Mythology And Folklore

What implications does the Srin-mo, a pre-Buddhist deity who traverses across almost all of the periods of time in Tibetan religious life, have on the social status of women? Embodying the places and spaces of Tibet, a malevolent demoness called the Srin-mo has been essential in laying the formation of Tibetan Buddhism. The concept of the Srin-mo can be traced back to the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet: Bön. The story of the Srin-mo is not a creation myth in the sense of a worldly inception,  but the story of the demoness does represent the creation of a harmonious society, spurring from the preceding time of primordial chaos found amongst the Bön religion. Looking at the origins of the demoness’ story is necessary in order to understand how and why the Srin-mo holds efficacious power over the land and people of Tibet. Here, I will investigate the case of the Srin-mo, which is controversially one of the most important beings in Tibet, but unquestionably, an irrevocable component of understanding what implications geography holds on Tibet.

Los ensayos que integran el libro que el lector tiene entre sus manos se plantean como objetivo contribuir a desentrañar las ambiguas relaciones existentes entre demonología cristiana y cultura folklórica en un escenario específico –España y el mundo ibérico- y en un período determinado –la modernidad clásica. Para ello, la primera parte de Strix Hispanica se dedica al análisis de la historiografía de la caza de brujas europea, manteniendo como hilo conductor los debates en torno a la compleja mitología del sabbat. La segunda parte incluye una serie de estudios de caso en torno a dos figuras paradigmáticas del folklore ibérico tradicional: la bruja y el saludador. A poco que el especialista se aboca al análisis del complejo de la bruja peninsular detecta una superposición idiosincrásica de mitologemas que pone a prueba las más elaboradas herramientas teóricas y metodológicas al alcance de los historiadores profesionales. En efecto, el problema de la profunda originalidad del estereotipo de la bruja ibérica no puede abordarse sin recurrir al apoyo de otras disciplinas, llamadas a cubrir las lagunas, los silencios, que la historia académica no puede, no osa interpelar. El saludador, por su parte, es una de las figuras más irreductiblemente originales del folklore vernáculo. Aún cuando los saludadores no integraron de manera permanente el sistema de la brujería popular española, durante gran parte de la Edad Moderna hicieron de la detección de brujas y de la neutralización de maleficia una de sus actividades más lucrativas -más allá de su convencional virtud para curar la hidrofobia y de su espectacular dominio sobre el fuego. El complejo del saludador constituye un tema particularmente apropiado para encarar el estudio de las interacciones entre demonología erudita y cultura local, pues sus trazos específicos exigieron hasta sus mismísimos límites a los más sofisticados dispositivos diseñados por la teología tardo-escolástica.

Les Slaves de l'Est (Biélorusses, Russes et Ukrainiens) possèdent une très riche tradition de chants épiques et religieux qui bien souvent renvoient à un fond très archaïque, un fond mythologique qui n'a de chrétien que l'apparence. Ces chants épiques russes (les bylines) et ukrainiens (les dumy), ces formules et incantations biélorusses, ne mentionnent évidemment pas d'antiques divinités slaves, mais ils font appels à des conceptions et des récits qui peuvent remonter à des temps bien antérieurs à la christianisation, et qui de ce fait peuvent être comparés à d'autres mythologies européennes. Textes traduits du russe, du biélorusse et de l'ukrainien.

2e édition.
Extraits: introduction, premier chant, bibliographie et table des matières

Dowsing is a customary means of finding hidden things – especially water and minerals – and is found across northern Europe and the Americas. It recently became the subject of some controversy after a scientist revealed that 10 out of the 12 British water companies stated on Twitter that they used the practice, despite a lack of scientific evidence for its efficacy. In this article, the author analyzes the contours of this controversy in order to identify underlying cultural attitudes towards knowledge and the landscape it reveals. He concludes by sounding two notes of caution regarding the critical posture adopted by scientists who are rushing to condemn this customary practice, stressing the importance of understanding the nature of dowsing as a cultural form regardless of its efficacy and the need for scientists to be mindful of their own biases and preconceptions.

