Academic literature on the topic 'Magic, Indo-European'

The labyrinth is beyond any doubt one of the most fascinating aspects of human societies. Though its magic forms and implications are well known and have been the subject of important analyses - the best known being perhaps P. Santarcangeli 's Il libro dei labirinti now with many translations in various languages, lately rediscussed by Krzak (1985) - there still are unrevealed aspects, some perhaps improperly understood. It is our purpose to examine here (1) the pre-Indo-European (hereafter pre-IE) family of the fundamental Greek form labýrinthos (a term sometimes labelled 'Mediterranean', which is not ultimately incorrect), (2) the pre-IE family of English forms maze/amaze and their unexpected south and southeast European parallels (noticed a long tirne ago, but unconnected to this context), and (3) the interpretation of the available data in the sense that the labyrinth was initially a projection of the Neolithic Goddess 's sacred body.

The relatively recent urbanization process in Romania allowed traditional knowledge to be transmitted, despite industrialization and technology diffusion. Childbirth is still a mysterious event, and magic thinking fills in the gaps of science in order to keep parents confident and at peace. Taboos are obeyed after birth and before christening, only to reach the phase when the future can be moulded: specific elements are chosen for the ritual bath, the child has to touch several objects that would make them smart, a good singer, etc. A year later, their future occupation will be predicted in a specific ceremony. All these active practices are found in urbanites’ families, and also in Romanian immigrant communities in Western Europe. Rituals are mostly compared to neighbouring countries, but also to other distant cultures that show striking similarities. This large geographical spread indicates Indo-European synergies. The identical form of the post-liminal practice of haircutting in Eastern Europe and the Asian rite of passage have not been previously dwelt upon, and it implies the existence of traditional thinking universalia.

This article is dedicated to conceptualization of the notion of glory in the Russian religious culture and secular discourse. Texts of the Holy Scripture indicate etymological relation of glory to the Ancient Hebrew root kbd (to be heavy, important, liver), which imposes additional meanings to the concept, not recorded in the dictionaries. For example, ancient Jews interpreted glory as a true value of the objects of corporeal and incorporeal world, which could be measured, “weighed”. Usage of the word glory in folklore, particularly in Christmas carols, as an imperative incantation can testify to the belief in the magic qualities of this word, as well as to connection of paganism and a religious rituals in people’s mind. As a result of comparative and hermeneutic analysis, the author concludes that in the religious context, glory retains the idea of the interconnectivity and interconditionality of hearing and speech, typical to the Indo-European root kleu, from which is stems from. A centuries-old process of de-ontologization led the loss of the internal form and value elements of semantic structure of glory, which caused distortion of this Christian concept in consciousness of the Russian native speakers. In the secular, profane discourse, fame became the key meaning of glory. However, in consciousness of the Russian native speakers, the word glory remains a significant source of cultural-linguistic information, which cannot be understood without reference to the history, traditions and religion of the nation.

«“Sacred” is an Indo-European word meaning ”separate”. The Sacred, therefore, [. . . is] a quality that is inherent in that which has relation and contact with powers that man, not being able to dominate, perceives as superior to himself, and as such attributable to a dimension [. . . ] thought however as ”separate” and ”other” with respect to the human world » Galimberti, (2000). The so-called votive altar, autonomous or attached to a major building often present in the Mediterranean countries, belong to the dimension of the Sacred.Votive altars - present in an old neighborhood of peasant origin in the suburbs of Naples called Ponticelli - are almost always placed in the interstices between street and courtyard (a self-built residential typology modeled over time by the inhabitants and which often forms the matrix of many neighborhoods popular Neapolitan). They keep and exhibit little sculptures and drawings of Jesus, Madonnas, and Saints of the Catholic religion, mixed with ancestors portraits and photos of relatives dead of the inhabitants, drawing on the ancient domestic cult of the Romans of Lari and Penati; it is certainly not a consciously cultured reference, but a mysterious ”feeling” that is common among primitive and popular cultures and that unravels through the centuries unscathed. Placed at the entrance of the living space, the altar expresses the sign of a difference, of a territorial change, separates ”ours” from ”yours”, welcomes, does not reject, but marks an open and inclusive threshold.With the paper, we want to study this phenomenon of ”primitive” culture and not regulated by laws, a mix of diffuse sacredness and popular magic, deepening the ”design” aspects of it, building an abacus in which to highlight potential and free references to the visual arts of these ”design works without designers”, and finding out new signs of the Sacred in the City in our time.

