Magical Practices in the Context of Funeral and Memorial Rituals among the Udmurt

Abstract

Abstract: This article examines magical practices in the funeral and memorial rites of the Udmurt, one of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Volga-Ural region in Russia. Magic is approached as a systemic component of the ritual complex rather than a peripheral or archaic element, drawing on ethnographic and folklore sources from the 19^th to 21^st centuries and the author’s field material from southern and eastern Udmurt communities. The study identifies three interrelated types of magical practice (harmful, protective and healing) and analyses the semantics of key funeral attributes (grave soil, ‘corpse water’, the clothing and belongings of the deceased, ritual objects and substances) as ambivalent mediators between the worlds of the living and the dead. It demonstrates that magical actions perform regulatory and protective functions, help manage social tensions and sustain sacred and cosmic order, while also tracing the transformation of these beliefs under conditions of religious syncretism and modernisation, including their interaction with Orthodox rituals. The article introduces new empirical material relevant for future comparative research on funeral traditions and magical beliefs in Balkan-Baltic and
Finno-Ugric cultural contexts.