Alexey Maslov's talk in Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy

On October 19 the Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy will hold a talk by Professor Alexey Maslov titled The Character and Magic: Magical Sources of Initial Chinese Characters – Contemporary Perception. The event is a part of the Public University: Thursday Talks in Moscow Museums project.

Many today's characters in Chinese have originated not only from the simplest pictograms and ideograms but also from the most ancient magic characters, which used to be runes or tools to communicate with the other world.

Some characters that relate to colours, like black or red, or quality, such as beautiful or merry, originate from magical images belonging to shamans and mediums, and are only tangentially related to its meaning in today's world. The talk will cover ancient decoding of what are common characters for us today, and transformations in the other world it could cause.

Speaker – Alexey Maslov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor and Head of the Oriental Studies School in the faculty of global economics and politics, Higher School of Economics.

The event is scheduled for 18:30 and free for all, however seats are limited so if you wish to attend please register online.

Venue: the Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy, 5th Luchevoy prosek 7 build 6, exhibit hall 7, Sokolniki Park, Moscow (directions)

Source: www.hse.ru