Un misterioso rito, retaggio vivente di epoche remotissime, si rinnova ogni anno all’interno delle celebrazioni del carnevale di Castelnuovo a Volturno, in Molise. Un essere fantastico, Gl’ Cierv, furioso e selvatico Uomo Cervo, muore e rinasce ciclicamente, simbolo solare e della rigenerazione della natura, testimonianza viva di un antico mito cosmico-agrario. Seguendo le sue orme, un viaggio lunghissimo attraverso il tempo e lo spazio ci conduce in un reame magico nel quale sciamani in estasi, contadini e cacciatori sono i custodi dell’arcaico culto del dio cervo.

ENG: A mysterious ritual, a living legacy of ancient times, is renewed every year within the celebrations of the Castelnuovo a Volturno carnival, in Molise (Italy). A fantastic being, Gl ’Cierv, furious and wild Deer Man, dies and reborn cyclically, a solar symbol and the regeneration of nature, living testimony of an ancient cosmic-agrarian myth. Following in his footsteps, a very long journey through time and space leads us to a magical realm in which ecstatic shamans, farmers and hunters are the keepers of the archaic cult of the deer god.

Link per l'acquisto:
https://www.stamperiadelvalentino.it/product/luomo-cervo/

ISBN: 979-12-80721-08-2

The present study scrutinizes the outlawry and outlaws that appear in the Icelandic Family Sagas. It provides a thorough description about outlawry on the basis of extant law and saga texts as well as an analysis of referential connotations attached to it. The concept of outlawry was fundamental for the medieval Icelanders conceptions of their past. Indeed, understanding outlawry is essential for understanding many of the Family Sagas. Outlaws appear in saga texts in significant roles.

The Icelandic Family Sagas comprise a group of prose narratives that were written down in the 13th and 14th century Iceland. They are based on events and personae that belong to the 10th century Iceland. These narratives introduce many outlaws, out of which some 75 are named.

The Family Sagas are studied here as one corpus and special emphasis is given to those narrative features that repetitively appear in connection with outlawry and the outlaw characters. Therefore, the eventual objects of this study are the medieval Icelanders general conceptions of the historical outlawry as well as the variations of these conceptions throughout the period of saga writing. The medieval Icelanders general conceptions about the 10th 11th century, which are reflected in the Family Sagas, are here referred to as the Saga World. The Saga World is the historically based taleworld to which all of the Family Sagas refer.

The medieval law texts, which were derived from centuries old legislative traditions, reveal that outlawry meant banishing from the society and being denied all help, and that the outlawed person lost the protection of the law. In practice, outlawry was a death sentence.

However, outlaws occupy many differing roles in the saga narratives even in connection with recurrent narrative motifs. These roles reflect the social and spatial structures of the Saga World. The inspection of outlawry within these structures reveals that the definition of outlawry as it appears in the law texts is insufficient for understanding outlawry in the saga texts.

The social and spatial structures also provide a basis for the connotations of outlawry. In this study, these connotations are inspected primarily from the referential connections between outlawry in the Family Sagas and corresponding phenomena in other concurrent literature. This is done by studying the implementations of the basic elements of outlawry in the Family Sagas marginalization, banishing, rejection and solitariness within other literary genres and the taleworlds to which they refer. It is argued that these taleworlds reflect the same ideas that were associated with outlawry in the Family Sagas albeit in different forms and that these different forms reciprocally contributed to the conceptions of outlawry.

The variety of denotations and connotations of outlawry that is visible in the medieval Icelandic texts reflects the ambiguity of outlawry in the Family Sagas. This ambiguity may shed light to questions such as why an outlaw could be perceived as a hero in a literary genre that predominantly promoted law and order and why the same outlaw could be perceived as a villain on another occasion.

A filmografia concede acesso a mundos distantes, e, por vezes, imaginários e desconhecidos. O cinema de terror tem vindo a evoluir numa trajetória paralela à pop culture, traçando contos e mitos perdidos no curso da história, e que levantam temáticas interessantes, para as quais o público não está consciente. Midsommar é um desses filmes, onde o folclore medieval nórdico é explorado na sua essência mais crua, e são levantadas morais transponíveis para o mundo contemporâneo. O conhecimento que se detém sobre estas culturas encontra-se num núcleo demasiado reservado, quer seja ao nível dos connaisseurs, ou das fontes historiográficas, que, na maior parte dos casos, se reduz a sagas, cuja linearidade histórica é incerta, ou a mitos que remanescem em manuscritos tardios, e após séculos de tradição oral. O cinema, acaba por ser uma fonte, que para além de contemporânea, nos permite analisar estas culturas com outro olhar, e acessibilidade. Do século XVI em diante, iniciaram-se estudos e compilações sobre a «Idade das Trevas», fazendo transcrições, e interpretações de cultos provenientes de mundos sobre os quais pouco ou nada se sabia, principalmente, naquele período em específico.

