y to take away. p> The ceremony of a social birth (initiation) in general has as semantic centre the idea of ​​dying of an adolescent in the old status and revival in a new, adult status, through imitation of staying in "the world beyond". p> In wedding ceremonialism the towel, stepping over of which symbolizes passing the Styx, the "weirdness" of newly-weds (a prohibition of touching them and their movement as the dead, against the sun), identifications of getting married with dying (crying-lamentation), a veil of the bride as a muslin which covers the face of the deceased, etc. all these factors clearly indicate a mortally-immortal basis of all this ceremony. p> And again, as well as in a New Year's holiday, there appear the died ancestors as only from their sanction the birth of a new member of a clan-tribe was allowed. At first it was shown in the form of a cult, when the bride copulated with a totem animal (a goat, a horse, a bull) in a "Natural" way. p> Then the right of superiority directly from a totem animal, passed to its personification, to the chieftain-priest. As a result, the first man of the bride at marriage night, often in presence of relatives, her mother and bridegroom, was not the bridegroom, but friends to the bridegroom, respected people of settlement and, according to absolutely recent ethnographic data on the Odessa area (1920th), the groomsman-boyar. p> Residual echoes of this element of a wedding ceremony in a fairy tale is cohabitation of Mary and the Bear, and in modern weddings - a ritual seating of the newly-weds on the bear, sheep or bull skins, or, in a degenerated variant, on a fur coat or simply on a pillow. p> To the same remnants concerns steady, but already not clear euphemism of conjugal infidelity - "to cuckold" (once the chieftain-totem, having copulated in public with the bride, gave his cap decorated with horns, to the bridegroom, handing him in such a way the force of ancestors). Thereby, the died ancestors symbolically generated a new life. p> The main point of funeral ceremonialism is reduced, eventually, to marking this event as a system of actions which will provide an indispensable revival of the deceased, the display of that is an embryonic, crooked position of a died man in a hole-bosom or preservation of ashes in a cremation urn, in a vessel-womb. p> To this range of reproduction of the basic formula "life - death - revival" refer also the erotic games of Europeans near the deceased, traditional strewing him with grain-seed (by the ancient Egyptians and modern Ukrainians) which should symbolically germinate, an Indo-Iranian ceremony of "dikshi", reproduced already in a tomb for those who could not lead it during lifetime because of expensiveness, in the form of sexual poses a posteriori (dogstile) of man and woman, (Imitation of self-conception of the dead with the purpose of reincarnation), copulation of the Kyїv combatants near a funeral fire with the widow of Duke "instead of the husband ", a ceremonial reconstruction in 19 century by Mordvinians of wedding during a funeral (including the ritual defloration of a died virgin by the Jews of Volhynia so that the devil could not copulate with her and she would not given birth to a dangerous monster) etc.
Consideration of a myth from this point of view of the universal-cultural approach has shown that categories of ultimate bases and world outlook codes literally penetrate through their contents. Thus, in mythological figures of fauna - a bull and a cow, a horse, a goat, a bear, a lion, a tiger, birds, fishes and insects, etc. the genitive, vitality and mortality, and also certain codes make their semantic background. For example , the pigeon was understood as allegory of a soul of the dead (immortality) . p> References to vegetative symbols of mythological consciousness shows, that their dependence on seasonal cycles makes them successful analogue of embodiment of a basic triad "life - death - revival". The last CUB is shown here because a drink of immortality was made exactly of plants.
If to speak about abstract mythological symbols, then the mythological thinking was developed enough to form in its structure the abstract symbols, having risen above an individual-sensual character of objective images. One of the most widespread world abstract symbols was a circle which was often concretized in illustrative images of the snake turned into a ring and others circular things. p> The circle symbolized the coincidence of the beginning and the end, of birth and death ( genitive and mortality ) and, eventually, eternity (immortality) . The erotic code in a circle appeared in its understanding as female beginning and when in its center there was a throne settled down, a trunk, columnar or world mountain - in its unification with male beginning. p> The analysis of typological myths, mytho...
