Alo

In the field of iconography the rhetoric of the end manifested itself initially as a history of silences, the absence of the motif being possibly equally significant as its presence since, as Michel Vovelle demonstrated, images interest us as expression of a selective, oblique

excerpts The cosmic tree, whose root, trunk and branches uphold – by dividing yet uniting – the three cosmic levels, is the same as the funeral tree, because, to the folk mentality, the cosmic tree is the only passageway to the other realm that the soul of the dead

excerptsTHE WATER PIXY. Representations. The Water Pixy and the Human Head. The Water Pixy's Wraith. Stories. The Water Pixy in Other CulturesAccording to Romanian popular beliefs in Bucovina, the Water Pixy is a tall, heavily- built woman, some say as tall as a camel,

excerptsDEATHDeath, whom some mistake for Samodiva, Sila Samodiva or Salea Samodiva, is the invisible spirit that takes away any man's soul, irrespective of the fact that the latter is old or young, rich or poor, happy or unhappy with his life, at the moment when it

excerptsTHE LIFE OF MANDeath. The Signs of DeathDeath is no longer visible to people and dying men no longer are aware of their time like once; still, there exist certain premonitory signs that show one the moment has come to embark upon the journey with no return. Not everybody

Among the customs associated with the individual's life, the burial ceremony is an intimate meditation before death seen as the inevitable end of a natural process, given along with life, therefore it does not bring about a greater trauma than any other aspect of living.

The essential resemblance between the legend recorded by Bandinus in 1647 and the folk legends about the Flood, collected at two and a half centuries' distance (around 1900), is conspicuous. In all these variants (but especially in the one chronicled by Bandinus) some

excerpts1. Participation and RepetitionPerhaps the most significant difference between modern man and archaic man consists in this: for archaic man, a thing or an act acquires significance only in as much as it participates in a prototype, or in as much as it reiterates

Architect The architecture of a country is, perhaps, the most accurate expression of its history, and nothing can give us a more certain insight into the past and more authentic knowledge of a civilisation. By what it has achieved throughout time, Romanian architecture

Historian The National Village Museum in Bucharest is the kind of museum in which the traditional exhibition halls are replaced by authentic households, consisting of dwellings and their extensions, technical devices, churches and triptychs transplanted from their places

Healing plants grow under Christ's cross and out of the blood of our Saviour. People in Germany and Norway believe that the grass of Sânziene (Hypericum) grew roots from the Saviour's blood drops. Other legends tell that the same plant was born from the blood

FATE, RELIEF, GOOD FORTUNETHE PARCAEUrsitoarele (the Fates, the Parcae), also called ursitori, ursători, ursite, ursoi, ursoaice or ursoni, or Mire by the Macedo-Romanians, or albe, harasite, caşmete or hrioase by the Neo-Greeks and Bulgarians are known as three virgins