E-mail: taty-lis@yandex.ru Tel.: +7 (8142) 71-96-49
33, Lenina av., Petrozavodsk, 185910, Republic of Karelia, Russian Federation
Senior lecturer, Department of Russian History, Institute of History, Political and Social Sciences, Petrozavodsk State University
A purpose of the article is to review a complex of magic attributes, providing a thief with such a supernatural ability as invisibility. The research is based on data of Eastern-Slavic cultural tradition in the latter half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. The idea that thieves use special magic items, which provide them with a supernatural power, is a common idea in the context of peasants’ understanding of thievery as a kind of magic. These ideas allow to regard a thief as one of such mythological fi gures, as wizards, witches, robbers or skilled professionals. The topicality and novelty of the research arises from the fact that the problem of mythologization of theft has not been studied enough within cultural anthropology and magic attributes of thieves have not been the objects of any scholarly research. The article focuses on a group of magic items, providing a thief with special abilities, their characteristics and means of acquisition (time, places and manipulations), as well as handling and applying of the things. Th e conclusions of the article may be used in studying of other functional groups of magic attributes of thieves, such as things for breaking or overcoming real barriers, neutralizing of the property’s owners, etc. Also all the magic attributes of thieves can be classifi ed on the base of the conclusions of this paper.
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