The article presents a case study of a walking pilgrimage to the village of Velikorecki (Kirov region), which is described in an electronic diary of a participant in a mass cross-religious procession. As an object of the case study, the electronic diary gives the richest material for the study of the “exceptional case”: it is a fairly voluminous text, its author is an experienced pilgrim who not only describes in detail all that is happening, but also seeks to evaluate, comprehend events and phenomena based on his own worldview attitudes. The codification of the text on the basis of the theoretical and methodological principles of phenomenology (A. Schütz, P. Berger) made it possible to analyze the features of motivation, ritual behavior and religious experience of the nematode and build. In the mini-theory presented, it is stated that the text of the diary embodies the traditional practice of walking pilgrimage that has developed for centuries in the national culture. The main theme of religious discourse is the process of personal spiritual transformation, in the expression of which there is a cultural code based on the opposition of sacred and ordinary systems of meanings. In the semantic units characterizing religious experience, stable structures are distinguished, having a universal, archetypal nature. These include the motives for overcoming the boundaries of sacral and profane, spiritual and physical tests in the sacral space, overcoming them in the process of cognizing the laws of the sacred chronotope, the birth of a new person. All this allowed us to characterize the presented experience of pilgrimage as an experience of a liminal situation.
Keywords: pilgrimage, Velikoretsky religious procession, religious experience
DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662.2019.1.101-107
About the author
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Olga V. Khodyreva – PhD in Cultural Science, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology; Vyatka State University; 35 Moscow str., Kirov, Russia, 610000; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |