The interrelationship of religion and magic in the experience of Latvians in Timofeyevka, Siberia

Abstract

Groups of texts about seasonal celebrations, family customs and charmers are examined in this article in order to reveal the interrelationship of magic and religion in Latvian traditional culture in Timofeyevka. The recollections and knowledge of informants, recorded in 2004 and 2006, during fieldwork in Timofeyevka, have been supplemented with examples published in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as recently documented examples of Latvian folklore in Latvia. The entire year of seasonal celebrations, which have become closely associated with the Catholic calendar - Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, Midsummer, and the remembrance of the dead in the autumn - has been examined. Annual festivities celebrated in the Latvian community have merged with Slavic festivals, for example, Easter, Pentecost and Midsummer traditions. In the recollections of family customs descriptions of funeral customs dominate over christenings and weddings. Notions of the supernatural are revealed in the stories of personal experience about healing, as well as in belief legends, which tell about the unusual ability of a person to transform into an animal or object. The experiences of the Latvian community of Timofeyevka concerning religion (official religion) and magic (unofficial religion) cannot be differentiated, because they represent a unified conceptual system in which one adds to the other. The rich traditional cultural heritage in Timofeyevka has been preserved due to the location of the village far away from large cities and main roads, and also due to the Latvian community's large population numbers in the past.