Między sacrum a profanum, czyli rytuały i obrzędy w świetle wypowiedzi mieszkańców pogranicza północno-wschodniej Polski

• Authors: Marcin Janczylik

Title variants

EN

Between the Sacred and the Profane, that is, Rituals and Rites in the Light of Statements of the Borderland Inhabitants of Northeastern Poland

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

According to ethnologists, the sacred and the profane often intermingle, and the boundary between them is smooth. What is secular in one culture, may be considered sacred in another. By virtue of particular rites processes of sacralization and desacralization may also occur. The article presents an analysis of intermingling of the sacred and the profane spheres in the rituals performed by the residents of selected villages bordering the north-eastern Poland. The analysis was made on the basis of the material gathered through a technique of interviews with a flexible structure. The experience of the surveyed borderland residents can be divided into religious, social and cultural. Appropriate ways of understanding, describing and expressing the world can be attributed to each of these spheres. Theological, rational or magical explanations should be mentioned here respectively. This system, in principle, should clearly specify the areas of the sacred and profane. However the statements of persons representing different ethnic and religious groups, recorded during the fieldwork, confirm the occurrence of collisions of these spheres and transfers between them.

Keywords

EN

borderland; the sacred sphere; the profane sphere; crisis rituals; magical thinking

• Publisher: Committee on Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slavia Orientalis
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 63
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 629-642

Contributors

author

Marcin Janczylik

• Instytut Filologii Polskiej i Kulturoznawstwa Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, ul. Jaggiellońska 11, 85- 067 Bydgoszcz, Poland