Annotation
The comparative religious studies deal with myths, rituals and cults with a special attention paid to native religions of foreign cultures, i.e. to religious forms available for study. Specific aspects of individual native religions are stressed with different intensity, therefore folk magic, animism, totemism and shamanism are seen as universal religious phenomena but in different proportion. They are found not only in the cultures of remote continents but also in historical forms of European religions.
These can be studied, thanks to the material provided by archaeology, till the very beginnings of settlement of the old continent. Symbolic cult forms (words, images, tones, gestures) represent an interface with other science fields ? literature, music, arts and dancing, and hereby constitute specific areas of study such as the anthropology of literature and arts.