نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
In ancient Iranian mythology and religious tradition, sacred or "minou" spaces are not just considered as a geographical or natural paradigms. Rather, they are symbolic, ritual, and cultural frameworks that developed through narrative and ceremonial processes. In addition to play an active role in the generation, organization, and transmission of meaning. This article studies how such celestial realms serve not as passive backdrops but as meaning-making mechanisms deeply incorporated in the structure of narrative and cultural memory in pre-Islamic Iranian literature. The critical question of the study is how sacred zones are formed through ritual, narrative, and collective symbolic encoding. Aling with how they become sites of moral judgment, existential trial, purification, birth, or the transfer of legitimacy. The theoretical framework is based on cultural theories that understand sacredness as a social and symbolic construction instead of natural given. Employing a qualitative, interpretive method, the study builds on semiotic and contextual readings of classical texts to analyze how spatial structures become activated in moments of cosmological, social, or narrative disruption. Instances including transcendental mountains, transitional bridges, celestial seas, hidden wells, women’s secluded quarters, and suspended plains are investigated in relation to myths of heroic trials, soul passage, or dynastic transfer of power. The evidence indicates that minou spaces in the Iranian tradition are dynamic and liminal forms that takes a shape in response to cultural or cosmic imbalance and serve as instruments for reordering meaning, reestablishing moral frameworks, and asserting legitimacy. These spaces, closely firmly bound in ritual practice, gendered embodiment, and collective memory, are not fixed metaphysical realms but cultural devices for framing the human relationship to the sacred. As such, minou cartographies should be understood not just as depictions of mythical geographies, but as conceptual model for arranging experience, stabilizing identity, and interpreting the existential logic of being.
کلیدواژهها English