“Sacred” is an Indo-European word meaning “separate”. The Sacred, therefore, [. . . is] a quality that is inherent in that which has relation and contact with powers that man, not being able to dominate, perceives as superior to himself, and as such attributable to a dimension [. . . ] thought however as ”separate” and ”other” with respect to the human world » Galimberti, (2000). The so-called votive altar, autonomous or attached to a major building often present in the Mediterranean countries, belong to the dimension of the Sacred.Votive altars - present in an old neighborhood of peasant origin in the suburbs of Naples called Ponticelli - are almost always placed in the interstices between street and courtyard (a self-built residential typology modeled over time by the inhabitants and which often forms the matrix of many neighborhoods popular Neapolitan). They keep and exhibit little sculptures and drawings of Jesus, Madonnas, and Saints of the Catholic religion, mixed with ancestors portraits and photos of relatives dead of the inhabitants, drawing on the ancient domestic cult of the Romans of Lari and Penati; it is certainly not a consciously cultured reference, but a mysterious ”feeling” that is common among primitive and popular cultures and that unravels through the centuries unscathed. Placed at the entrance of the living space, the altar expresses the sign of a difference, of a territorial change, separates ”ours” from ”yours”, welcomes, does not reject, but marks an open and inclusive threshold.With the paper, we want to study this phenomenon of ”primitive” culture and not regulated by laws, a mix of diffuse sacredness and popular magic, deepening the ”design” aspects of it, building an abacus in which to highlight potential and free references to the visual arts of these ”design works without designers”, and finding out new signs of the Sacred in the City in our time.

Gó rals are a separate ethnocultural group living in the mountainous regions of the Carpathians on the borderlands of Poland and Slovakia (Silesia, Orava, Podhale, Spiš, etc.). In the ethnogenesis of this group, not only Slavic tribes and peoples took part, but also Hungarians, Ger-mans, Aromanians, Turks, etc., which enriched the Gó ral traditional culture with other ethnic elements. Both Slavic and non-Slavic elements of spiritual culture retain their antiquity, that is, the archaic features of the traditional culture of the Gó rals include the cultural archaisms of the peoples inhabiting this region. In various spheres of the spiritual cul-ture of this mountainous region, many archaic elements of the common Slavic era have been preserved, which are also known in diff erent parts of the Slavic world. In funeral rituals, these are, for example, relics of “white mourning”, the custom of lightly hitting the coffi n on the thresh-old when taking it out of the house, a wedding-funeral, prohibitions on a number of works on memorial days so as not to “clog the eyes” of the souls of the dead, etc. In the fi eld of traditional medicine, such common Slavic practices are methods of treating the evil eye and sorcery (extin-guishing coals), the magic of ensuring the life and health of a newborn (passing a baptized child through a window, treating “sukhotka” (con-sumption) by dragging through a kalatch), methods of treating fever (leaving things on the road), the belief that moonlight can cause illness in a child, etc. In folklore, such archaic (at least Balto-Slavic) motives are the transfer of objects from one mountain to another by giants and the motive of the troops sleeping in a mountain. This motive is Celtic in origin (at least in Europe), however, it has deep Indo-European origins.

В статье исследуются истоки культа коня, возникшего в среде индо- ариев в глубокой древности. Конь в быту скифов и осетин, конь – помощник и друг всадника, крылатые кони и конь-птица, кони – ангелы и полубоги, кони волшебные и бессмертные, солнечная природа коня, имена, цвет и символика чисел – эти и другие разноаспектные позиции, рассмотренные в сравнительно-этнокультурном ракурсе, позволяют заключить: а) доместикация коня стала поворотной страницей в истории мировой цивилизации, в том числе в судьбе ираноязычных племен степей Евразии; б) высокое положение, которое занимал культ коня в среде индоевропейских народов, блестяще иллюстрируют и анализируемые в статье реликты из быта и культуры осетин, унаследованные ими от их этногенетических предшественников. The article considers the origins of the cult of the horse that emerged among the Indo- Aryans in ancient times. The horse in the everyday life of the Scythians and Ossetians, horse is a helper and a friend of the rider, winged horses and a horse-bird, horses-angels and demigods, magic horses and immortal ones, the sunny nature of the horse, names, the colour and symbolism of numbers – these and other issues of different aspect is considered in a comparative ethno-cultural perspective, allows to conclude: a) the domestication of the horse became a turning point in the history of world civilization, being crucial as well in the fate of Iranian-speaking tribes of the steppes of Eurasia; b) the high position which was held the cult of the horse among the Indo-European peoples, is brightly illustrated and analyzed in the article relics from the way of life and culture of the Ossetians inherited from their ethno-genetic predecessors.


