In development of Lotman’s idea about two communication channels in culture, the addressee’s reception of a message from the outside is considered as initiation of autocommunication of the addressee with his other self-inner speech. The author analyzes a role of fascination (in the sense of Yu. V. Knorozov) in the addressee’s assimilation of the information contained in the message with the help of inner speech and the emergence of fascination in the latter. As an example, here is an analysis of the Latin prayer Anima Christi.

   The article deals with the plots and motifs associated with the eyes, loss and acquisition of sight in the tale tradition. Blindness in fairy tales rarely acts as a “qualifying disability”. The semantics of a blind man varies considerably depending on the genre variety, from the wise man and the seer to the fool and dupe.

   The Oberiut poet Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) created his own version of the occult-oriental synthesis in the manner that the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink (1868–1932), and not only him, practiced. The occult worldview makes it possible to include in such a synthesis any religion from Buddhism to Orthodoxy, uniting them according to the principle of magical effectiveness. The difference between the syntheses of Meyrink and Harms was that the former alternated between Buddhist and occult initiations during the fin de sciecle era, when they were in great vogue. And the latter did that ten or twenty years later in Soviet Russia, where such things were persecuted by an atheistic state. Another important difference was that Meyrink acted as a missionary in his works, but did it indirectly, while Kharms tried to directly transform the world, relying on the alleged magical power of avant-garde poetry.

   The article considers the role of the body in Islamic beliefs through the prism of the author’s own perception. The central subject is the resurrection before the Day of Judgment and the subsequent Eternity, into which each person will also enter bodily. Hence the great attention to the body in Islamic rituals (rites of body purification, the role of burial) and in everyday life of Muslims (obligation to take care of the body). It is connected with the basic Muslim understanding of the human being as an inseparable unity of soul and body.

   This article presents a semiotic interpretation of the spatial and temporal infrastructure of the Celtic-Roman world on the example of the ancient Roman Transalpine Consular Road, connecting Rome and Britain. The investigation is based on the author’s field and archaeo-astronomical research and antique sources. The article is focused on the active influence of the ancient infrastructure on the socialisation of the contemporary population of the region and the formation of a multi-level identity in its worldview system.

   The problematics of corporeality is one of the central issues in the medieval Tamil philosophical treatise “Tirumantiram” by Tirumular (c. 10 th – 12 th centuries). It offers a yogic understanding of the body as consisting of several shells (kośa) and having its own subtle body anatomy (sūkṣma śarīra). Such understanding of corporeality was completely new for Tamil culture, where until that time the dominant concepts of corporeality were the one, dating back to ancient Tamil poetry (“Sangam literature”), and another, influenced by the Jain asceticism (as, for example, reflected in the early medieval didactic anthology “Naladiyar”). The article proposes a commented translation from the Old Tamil language of the chapter “Transitoriness of the Body” from the first tantra of the “Tirumantiram”. In that fragment, the author recalls the imminent death of the gross body, which becomes the starting point for explaining the need for its transformation with the help of yogic practice.

   “The case of the renewal of three icons in Vyalki village of Bronnitsky district” is the document from archival fund of Moscow Governor-General Chancellery (Central State Archive of Moscow). That file gives information about the renewal of three icons in Vyalki village in summer 1842, and includes a story of several ailing klikushi (hysteric person) who felt noticeable relief after worshiping those icons. The document is particularly interesting because it contains evidences of klikushi, and gives an idea how they perceived own malaise and following healing.

   The article presents and analyzes a collection of string puppets called putali, collected by the author in the Thimi, Katmandu valley (Nepal) in 2006. Their main features are revealed.

   The article presents and analyzes a collection of the ceremonial articles of Parsis Zoroastrians, collected by the author in Mumbai and Kolkata in 2008. Their main features and functions are revealed and analyzed.