Izvorni znanstveni članak
Between superstition and state-imposed reason. The ‚Evil’ in the rural folk culture of southern Carinthia.
Peter Wiesflecker
; Landesarchiv Steirmark und Institut für Geschichte, Karl - Franzens Universität Graz, Österreich
Sažetak
This article covers aspects and manifestations of the ‚Evil’ in rural folk culture in general, and folk belief and customs of the predominately agrarian world of southern Carinthia in particu-lar. The focus lies on the study of ethnological phenomena as well as aspects of religious stud-ies in the bilingual area of the Lower Gailtal. The article deals on the one hand with archaic defence mechanisms against the ‚Evil’ deriving from folk piety, on the one hand, it portrays specific provisions from the state, who, since enlightened absolutism, intervened against folk belief in general and superstition in particular with official decrees and through jurisdiction.
The young, among man and beast alike, as well as women were particularly threatened by the ‚Evil’, which could manifest itself in the form of magic, either spoken (word magic) or through actions (black magic), or in the shape of ghosts and demons. At the same time, the ‘Evil’ in the broadest sense personified itself primarily in the shape of the woman, such as the milk spells or other black magic performing witch or sorceress, or the Percht (Slovenian Pəh-tra), a figure living in a dugout, which every year on the eve of Epiphany came and still comes to peoples’ houses. Demons and ghosts like the nine uroki, which walk abroad at deliveries, or the Schab are not sexually connoted and generally occur as sex- and/or bodiless creatures. While the uroki are not personalized, the Schab (Slovenian škopnjak) manifests itself as burning sheaf, fiery broom or fireball with glowing tail.
Furthermore, cases of death also called for special provisions. In contrast to the ‘Evil’ which threatens births and marriages in the form of primarily bodiless ghosts or demons, the ‘evil’ death is personalized, i.e. prehensile and visible in the person of the deceased, which could carry away with it living beings (man or animal) as so called ‘nachzehrer’. After all the de-fence rites and the burial have been performed, another transformation takes place, as the ‘evil’ deceased then no longer poses a threat.
Until long after the period of Enlightenment, here and there even until the early 20th century, according to the agrarian society, the ‘Evil’ displayed itself primarily in the form of black magic inflicted on man and animal by a third party. Attempts by state and church to proceed against this superstition for a long time remained mostly ineffective. How vigorously people clang to downright archaic concepts of the ‘Evil’, which could manifest itself not only in the form of magic but also in thunder-storms, can be seen in the persistent resistance of the peas-antry against restrictions on supplicatory processions and especially the so-called weather tolling under the emperor Joseph II (reign 1780–1790). A country parson who abode to the official prohibitions usually had a hard time with the children of the parish.
Ključne riječi
Southern Carinthia; superstition; folk belief; manifestations of the « Evil » in rural folk culture; Enlightened absolutism; official decrees an jurisdiction
Hrčak ID:
115435
URI
Datum izdavanja:
30.1.2014.
Posjeta: 1.998 *