Ritual-mythological roots of figure-turning in legends of South Khorasan

Legends and oral traditions are important sources of the manifestation of mythology and culture of Iran's past. One of the important components of these traditions is magic and extraordinary acts that originated from the imagination of ancient mankind. Transformation is one of the most important and imaginative effects of local legends. According to the climatic and cultural conditions, the legends of South Khorasan are the origin of wishes and dreams, culture and various mythological rituals. In this essay, an attempt has been made to investigate the legends of the region in an analytical-descriptive way in order to answer the questions of what is the figure-turning in these legends, what are its types, and what are its mythological roots. With the conducted investigations, the results were obtained that transformation exists in most legends and one can see all kinds of transformation in them, including the transformation of human into animal, animal into human, and human into plant. This type of personification has been the most repeated and all these personifications go back to mythological roots such as plant gods or descent gods and the important roles of animals in human life as helpers of gods.