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In the paper, the result of field inquiry concerning the reception of "Sretenje"-Serbias national day holiday, in times of transition, are presented. Through a five year research of this public holiday, communication channels, form and contents of the community messages were being analyzed. From 2004-2005 the research was focused upon the recipients of these messages, towards a communication collective, i.e. the public. The study was performed in Belgrade, Krusevac and Vrnjacka Banja. I examined the reception of a holiday in transitional times, as well as the fulfillment of the prime objective of the messages.
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In this paper, I discuss the contribution of late professor Dušan Bandić to the research of popular religion and popular orthodoxy, in the context of 20th century Serbian ethnology. The concept of "popular religion" Bandić introduced helped fill a void created by decades of theoretical and methodological stagnation in studies of popular religion and beliefs. The concept of popular orthodoxy, likewise, represented a completely innovative approach to religion studies, since it focused on the reception and interpretation of messages from the Serbian Orthodox Church among the general population. Thus, it managed to reach the depths of religious research that had been previously obscured in studies that could only provide an image of formal religiosity.
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The research in the town of Knjaževac and surrounding villages reveals that the phenomenon of spirit possession influences the formation of a special category of ritual functionaries, called "church persons". Depending on the degree of professionalization of their abilities, the services those persons offer range from communicating with the dead (channeling their souls' voices) to becoming the key religious functionary in a community, where he/she, besides communicating with the other world, healing, and foreseeing the future, also organizes religious life and offers religious, moral and ethical sermons, which play an important role in the community through the foundation and maintenance of important places of cult. Church persons are upwardly socially mobile, in terms of economy and status. The actions of these functionaries subsume the two previously known categories – medicine men and priests. They apply their knowledge in ways close to the popular spirit,with additional authority generated by the phenomenon of spirit possession.
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Since 1950s the United States of America (USA) legitimized their imperial hegemony also by conquest of Space. Consequently, this empire sees itself as a legitimate representative of the humanity. Such a notion reflects itself in both folklore and science fiction.
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On the occasion of 150-anniversary of the Franciscan monastery in Guča Gora dedicated to St Francis of Assisi the article addresses his worship in the tradition of Bosnian Franciscans. It was done through presenting the preaching of Fra Stjepan Margetić Na svetoga Oca Frančeska Patriarka našega, O čudo i veselje (On the Feast of our Patriarch St Francesco – Oh, miracle and joy). St Francis is described as a marvel to God, angels and humans, attesting to the tradition of justified correlation and differentiation of mystics and politics (J.B.Metz) in the worshiping St Francis by the Bosnian Franciscans: the religious and social meaning of Christian monkhood, meaning the more mystic, the more social! The mysticism of Bosnian Franciscans is especially visible in their faith and love of God and in imitating St Francis – marvel to God, angels and humans. The Franciscan politics is manifested in their (1) continuing protection of Bosnia and Herzegovina as followers of the Bosnian middle-age kingdom and the hope of ridding Bosnia of Ottoman slavery as Israel rid Egypt of slavery; (2) Accepting B&H not only as a political, but also as a mystic reality through metaphysical ideas and physical praxis of the country being in God’s providence – a marvel to God, angels and humans. This attitude of the Bosnian Franciscans to B&H takes rise from St Francis sprit of love for Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, but also for God’s creation which includes loving land, as seen in Song of Brother Sun by St Francis: Be praised, my Lord, for our sister, mother earth, who sustains and governs us and produces diverse fruits and colored flowers and grass.
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The region of north-eastern Serbia is known for a vivid magic activity of its population. Every village has sorceresses using the so called white or black magic. The most attractive example of magic practice is a wide-spread ceremony of casting spells in order to “tie” someone. Magic tying is a way in which wives punish their unfaithful husbands and lovers, causing their partial or complete sexual impotence. It is not hard to imagine why this magic activity has survived until today. It is clear that, alongside its therapeutic significance (e.g.autosuggestion), this practice has a conclusive social significance too. Charms are, in a certain sense, also means of pointing out that impotence is a social phenomenon. It is implied that the impotence of a man is not an expression of his physical or mental disability, but that it comes as a result of the magic activity of women. In this way man does not lose any of his supposed strength, masculinity and authority otherwise attributable to the patriarchal male person. The order in which the male is domineering over the female remains preserved. On the other hand, it seems that the “tying” and the efficiency of spells amount to some kind of a relief for women who are unsuccessful in social terms, for women that are abandoned or are about to be abandoned by their husbands or lovers. For both of these categories of women, the casting of spells always leaves hope that their apparently insoluble situation will be resolved.
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The author explores, within the scope of the research project, a perception of death in three archaic but ideationally persistent forms of our folklore: lamentations, curses, and charms. The first and foremost stage of this research work is a study of lamentations. Due to the complexity of the notion of death, it is, first of all, necessary, as the author points out, to determiner there is anything peculiar to this avenue of approach to death, with respect to the official orthodox dogmatic, and with respect to other forms of folk creativity. It is also imperative to make a close study of whether the contemplated lamentations include certain old ideas of death and of the afterlife, which may have their origin in some ancient religion. Exemplified by fragments of folk lamentation verse taken from three anthologies (compiled by Vuk St. Karadžić, Novica Šaulić, and Tatomir Vukanović, respectively), the subjects under consideration include how lamentations relate a down-to-earth attitude to death, what is meant by the syntagm “eternal home”, and how death reflects in the community of the living. Metaphoric and sublimated poetic language, reelected also in curses, could be of use to us as a criterion in our appreciation of praise worthy qualities of our people.
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