The article examines the mythological beliefs of the modern Mari priesthood – karts. Based on field materials, recorded in the Republic of Mari El and Bashkortostan, the author explores mythological worldview of the karts and the ways of transmitting mythological and ritual knowledge. Through the analysis of interviews, the author highlights the faith of ritual specialists in the afterlife and the posthumous existence of the soul, as well as their views on the organization of the mythological space and its inhabitants. According to the field data, among the group of informants the most common idea is division of gods into higher and lower. The higher gods are associated with celestial objects and cosmogony, while the lower ones are associated with nature, death and the everyday sphere. The most important deity is widely considered to be Osh Poro Kugu Yumo, the demiurge god. There is no consensus on the organization of the “other world”, it is described both as an abstract kingdom of Kiyamat and as a natural landscape. In the ritual texts there is category of patron deities of the dead. The concept of posthumous judgment and punishment of sinners is stable.

The article is devoted to the study of one of the aspects of the genesis of the plot of the legend about the phenomenon of the sacrificial deer. Due to the fact that to date, there has been no general opinion among researchers about the emergence and spread of different versions of the legend about the phenomenon of deer among the Northern Russians, Karelians, Vepsians and the Komi, to solve the problem, it was proposed to turn to a detailed study of each individual case. Based on this, the article analyzes historical data on the Vicherа tradition of the Komi and identifies factors that contributed to the development of the legend of the phenomenon of deer in this local culture. Consideration of the history of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the revealed icon of the Mother of God of Vishera, as well as the historical and social context, allows us to conclude that the legend with the motive for the wonderful appearance of a deer in the folk culture of the Vishera Komi is associated with the Orthodox tradition. Until the early 1930s, the legend motivated the rite of sacrifice of a pet, which was held on the patronal feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in honor of the revealed icon of the Smolensk Mother of God, making up one of the vow rituals in the tradition of honoring the miraculous icon. In the oral culture of the Vishera Komi, the legend of the deer phenomenon organically fits into the circle of Orthodox folklore texts about the wonderful appearance of the icon and the miracles taking place around it. The interaction of legends about the appearance of the icon and the appearance of the deer served as an impetus for the development of ideas about the miraculous properties of the icon among the Izhem reindeer herders. In general, the analysis of the history of the development of the legend of the deer phenomenon in the local culture of the Vishera Komi is the result of an adaptation of the Christian plot in the cultural landscape of the Vishera.

The author examines an unusual iconographic incident: the Vologda icon of the late 16^th century, in which Abel occupies a place in Hell, on the devil’s lap, traditionally belonging to Judas Iscariot. The author outlines a range of book and folklore texts, which reflect the legend that the traitor apostle is sitting in Hell on Satan’s lap. After that, he analyzes the legend of Abel as the first dead man on earth. This legend is a Christian adaptation of the nomadic motif “a bird teaches people to bury the dead in the ground”, which is widely represented in folklore in Eurasia. Variations of the motif are known in Muslim, Jewish and Christian literature, in Asia Minor, the Caucasus and the Arctic. In Russia, this motif was known thanks to the legend of Abel, which became part of the popular Explanatory Palaea. She said that after the first murder on earth, Abel remained incorruptible. God sent two turtledoves to the ancestors – one of them died, the second buried her in the ground and thus taught Adam and Eve how to deal with the dead. This story spread in the Russian iconography of the 17^th century. As the author suggests, this is exactly what gave rise to the original visual solution on the Vologda icon – its creator knew the legend of the first dead man and deployed its logic to events related to the crucifixion and resurrection of the Savior. It was not the main sinner who turned out to be on the devil’s lap, but the one who was the first to die on earth, and whose soul was the first to go to Hell – the prophets lead him out of Hell.

The purpose of the article is to apply a folkloristic approach to understand psychoanalysis’s genesis, canon and function. The situation of a psychoanalytic session is viewed as a communicative event of a special kind, in many ways analogous to the relationship between the folklorist and the narrator. This approach allows us to compare psychological and folklore concepts: narrative authenticity, authorship, genre, literariness and parody. It is shown that the analysand, like the folklore performer, is not its author, but its performer. In this case, the function of the psychoanalyst realized in therapy turns out to be dual: in the course of a session he works as a folklorist, and in personal therapy, using secondary folklore, he becomes a narrator. Using the example of the psychoanalytic understanding of the Oedipus complex, it is shown how the psychoanalytic plot displaces the Sophoclean plot, becoming a part of fiction, the denotation of which is not the truth or falsity, but only its meaning. The thesis is put forward according to which psychoanalytic literature, in its content and functioning, is both a theory of psychoanalysis and fiction. In this vein, its genre can be defined as a medical legend.

The article describes in detail the history of the founding of the journal “Turkish Folklore Studies”, an iconic journal among the many folklore ones in Turkey. The important role of the magazine’s publisher İhsan Hınçer is revealed and his detailed biography is given. The article substantiates the importance of this journal for Turkish folklore studies. The article explains the importance of the journal for Turkish folklore studies. The journal was published every month without omission for 31 years (1949–1980). In those years, there were no folklore departments or state organizations in Turkey that were engaged in the academic study of folklore and “TFR” filled the lacuna. The journal united both professional folklorists and amateurs under its roof and served as a kind of institute. The article lists the topics of the journal’s publications. Although field research materials dominated in the journal, works on folklore methodology and terminology were also present. The reasons for the closure of the journal and the circumstances of its revival are explained. The activities of the newly formed journal are summarized. Since 2023 three issues have been published, and one conference has been organized. At the end of the article the plans of the journal for the future are given.

Votive holidays include holidays that are established by the rural community according to a vow. They are a form of a folk vow, a commitment that a person or community undertakes to get rid of various disasters: cattle plague, droughts, hail storms, etc. Within the framework of the calendar cycle, votive holidays also act as one of the varieties of locally timed, or local holidays. This article is devoted to the study of the tradition of establishing votive holidays in the Nizhny Novgorod Pravoberezhye – in the territories of the Nizhny Novgorod region located below the Oka and Volga rivers. The work is based on field materials from the folklore archive of Nizhny Novgorod State University named after N.I. Lobachevsky, as well as information about votive holidays contained in pre-revolutionary publications in the“Nizhny Novgorod Diocesan Gazette”. These materials reflect the state of the studied tradition in the second half of the 19^th – 20^th c. In the article, we explore the terminology of votive holidays. We identify the reasons for the establishment of votive holidays (loss of crops, livestock deaths, fires, etc.). We determine the specifics of their assignment to specific calendar dates, as well as the spatial and temporal characteristics of votive holidays. We analyze the variants of the structural organization of votive processions with a prayer service, which form the main content of votive holidays. At the end of the work, we consider how in the Nizhny Novgorod Pravoberezhye in the second half of the 20^th c. the transformation of votive holidays into patronal holidays.

In this article, based on the author’s field materials from ethnolinguistic expeditions in the Purovsky and Krasnoselkupsky districts of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the state of folklore traditions of the Selkups of the Tazov-Turukhan group is assessed. The field materials are based on the oral folklore of the Selkups from Krasnoselkup (2008), Tolka (2008–2023) and Tarko-Sale (2012). In order to introduce the research results into scientific use, the folklore works were freely translated from the Selkup language into Russian, preserving the phonetic characteristics and peculiarities of the different dialects of the Selkup language.