 
 
 The doppelgänger (literally ‘double-goer’) of 18th and 19th century European literature and lore is a sinister likeness that dogs and shadows a protagonist heralding their death or descent into madness – a ‘spectral presentiment of disaster’ (Schwartz 84). Recently the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ has been adopted by the English-speaking entertainment and technology press to refer to a digital image of an actor or performer; whether that image is a computer-generated wire-frame model, an amalgamation of old film footage and artistry, or a three dimensional laser scan of the face and body’s topography. (Magid, Chimielewski) 
 
 This paper examines some of the implications of this term and its linkage to a set of anxieties about the relationship between the self and its image. According to Friedrich Kittler, media of recording and storing bodily data are central to how many of us imagine identity today. Technologies such as photography and film ushered in a ‘technological rechristening of the soul’ (149). Kittler contends that these image technologies have had an impact on identity by creating ‘mechanised likenesses [that] roam the databanks that store bodies’ (96). In this context the use of the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ suggests some kind of perceived disruption to the way identity and image, or original and copy, relate.
 
 For example, a short article in Variety, ‘Garner finds viewing her digital doppelgänger surreal’, promotes the release of the videogame version of the television show Alias. But instead of the usual emphasis on the entertainment value of the game and its potential to extend the pleasures of the televisual text, this blurb focuses on the uncanniness of an encounter between the show’s lead, Jennifer Garner, and the digitally animated game character modelled from her features (Fritz 2003). 
 
 An actor’s digital likeness can be made to perform actions that are beyond the will or physicality of the actor themselves. Such images have a variety of uses. In action cinema the digital likeness often replaces the actor’s stunt double, removing much of the risk previously borne by the human body in filming explosions, car chases and acrobatic leaps. Through its multiplication or manipulation the digital doppelgänger can expand the performative limits of the actor’s body and face. These figures also have an important role in video game versions of popular action or science fiction films such as the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy. The digital doppelgänger therefore extends the capabilities of the human performer’s image, bestowing ‘superhuman’ qualities and granting it entry to interactive media forms. The most serendipitous use of these images, however, is in the completion of films where an actor has died in mid-production, as when, for instance, Oliver Reed famously passed on during the filming of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. In such cases the image literally substitutes for the once-living; its digitally animated gestures and expressions filling in for an inanimate body that can express and gesture no longer and never will again. The history of doppelgängers and doubles, you see, is intimately bound up with human mortality and the origins of image making. 
 
 According to Otto Rank, the earliest connotations of the double in Indo-European lore were benign, entailing the immortality of the self. This incarnation stems from animistic beliefs in the manifestation of the soul in shadows, reflections and images (49-77) and is intimately connected to the magical origins of figurative representation. Andre Bazin argues that the most enduring form of image magic has been that concerned with rendering the subject immortal. In his essay ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, he emphasises that the basic psychological impulse beneath the origins of the plastic arts was a desire to snatch mortal things from the indifferent flow of time – to cheat death through the creation of a substitute, a double, for the living body (9).
 
 However, by the post-Enlightenment era, Western belief in the preservative powers of the double had eroded, and subsequently, the meaning of this figure in folktales and literature came to be inverted. The double or doppelgänger became a spectral projection of the self, an ‘uncanny harbinger of death’ (Freud 324-5). Meanwhile, even as the haunted image persists as a motif in short stories, novels and film, rationally:
 
 No one believes any longer in the ontological identity of model and image, but all are agreed that the image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death (Bazin 9).
 
 
 Photographic and filmic images have aided Western cultures in keeping the dead in view, saving them from being totally forgotten. These images are filled in or animated by the subjective memory of the viewer. The digital likeness, however, is birthed in a computer and made to gesture in the performer’s stead, promising not just a ‘technological rechristening of the soul’, but the possibility of future career resurrection. Ron Magid reports: 
 
 Cyberware president David Addleman is hopeful that all stars will eventually stockpile their data, like the suspended bodies in Coma, just waiting for the day when technology will resurrect them for as yet undreamed-of projects. (Magid)
 
 
 This reference to the 1970s horror film, Coma, with its connotations of lifeless bodies and sinister scientific procedures, brings to mind unconscious forms, zombies awaiting resurrection, an actor’s image as puppet, a mindless figure forced to gesture at the control of another. These are fears of decorporealised detachment from one’s own likeness. It is a fear of the image being in exile from its referent, being endowed with the semblance of life though digital processes. In this fear we can hear the echoes of earlier anxieties about the double. But these fears also revisit earlier responses to the cinematic recording of the human image, ones that now may seem quaint to us in a culture where people fantasise of becoming media celebrities and indeed queue in their thousands for the chance. 
 
