The Concept of the World in Macedonian Folk Legends

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Ermis Lafazanovski

In general, the concept of the world in the Macedonian folk legends incorporates everything that the pre-Christian and Christian religious and philosophical mind understood to be included in the notion of the world. Such a concept was namely under the direct influence of the old and great religious systems like the Iranian and Haldeic philosophies and cosmogonies, especially the Maniheism, which later through the Armenian Paulicaism reaffirmed its thought flows and in the dualistic philosophy of the Bogomil, the traces of which are still visible in modern Christianity (Dragojlovikj D., Antikj V., 1990). In this respect, the most mystical and the most esoteric Macedonian legends – which according to their structure are not far from the myths – are cosmogonic legends of the creation of the world and life, where the concept world includes mainly dualisticly structured phenomena like god and devil, light and dark, earth and sky, sun and moon, plants and animals, man and woman and so on. (Sazdov, T.,1987, 128-142).
         The thing that is most important about these types of legends is the fact that they reveal a philosophical-religious interpretation of the organization and the mutual relation between man and the world. They reveal, at least approximately, the answer to the question about the ontological or gnoseological status of the world in relation to man. Of course, as in the great cosmogonic religious systems, so too in the Macedonian cosmogonic legends one of the possible solutions leads to the answer that man and the world are in an inseparable unity, namely in a constant dialogue. The dialogue may be taken as the basic category of communication between man and the world. Hence, they communicate by means of their own language based on symbolically interpreted questions and answers (Toporov, 1971, 9-62). And while the world poses various questions to man, he answers them with a symbolic interpretation of different mythological concepts like: the notions of god and the devil, light and dark, the saints, the priests, the sacred places (churches), the sacred marriages, the sacred tree and so on. By means of these symbolical interpretations man in fact introduces order into the previous chaos.
         This type of dialogue, containing both a symbolic and a communicative language, is probably most obvious in the Slav languages, and therefore in the Macedonian language too. On the subject of the influence of the language on the orthodox religious conceptualization, B. A. Uspenski gives several examples of the mutual influence of the Russian language and the religious notions and concepts like krest (cross) – Hristos (Christ) – krestitisya (baptize), prepodobnм (holy) -nepodobnм (unholy), bog (god) – bogatмi (rich) etc. (Uspenski,B., 1967, 159-168).
         Uspenski is in this way looking for the linguistic basis and roots of some religious notions. Although in his study he does not deal with the word world and its connotations within the religious sphere, like the words svyatie and svyateno, in the Slav language, and hence the South Slav languages, mythology, religion and folklore, the word world (Slovenian svйt, Croat svijet, Serb svкt, Bulgarian svet', Macedonian svet) is found in the root of many words which are manifestations of religious notions reflected in folk legends. In the Macedonian cosmogonic legends such words are svet (world), svetlost (light), svetec (saint), sveshtenik (priest), sveto drvo (sacred tree), svet brak (sacred marriage – hierogamy) and so on. Through these derivatives of the root world as well as through the specific verbal tales which directly or indirectly include this notion, it is possible to create a concept of the world which would characteristic or separated from the rational or modern context of life. Linguistically speaking, all the key words or phrases found in the cosmogonic legends of the creation of the world, like world (its creation, dualistic or monotheistic, namely the world outside of humanity) light, saint, sacred place, priest, sacred tree, sacred marriage within their root contain the word world, which may imply a certain analytical approach to the problem.

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