This  article  takes  a  semiotic  and  structuralist  approach  to  understanding  the  characteristic nightmare package of imagery, or image-constellation, which appears also in charms, curses and lullabies to do with disturbed sleep. Elements of the nightmare package – its mythos – is related to a spectrum of charms and related  belief-narratives.  Charms  against  the  nightmare  are  investigated,  as are sleep charms as representative of the nightmare narrative of threat coming close  to  fruition.  Detail  is  provided  on  spiritual  beings  believed  to  attack  the  sleeper, as well as on charms as methods to ward off such attacks. Psychological explanations are considered, such as the nightmare antagonist being a disguised avatar of the self.

The present volume responds to the rising boom of interest in folklore and folklore research in the study of Old Norse mythology. The twenty-two authors of this volume reveal the dynamism of this lively dialogue, which is characterized by a diversity of perspectives linking to different fields and national scholarships.

The chapters open with a general overview of how the concepts of “folklore” and “mythology” have been understood and related across the history of Old Norse studies, which is followed by a group of chapters that discuss and present different approaches and types of source materials, with methodological and theoretical concerns. The interest in folklore is bound up with interests in practice and lived religion, which are brought into focus in a series of chapters relating to magic and ritual. Attention then turns to images that link to mythology and different mythic agents in studies that explore a variety of usage in meaning-making in different forms of cultural expression. The next group of studies spotlights motifs, with perspectives on synchronic usage across genres and different media, cross-cultural exchange, and long-term continuities. The volume culminates in discussions of complex stories, variously in oral traditions behind medieval sources and relationships between accounts found in medieval sources and those recorded from more recent traditions.

Individually, the chapters variously offer reflexive and historical research criticism, new research frameworks, illustrative studies, and exploratory investigations. Collectively, they illustrate the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary discussion at the intersections of folklore and Old Norse mythology, where the transformative impacts were recently described as a paradigm shift. They open new paths for scholarly discussion with the potential to inspire future research.

The technique we practice to tell imagined stories among ourselves especially the construction and the preservation of the mythical stories is always important to our psychological development. Today, the world of digital games work as the foundation into artificial worlds, where the imagined stories are well maintained and prolonged. Mythic narratives have the power to develop above their standard and become "remediated" which means, they can stimulate, translate and adapt into other forms of media and afterwards create a life outside their original medium, where the artificial universe sustains, expands and grows in detail. (Bolter & Grusin, 5). Thus, the fictional world of the games exists beyond the game and have become more than the game. The mythic world has its own story to tell, its own metanarrative, framing and assistance of the game. The video game Asura's Wrath (2012) have advanced the borders of digital and narrative experiences and they merged the digital interaction with traditional notions of play and explained the mythological interaction. In other words, these games involve the activity of the play.

Символом Удмуртии стали родники. В прошлые времена удмурты охотно участвовали в православных обрядах водосвятия. Мифологические водные «хозяева» издавна были весьма значимы у финно-угорских народов, и, соответственно, природные водоёмы имели большое значение в их жизни и религии. А у русского населения горнозаводского Урала записаны легенды и предания о человеческих жертвах, которые якобы приносились при строительстве плотин и заводов. Здесь очевиден распространённый фольклорный мотив «строительной жертвы». Но на сходных мифологемах, поверьях, преданиях выстраивались улики против удмуртских крестьян из с. Мултан Вятской губернии, обвинённых в 1892 г. в ритуальном убийстве. Один из важных аспектов Мултанского дела оказался связан с представлениями удмуртов об опасных для людей водных «хозяевах».

Dracorex was a dinosaur of the family Pachycephalosauridae, that lived during the Late Cretaceous of North America. The type (and only) species is Dracorex hogwartsia, meaning "dragon king of Hogwarts".
It is known from one nearly complete skull (the holotype TCMI 2004.17.1), as well as four cervical vertebrae including the atlas, third, ninth and eighth. These were discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota by three amateur paleontologists from Sioux City, Iowa. The skull was subsequently donated to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis for study in 2004, and was formally described by Bob Bakker and Robert Sullivan in 2006.

