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• Ancia Zarichanska and Folk Belief in Transcarpathia: A Comparative Perspective

  7-28

  Vasyl Korol

  Oleksandr Kryvonos

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  21

  This study focuses on the historical figure of Ancia Zarichanska (Anna Poidyn), a spiritual mediator and charismatic healer from the Transcarpathian village of Zarichchia. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork (2018–2019) and qualitative interviews with local informants, the article examines the narrative construction of this woman in collec­tive memory, as well as her magical abilities, ritual practices, and ascetic lifestyle. Her unusual behavior – including voluntary seclusion, visionary experiences, fasting, and selective social interaction - is interpreted as an expression of religious asceticism, deviant piety, and spiritual authority.

  Central elements such as near-death experience, rebirth motifs, and prophetic healing are analyzed in comparison with European folk healers, visionary figures, and shamanic initiation processes. Zarichanska’s case demonstrates how spiritual legitimacy can be es­tablished outside institutional religion. Particular attention is paid to the cultural logic underlying the attribution of mystical authority, the emergence of local rituals such as “Hercna Wednesday,” and the ritual veneration of her grave as a site of popular devo­tion.

  This study contributes to the ethnology of folk belief by showing how collective memory, oral tradition, demonological narratives, and religious-magical practices inter­weave to shape local forms of “folk sainthood.” The figure of Zarichanska is presented as a paradigmatic example of trans-cultural patterns of non-institutional spirituality, which fulfill identity-forming functions, especially in times of social transformation.

• The Character of the Wayfarer in Gyula Krúdy's Novel The Travelling Companion

  47-64

  Gyula Balogh

  Views:

  27

  In Gyula Krúdy’s texts, the author’s alter ego figures and mediator types can be given a new meaning with the help of the results of folklore research. The writer got to know the archetypal features of these figures very early on, as even when reading the writings of his youth, it is striking that Krúdy not only wrote the plot and atmos­phere of the mostly family-based fairy tales and ghost stories into his texts, but also used the storytelling techniques that create the folklore treasure.

  The study will discuss Krúdy’s short novel The Travelling Companion, the division of the main character’s identity, the wide range of reading possibilities offered by the story’s sacred character and mystical atmosphere. The present interpretation under­takes to reveal the complex personality of the travelling companion, to examine those scenes abounding in sacred elements, through a detailed analysis of which the com­mon features of the Krúdy hero and certain figures of the folk religious world become visible.

  It can be assumed that Krúdy knew and used in his works certain features of the accompanying, helping spirit, the so-called soul guide, psychopompos, which term denotes Hermes, the god of travel. However, the term psychopompos is not only known in cultures based on Greek myths, it also applies to the accompanying spirits of ancient shamanism. We find the remains of this belief in shamans in the case of the so-called wayfarers, who, together with other strange people, are considered late descendants of shamans.