Sanctuaries in the Discourses of Sacred Geography

Abstract

The paper explores the phenomenon of sanctuaries from the perspective of religious semiotics. The authors have identified the ambivalence of the perception of a mystical place by folk religion: a mystical place can be simultaneously perceived both as a topos in which ritual is performed, and as an object of worship. At the same time, stable ritualogemes of veneration of mystical places are developed, forming elaborate ritual complexes. Analysis of the mytho-semiotic specificity of narratives about sanctuaries made it possible to propose their typology: places of power, mysterious places, places of refuge, places metonymically associated with special religiously significant events. Specal areas that are dangerous and harmful to humans are considered separately. The study includes analyzing of basic mytheologems that form the discourse of sacred geography. It has been proven that the narrative about sanctuaries is not only formed as a result of the functioning of the mechanisms of mythological hermeneutics characteristic of folk religiosity, but also turns out to be capable of generating new mythological plots. At the same time, a religious studies analysis of the specifics of sacred sites revealed the impossibility of their unambiguous confessional identification due to the presence of syncretic mythologemes in their interpretation. Stories about visiting sacred places and the experiences of various events and states associated with these visits are actively mythologized and become sources for the generating of new semantics and semiotics of sacred geography.