Sacrificial Offering Куяськон in the Udmurt Folk Medicine

The article aims to systematize and analyze contemporary ethnographic data on an Udmurt healing ritual known as куяськон , that is making a sacrificial offering of symbolic presents (for example, coins, a heel of bread, en egg, salt, etc.) to the evil spirits or the undead. The ritual is believed to help to cure such disorders as skin diseases (abscesses, boils, rashes), pains in the lower extremities, sharp and persistent pain in any part of the body or sudden health deterioration, which are supposed to occur as the result of breaking ritual and cultural norms and space and time requirements. I pay particular attention to the structural components of the ritual, analyze its personal, verbal, spatial, temporal, attributive, and action codes, and trace its evolution.