The image of Venetian mirror in the magic storylines of P. P. Muratov and A. V. Chayanov

This article examines the role of the image of Venetian mirror in the novella “The Venetian Mirror” by P. Muratov and “The Venetian Mirror, or Remarkable Adventures of the Glass Man” by A. Chayanov, as well as their connotation with the literary tradition of the mirror image. Representation of the mirror as a bearer of supernatural power takes its roots in folklore. Image of the mirror and principle of mirroring hold an important place in the poetics of romanticists and symbolists, and gain popularity in literature of the 1920s. Analysis of the image of Venetian mirror in the works of Muratov and Chayanov demonstrates that both texts fall under the tradition of Venetian text of the Russian literature, as well as reveal similar motifs that indicate their typology for small magical prose. However, the author also determines the individual interpretations of the role of magical item in the life of the protagonists: if in A. Chayanov’s novella, the Venetian mirror changes the usual order of things, then in Muratov's novella it sets the tone of narration. The scientific novelty lies in functional comparison of the texts with magical storylines, in the center of which is the image of Venetian mirror. The author comes to the conclusion that the extensive use of magical elements in the romantic context by A. Chayanov is antipodal to  neutral intonations of P. Muratov. It is noted that Chayanov creates a neo-mythological story of the pursuit and cognition of “Self”, personal becoming; while Muratov in his novella realizes the myth of lost harmony.

“Then He Stabbed Me with a Spear”: Aggressive Sacred Images and Interreligious Polemics

This paper studies Coptic communal identity in early Islamic Egypt by analyzing two hagiographical narratives from the Christian Copto-Arabic text The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria. The narratives relate incidents of sacred images that become ‘aggressive’ when they retaliate against insults. Although the relation between religious violence and sacred art has merited much scholarly attention, the focus is usually on humans as the aggressors and sacred art as the victim. The reverse is scarcer, and its rarity means we miss an opportunity to rethink such narratives as communicative modes of rhetoric to be contextually interpreted. Here I argue that these aggressive sacred images were tools of power within a polemic religious discourse aimed at proclaiming divine truth, undergirding it with supernatural power, and ultimately shaping Coptic communal identity around this discourse.

Analysis and Discussion Concerning Death

The analysis and discussion concerning death as intended by the Researcher depicts that death is an irreversible condition or state encountered by beings (all living creatures), due to a total dysfunction of the body organs. Such an irreversible condition is an enemy of human beings, which supersedes humanity, causing unexpected changes in life. It came as a punishment of abusing the supernatural power and finally it became a fact of not living forever. By the use of different literatures, Interviews and Documents, the research explored diverse concerns of death and drew its conclusion. Some of those concerns are “how is death detected? What are the causatives of death? Does death have its remedy? Where are dead people? Why do we bury the dead? And what is next after death?” The findings reveal that Doctors prove death by assessing and measuring the vital signs such as Blood Pressure, Pulse Rate, Respiratory Rate and Body Temperature. Moreover, the causatives of death include chronic pulmonary obstructive disease, ischemia, stroke, dehydration, infections and pain as well as old age. Those who encounter death are laid in the graves because God commanded it to be so and they produce unpleasant smell and stink. The remedy of it depends on the supernatural power that is believed to have ability of restoring the lost lives at consummation. That’s why Christians believe that on the second coming of Jesus Christ, all the dead shall rise. Hence, human beings have to be kin enough in lifetime, so that they may prolong a bit their lifespan through observance of health principles and guidelines.

PERCEPTION OF BIOCHEMISTRY ON LIFE PROCESS

Our questioning about life is started from our childhood age and it was continued until our old age of the life but you want answers to what is the main logic between life and our nature. It is not concluded by the science also. But science is continuously searching the related things in our lives and in nature for finding relationship of them. From the beginning of civilization, the human thinking no arising questioning and don't try to get answering the understanding problems of life and environment was not considered. From that situation and the time human being was followed the supernatural power belief system for life and nature.

