Actualization of the Image of Кikimora in Beliefs and Masquerades of the Russians in Western Siberia

Abstract

The mythological character “kikimora” is considered on ethnographic materials ofvarious ethnolocal groups of Russians in Western Siberia. Kikimora was considered a character in the home space, mostly malicious, harmful, sinister. Kikimora was spinning. Therefore, she was associated with the symbolic embodiment of destiny: a deity that spins and breaks the thread of life. Kikimora embodied the trickster archetype. The concept of kikimora correlates with the symbols of time. “Border” periods are especially significant: the change of day, the transition from the old year to the new year. Therefore, the masquerade image of the kikimora entered the calendar rituals of the winter-spring period. In Western Siberia, until the middle of the twentieth century, the tradition of dressing up in “kikimora” on Christmastide and Maslenitsa (“farewell to winter”) was preserved. Women dressed up in old shabby clothes, smeared their faces with soot: they created the image of a slob. Masquerade “kikimors” carried items of women’s handicraft: wool, flax, a spindle, a comb. Entering the house, they pretended to be spinning threads. The concepts of forest and swamp kikimora, widespread in the 20th and early 21st centuries, are probably associated with the erosion of this image in popular beliefs. Consciousness transferred the kikimora to a space far from the human cultural environment. Kikimora as a domestic demon, the spinning goddess disappears from popular beliefs, but is actualized in the forest and swamp spirits. The word “kikimora” is firmly entrenched in the Russian vocabulary to become a household name, a curse, while the characteristic features of the character have been preserved. The masquerade tradition in the twentieth century actualized the rudimentary idea of kikimora as a spirit spinning the thread of fate. However, the fundamental features of this character were lost: from the deity of destiny, kikimora turned into a playable character in genre scenes of Christmastide andMaslenitsa masquerades.