The article presents a comprehensive analysis of the problem of distinguishing between religion and esotericism. It uses the example of the differentiation of magic and the concepts proposed by J.D. Frazer and B.K. Malinowski (1925) as criteria for distinguishing these two phenomena. Despite obvious points of intersection, such as appeal to the transcendental and search for meaning, the...
The activity and creativity of Svetlana Zarasyevna Hodger, a Nanai craftswoman and storyteller, help her relatives solve various life problems. This article investigates the influence of her lucid dreams on the process of creating works of art and crafts, which have long been of interest to ethnographers, art historians, and local historians in Russia. Her works have been presented in...
The generalization of the field material collected by the author allowed to identify two groups of interrelated factors that form the mentality of those Nanai people who practice shamanism. There were two principles identified, the goal-setting and detecting the resources required to achieve the desired results. On the one hand, an irrational worldview, the idea of the accessibility of the...
The article outlines the main ideas of the archaeologist David Lewis-Williams and his contribution to the study of shamanism and the analysis of rock paintings. Author examines the depicted scenes, the process of the painting, as well as artifacts and ethnographic evidences of the alleged rituals. The reconstruction of rituals is accompanied by the Lewis-Williams’s conception of the spectrum of...
There is some debate about the existence of an “ancient Egyptian shamanism”. A number of scholars used such a label to describe religious phenomena relating to the pre and proto-dynastic religion, the Opening of the Mouth Ritual (especially scenes 9 and 10), and the Tekenu ceremony. Moreover, it is possible to identify a certain “evolutionistic” tendency in explaining the two aforementioned...
The article deals with the theory of levels of religiosity proposed by one of the classics of the phenomenology of religion F. Heiler. In his works he offered a system of levels of religiosity structured from primitive to higher - mystical and prophetic - types. The article presents Heiler’s theory and summarizes the main features of the two higher types of religiosity, showing their...
The article discusses the possible perspectives of interdisciplinary research, standing on the border of the study of culture and religion. The author proposes to illustrate the specificity of such interdisciplinary character on the example of manifestation of Western esotericism in adventure computer games of the 90s. In the first part of the article main occulture myths are identified with...