Жената-птица в семейните обреди на българите
Woman-Bird in Bulgar Family Rituals

Author(s): Valentina Vaseva
Subject(s): Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Family and social welfare
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Summary/Abstract: This paper is an attempt to generalize the huge ethnographic and linguistic material required for the reconstruction of the women’s bird symbolism in the family rituals. Bird symbolism of husband was presented in the evolutive process from the birth to the full sexual maturity in the first part, while bird symbolism of wife was constructed in synchronic perspective, embracing the group of all women in reproductive age. Using of the bird symbols characterizes the highest reproductive processes in human society, so they are becoming comparable both to the process of cosmogenesis and to the process of reproduction in bird species. The paper accents the symbolic representation of menstruacy, concepcion, pregnancy and birth through the images of the hen, of the magpie, of the partridge, of the crow and of the other birds. The role of the woman-bird symbol at the moment of death has also been investigated. That is the way the image of woman, incarnated in bird, is the most clear at two important moments framing the human life – in the act of birth and in the act of death.

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