Dracorex, a herbivore, had a skull with spiky horns, bumps, and a long muzzle. The species also sports well-developed supratemporal fenestrae and a heavily-armored flat skull – lacking the characteristic pachycephalosaurid dome. Coupled with these two features is the excessive number of osteoderms in the form of irregular osteodermal crust: a number of nodes, larger hornlets, and spikes. Disregarding this, Dracorex is physically comparable to Stygimoloch. In the Pachycephalosauridae family, the Asian taxa includes a number of (somewhat) flat-headed pachycephalosaurs (Homalocephale calat'hocercos, Goyocephale lattimorei, and Wannanosaurus yansiensis). However, prior to the discovery of Dracorex, the only semi-flat-headed pachycephalosaur from North America was Stegoceras validum (inclusive of Ornatotholus' browni). Even then, the semi-flat-headed trait was only present in juveniles of the species.

Aside from having a flat, nodal skull, the most prominent feature of Dracorex is the pair of huge and unrestricted superior temporal openings. The supratemporal fenestrae are much larger front-to-back and side-to-side than in Homalocephale, and larger than in Goyocephale. Only a fragmentary Wannanosaurus skull shows fenestrae as large as those of Dracorex. This fenestral architecture has been seen in ancient archosaurs, but not in other pachycephalosaurs.

Consequently, if unreduced superior fenestrae are morphologically primitive, then Dracorex is more primitive in the temporal region than any other known pachycephalosaur. However, Sullivan (2003, 2006) demonstrated that the oldest known pachycephalosaurs were, in fact, fully-domed, and that the flat-headed morphology appeared later in the fossil record. This suggests that doming may be primitive for pachycephalosaurs and that a reversion to the non-domed, flat-headed state is a secondary (derived) character reversion, coupled with the re-opening of the supratemporal fenestrae. Indeed, while Stegoceras has been considered to be transitional between domed and flat-headed taxa, it may indicate the beginning of a character reversion to suppression of doming and opening of the supratemporal fenestrae in some taxa.

The excavated specimen was most likely a young adult. However, based on ossification of the mid-cervical arch with the centrum, it was near maturity. The animal was approximately 10 feet (3 m) long.

However, at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Jack Horner of Montana State University presented evidence, from analysis of the skull of holotype specimen TCMI 2004.17.1, that Dracorex may well be a juvenile form of Pachycephalosaurus.

Classification
In the original description, Bob Bakker included Dracorex in the family Pachycephalosauridae within the subfamily Pachycephalosaurinae. In the latter in the Pachycephalosaurini tribe together with Pachycephalosaurus forming a clearing next to Stygimoloch . To carry out the analysis of the relationships between the genders, he observed the differences in cranial ornamentation.

In a comprehensive study of numerous fossils of Pachycephalosaurus published in 2009, John R. Horner and Mark B. Goodwin , a strong variation warn ontogenetic of the skull : large morphological differences between juveniles and adults. For them, the flat Dracorex skull , the nodules at the front end, the small spines at the back, and the thick but non-dome-shaped frontoparietal, indicate that the only known specimen is a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus

