<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>The protest of the North Ossetian nativist religious movement against discourses of dominant institutions in the public sphere involves as its necessary component ‘re-description’ of religion in general and ‘re-constructed’ religious systems in particular. Usually, this means revealing allegedly forgotten ancient meanings of indigenous customs, rituals and folklore texts through the use of various concepts taken from esotericism and/or practical psychology. The language for this re-description is provided by conceptual apparatus developed by New Age movements. Of particular interest in this respect is the language of ‘new science’, ‘alternative history’, ‘transpersonal psychology’, etc., employed as a tool for criticising the established system of Christian-centric understanding of what religion is and what its social functions are.</p>
</abstract>

The protest of the North Ossetian nativist religious movement against discourses of dominant institutions in the public sphere involves as its necessary component ‘re-description’ of religion in general and ‘re-constructed’ religious systems in particular. Usually, this means revealing allegedly forgotten ancient meanings of indigenous customs, rituals and folklore texts through the use of various concepts taken from esotericism and/or practical psychology. The language for this re-description is provided by conceptual apparatus developed by New Age movements. Of particular interest in this respect is the language of ‘new science’, ‘alternative history’, ‘transpersonal psychology’, etc., employed as a tool for criticising the established system of Christian-centric understanding of what religion is and what its social functions are.

Ossetian Ritual Feasts and Transpersonal Experience: Re-Description of a Religion as a Religious Practice

Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The protest of the North Ossetian nativist religious movement against discourses of dominant institutions in the public sphere involves as its necessary...

Ossetian Ritual Feasts and Transpersonal Experience: Re-Description of a Religion as a Religious Practice

Published Online: Dec 22, 2021

Page range: 74 - 88

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2021-0018

Keywords
North Ossetia, New Age, religious nationalism, nativism, transpersonal psychology

© 2021 Sergei Shtyrkov, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Ossetian Ritual Feasts and Transpersonal Experience: Re-Description of a Religion as a Religious Practice

Published Online: Dec 22, 2021

Page range: 74 - 88

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2021-0018

KeywordsNorth Ossetia, New Age, religious nationalism, nativism, transpersonal psychology

© 2021 Sergei Shtyrkov, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
North Ossetia, New Age, religious nationalism, nativism, transpersonal psychology