Translated material
Archaic syndrome
He was the only one of the Seylem judges who had never regretted the right in his life. This fault was so tormented by his great -great -granddaughter, the famous novelist Nathaniel Gorn, that he changed the spelling of his last name - instead of Hathorne, he began to write Hawthorne.
Salem residents took revenge on the writer. After the Roman “Scarla letter” was released in 1850, which depicts intolerance and moral obscurantism of the 17th century Puritan American, Gorotorn ran into such hatred of fellow countrymen that he and his family had to leave his hometown forever.
We are used to thinking that the times of obscurantism remained in the distant past. But here is a message from the State Russian news agency about recent events in Moscow :
Orthodox missionary Andrei Kaplin sprinkled with baptismal water one of the supporters of Pussy Riot. In response, some demon began in response: she began to wave her hands, rush at others.
We are talking about the attack of Orthodox activists on the picket participants near the Moscow City Court building in support of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, arrested for punk-graben in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. These are the testimony of the witness of the incident. Apparently, the next step in justice will be the investigative experiment with sprinkling with holy water directly in the courtroom, in order to see whether they will begin to rage. And there, not far and more severe trials recommended by the authors of the "hammer of witches".
In Russia, there is already a precedent of condemnation for witchcraft. True, the appeal authoritycanceled the verdict that received a scandalous publicity.
In Rus', there has never been such a large -scale witch hunt, which was in Europe. Accusations of sorcery were most often political in nature. For example, the Moscow boyars who called for the kingdom of Demetrius, and then betraying him, claimed that they were bewitched: they say, Grishka Otrepyev "on the state was given a demonic help, and he seduced the people of the Black Council." It is clear that the authors of this "press release" did not believe in any witchcraft. Do modern inquisitors believe in it, ready to sentenced the participants in a harmless performance to the dragon dates?
I recall last year's arrests of high -ranking officials in Iran on charges of witchcraft and communicating with genies.
“Each century has its own Middle Ages,” said Stanislav Jerzy Lets. Trying to explain the nature of mass psychosis, which covered Europeans in the era of witch hunting, scientists express various theories. One of them belongs to Russian anthropologists and is called " archaic syndrome ." When the scrapers who hold society are weakening and disappear, state institutions cease to work, a person is looking for support in the irrational one - there is an archaization of public consciousness, wildness, faith in the occult forces becomes massive.
The current surge of religious fanaticism in Russia is a phenomenon of this particular variety. Punishments to the "blasphemers" are offered quite medieval: to carve with rods, put on a stake, dump in feathers, lick the hollow ... Well, who is raging here - cheerful artists or self -official defenders of faith?
In the United States, there is also another great battle of Obsc and rationalism today. Mormon Mitt Romni was too liberal for the conservative republican electorate, and his competition is a Catholicist-Fundamalist Rick Santorum, denouncing the "moral relativism" of American society.
But America is a special case. This dualism of the collective American soul is determined historically. Religious dissidents, who founded the first colonies in North America, swam the ocean precisely in search of freedom of religion. Liberalism and religiosity are like two currents in one channel. They collide, form whirlpools, but without any of them the river will freeze.