KASEKTEN PEREMPUAN DI PESANTREN: PONDOK PESULUKAN THORIQOT AGUNG TULUNGAGUNG

In Javanese Islamic discourse in general, Javanese scholars look more at the broad horizon of Sufistic teachings and practices as an important variable in the Islamization of Java. The author feels that the micro area that discusses daily spirituality, especially women's spirituality, is an area of study that is worthy of research. In the practice of spirituality, of course, it cannot be separated from magical power, it is believed to have supernatural powers. The power is obtained in practice or penijazahan. Then there are various theories about mysticism, kebatinan to sects, in fact women are also actively involved in cosmology or social facts in Java. Therefore, the author poses a research question, namely, why the position of women in the narrative of daily spirituality is considered secondary and how is the practice of kasekten in Pondok Pesulukan Tharekat Agung. This paper specifically discusses the practice of spirituality or female students at the Thoriqot Agung Islamic boarding school in Tulungagung district. Practice or education is generally known as the path that can lead a person to gain enlightenment (sakti). This study uses an ethnographic-based qualitative approach. The findings of this study explain that sociological aspects and patriarchal religious interpretations condition women's spirituality to always be at a secondary level. Women who engage in spiritual practice cannot get the same degree as men, such as becoming Murshid, even though they are already spiritually established. Thus, women are only counted as students in the Tarekat and are not as charismatic as men who hold the title of Kyai Tarekat.

Photo Art Project ‘Female Multi-Component Associative Image ‘Fern Blossom’. Part 1

The author’s idea. What the phenomenon of ‘Fern blossom’ is, whereas according to scientific data, the fern does not bloom and does not form inflorescences. Fern flower in the East Slavic mythology has the character of a magical plant that gives a person magical power. With the help of the fern flower, the owner of it could understand the language of animals and trees, see hidden precious treasures under the ground, heal people from various diseases, predict the future and more. It is believed that the fern blossom can be found only on Ivan Kupala night. This holiday is traditional in Ukraine and is named after the Christian Saint John the Baptist, but originates in the distant past from the pagan faith.

Nad „Golubnjačom“ uživo

The play Golubnjača (1982), although primarily a multi-layered and complex literary work, did not attract the attention of literary critics as much as those who saw it as a danger due to possible rewriting of historical facts that were already established as a “credo” of the existing social reality. But it is precisely its theatrical realization that represents the basis that gives the written text the power of a living, embodied word. In this way, the writer opened his literary treasure to his readers in the same way that he attracted viewers to watch his plays with the magical power of living words.

Folk Carpathian-Ukrainian demonology: motivational-functional research method

The traditional way of describing and researching national demonological systems is the character approach. The article attempts to substantiate another possibility of studying Slavic demonology – through the concept of a mythological motive. The motive is understood as a semantic predicate of demonological narratives of various kinds, the minimal meaningful unit of plot composition (including motives-actions, motives-situations, motives-descriptions etc.). The composition of motives in each mythological tradition is unique and can be used to understand the mentality of the people, their way of perception of the world and their attitude to the world. The article describes, with varying degree of detail, some of the motives characteristic of the Carpathian-Ukrainian demonology: motives “to scare a person”, “to lead astray”, telling fairy tales as a protective charm, substitution of babies by demons, motives of double-mindedness, gaining magical power against hail, a circular dance of forest demons and a number of others. Among them, there are world-known, all-Slavic, actually Carpathian-Ukrainian and also Carpathian-Balkan motives. An analysis of these, as well as of other motives, contained in mythological narratives from the collections of V. Hnatiuk, V. Shukhevych, A. Onyschuk and others, allows us to realize the specificity and uniqueness of the Carpathian Ukrainian tradition, and can also provide material for conclusions of an ethnogenetic nature.

Advertising and Consumers’ Enthusiasm

Advertising tends to portray products as a magical power to achieve a happier life, a success in career, or an enhancement in self-esteem, which plays an indispensable role in promoting consumers’ enthusiasm towards products. The aim of this article is to explore the connection between advertising, purchase attitude and behaviors from the semiotic perspective. This involves the significance of advertising’s development and impacts, the persuasive process of advertising, semiotic system, and latent values in advertisements.

