Semantics of bread in middle polish ritual texts of the spring calendar

The article examines the features of representation of the theme of bread in the ritual texts of the spring calendar cycle of the Middle Polissya; identifies semantic dominants, mythological motifs of the emergence of verbal and diverse non-verbal units of the cultural text under study; analyzes the origin, semantics and nomination of ritual actions, objects as structural elements of various rituals of agrarian, apotropaic, imitative-magical orientation. The theme of bread (in the broad sense) as a cultural symbol is quite diversely presented in ritual texts regarding various phenomena of traditional folk spiritual culture. In the spring ritual of the Middle Polissya region, bread products are an attribute of many rituals associated with important events of the folk calendar, for example, the meeting and calling of spring (associatively of birds), the first going out to field works, the first grazing of cattle, etc.