THE PLACE OF THE FERTILITY PHENOMENON IN THE CYCLE OF FUNERAL RITES

Abstract

The article is devoted to studying fertility, which is carried out using the constructed structure of the cycle of funeral rites and the results of research performed by predecessors. The scheme of the funeral cycle was created within the framework of structural and functional analysis, and the results of the research were obtained due to other methods, mainly semiotic, semantic, and structural-semantic. The connection with fertility can be traced in actions that use bread, grain, and other attributes of polyphoria, as well as in those that are in one way or another related to erotic and sexual orientation and reflect the remnants of ritual marriage with the deceased, phallus and vulva cults. A coffin with a dead body placed in it is like a grain thrown into the ground during sowing. As the grain dies in the ground, sprouting for a new harvest, so the buried must be reborn for new and eternal life in the cult of ancestors to help and support living descendants and heirs. The ritual actions of the funeral cycle have a threefold meaning, which lies in removing the dead body from the territory of the alive, burying it in the ground for further revival, bringing the dead to the afterlife, and including him in the cult of ancestors. At the same time, all three goals of funeral rites are superimposed on each other and form a complex configuration that is part of the people’s worldview of life and death, reality and the afterlife, entering and exiting the rite. Thus, the basis of funeral ritualism, at least at the level of primitive folk worldview, is fertility as a cult and phenomenon. Fertility on which depends, on the one hand, on human reproduction and, on the other – the cultivation of crops; in both cases, it is a matter of prolonging the life of the nation. As a result of the research, it was established that the structure of the funeral cycle of rites gives only a partial reflection of the elements of sacralization of fertility, as it is based on a universal version of rites, which is characteristic of the vast majority of regions and ethnographic districts of Ukraine. For a more detailed study, the structure of each individual region should be created.