« 2017. #6 (138)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2017, 6 (138), 1323—1329

UDK 39(=161.2):638.12

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/nz2017.06.1323

Received 28.09.2017

THE BEE AS THE EMBODIMENT OF THE HUMAN SOUL IN THE UKRAINIAN FOLK WORLDVIEW VISION

Movna Uliana Vasylivna, Ph.D in History, senior researcher

at the Department of Historical Ethnology

of the Institute of Ethnology

of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Svobody Avenue, 15, Lviv, 79000,Ukraine.

Contacts: Tel. (032) 2970157; e-mail: ina@mail.lviv.ua

 Abstract. A special study of one of the aspects of the sacred status of bees in the Ukrainian worldview tradition – as the embodiment of the human soul has been done. The formation of traditional folk perception of bees as a form of the post­mortem existence of the human soul was influenced by archaic mythological beliefs in the close relationship between this insect and afterlife and its chthonic status, in particular the adherence to the spatial bottom (land) and the connection with the death and souls of the dead. Granting to the bee of a mythological connotation of the symbol of the soul is closely linked with belief in the seer’s gift of the insect, and the culmination of its exaltation as the essence of heavenly origin was the equation of a bee to a man possessing a soul equivalent to a human being.

 Keywords: bee, man, soul, worldview, Ukrainians.

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