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The Ethnology Notebooks. 2024. № 2 (176), 336—345

UDK 39(=162.1:292.452):[633/635.054:615.89]

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/nz2024.02.336

TREE IN FOLK MEDICINE OF UKRAINIAN HIGHLANDERS

NAKONECHNA (HOSHCHITSKA) Tetiana

  • ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8596-8974
  • Doctor of Philosophy, researcher fellow
  • of the department of Historical Ethnology
  • of the Institute of Ethnology
  • The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
  • 15, Svobody Avenue, 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e-mail: hoshchitska.tetiana@gmail.com

Abstract. Introduction: Folk medicine was a complex complex in which positive empirical knowledge and means of healing magic were combined, folk tradition and later elements that flowed into it from professional, foreign influences and observations and adaptation to local conditions, layering of beliefs originating from different eras, etc. Problem Statement: Therefore, in this field of folk knowledge, various relics of ancient worldviews, which continued to function in the daily life of certain ritualized forms of behavior, various taboos, verbal formulas, etc., often remained preserved. It is to such relict phenomena that various aspects relating to trees in the methods of folk therapy should be attributed, which often carry an echo of ideas of extremely distant eras. Actually, this determines the relevance of the proposed research. The purpose of articles is an attempt to comprehensively outline the place of the tree in the techniques of folk therapy, both in the utilitarian sense and to the greatest extent in the symbolic sense. The object of the study is the traditional medicine of the Ukrainian Carpathians, and the subject is the tree in the methods of folk therapy in its broadest aspects. The scientific novelty of the proposed study is that for the first time an attempt has been made to examine in detail the use of wood in folk therapy, and various beliefs associated with ceremonial trees and their alloforms, with specific wood species that have somehow been reflected in the techniques and practices of folk treatment. The main methods used by the author are structural, typological analysis, historical reconstruction and comparative methods. Results:

Keywords: ceremonial tree, folk medicine, folk veterinary medicine, ordering, Ukrainian Carpathians, Bojky, Lemky, Hutsuls.

Received 21.02.2024

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