Bee-keepers’ Spell in Ukrainians’ World-View Practice: the Magical Power of a Word

Abstract

The article is exposing some results of the study in bee-keepers’ spell as a featuring trait of Ukrainians’ world-view practice; the present research is the first work of such a kind in the home ethnology. The spell belongs to that sort of ritual text that might be characterized by a vivid and most active speech with its fully evident magical strength. Spell as a genre of folklore refers to peculiar items owing to its archaic nature as well as to utilitarian functionalism, especially verbal destination, unity of sacral and profane articulation. The world-view ground of spell has been always heterogeneous as that originated and developed through the ages  with  fixing  so  prime  of  human world-consciousness  as  historically  later  (Christian) epistemological and axiological picture of the reality. In the paper the bee-keepers’ spell has been  considered  because  of  its  religious  and magical  contents  that  has  quite  significant spread so in everyday bee-keeping practice (occasional aspect), as in the contents of yearly religious  festivals  (the  calendar  one).  The  aim  of  bee-keepers’  spell  has   been  getting a concrete practical result, i.e. successful functioning of apiary.