A STEP IN THE DREAM

With the launch of the first issue of “Folklore Culture” magazine, the long- awaited dream has come true. The road to this end has not been a rosy one, yet it sheds light on the heart-arresting fascination and magical beauty of the dream.

It is a dream that tantalizes our human nature and eventually triggers in us the desire to investigate our folklore and cultural tradition whose richness is immaculate, and its diversity is boundless and priceless.

This tradition motivates the search for a way to comprehend our ego, at a time of perplexity and fear toward relating to the ‘other’ and making the ‘other’ relate to us. How can we achieve this goal amidst the varied stereotypes that endeavor to uproot us?

It is a universe of symbolism, imagination and characters that stir our lavish interest in going back to the endless springs of our ancestors’ heritage which have always been the sanctuary we seek refuge in whenever our hearts overtlow with yearning to vanquish our thirst. However, the more we drink from those springs, the thirstier we feel.
It is the hope to safeguard this tradition before it sinks in the abyss of oblivion and we lose its track.

Our ambition exceeds the collection of this tradition. We aspire to scientifically and objectively subject it to meticulous scrutiny, hoping to find what our brush has been hesitant to depict about ourselves the portrait of our human nature and heart which is throbbing with love and the dream for the betterment of human life and the happiness of the ‘other’, the ‘man’ of nobility, generosity and altruism that resides in us.

In this time when one has become skeptical about what the term ‘scientific research’ denotes since any methodology is purported to be scientific, we do long for a kind of research that is actually scientific in its methodology, tools and procedures. We seek research based on genuine points of reference, objective descriptivism, and valid knowledge rather than on subjectivity and invalid conclusions. We, however, do not claim that what we publish is tiawless, but we endeavor to shy away from research that is immune to criticism. We do welcome texts that are open to review and reconsideration.

The knowledge we seek is not one which would be the sole monopoly of academics, but one which can be equally comprehensible to the layman as well as the specialist. The knowledge we seek is one that feeds the minds and souls of the public at large as well as the scholars’. It is the knowledge that satisfies the interest of all readers. Consequently, we expect a kind of knowledge that is vigorous, yet easily accessible.

This is a model that our magazine is keen to implant in the land of dream. We hope that your contribution will help this bud bear fruit in the near ffiture.

Editorial Board