Oleksandr Vasianovych

Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD), Deputy Director for Research, State Scientific Center for Protection of Cultural Heritage from Technological Disasters, Kyiv, Ukraine

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9360-6447

E-mail: guru_v@ukr.net

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Keywords: thunderstorm, hail, folk meteorology, meteorological magic, Ukrainian Polissia, worlds’ border, domestic space

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Abstract

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The article draws attention to the specific locations in a house used by residents of Ukrainian Polissia to prevent thunderstorms and hail. The house for the Ukrainians of Polissia was associated with «their own» inner space that opposed the outer space. To preserve the inner space, Ukrainians took care of those places that were at the worlds’ border (windows, doors, chimneys) or occupied a central place in worldviews (furnace, pokut – home altar).

Based on the field materials collected at the beginning of the 21st century, the meteorological beliefs are conventionally divided into two groups: folk means of preventing adverse weather phenomena; magical ritual actions to eliminate a certain natural disaster. Oppositional groups aimed at opposing one weather phenomenon to another have been identified: fire vs. water, internal vs. external, own vs. someone else's

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