Alternative interpretation
Dracorex may be a closely related individual of Stygimoloch and / or Pachycephalosaurus in which the cupola and horns are not well developed either because the animal was a juvenile or a female. This consideration was supported at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Jack Horner from Montana State University presented evidence, from analysis of the skull of the only extant specimen of Dracorex , that this dinosaur could be a juvenile form of Stygimoloch . In addition, he presented data indicating that both Stygimoloch and Dracorex may be juvenile forms ofPachycephalosaurus . Horner and MB Goodwin published their findings in 2009, showing that the spine / nodule bones and cranial domes of all three species' exhibit extreme plasticity and that both Dracorex and Stygimoloch are known only from juvenile specimens, while Pachycephalosaurus is only known from specimens. Adults". These observations, plus the fact that all three forms lived at the same time and place, lead them to conclude that Dracorex and Stygimoloch may have simply been juvenile Pachycephalosaurs that had lost their spines and developed domes as they aged. The researchers were unable to break out Dracorex's skull to sample it,  and had to use a cast of the skull for descriptive purposes.
A 2010 study by Nick Longrich and colleagues also supported the hypothesis that all flat-headed pachycephalosaurus were juveniles, suggesting that flat-domed forms, such as Goyocephale and Homalocephale , represent the juveniles of domed adults. 
In 2016, Goodwin and Evans analyzed the youngest known ontogimorphs of Pachycephalosaurus , collected from the Hell Creek Formation. While this material would normally refer to DracorexSince it represented one or more individuals younger than the only known Dracorex individual and displayed similar characteristics, the items showed that the unique characters in Dracorex and Stygimoloch represent morphological characters consisting of a morphological continuum for Pachycephalosaurus . In other words, these younger individuals showed that Dracorex characteristics were probably transient and can be easily traced on a growth curve to Pachycephalosaurus , where Stygimoloch and Dracorex are incorporated into this genus. As such, DracorexIt is probably not a single species, but a more modern synonym for Pachycephalosaurus .
This study has not been challenging and represents the most recent analysis of this genre. In conclusion, an ontogenetic relationship is established, being infantile, juvenile and adult individuals of the same species, between Dracorex hogwartsia , Stygimoloch spinifer and Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis , the latter being the bearer of the valid species name, as it is the first of the three to be described.

Name
The name Dracorex hogwartsia was inspired by young visitors to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis as a tribute to both dragons (Dracorex means "dragon king"), which the animal resembled, as well as the Harry Potter series of books by J.K. Rowling (hogwartsia for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the fictional school from the popular series).

References
^ Bakker, R. T., Sullivan, R. M., Porter, V., Larson, P. and Saulsbury, S.J. (2006). "Dracorex hogwartsia, n. gen., n. sp., a spiked, flat-headed pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota." in Lucas, S. G. and Sullivan, R. M., eds., Late Cretaceous vertebrates from the Western Interior. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 35, pp. 331–345. [1]
^ Erik Stokstad,"SOCIETY OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY MEETING:Did Horny Young Dinosaurs Cause Illusion of Separate Species?", Science Vol. 18, 23 Nov. 2007, p. 1236; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5854/1236.

Былины — русские эпические песни — представляют собой достаточно однородный корпус текстов, претендующих на отобра жение хронологически отдаленной исторической реальности, записанных преимущественно на Русском Севере
в XVIII—XIX веках. Содержание былин и время их записи неоднократно побуждали исследователей дискутировать о происхождении русского эпоса: создавался ли этот жанр в городском пространстве средневекового города или же это продукт творчества «социальных низов» — крестьян?
Напрямую проводить параллели между реальными экономическими отношениями русского Средневековья и их отображением в былинах некорректно, однако уместно говорить, во-первых, о том, как организуется экономическое пространство русского эпоса и насколько это совпадает с экономическими терминами, используемыми в письменных источниках — летописях и торговых договорах; и, во-вторых, какие представления об экономических отношениях существуют
у носителей эпического жанра. В отличие от мифологических рассказов, где деньги и денежные отношения связаны с представлениями об «ином» мире, эпос с его денежной лексикой ориентирован, с одной стороны, на воспроизведение реальных товарно-денежных отношений, существующих в среде носителей этого жанра — крестьян — и, с другой стороны, на моделирование экономической
ситуации идеального прошлого (князь расплачивается с дружиной; наделы, получаемые героем в награду).

Mirvarid Dilbazinin əsərlərində öz ifadəsini tapan,
diqqətimizi cəlb edən nə varsa, hamısı cəmiyyətimizdə baş
verən hadisələrin tərənnümüdür. Bu baxımdan, onun
aktuallığı, yeniliyi ilə hər zaman nəzərə çarpan şeirləri bu
gün də kitabsevər, mütaliəyə marağı olan oxucular
tərəfindən sevilərək oxunur, həm uşaqların, həm də gənc
nəslin sağlam ruhda yetişməsində mühüm rol oynayır.
Mirvarid Dilbazinin əsərlərini oxuduqca görürürük ki,
onların hər biri orijinal olmaqla bərabər, xüsusi
yaradıcılığın məhsuludur. Bu zaman nəzərimizi çəkən bir
məqam da var ki, sənətkar əsərlərinin adlarına həssaslıqla
yanaşmış, onların mövzu və ideyasından qaynaqlanan xalq
ifadəsini başlıq olaraq fərqləndirmişdir. Təhlil zamanı
görürük ki, şairənin qələm məhsulundan yaranan bu
keyfiyyətlər əsərləri ilə həmahənglik təşkil edir. Zəhmət və
həyat eşqindən doğan bu yaradıcılıq yolunun oxucuya
aşılamaq istədiyi bir amal var: xeyirxahlıq, sədaqət,
düzlük.