Anna Akhmatova’s Mystery: Word and Image

A comprehensive analysis of the word тайна (“mystery”) and its image in Anna Akhmatova’s art demonstrates how insistently Akhmatova created an aura of mystery around her life. The intentional duality of her birth date; the modelling of the image of her childhood as a period when she became aware of her otherness; the legend of a precocious gift of vision and foresight, which is relevant to the image of Akhmatova’s persona (Cassandra – Moon Maiden – enchantress –Chingisidess) and is also associated with the main spheres of her poetry: antiquity, the magical power of poetry, and history. The article identifies the actualisation of “Akhmatova’s mystery” in different aspects: biographical, personally identificatory, and poetical proper. Rigorous linguistic analysis involving corpus-based data makes it possible to establish the special position the word тайна plays in Anna Akhmatova’s vocabulary and provide a justification of its status as an idioglossia. The word тайна in Akhmatova’s poems organizes a wide thematical and associative field around itself, whose units are frequently used and assume an individual significance. The poems contain all meanings of the lexeme тайна that are used in the language system, and all the lexical-semantic variants are consolidated by the seme “unknown information”. The invariant meaning of the word тайна is attributed to the opposition “knowledge – ignorance”. The semantic complex of the lexeme in poetry is also strengthened by the meaning “arcane knowledge, involvement in mystery, and reaching the truth”. It is established that the lexically invariable image of тайна, which can also be seen as a leitmotif, is found in all the themes conceptually significant for Akhmatova: destiny, art, and love. Only on one occasion is the image of mystery not marked by a word but instead grows out of the atmosphere of the poem, which is conterminous to secret fear and mystical terror. Secret as something irrational, inexplicably horrifying is almost certainly commonly found in poems about time and space, where the poet’s daily life takes place. The fear of enclosed space and swift-flowing time is empowered by life circumstances, in which the poet’s creative expression of will is materialised. This fear is born out of the primary knowledge of limits, beyond which a human being is not allowed to go. The analysis of the word тайна and its image in the poet’s art leads the authors to conclude that the externally austere, but internally counterintuitive harmony of Anna Akhmatova’s poetry is created along the fine line between the impermissible and the unrestricted, the secret and the explicit, the mystical and the rational.

«Women's Practices» in Non-Canonical Pilgrimage in Islam

Analysis of some «women's practices» in non-canonical pilgrimage in Islam revealed that the specification of these pilgrimage practices follows from such factors as the status and role position of a woman in society, her main functions in the family and community, as well as her psychoemo-tional nature. There is a tendency on the part of women to assign to sacred natural objects a super-natural character and to endow them with magical power. This can be clearly seen both at the level of systematization and theoretical analysis of similar studies, and after considering the results of the author’s small electronic sociological survey. 54,5 % of respondents believe to some extent that sa-cred objects indicated in the survey possess supernatural powers. The same surveys revealed syncre-tism between pagan objects of religious worship and Islamic attributes of the religious life of Dage-stanis. At the same time, the perception of some natural objects as sacred ones differs in the regions of the republic.

The materiality of the letter in Seto oral culture

This article focuses on the concept of letter in oral folklore. The main research material is examples from the older folk songs of Seto, where a letter, a book and other items referring to literacy are mentioned. Texts under consideration are poetical and the meaning conveyed in them is not always very clear. The term letter may be related to a message, paper, book, leaf or other material medium in the songs. The boundary between oracy and literacy is therefore thin, given that letters and writing are often imagined and conveyed in a physical context. Literacy in Seto folk songs is sometimes reflected as part of mythological knowledge and a mythological worldview. The written text or objects carrying it may have magical power. In some songs the writing can also be found on plants, which is interesting from a cross-cultural perspective. Similar motives from the folklore and beliefs of other peoples have been used comparatively to understand the content of the songs under consideration. The song of heavenly cows eating holy plants offers an opportunity to draw intercultural parallels and raises the question about the ethnogenesis of the Seto and their relatedness to different Eurasian peoples further to the east.

Rhetorical uses of precise numbers and semi-magical round numbers in political discourse about COVID-19: Examples from the government of the United Kingdom

This paper examines how the British government has used statistics about COVID-19 for political ends. A distinction is made between precise and round numbers. Historically, using round numbers to estimate the spread of disease gave way in the 19th century to the sort precise, but not necessarily accurate, statistics that are now being used to record COVID-19. However, round numbers have continued to exert rhetorical, ‘semi-magical’ power by simultaneously conveying both quantity and quality. This is demonstrated in examples from the British government’s claims about COVID-19. The paper illustrates how senior members of the UK government use ‘good’ round numbers to frame their COVID-19 goals and to announce apparent achievements. These round numbers can provide political incentives to manipulate the production of precise number; again examples from the UK government are given.

Mitigasi Covid-19 Melalui Kearifan Lokal Pesantren di Madura

This study discusses strategies to strengthen the global pandemic COVID-19 mitigation in Madura through the utilization of the local wisdom values ​​of pesantren. There are three focus issues raised in this study, namely; COVID-19, the value of local wisdom, and finally pesantren. Using this type of qualitative research based on an analysis of sociological theory, this study found that the pesantren's social position as one of Madura's local wisdom values ​​could actually be used as a strategy to strengthen the COVID-19 transmission and transmission control activities in Madura. The strengths and advantages of pesantren in strengthening COVID-19 mitigation in Madura can be seen from two things; First, pesantren is a popular traditional Islamic institution that is synonymous with magical power and charismatic clerical figures. With this, pesantren can be used as instruments to educate the public about the importance of complying with the health protocol regulations issued by the government; Secondly, pesantren have large and broad social capital, where the social capital is centered on three networks of power such as the kyai, santri, and aumni. In this regard, both the kyai, santri, and alumni, all three can be used to strengthen the COVID-19 control agenda in Madura, specifically to target some areas which have not been adequately addressed by formal policies. The involvement of pesantren and all their social networks such as kyai, santri, and alumni, besides being able to strengthen the COVID-19 mitigation agenda, can also realize an integral role control model by combining two approaches at once, namely structural approaches and value-based approaches of local wisdom.