О симболици обредног понашања у народној култури Срба
About the symbolics of ritual behaviour in the folk culture of Serbs

Summary/Abstract: The paper commences from understanding folk culture as a set of verbal andnon-verbal texts, which are preserved in the memory of a collective and passed on by oralcommunication. One of the significant structural elements of these texts are usual predicatesor actions which, in the series of realizations, have its own recognizable symbolicmeaning. The paper describes the realization of several dozen of such ritual actions, asa part of the ritual behavior of Serbs (mainly in the customs concerning the life cycle ofa man and holiday rituals), and analyzes their meaning. Generally speaking, on the onehand, these actions can serve for passing a certain message from one man to another, and onthe other hand, they can be aimed towards the invisible world, primarily to the ancestors. From various, mostly Serbian, ethnographic and folkloristic sources of 19th and 20thcentury, ritual actions such as: calling, greeting, kissing, washing, gifting, hitting, rounding,daggling, swinging, pulling, shooting, smashing the dishes, jumping, thurifying etc., as well as some other means of abnormal behavior, which can also be called “antibehavior”:being silent, spitting, undressing, putting on overturned clothes, walking backwardsetc. have been isolated and analyzed.By repeating certain ritual actions, a social control of time is being accomplished,borders of its space are being determined anew, the established social structure is beingpreserved, relationship of the living towards the dead is being defined, as towards all that, according to national beliefs, can influence the life and wellbeing of a community.

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