РЕЛІГІЙНИЙ СИМВОЛ: СУТНІСТЬ ТА ФОРМИ ПРОЯВУ

The article examines the characteristic features of religious symbols and their various manifestations. It is emphasized that a religious symbol is a way of attesting to the realm of the transcendent, of revealing its sacred status. Religious symbols ensure the identification of a religious tradition and its construction. By fixing a religious identity, the symbol acts, on the one hand, as the basis for intra-confessional unity and solidarity, and, on the other hand, as a separation from other confessional groups whose collective ideas are formed around other sacred symbols. The religious symbol represents the experience of cult practices of a particular religious tradition. The study reveals the structural components of a religious symbol: symbolic action, the symbolized Absolute, the content of the symbol, its impact on a person as a certain integrity, thanks to which the sacred space is formed. It is emphasized that all structural components of a religious symbol are interrelated, and if any of them is excluded, we will obviously lose the religious symbol itself, which may lead to a violation of the continuity of the integrity of the symbol, and, consequently, its uniqueness and functionality. It is noted that the essential properties of a religious symbol are sacredness, the ability to identify and transform. Moreover, a religious symbol is associated with a person's semantic orientations, constructs his or her life world and priorities in it, and manifests the "inscription" of the sacred realm into both the socio-cultural space and individual religious consciousness. The religious symbol introduces a person into the context of a dialogue that involves cooperation, a certain collaboration in the common field of communicative religious and symbolic practices. The forms of manifestation of the religious symbol at two levels are clarified, on the one hand, at the level of integrity, which is characterized by a certain harmony, coherence of all its components, and on the other hand, at the level of destruction, ...