Arkońska wróżba z kołaczem. Gest zasłonięcia się w kulturze duchowej Słowian w świetle analizy antropologicznej

Abstract

This article deals with the ritual of “wheel-bread divination” described by Saxo Gramaticus in the Gesta Danorum chronicle in context of the cult of the Świętowit deity worshipped by West-Slavic tribes from Rügen. Jerzy Kmita’s notions of “humanistic interpretation” and language and ethnographic fractography used in a comparative context provide a background to the analysis. The effect of the research is to identify a set of culturally motivated beliefs and judgments determining the semantic content of the ritual, which is reconstructed on the basis of the materials used.