Display of the Ancient Religious Bone Cults in the Late Acheulean–Mousterian Art

The relevance of research. One of the most important unsolved problems of cultural studies, religious studies, art history, and history is to determine the time of the origin of religious ideas: that of the beginning of the spiritual evolution of the mankind, which at a certain stage of development begins to master not only the material world but also tries to comprehend the supernatural transcendent reality. The views of scholars regarding the time of the birth of religious beliefs is divided into two opposing points of view. According to one of them, expressed in the works of R. Marett, F. Ratzel, V. Kabo, A. Zubov, religious representations were inherent in the primitive man since the beginning of existence. A serious argument against this version is the fact that art the site of Olduvai culture no object was found that did not have a utilitarian purpose and that could be interpreted as a cult object. However, this fact can be explained by the fact that the rational awareness of the highest supernatural power was preceded by its subconscious (intuitive) sensation, which did not require objectivation in cult objects. Religious ideas were primitive so that they did not need any cult objects. According to other scholars, one can speak of the emergence of religious ideas only from the moment when the cult artefacts appeared; the pre-religious period had lasted until the end of the Mousterian era. However, the discovery of a number of archaeological sites in the second half of the 20th century at the beginning of the 21st century makes it possible to move the beginning of the appearance of Religious beliefs back until the period of the late Acheulean–beginning of Mousterian era.The purpose of the article: to establish the time of the origin and evolution of the earliest religious beliefs associated with the cult of bones, based on the analysis of the most ancient artefacts currently known, which testify to the ritual activities of the primitive man. The considered artefacts lead to the conclusion that the most ancient evidence of the cults of bones belongs to the era of the late Acheulean and Mousterian. Animal bones were among the first objects that the primitive man singled out from the environment as sacred, and endowed with a supernatural ability to revive the lives of animals and humans. Symbolic compositions of bones and signs carved in them became sacred attributes used for magical rites. The first acts of the ritual symbolization marked the emergence of sacred art and magic, which, radically different from the directly useful work, passed into a special plane of connection of men with the supernatural force. The earliest monuments (Torralba, Ambrona, Azykh), which testify to magical actions with bones, date back to about 400–200 thousand years BC. Thus, more than 2 million years passed from the appearance of man (ca. 2.7 million years ago) to the emergence of religious ideas, which required objectification in cult items and the performance of certain rituals. Although it cannot be denied that the intuitive subconscious sense of the supernatural power has been inherent in man since the beginning of his existence, purposefully by cultic magical actions that called on higher powers for help, he began to practice from the period of the late Acheulean. In the Mousterian era, in addition to the cult of bones, the cult of the skull arose as a container of special energy capable of renewing human life. Despite the fact that there are only a few examples of skull burials in the Mousterian period, apart from Mount Circeo, in Zhoukoudian (1929), Ngandonga (1931–1933) and Steingheim (1933), it can be assumed that about 70–50 thousand years ago, along with burials, an undissected body could be another rite of separation of the skull, which as a container of a special vital energy of man was buried in some parts of the caves on piles of bones and stones, just as at about the same time separately buried the skulls of bears in stone boxes and niches in caves of Regurdu, Azykh, Drachenloh, Wildenmannlisloch, and others. Later, with the development of ideas about the soul, the cult of skulls is further developed, based on the realization of the power of the extracorporeal spiritual essence of the revered dead (= ancestors), the concentration of which requires a magical container.

Preverbal infants expect agents exhibiting counterintuitive capacities to gain access to contested resources

Claims to supernatural power have been used as a basis for authority in a wide range of societies, but little is known about developmental origins of the link between supernatural power and worldly authority. Here, we show that 12- to 16-month-old infants expect agents exhibiting counterintuitive capacities to win out in a two-way standoff over a contested resource. Infants watched two agents gain a reward using either physically intuitive or physically counterintuitive methods, the latter involving simple forms of levitation or teleportation. Infants looked longer, indicating surprise, when the physically intuitive agent subsequently outcompeted a physically counterintuitive agent in securing a reward. Control experiments indicated that infants’ expectations were not simply motived by the efficiency of agents in pursuing their goals, but specifically the deployment of counterintuitive capacities. This suggests that the link between supernatural power and worldly authority has early origins in development.

Antropologia da “praga”

A genre of speech used by the speaker to access an essentially therapeutic power, but also traditionally to invoke a magical or divine power to destroy an opponent, the curse (in Portuguese “praga”, from the Latin “plaga”: “blow,” “wound,” “calamity,” in the proper and figurative sense) is at the same time a discourse of threat and satire, a discourse of merciless predation by an adversary who employs the force of words and gestures invested with supernatural power. In this article, based mainly on the many dozens of curses spoken by characters in the works of the Portuguese novelist Aquilino Ribeiro, I propose to build a theory (literary, cultural and anthropological) of the curse.

Konsep Kesakralan Masyarakat Emile Durkheim: Studi Kasus Suku Aborigin di Australia

This article explains the concept of community sacredness through the results of Emile Durkheim's research on Aboriginal tribes in Australia. The research method used is descriptive analytical. The results of this study are Emile Durkheim dividing people's trust into two groups, namely the sacred and the profane. These two things are very influential in people's daily lives. Besides these two things, religion also has a function to bind people's beliefs to obey the rules that apply in the environment. So it can be concluded that the sacredness of society occurs when they believe in the supernatural power possessed by totems, so that they glorify it and regard it as something sacred and have restrictions on anyone who violates it. Instead, they loosen the profane aspect as an earthly ritual, so they may violate it and ignore it.