"TUESDAY" BELIEFS AND OMENS OF NOVRUZ HOLIDAY IN TURKISH MYTHICAL THINKING (ON THE BASIS OF THE FOLK LIFE OF SOUTH AZERBAIJAN)

Abstract

Holiday rituals, games and performances, music and dance traditions, fortune-telling techniques, etc. on Novruz Tuesdays are rich in beliefs and omens related to Turkish mythical thinking. Although ceremonies in the southern family life in the regions of Tabriz, Ardabil, Hamadan, Urmiya are organized and held according to national codes and spiritual-cultural unity, they are distinguished by their differences in various ritual images in local character. In the south, these ceremonies, which are successively called "khabar", "gul", "kule" and "akhir" Tuesday, are compared in terms of special combination of magical elements and fire and water, and imitative protection from fetish amulets, evil eye and evil spirits through hypnosis, binding, talisman and so on.
In addition, a mirror "joined" to the sacral energy of fire, water, tree-plants, and wind elements of creation, selection of Quranic verses in verbal magic, table traditions decorated with various colors, "Chilyasin water" ceremony, as well as the images of "Tuesday grandmother" and "Tuesday boy" in the series of the ceremony heroes called Kosa and Kechal, the uniqueness of greeting ancestral spirits in songs have a special place in this context. Among the ceremonial dances, "Yalli" and "Jalman" ("Chelman"), which are compatible with the ancient "Jalin" in which shamans also participate, immortalize the complex content of beliefs in the ritual content of holiday games. "Tuesday" rituals in the southern family life, in any case, preserve the multifaceted historical presence of beliefs and faith in the ethnographic framework, including the religious worldview, starting from the pre-animistic thinking system.