BORSHCH IN RITUAL AND MAGIC PRACTICES OF POLISHCHUKS OF THE CHERNIHIV REGION (BASED ON FIELD MATERIALS)

Traditional nutrition occupies one of the foremost places in the material culture of people, its essential manifestation in the spiritual culture is also natural. At the same time, the ritual load of traditional dishes is not the same; only some of them have become the key to certain customs and rituals. These include, among others, borshch, a unique dish that every housewife in Ukraine cooks according to their recipe. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the use of borshch in the ritual and magical practices of Polishchuks of the Chernihiv region, to find out its causes and internal form. In the context of family and calendar rituals, the use of borshch is quite transparent and almost identical. He plays an important role in commemorating deceased ancestors. According to the ideas, they eat not the dish itself, but the steam from the hot dish as its emanation. In this context, a "hot commemorations," Christmas Eve, or the so-called "Didy" borshch goes into the same paradigm as freshly baked bread or pancakes, freshly cooked potatoes, and so on. Nevertheless, on the "Shchedryi vechir," the panspermic value of borshch is actualized: in addition to the many permanent ingredients, grains of different crops were added there, which was to ensure a high harvest during the next year. Much more difficult to interpret are cases of borshch use in obsessional rites, particularly in meteorological magic. First of all, it is a way to cause rain by throwing a stolen borshch pot in a well, as well as children's well-known calls to the rain in Ukraine, where it is proposed to "boil it to the borshch." The difficulty is the presence of a number of related factors, each of which can be decisive in the ritual of causing rain: not only the borshch was poured into the well, but also the pot was thrown; he who stole it was crying; well after borshch contamination was cleaned and others. However, in the author's opinion, in the meteorological magic of the Polish citizens of the Chernihiv region, the importance of borshch is of paramount importance. Keywords: Eastern Polissia, Chernihiv region, borshch, rituals, calendar, meteorology.