"The Power of a Night Ritual" "Walking With a Flag - Night Initiation Ceremony" GRZEGORZ PIASKOWSKI, LEONARD SOBIERAJ, MAGDALENA LICA-KACZAN Mazovian Museum in Plock, Department of Ethnography Tumska 8, 09-402 Płock e-mail: gpiaskowski@wp.pl Stream. The flag mustn't touch the ground; It must also cover the route precisely along the border of fields, regardless of the obstacles. It is one of the tasks set for novices"

Description popularizing the research project

The weakest of the forces of nature is always more powerful than the mightiest of men. We have been aware of our fragility against the elemental forces since the very dawn of humanity. In every corner of the Earth, people of all ethnic groups, cultures and languages, always tried to achieve the impossible, to make their lives easier by taming the forces of nature. In every culture there were shamans, druids or priests who possessed the hermetic knowledge, well-hidden from the commoners, of ways to negotiate with the forces of nature. Due to their knowledge and secret rites, they accompanied the most important events in people's lives: births, marriages and deaths. In such moments of life, when people did everything they possibly could, there was still the supernatural element to take care of. The important events, which provided food for the community, such as successful hunts, abundant harvests and breeding animals, did not depend entirely on people. They were often accompanied by colourful rituals. Many of them, in time, became religious ones.
In the 21st century's rationalism they seem to be unnecessary. Independence on the cycle of seasons separated us from the need to incorporate such rituals into our everyday activities. Such ceremonies as a harvest festival or drowning of Marzanna we learn in playschool. Yet, we only treat them as folklore and a way of promoting the region rather than a genuine rite performed out of worry about the crops or a marriage. Meanwhile, in quiet villages where growing crops and breeding animals is the very foundation of welfare, there are still observed magical rituals to protect fields against the elemental forces. In Łowicz villages, the night ceremonies protecting crops are accompanied by symbolic rites of passage when a boy turns into a man. It is not easy to imagine the honour aspect of the challenges. The rituals are intertwined with Christian Easter ceremonies and carry a heavy load of symbols. Decoding them may say a lot about the community. For the community the meanings are crystal clear but their neighbours often see something completely different in them. Shall we be surprised? We, who rationally criticise superstitions, yet just in case hold our fingers crossed .?

Abstract

In the middle of the 19th century, near Płock appeared Oskar Kolberg. This invaluable for Polish culture researcher said that the part of Mazovia had undergone such a great civilization-al transformation that for people interested in traditional culture it did not present any special value. Professor Reinfuss, who visited the region at the beginning of the 1950s to assess the state of folk culture, represented the same point of view . Similar opinions of the lack of oppor-tunities for research on authentic culture can be also found today. Research experience of ethnologists working in the Mazovian Museum in Płock shows that it is still possible to come across rites, customs unknown or considered either extinct or, for various reasons, not de-scribed and thoroughly analysed . One of the more unusual examples of extremely interesting yet not fully recognized phenomena may be the night ceremony of initiation which was docu-mented and described by ethnographers from Plock. The ceremony is performed not in Va-nuatu or Papua New Guinea, but in a Łowicz village. Ethnographers from the Płock museum were the first researchers who took part in the entire course of the ceremony called "walking with a flag" (or walking the fields). Participating in the ritual they recorded and described all the individual parts of the ceremony, roles of those participating in it and their meaning. A photo report showing the entire course of the ceremony was created . It shows village dwellers of Płaskocin (only males) running around their fields, with the flag at night. In this way, they be-lieve that their fields will be ritually protected against disasters. It takes place on Easter Monday and a boy taking part in it for the first time is called "fryc" (novice). He has perform many tasks and after completing the long ceremony he is included in the group of men. The expedition took place in 2013. Its result was a museum exhibition and publication accompanying it. The gathered information, films and the photos are a valuable document and source for further research. In the following years researchers observed "walking with a flag" in other villages of Łowicz Mazovia region. They showed diversity of novices' trials and ritual activities in different villages. This diversity is a particularly interesting material for analyses of the semiotic culture, not only of the region.

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