author: Iryna Rachkovska
Urgency of the research. In view of the development of the national identity of the Ukrainian people during the war, the appeal to folk culture, including elements of folk beliefs, their understanding in the context of the Christian context, there is a need for a comparative analysis of the religious foundations of the ethnological concept as a whole, an understanding of folk symbols, including including bread as a religious and social paradigm of Ukrainians, reviewing the prerequisites and reasons for the activation of pre-Christian segments of the idea of metempsychosis in Ukrainian society, its functional aspect of consolidation of efforts in the context of the development of the ethnic worldview of Ukrainians.
Target setting. The religious foundations of the ethnographic paradigm of the symbols and attributes of the Ukrainian nation, which were formed by researchers of traditional culture, folk cults, and sacred cultural heritage, require an objective analysis, including, in particular, the positive consequences of the implementation of the idea of metempsychosis in the folk beliefs of Ukrainians, its religious and social significance, role in the formation of religious worldview and national identification.
Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. This intelligence is based on a review of the treatises of Porphyry, Diogenes Laertsky, which relate to the development of the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, as well as a review of the research of such scientists as H. Vovka, O. Predko, O. Freudenberg, O. Boryak, Yu. Pukivskyi in the context of consideration ideas of metempsychosis through the prism of the cult of ancestors, agrarian cults and other cults of folk beliefs of Ukrainians. The article also uses the materials of the author's field research, which she carried out as part of expeditions and work on identifying elements of folk beliefs and traditions related to the cult of the dead in the Western Polissia (Rivna region).
The research objective. The main task of the article is to highlight the issue of the idea of metempsychosis in the religious worldview of the Ukrainian people, which was reflected in folk beliefs, and hence in the cultural and social symbols of the ethnos, its philosophy and values, in particular, in the role of bread as a separate national paradigm.
The statement of basic materials. Ukrainians attach an extremely deep meaning to bread: first of all, bread is a philosophy that includes many aspects of a civilized society - religious, economic, historical, political and cultural. Most of the cultural and religious symbolism in Ukraine has been preserved by ritual bread, which is used in the context of religious and traditional ritual rituals. Among them are pre-Christian traditions based on the idea of the reincarnation of the soul after death, metempsychosis. Such an idea was integrated into the basis of the folk beliefs of Ukrainians in the context of the development of the cult of ancestors, agrarian cults, etc. Bread acquires religious symbolism in Christianity and is considered as the body of Jesus Christ - the Church forms a system of rituals and rites based on the idea of bread as the divine Body. All these religious aspects were synthesized in the ideas of Ukrainians and transformed into a separate system of mythologizing and sacralizing bread, both in the religious and in the cultural and social context of Ukrainian national existence.
Conclusions. Briefly summarizing, we can conclude that bread in the religious ideas of Ukrainians is one of the forms of metempsychosis, the idea of which formed the basis of folk beliefs. Therefore, the consolidation of research on the development of cults inherent in the religious worldview of Ukrainians and the materials of studies on ceremonial and ritual forms of bread and its role in the cultural and social life of Ukrainians will create prerequisites for further analysis of the traditions of the Ukrainian people through the prism of religious symbolism.
Keywords: bread, death, metempsychosis, cult of the dead, victim, Ukrainians
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