The Functions of Omens of Death in Transylvanian Hungarian Peasant Death Culture (Examples from Csíkkarcfalva and Csíkjenöfalva)

Abstract

European peasants' culture of death has evolved a number of rites and systems of folk beliefs during the past hundreds of years that aim at coordinating and reducing the near-death crisis situations. Recently, many researchers dealt with the ethnographic and descriptive analysis of the systems of folk beliefs and directions of behavior related to transience; however, the investigation of societal and psychological significance of these rites and beliefs has rarely been attempted. The goal of the following study is to present in detail the structure of the omen beliefs as well as their social and psychological role in two peasant communities in Transylvania. The psychological-social functions of the negative predictions, drawn from images of dream, unusual behavior of animals, the state of certain parts of body, etc. can be divided in three groups as follows: 1) conditioning or “memento mori” functions related to unfulfilled predictions, 2) realization-rationalization-preparatory functions, in case of omens closely before the death, and 3) in the first stage of the grief work, the significance of the reorganization function will be examined.