From the Author:
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“I am writing this work for ethnographers who are familiar with field work and, therefore, have touched the real life of our people. I myself happened to know people who considered themselves descendants of buffoons, were groomsmen at weddings and played Christmastide.
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These were simple village old men, but by right they should be called sorcerers.
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.In this work I am trying to explain what my natural-scientific worldview could not digest when I looked at their game. Science has enchanted itself, as it is said in the song “Don’t talk about love, everything has been said about it.” So folklorists created descriptions and explanations of almost everything that was in folk culture. Clever explanations, equipped with heavy artillery of incomprehensible scientific terms. They have everything, everything has already been said, but you just can’t understand how to do it yourself?!
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.And when you think about it, remembering not what scientists said, but what you actually saw, you understand: the scientific explanation is not enough, it is simply narrow, a living phenomenon does not fit into these children’s pants. Scientists know very well how to talk about it scientifically, but they do not see it in its entirety. They lack theory.
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Simply, breadth of vision.
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And in order to find it, you need to make an effort, allow yourself some assumptions that are unacceptable within the framework of the scientific picture of the world, and expand your consciousness. What is required is something like an assumption that what the people were talking about is really not fiction, not superstition or primitive ideas. It was, and people knew how!
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.And then the opportunity arises to understand and even be able to do it yourself.”