Editorial

By | 2015-06-16T20:53:13+00:00 15 March 2015|

We value our lives, and the lives of others. And this is also a key element to living our lives powerfully.  When we start valuing without judgment through meaning (whether ours or society's), our lives begin to morph into something completely different. When we value without agendas, we are free from the agendas of others. When we put what matters to us under the microscope of our conscious awareness, we can manifest matter (physical experience) which we choose by design, and not unconscious or programmed meaning or importance. When we move out of the programming, we can take action at a [...]

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Woman as a nation’s symbol: the Romanian case

By | 2017-03-20T07:26:06+00:00 15 March 2015|

Out of all the definitions scholars gave to the concept of a modern nation the one that best fits our approach refers to the nation as a “virtual community”. We understand “nation” as a mental construct based on a set of symbols. The present study will make reference to one of these icons, which is the female embodiment of a nation. The subject of our analysis is Romanian society during the XIXth Century. There are two objectives to be pursued: the first is to reveal the historical context in which Romanian artists felt the need to represent the nation in a woman’s body and, secondly, to see if this new national perspective in regard to women was a consequence of the changes registered in the general perception of women’s place and role in Romanian society.

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The Most Prevalent Feminine Mythical Characters in Romanian Folklore

By | 2017-03-20T07:26:09+00:00 15 March 2015|

The powerful mythical figure of Neolithic, the Great Goddess, survived in the Indo-European pantheon, with characteristics surfacing in almost all the feminine divinities of the classical mythologies. In the Romanian folklore one can recognize this pre-historic goddess in the character of Ileana Simziana, the most adorned fairy of the land. She is the heroine of numerous songs, carols, and fairy tales; the most beautiful of all fairies, their queen, so beautiful that ‘one could look at the sun but not at her’. Other feminine characters in Romanian folklore are the fairies, zâne, beautiful and kind, helping people. They are opposed by Iele (3rd plural personal pronoun iele) ‘they’, fairies that could turn very aggressive towards mankind; perhaps some of the demonic and chimerical depictions of the Neolithic Goddess, her relationship with death and destruction, have transpired into the characteristics of this group of fairies with negative powers.

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Bucovina: Onomastics and History (II)

By | 2017-03-20T07:17:24+00:00 15 March 2015|

The conference was delivered in the Council Hall of the Romanian Academy on May 24th 2001
The author of the present paper describes the evolution of Bucovina from the inclusion into the Habsburg Empire of this territory - once part of Moldavia - to the day. After some hesitations, this land annexed to Austria-Hungary, which had not previously had a name of its own, received a Slavic name eventually. This name had been used by the Moldavian Chancellery only in the documents written in the Slavic language, since proving that it was not a Romanian territory was a necessity back then. The same criterion was used when choosing Cernăuți as the capital of Bucovina; it is worth noting, however, that this is a Romanian name, since the Ukrainian one is Cernivtsi. The author also analyses the dramatic changes in the toponymy and anthroponymy of Bucovina, both during the Austrian-Hungarian occupation and especially after the northern part of this territory, included in the Cernăuți/Chernivtsi region and currently part of the Ukrainian Republic, became part of the Soviet Union.

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