The functions of omens of death in Transylvanian Hungarian peasant death culture (examples from Csikkarcfalva and Csikjenofalva)

European peasants' culture of death has evolved a number of rites and syste ms of folk beliefs during the past hundreds of years that aim at coordinati ng and reducing the near-death crisis situations. Recently, many researcher s dealt with the ethnographic and descriptive analysis of the systems of fo lk beliefs and directions of behavior related to transience; however, the i nvestigation of societal and psychological significance of these riles and beliefs has rarely been attempted. The goal of the following study is to pr esent in detail the structure of the omen beliefs as well as their social a nd psychological role in two peasant communities in Transylvania. The psych ological-social functions of the negative predictions, drawn from images of dream, unusual behavior of animals, the state of certain parts of body, et c. can be divided in three groups as follows: 1) conditioning or "memento m ori" functions related to unfulfilled predictions, 2) realization-rationali zation-preparatory functions, in case of omens closely before the death, an d 3) in the first stage of the grief work, the significance of the reorgani zation function will be examined.