MUDOR UAN

ceremony held by the Votyaks, or Udmurts (people of the Ural Mountains), to consecrate a new family or clan shrine (kuala) and a sacred container (vorud) kept on a shelf within the shrine. Mudor itself means ground, so that the ceremony in fact was the blessing of a new site taken over by people breaking off from the ancestral lineage when it expanded past a critical point. The main ceremony of the mudor uan, or mudor wedding, consisted of taking ashes from the hearth of the ancestral shrine with some appropriate formula such as I am taking the lesser and leaving the greater and transferring them to the shrine in a new location, which would then stand in a subordinate position in relation to the greater ancestral kuala. See also vorud.