 To put this into some historical perspective, it is worth noting how the figure of the double played a part in some responses to then new cinema technologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yuri Tsivian writes of the unease expressed in the early 1900s by Russian performers when encountering their own moving image on screen. For some the root of their discomfort was a belief that encountering their projected moving image would play havoc with their own internal self-image. For others, their unease was compounded by non-standardised projection speeds. Until the mid to late 1910s both camera and projector were cranked by hand. It was common for a projectionist to lend some haste to the action on the screen in order to finish work at the auditorium early. Early Russian writers on film were well aware of the projectionist’s role in transforming ‘calm fluent gesture’ into a ‘jerky convulsive twitch’, and making the ‘actors gesture like puppets’ (cited in Tsivian 53-54). 
 
 Luigi Pirandello’s novel Shoot! from 1916 dealt with a cinema actress traumatised by the sight of her own ‘altered and disordered’ screen image (59-60). A playwright, Pirandello condemned the new media as reducing the craft of the living, breathing stage-actor to an insubstantial flickering phantom, a ‘dumb image’ subtracted from a moment of live action before the camera (105-6). Walter Benjamin refers to Pirandello’s novel in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, recognising it as one of the first discourses on the relationship between the actor and their screen image. For Benjamin the screen actor is in exile from their image. He or she sends out his or her shadow to face the public and this decorporealised shadow heralds a diminishment of presence and aura for the audience (222). 
 
 Benjamin suggests that in compensation for this diminishment of presence, the film industry ‘responds to the shrivelling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the studio’ (224). The development of star-image discourse and celebrity works to collapse the split between person and decorporealised shadow, enveloping the two in the electrified glow of interconnected texts such as roles, studio publicity, glamour photography, interviews, and gossip. Star personality, celebrity scandal and gossip discourse have smoothed over this early unease, as have (importantly) the sheer ubiquity and democracy of mediated self-images. The mundane culture of home video has banished this sense of dark magic at work from the appearance of our own faces on screens. 
 
 In the context of these arguments it remains to be seen what impact the ‘digital doppelgänger’ will have on notions of public identity and stardom, concepts of cinematic performance and media immortality. Further research is also required in order to uncover the implications of the digital double for the image cultures of indigenous peoples or for cinema industries such as Bollywood. As for the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ itself, perhaps with ubiquity and overuse, its older and more sinister connotations will be gradually papered over and forgotten. The term ‘doppelgänger’ suggests a copy that threatens its original with usurpation, but it may be that the digital doppelgänger functions in a not dissimilar way to the waxwork models at Madame Tussauds – as a confirmation of a celebrity’s place in the media galaxy, wholly reliant on the original star for its meaning and very existence.
 
 References
 
 Bazin, A. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What is Cinema? Ed./Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley & London: U of California P, 1967. 9-16. Benjamin, W. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fonatan, 1992. 211-44. Chimielewski, D. “Meet Sunny’s Digital Doppelganger.” The Age (5 January 2005). http://www.theage.com.au/news/Film/Meet-Sunnys-digital-doppelganger/2005/01/04/1104601340883.html>. Freud, S. “The ‘Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. Ed. James Strachey, Anna Freud et al. Vol. xvii (1917-19). London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1955. 219-52. Fritz, B. “Garner Finds Viewing Her Digital Doppelganger Surreal.” Variety (27 August 2003). http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=upsell_article&articleID=VR1117891622&cs=1>. Kittler, F. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Trans. and intro. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1999. Magid, R. “New Media: Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Wired News (March 1998). http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,10645,00.html>. Parisi, P. “Silicon Stars: The New Hollywood.” Wired (December 1995): 144-5, 202-10. http:www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,10645,00.html>. Pirandello, L. Shoot! (Si Gira) The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematographer Operator. Trans. C.F. Scott Moncrieff. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co.,1926. Rank, O. The Double: A Psychoanalytical Study. Trans./ed. Harry Tucker, Jr. North Carolina: U of North Carolina P, 1971. Schwartz, H. The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles. New York: Zone, 1996. Tsivian, Y. Early Russian Cinema and Its Cultural Reception. Trans. A. Bodger. Ed. R. Taylor. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1998.
 
 
 
 
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