Folk Demonology in the Context of Ethnic and Social Categories

Abstract

Demonic personages can be viewed as an invariant aggregate of differentiating features and functioning within the frameworks of a complex system of notions about supernatural creatures, know as folk demonology. It emerged as a result of the opposition between Nature and culture in the course of the formation of the idea about the systematic organization of the world, in the process of the mastering of space and creating the concept of time.

The proposed work examines the specificity of demonic characters. Criteria are developed for assessing a member of society as "one's own". Deviation from one characteristic moves an individual to the category of "one's own stranger" within the community. The first two signs "person", "living" distinguish humanity and demonicity. For example, the significance for the perception of the spirit of a great-grandfather as "one's own stranger" is his belonging to a clan, family. "One's own stranger" members of society are compared with demons (despicable characters - characters associated with birth, diseases, pagans, villains, ...) based on materials from Bulgarian folk culture in the period from the end of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century.