Humanities & Social Sciences 6 (2015 8) 1086-1093 ~ ~ ~ УДК 398; 398.541 Inventing the Sacred Place: the Case in Western Siberia Elena V. Golovneva* Ural Federal University named after the B.N. Yeltsin 19 Mira Str., Ekaterinburg 620002, Russia Received 24.01.2013, received in revised form 18.01.2014, accepted 06.11.2014 This article refl ects on the experience of theorizing sacred place through case-study of Okunevo village in Western Siberia. <...> On particular, it focuses on the analysis of non-traditional religious movements in context of this Siberian village. <...> The article opens with brief review of the meaning and content of concept “sacred place.” It then refl ects understudied in scientifi c researches interpretation of sacred place by representatives of neo-orientalism and neopaganism in Siberian region. <...> It concludes with some comments regarding suggestions about possible social functions of sacred places in contemporary reality. <...> Sacred place is considered as a symbolic identity-performance of different religious movements and an idea of “religious revival”. <...> The inventing of sacred space in contemporary context is connected with dissemination of local myths regarding “Chosen people”, “particular energy and spiritual character of the place” and “holy Temple.” Keywords: sacred place, sacralization, non-traditional religiosity, religious myth, Western Siberia. <...> Introduction phenomenon of of sacred This research project addresses the inventing and disseminating in places Various cultural contemporary Russia. ground: non-traditional religions, practices emerge on this “historical reconstructionist” movements and para-scientifi c aspirations. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: golovneva.elena@gmail.com # 1086 # Theoretical framework For the past fi fty years sacred space has received the attention of scholars from a variety of disciplines. <...> Scholars theorized sacred space in different and often contrasting ways, identifi ed different lines of defi nition (see Kong, 2006, 2010; Wilford, 2010; Chidester & Linenthal, 1995; Sheldrake, 2007). <...> Many conventional interpretations of the sacred implicitly refl ect the approach of the historian of religion, Mircea Eliade. <...> For religious subject, Eliade argues, “space is not homogeneous; he experiences Elena V. Golovneva. <...> As a rule, the phenomenon “sacred place” is associated with locality that produces the complex of religious ideas, myths, values and practices. <...> The artifi <...>