Bazyk D. Religious Beliefs and Forms of Their Contemporary Manifestation

This thesis is dedicated to studying primitive religious beliefs in a modern context, and is an attempt at an epistemological analysis of the forms primitive religious beliefs take in modernity. The following forms of primitive religious beliefs are examined at length: fetishism, totemism, rites of passage, and primitive magic. Studies of Australian and African empirical materials have shown that the absorption of forms of primitive religious beliefs and their successive downplay in traditional societies ensues not so much as a result of Christianization or Islamization, but in the conditions of increscent processes of secularization and globalization, which are the dominant destabilizing factors for both the traditional way of life and the forms of manifestation of primitive religious beliefs. Among the subjects studied was the specific character of the reflection of early forms of religious belief in the religious and ceremonial practices of Ukrainian Neopagans. It was found that at the current stage of development of Ukrainian society, the rebirth of forms of primitive religious beliefs in Ukrainian Neopaganism is of a mostly artificial character and is the result of the modern tendency to create or craft religion. The specifics of the syncretic character of relict manifestations of primitive forms of religious beliefs in contemporary Ukrainian Orthodox Christianity were also studied.