The Theory of Conceptual Integration in the Framework of the Study of the Cultic Milieu on the Example of Ufology

The phenomenon of unconventional religiosity cannot be investigated, being limited to the framework of its structured forms. Most studies of sectarianism focus on institutionalized forms of unconventional religiosity, their influence on society, and creed doctrines. Increasing in content and forms, unconventional religiosity has a kind of generating community, which Colin Campbell in 1972 called the Cultic Milieu. The Cultic Milieu in the definition of the author is deviant beliefs and practices of the cultural underground, rooted in historical experience. Not all ideas of the Cultic Milieu have pronounced religious elements. The complexity of studying the Cultic Milieu lies in the fact that it is poorly verified within the framework of sociological approaches, since its volume and nature are revealed exclusively in the processes of communication and intercommunication of carriers. According to our hypothesis, ideas and practices are in a state of constant transformation and are subject to analysis only in a synchronous slice. However, any construct or an individual image of the Cultic Milieu by definition has religious or mytho-magical characteristics. A model for connecting religious and non-religious elements in the study area has not yet been found. In the studies of sociologists, the theme of the cult environment is described as a rule using terminological generalizations: implicit religion, substitute religion, faith without affiliation, and so on. The content of the ideas of the Cultic Milieu is currently superficially described in terms of "syncretic" or "eclectic," but nothing more. Within the framework of this work, an attempt was made to apply one of the classical methods of cognitive linguistics in relation to the ideas of the Cultic Milieu, exactly, the method of conceptual integration between the mental spaces of concepts from the field of non-institutionalized non-traditional religiosity. The application of this approach makes it possible to identify the process of genesis of a specific idea from the thematic field of the Cultic Milieu. In this case, it is one of the many variants of the paleocontact of the ufological narrative with a religious context.