Magician Doll

Posted on 18 apr 2008

Still, there is something mystical in a handmade doll that can scare, especially if the doll is made by hand of a skilled craftsman. It is no mere chance that in the world of literature and cinematography the action often unfolds around the doll, in which the soul of its master, or devil’s one has transmigrated. If we recall fairy tales, an animated doll – one of the many magical helpers, also appears in many of them.

According to many researchers, the first handmade dolls were related to the rites and the cult of the dead ancestors. Many nations made the “wooden ingot” or a doll that were identified as a receptacle for the deceased’s soul of a family member. The “Ingot” was fed with everything that family members ate, and generally it was cared for as to be alive.
 
Even nowadays many African tribes use handmade dolls in their rites as personifications of dead. When the wife dies and widower marries the second time, he keeps in his hut the doll, which represents that wife in the beyond. It is honored in order the wife beyond the veil not to be jealous of the wife in this world.
 
In some tribes of American Indians the Mother puts the child’s idol in his cradle in case of his death, and treats it as if it is alive. In African tribes of upper Nile women dealing with witchcraft, manufacture fetish-like dolls, which have a magic power. In the former Dutch New Guinea a figurine was carved when a person died, the figurine helped to prophesy. Altaians have rag dolls, so-called Enekeler (“grandmother”) – they are considered to embody the spirits of ancestors – women and are demised by mother’s side.

In Africa, girls in many tribes receive dolls as a gift on public puberty ceremony and keep gifted dolls till the birth of their first child.
 
According to one of the hypotheses, the origin of dolls relates to ancient beliefs, which underlay in European medieval magic. These are views concerning the artificially made humanoid creatures, possessing supernatural abilities.
 
In Rome and Egypt big figures of gods were brought round the cities during religious celebrations. In India and Southeast Asia, deeds of Deities – heroes were the main theme of puppet shows. It is no coincidence that in the ancient Indian epic Sanscrit poem “Mahabharata” people are compared with marionettes, as they don’t have their own will like the dolls and are governed by threads running from the gods and deities.

But in the course of time dolls ceased to be associated with cults and rituals. The dolls lost their mystical essence and turned into a mere fun, mostly childish, and are manufactured in industrial capacities nowadays. Though the doll immediately has gained its opponents speaking it is harmful to pay all the attention to a little insensible caricature, rather than communicate with the environmental life. However today, teachers and psychologists are not so categorical, though they still admit that some of the dolls can be injurious.