RELIGIOUS MIRACLES CONFINED TO WATER SOURCES

Abstract

Religious psychoses and various forms of superstition are widespread, as a rule, in the days of severe upheavals and in the times of crisis in history. One of the most common phenomena of this kind in the 19th - first half of the 20th century was the discovery of holy wells or springs, in the waters of which numerous pilgrims observed visions with images of icons and faces of saints, as well as other paintings, most often on religious or historical themes. The purpose of the study is to analyze the distinctive features and the range of narratives about a certain group of events that are considered miraculous in the folk tradition - the appearance of saints and icons in the water. It is established that a place of pilgrimage is often a symbolic sacred center of a certain area (spring, well, krinitsa, bend of the river), or a certain narrow-local territory (hospitals, houses, churches). The most susceptible categories of the population - young girls and boys, elderly widows, etc...