Human Kinetics as a Healing and Magical Remedy in Ethnocultures

10.33876/2311-0546/2024-4/331-339

Abstract

Healers not only reproduce spelling and invocation texts during the healing ritual, but also perform body movements. The article uses the ethnochoreological term "kinetics" to denote the movement component of magical treatment. Traditional medicine has an extensive range of medicinal products. The article aims to show kinetics as one of them. First, based on ethnographic facts from the scientific literature about different ethnocultures, kinetic elements addressed by the healer to the patient are presented. Then, based on the materials from the author's personal archive about the folk tradition of the Russian Old Believers living in Buryatia (the Semeyskie), the relation between kinetics addressed to the patient and diseases treated with magic is revealed. Further, the possibility of applying knowledge about the kinetics of healing rituals in the ethnological study of the folk medicine is explained. The author concludes that kinetics is used as a healing and magical remedy in ethnocultures. The obtained result can be used to study the variability and universality of the folk medicine based on detailed recorded data on the kinetics of healing rituals.