Летящата икона на Света Богородица от с. Конче, Радовишко. Поглед към символните медиации на иконата
The Flying Icon of Sveta Bogorodica from the Village of Konche, Radovish District: Looking at the Symbolic Mediation of the Icon

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with a case of a miraculous icon of the Holy Mother of God which was believed to ‘fly’ from one place to another in order to express her own will. The scrutiny and confrontation of oral data collected by the author in two Macedonian villages show that the beliefs about the flying icon converge on several points, well fitting inside the religious- ideological framework of local Orthodox people. If the ‘flying’ miraculous icon can be seen as an embodiment of the local community, her ‘flight’ depicts real dis- placements of parts of, or the entire community, between regions or from one nation-State to another. It also conveys, symbolically, the idea of the ‘loss’ due to a change of identity, from Christian to Muslim, especially for women, through marriage. Last but not least, the paper shows the role of a local visionary woman in spreading these beliefs and rooting them into her own community.

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