UDC

394.9

Authors

Mazalova Nataliya Evgenyevna
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography,
Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia)

Abstract

In spite of the fact that Russian ritual experts (“the knowledgeable”) and their magic activity have long been an object of various studies, this research requires further development in the context of current trends both in Russian and world science. This paper studied folk ideas about “the knowledgeable”, their magic power and sacred knowledge in the local ethnocultural tradition of Kenozero using the field data obtained by the author in 1991. The following methods were used: the structural-semantic one, which helps to find the ethnographic substratum of mythological ideas, and the comparative method, allowing us to determine the place of Kenozero local tradition within the Russian one. The author studied traditional ideas of Kenozero population and compared them with beliefs prevailing on the rest of the Russian territory. Further in this paper ritual experts were differentiated. The author distinguishes between the concepts of magic power and secret knowledge. The magic power of a wizard is concentrated in his helpers. The “secret” knowledge is first of all the knowledge of spells and magical actions, but for wizards it also includes the ability to control his helpers. Spells, that all ritual experts know, also have magic power. Possessing magic power and sacred knowledge, “the knowledgeable” played an important social role: they held contact with the natural world. Kenozero tradition is unique due to the fact that in addition to demons wizards had woodland and water spirits as their helpers. The author believes that when differentiating ritual experts one should take into account the localization of his helper – whether it is the world of people or the natural world. Having studied traditional beliefs about “the knowledgeable” in Kenozero, the author was able to reveal specific mythological ideas typical of this local ethnocultural tradition and found it rather archaic.

Keywords

ritual expert, wizard, sorcerer, healer, magic power, sacred knowledge

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