Walking on red, hot coals in a ritual way attracts more and more people in the World. Is it a global phenomenon or are they isolated local cultural constructions? How old are these traditions? How do New Age rituals and human potential movements interact with new religious movements and traditional cults in accordance with firewalking practices? Are there cultural links between distant fire walking rituals from India to the USA, from Java to Spain, from Fiji to Greece and Bulgaria? The lecture gives a typological frame about firewalking rituals (how they were spread in the last century), and a comparison between them. The lecture also contains a cultural anthropological case study how social discourses construct the meanings and special forms of an actual fire walking ritual among a NRM in the Carpathian basin (the “Shines”, organized by a vernacular prophet).
Moderator: Dr. Rasa Pranskevičiūtė
Short bio
1991-1996 BA, MA – lawyer (social philosophy and international law) degree at ELTE University (Budapest), Faculty of Law, 1996-1999 Chamber of Attorney (Budapest), attorney of law (equivalent of PhD)
2007-2011 BA, 2011-2013 MA – ethnographer, social and cultural anthropologist, specialization of anthropology of religions at University of Pécs (PTE), Department of Ethnography and European Ethnology
2013-2016 PhD studies at University of Pécs (PTE), Department of Ethnography and European Ethnology
2008- book editor of scholarly work series at Napkút Publishing House, Budapest
2001- scenario writer and C of ethnological films for Duna Chanel (which won the World’s Best Cultural Channel Award in 2008)
Main field of research: NRM, neo-pagan movements, community studies, ethnicity, cultural construction of social groups, subcultures, online ethnography, ethnology of religions
Member of the SIEF (Ethnology of Religion Working Group), Hungarian Ethnographical Society, Hungarian Anthropological Society, Association of Hungarian Writers
Fieldworks: Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Pakistan, and shorter fieldworks in Nepal, India, Japan and Russia, Indonesia
