SILENCE AND SOUND IN THE TRADITIONAL WORLDVIEW OF THE BESERMYAN
The article discusses the categories “sound” and “silence” in the context of the traditional worldview and characteristics of the sacred space. In certain periods of the year, seasons and dayparts the space was / is filled with sounds (a cry, a call, a song, a knock) which change its characteristics. Every sacred space has certain sound characteristics associated with such parameters of worldview and mythology as “silence” and “noise”. The semantics of sounds and ritual singing, produced by human beings, were tied to specific places of the landscape and to a particular time. Sounds and songs were performed to exorcise spirits, to awaken the nature after the winter, in order to increase (soil) fertility. Silence is the sound characteristic for some sacred places (cemetery, sacred grove, place of prayer) and time (night, midnight, transitional time of year). The change of “typical” or specific sound characteristics can be like a random violation of its spatial and temporal parameters, performed for ritual purposes.