Pásztor Emília (szerk.): Sámánizmus és természethit régen és ma - Bajai dolgozatok 23. (Baja, 2019)
Előszó
Preface Preface Recording ideas, thoughts or knowledge in general has many forms, from simple drawings, pictography to stylized symbols. Over the millennia, people have drawn or written down their knowledge, their signs on a variety of materials and objects: from the rock walls of caves, through stone and clay pots to actual paper. Prior to writing, people had to keep all the information, data in their minds. Thinking and knowledge are aided by imagination and communal memory which can bring humanity to the heights of culture and science. The former means that we can imagine all what we cannot live through personally. The latter means that we can embrace the memories, experience, knowledge of others by speaking, writing, or communicating in any other forms, and then we can pass our own knowledge on to others. Imagination and communal remembrance together enable us to learn about and understand the world. This notion makes the basis of the studies found in this volume. The writings are based on the premise that the everyday life, celebrations, customs, traditions, and social memories of the pre-literate societies can be understood more precisely by examining their surviving material culture or living rituals with a unique interdisciplinary curiosity. In their writings, archaeologists, astronomers, and ethnographers are trying to solve the biggest questions and debates of contemporary culture and science by comparing the prehistoric and 19-21th century material and intellectual culture and beliefs. The writings showcase the significant features of spiritual life during the thousands of years before the spread of Christianity through the works of art of the exhibition Shamanism and Nature Worship - Past and Present in the Türr István Museum.They presentthetraditional, but encrypted signs and messages of imagination and memory from the past. The writings are based on the study of these works of art which sometimes showed up in scientific debates by accident in their physical reality, but widened the discussions on history, religion, literature, and art. However, they more often offer the prospect of broader thinking over the course of two decades of dialogue with the memories of prehistoric, ancient, and medieval European and Asian cultures. Zita N. Kovács