COVID-19 infects cities, here grasped as quasi-living functioning systems, and the changes inflicted can poetically open us to certain things. Drawing on ecological psychology, we maintain that this brings people into contact with different realities depending on their overall wellbeing, arguing that the aesthetic experience of cities accordingly varies. We then consider iterations of these ideas in dystopian cinema, which portrays global threats altering human relations with technology, art, and the world.

In emphasizing equivalences with conceptions of evil eye, accounts of Ethiopian buda understate the capacity of these beings to transform into hyenas. The case study presented here highlights how this element of the buda belief reveals a social realm that extends beyond the strictly human.

Naar aanleiding van Thierry Baudet’s overwinningsspeech
na afloop van de verkiezingen in maart 2019, probeert deze
bijdrage grip te krijgen op de veelgehoorde kritiek op de
populistische stijl van politiek bedrijven, aan de hand van
Plato’s bespiegelingen over de rol van mythes in de publieke
sfeer. De filosoof was kritisch over het populaire gebruik
van verhalen door bijvoorbeeld de dichters van zijn
tijd, maar maakte zelf veel gebruik van de verhaalvorm in
zijn zoektocht naar de waarheid c.q. het goede. Het roept
de vraag op wanneer de politieke mythe zuiver en wanneer
onzuiver wordt gebruikt, een vraag waar Plato wel
een abstract maar geen concreet antwoord op geeft. Zijn
genuanceerde blik op de mythe maakt wel duidelijk dat
het populisme zich niet onderscheidt door een gebrek aan
respect voor de feiten, want dat geldt voor de ervaring van
het politieke in het algemeen. Ook kan de klassieke denker
ons leren dat we alleen een positie kunnen bepalen in de
mêlee van beelden en verhalen waar wij tegenwoordig mee
te maken hebben, door de filosofische confrontatie met de
verbeeldingswereld aan te gaan.

The book (in Estonian) describes the life and lore of the coastal dwellers in north Estonia and Hiiumaa about a century ago. It also includes 32 photographs from the collections of the Eesti Rahvamuuseum (Tartu, Estonia; www.erm.ee) and Nordiska Museet (Stockholm, Sweden; www.nordiskamuseet.se).

See raamatuke talletab ja ühtlasi loob killukese Eesti rannapärimust, keskendudes umbes sajanditagusele argisele ja erilisele Mandri-Eesti ja Hiiumaa põhjarannikul. Sel ajal elasid sealsed rannakülad üle kiireid muutusi, ent rahva mälus oli veel arvukalt eri paikadega seotud lugusid ja uskumusi ning teada kombeid ja tabasid. Isegi kui neid enam vanamoodi ei peetud, seda usinamalt asusid teised neid talletama ja nii on mõndagi värvikat sajandi tagant meieni kandunud. Raamat on pühendatud tänuga kõigile neile, kes mind sellel kogumise teel on juhtinud – 20. sajandi esimesel kolmel kümnendil sündinud randlastele, nende mälestusele.

