Мифотопонимия русских заговоров
THE MYTHOLOGICAL TOPONYMY OF RUSSIAN MAGIC SPELLS

Summary/Abstract: The article describes the toponymy of a particularly archaic genre of Russian folklore, the magic spell. The traditional world model presented in the texts is a series of concentric spac.es (locus), whose sacral character increases towards the centre. The description begins with mythological toponyms representing the outer locus, usually presented as the sea, a city or river, the latter functioning as the border with ‘the other world’. It, then proceeds to mythological toponyms of the middle locus presented as an island or mountain. Finally, it focuses on names of objects from the inner locus, comparable to Axis (Arbor) Mundi, where, apart from onomastically unnamed objects, the spells contain references to Stones and trees bearing proper names. According to the author, the invocation of names magically opens the door to the centre of the world, where the person uttering the spell is met by a wizard-helper (defender), which guarantees the success of the action for which the spell is cast

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