I don’t think there’s any reason to feel bad about it! It helps to give context, especially for those who are unfamiliar with Dizady. And just as you said, the book itself lists various names for the holiday at the start of each segment- no harm done!
Shame I can’t start using that in English- that’s hilarious
One thing I forgot to mention in relation to this is that in ancient times, the gymnasium was also used for intellectual pursuits – where philosophers would often congregate and debate. This bled over into more modern times, where we’ve sometimes called the high school itself a gimnazija or similar (gymnasium).
The word γυμνάσιον (gumnásion), from Greek γυμνός (gumnós) ‘naked’ or ‘nude’, was first used in Ancient Greece, in the sense of a place for both physical and intellectual education of young men. The latter meaning of a place of intellectual education persisted in many European languages (including Albanian, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Greek, German, Hungarian, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Scandinavian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak and Slovenian), whereas in other languages, like English (gymnasium, gym) and Spanish (gimnasio), the former meaning of a place for physical education was retained. - Gymnasium (school) - Wikipedia
So to clarify, the word “gymnastics” in this context is a more holistic full body and mind approach to spirituality, I believe.
Looking at the origins, this makes sense! Although I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget about the connotation of gymnasium = naked now that it’s in my head Though perhaps it’s better than the memory of the awful leotard from gymnastics class
Thank you for sharing your language wisdom, Katerina- these are so interesting to learn about!
Thanks @starborn for inspiring me to delve into my roots of Hungarian Witchcraft. I’m a Hungarian born in Sweden (so that makes me Hungarian with Swedish citizenship?). Hungarians may not consider themselves as neither slavs or germanic but it’s close enough for me.
I hadn’t considered diving into witchcraft from my area yet, either. There will likely be crossover with other Slavic nations, but there’s probably some weird and wacky Macedonian stuff I can dig into.