In an article titled "The Origin of parody," the Soviet critic Ol'ga Freidenberg defines parody as "imitation in which a sublime form is filled with a paltry content, ... an imitation of the lofty by means of the pitiful, disparity of content and form, mimicry, a translation from the tragic to the comic." In tracing the origin of parody Freidenberg's examples illustrate parodic acts of religious rituals in the middle ages and identical phenomena in Greek and Roman antiquity, such as: mockery of religious feasts that coincided with Christmas, with feasts of the Virgin, and with Easter; mockery of the gods sacred hymns and ritual songs in the comedies of Aristophanes. In all these instances it was specifically the highest representatives of the church and secular authority that promoted this activity and participated in it eagerly. And then Freidenberg poses the following question: How is one to explain the presence in ritual of the parodic principle ... if its essence is comic mimicry of the lofty? This paper addresses the question of the coexistence of these two opposing cultural facts; it identifies the fundamental features of the functioning of the mechanism of parody, and it suggests that various concepts of the Moscow-Tartu group as expressed in their works pertaining to semiotics of culture, may be fruitfully applied to the study of parody. The paper addresses some of the most important questions that I believe are relevant to the understanding of parody, such as: what are the requirements (cultural and textual) for the existence of parody? What limitations are expected, from or what limits are imposed upon the receiver's familiarity with the text parodied and its activation in the perceiving process. From the semiotic point of view, according to the Soviet critics, "culture may be regarded as a hierarchy of particular semiotic systems, as the sum of the texts and the set of functions correlated with them, or as a certain mechanism which generates these texts". Culture, then, consists of both static and dynamic elements. The static elements are comprised of the information that culture stores for transmission. The dynamic elements are those elements which comprise the mechanism which governs the semiotic structure of culture. There are two mutually opposed mechanisms at work in culture: The tendency toward diversity, and the tendency toward uniformity. At any one time one of these forces is the dominant one. Therefore, there are no eternal cultural codes or texts. The dominant force constantly accepts and rejects texts into culture. There is constant interplay between restrictions and transgressions. The shift of cultural boundaries leads to a condition where texts are either erased or destroyed, displaced into the areas of non-culture, or brought back into the system as information. As with myths, it is human history that rules the life and death of cultural language. Culture can only have an historical foundation; it is a type of speech chosen by history. (Barthes, Mythologies, p. 110).

Th e authors endeavour to understand the symbolic power of crossroads through the ethnographical records from Istria and the Karst in Slovenia. From the Antiquity to this day the crossroads are marked with diff erent monuments, ranging from ancient landmarks and Christian symbols to memorials to fallen heroes and national monuments. In peoples' imagination crossroads are perceived as dangerous places, where diff erent demonic forces gather and meet. On the other hand, they also represent the meeting places of benevolent creatures and sites of apotropaic and magic acts, so their character is ambivalent. Besides crossroads there are several other examples of liminal places, sites of crossings and borders, which attract supernatural forces. Liminal spaces will be discussed within the dualistic perspective, where reality is perceived on the grounds of binary oppositions, and on the idea of an empty centre, a »gap«, which was constantly being attempted to diminish and domesticate. O simbolnem pomenu križišča med antiko in sodobnostjo (…) sam pa pojdi naprej, proti Hadesa dvorom trohnečim. Tik ob vhodu izliva se v Aheron Reka ognjena, z njo obenem Kokítos, ki sam iztok je iz Stiksa, dva bobneča slapova, na stéku pa rtasta skala. Tja se pririni, junak, čim bliže se moreš, ti rečem, jamo izkopli v tla, kak láket široko in dolgo, mrtvim vsèm izlij okrog njé zadušno daritev (…) (Odiseja K–X:512–518) V odlomku iz Homerjeve Odiseje opiše Kirka kraj, kjer mora Odisej opraviti obre-dno daritev, predno stopi v stik z dušami iz podzemlja. Odisej opravi pitno in žgalno dari-tev podzemnim božanstvom, Hadesu in Persefoni, ob skali, kjer se zlivata dve reki. (…) črna se ulila je kri; in glej, odprè se podzemlje (Odiseja Λ–XI:20–50). 1 Vhod v deželo senc se v Homerjevem epu torej odpre na križišču, ob sotočju dveh rek. Religiozna vloga križišč je bila znana že pri antičnih Grkih, saj so tam puščali ob pre-hodu kamenčke. Zato so se sčasoma nagrmadili kupi kamenja, ki so delovali kot darovanja božanstvom, čeprav niso imeli tega pomena, kot meni Pausanias, grški geograf iz 2. st. n. št. Vendar pa so Grki poznali boginjo križišč: Hecate trioditis (v prevodu Hekata »s tremi obrazi«), zaščitnico čarodejev. Postavljena na križišče, je morala imeti omogočen pogled v tri smeri, kar dokazuje, da je bila arhetipna podoba križišča v resnici oblikovana kot črka Y (Dragan 1999:151). 1 Na povezavo križišč in vhoda v podzemlje v Odiseji je opozoril Petrović (2000:8).