Структурата на урочасването като зловредна магия
The structure of the act of casting an evil spell as evil magic

Summary/Abstract: An attempt is made in the paper to discover and trace the structural elements of casting an evil spell which qualify it as a magic act. The study is based on extensive source material from all over Bulgaria for the period between the mid-19th century and the 1970s. The phenomenon is approached from the viewpoint of the character of interaction and mutual influence of the two principal participants in the act: the person casting the spell and the one on whom the spell is cast, who occupy the two opposite poles of the binary opposition between good and evil. With a view to making the presentation of the arguments more consistent, the character of the negative effect of the spell-casting, which spreads over the entire sphere of social space, is traced. The beliefs about the evil eye and the evil look as sources of harmful influence are considered. The analysis of words as elements of spell-casting leads to the conclusion that the conjuring formula is a coded model of the evil magic rite which includes all elements of the structure of the magic: the magic action, the conjuring formula and the magic substance. The paper also traces the typological diversity of spell-casting which comprises all typological principles of the aggressive and evil magic effect: imitative, contact and initial. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the casting of the spell is performed by the magic force of the evil person which is a coded model of the magic rite resulting from the evolution in magic thinking. This gives grounds for defining the act of spell-casting as an evolutionary higher stage of evil magic that has undergone condensed changes, but has nevertheless preserved its magic structural mechanism.

• Details
• Contents