vow

As a practice and a votive site, the vow has a significant place in traditional culture and is quite vital to the present day. It has its roots in Antiquity and is based on the belief that supernatural powers haunt all natural objects – caves, water springs, trees, etc., and are their owners. In order to settle on a particular territory and to use its resources, people should fight with the spirits and pay them for it – with gifts and sacrifices. Moreover, the sacrifices should be in a way equivalent to people’s expectations for favourable living conditions and abundant harvest, that is, the sacrifice should consist of what is most precious for the community. There are a number of rites containing some relics indicating that once even human life was sacrificed. Barbarous as they are, such rites suggest that striving for their living and paying a high price for all the earthly possessions they get from nature, people could not afford to squander and waste the earned resources; they were compelled to respect and highly evaluate them.