engleski

Over the Mountains High, across the Waters Deep (astroethnological contributions)

To motivate and stimulate the fertility of the soil, the resultant abundance of crops and foodstuffs, high natality rates and harmonious existence of a given tribal community in each new yearly cycle, people mimicked, through ceremonial processions, the movements of celestial bodies. They thereby symbolically stimulated the perpetuation of the regular astronomical cycles and, by developing a set of beliefs initiated a transfer of their cosmogonic-eschatological perceptions of the heavenly macrocosm to the human microcosm. The choreography of the traditional circle-dances, the melodies of the accompanying songs and the structure and content of the lyrics based on myths, a variety of oral transmission and last but not least the local micro-toponymy clearly reveal the surviving traces of the pre-Christian Slavic myths. These myths have been the subject of intense study by historians, linguists, anthropologists, ethnographers and other scholars belonging to various academic and scientific disciplines since the end of the 20th century. This paper is based on archival materials, publications and my own ethnographic fieldwork in Croatia. In this paper I study the transfer of the personal and collective experiences of the people of the Croatian and South Slavic areas through their peculiar folklore language, a transfer that is occurring at the diachronic and synchronic levels, from the terrestrial to the celestial and from the existential to the spiritual spheres. I observe the encounters, labeling, adapting, shaping, merging, contextualizing, and semanticizing of their experiences.

divine macrocosms, terrestrial microcosms, traditional astronomical names, oral literature

Rad se temelji na izlaganju predstavljenom na IC Sacralization of Landscape and Sacred Places / MZS Sakralizacija prostora i sveta mjesta (zbornik IARH), održanom 2.-3.06.2016. godine. Rezultat je istraživanja u sklopu dva IEF-ova interna projekta - Nematerijalna kultura i digitalna humanistika te Kulturna animalistika: životinja i čovjek – interdisciplinarne analize i mnogostruke kulturne prakse.