TY - JOUR T1 - An Esoteric Part of Mari Culture AU - Natalia, Glukhova AU - Elina, Guseva AU - Galina, Shkalina AU - Riese, Timothy AU - Marina, Sokolova JO - The Social Sciences VL - 11 IS - 8 SP - 1808 EP - 1812 PY - 2016 DA - 2001/08/19 SN - 1818-5800 DO - sscience.2016.1808.1812 UR - https://makhillpublications.co/view-article.php?doi=sscience.2016.1808.1812 KW - The Maris KW -esoteric texts KW -magical practitioners KW -succession KW -analysis AB - This study shows some elements of an esoteric part of Mari culture, namely the classification and pragmatic characteristics of Mari charms; the description of charm performers and their magical rituals. Mari charms are an integral part of the national spiritual culture, a leading constituent of its magic domain. At the same time, the tradition of practicing magical texts is a living cultural phenomenon which can be observed still today. This research has been carried out with the help of methods and techniques based on the pragmalinguistic approach applied to 580 texts taken from different sources. The greater part of the collected charms consists of the texts gathered during the researcher’s folklore field expeditions to the regions of Mari compact settlements. The analysis revealed six groups of charms with a prevalence of texts for healing and protecting from witchcraft. This study describes the sequence of actions in a strict ritual procedure of charm usage by magical practitioners. It is shown that the core component during the succession of steps is the verbal formula itself. Structurally, Mari charms consist of different parts each of which plays a specific role in the pragmatic function of the text. ER -