Slawische Religion

I. Allgemeine Charakteristika II. Slawische Gˆtter, Quellen und methodische Problematik ±
III. Religiˆse Grundstrukturen und Begegnungen mit dem Christentum

"Slawische Religion" Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart
From their earliest knowable pre-history up to the time of their conversion to Christianity beginning in the eighth century, two social characteristics of the Slavic peoples remained fairly constant, despite the frequently disrupting historical forces of invasion and migration. The Slavs, a collection of Indo-European tribes originally based in east and central Europe, were by nature and organization sedentary (consequently, peaceful) and agrarian.
"Slavic Religion"
Review of Eva Pocs, Between Light and Dark (History of Religions)
Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age. By EVA PÓCS. Translated by SZILVIA RÉDEY and MICHAEL WEBB. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999; distributed in the U.S. by Cornell University Press. Pp. 187, 3 black-and-white plates. $39.95 (cloth); $21.95 (paper).

The enormous and perennial interest, of both a scholarly and popular bent, in the topic of European witchcraft has meant that any new contribution to the topic must struggle to distinguish itself from the myriad of research efforts that have gone before. The recent translation into English of Eva Pócs's Between the Living and the Dead well survives this night battle for distinction if only because it engages a corpus of data that has not previously been discussed extensively in the Western literature. Pócs's treatise deals with witchcraft (and other "mediatory," as she calls them, belief systems) as it is revealed through the testimony of over two thousand court trials. These witch trials occurred in Hungary during the period of the great European witch-hunts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century...

Review of W.F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight (History of Religions)
The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia. By W. F. Ryan. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Pp. 504, 19 black-and-white plates.

$71.50 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

“Where should one begin to learn to be a koldun [sorcerer]?”
“Anywhere you like. But best is a bathhouse at midnight.”

Hence the title of W. F. Ryan’s impressive survey of popular and folk magicacross the broad expanses, both geographical and historical, of Great Russia. “The communal village bathhouse and midnight,” Ryan writes in the second chapter, on popular magic, “represent the conditions par excellence for magic and divination in Russia” [p. 50]. Also densely compacted in this single event—the bathhouse at midnight—is a summary of the magico-religious side of Russian folklife as a syncretism of thoroughly Slavic traditions and common (Indo-)European or even universal beliefs. For locating communal bathing facilities at the edge of an agrarian village is an ancient Slavic custom that persists into modern times, while the notion of midnight as a significant point within a dangerous diurnal transitional period is common in many areas of the world....

Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006)

In contemporary Western popular culture, the vampire has evolved into one of the most recognizable symbols of evil. Yet less has been said---and even less has been understood---about its nemesis, the vampire slayer. Slayers and Their Vampires is the first work to explore how the vampire slayer began, and it goes further to ask why the true history of the vampire slayer has been so long ignored.

Author Bruce McClelland describes how the literary and screen dramas obscured the darker nature of the slayer, whose persecution of a corpse is accepted as heroic rather than corrupt. McClelland refuses to accept the heroism of most slayers like Dracula's Van Helsing or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who are routinely presented as superheroes acting above the law because of their special knowledge. Instead, he presents a nonromanticized history of the earliest vampire rituals that shows how much creative license figured into the refashioning of the vampire for the entertainment of the West.

With its wide range of inquiry, this book will appeal not only to fans of Dracula, vampire, Buffy, Anne Rice, and Anita Blake lore, but also to students of anthropology, sociology, European religious history, Slavistics, folklore, and cinematic and literary history.

Bruce A. McClelland is a writer, translator, and vampirologist in Gordonsville, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Slavic Studies at the University of Virginia. His work on vampires has appeared in Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. He has published four books of poetry, a book of translations of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, and his translations of Russian poetry have appeared in journals, books, and anthologies.

"A fascinating comparison of the original vampire myths to their later literary transformations."

---Adam Morton, author of On Evil

"From the Balkan Mountains to Beverly Hills, Bruce has mapped the vampire's migration. There's no better guide for the trek."

---Jan L. Perkowski, Professor, Slavic Department,
University of Virginia, and author of
Vampires of the Slavs and
The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism

"The vampire slayer is our protector, our hero, our Buffy. But how much do we really know about him---or her? Very little, it turns out, and Bruce McClelland shows us why: because the vampire slayer is an unsettling figure, almost as disturbing as the evil she is set to destroy. Prepare to be frightened . . . and enlightened."

---Corey Robin, author of
Fear: The History of a Political Idea

"What is unique about this book is that it is the first of its kind to focus on the vampire hunter, rather than the vampire. As such, it makes a significant contribution to the field. This book will appeal to scholars and researchers of folklore, as well as anyone interested in the literature and popular culture of the vampire."

---Elizabeth Miller, author of
Dracula and A Dracula Handbook

"Shades of Van Helsing! Vampirologist extraordinaire Bruce McClelland has managed that rarest of feats: developing a radically new and thoroughly enlightening perspective on a topic of eternal fascination. Ranging from the icons of popular culture to previously overlooked details of Balkan and Slavic history and folk practice, he has rethought the borders of life and death, good and evil, saint and sinner, vampires and their slayers. Excellent scholarship, and a story that never flags."

---Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of History of Religions, University of Chicago, and author of
Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Authority: Construction and Corrosion, and
Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice

"By Whose Authority: The Magical Tradition, Violence and the Legitimation of the Vampire Slayer" (Slayage 1)
The American superhero of necessity possesses a dual personality: one, like Clark Kent, that fits, or tries to fit, invisibly into the ordinary fabric of society; another, like Superman, whose reserves of power place him far beyond mortal men. This duality is a response to an underlying, and unresolved, dualism in the society in which these heroes uncomfortably fit. The workaday identity accepts the ability of ordinary authority and enforcement structures to identify and contain undesirable elements, such as criminals. The secret identity, however, tacitly acknowledges the limitations of those structures when confronted with the darker motives of human beings.

"THE ANATHEMATIC VAMPIRE: Concepts of Matter and Spirit in Orthodoxy, Dualism and Pre-Christian Slavic Mythology" (Internet Vampire Tribune Quarterly)
"A pagan civilization always presents a more harmonious unity than does a Christian civilization. Christian society is ever the arena of a struggle for domination between Christian and pagan, or secular, forces." -- G. P. Fedotov, A Treasury of Russian Spirituality

There seems to be little disagreement that the folkloric character known as the vampire is of Slavic origin: the term itself is almost undoubtedly Slavic, despite ongoing speculation concerning its actual etymology [1], and the existence of folkloric creatures with attributes and behavior that qualify them as members of the vampire family [2] can be traced back at least to the time in Slavic history when Christianity was attempting to supplant the existing local religions. [3] Beyond that, knowledge of the origins of this supernatural entity [4] is scant, due in large part to the scarcity of primary sources...

Online Orality: The Internet, Folklore. and Culture in Russia," in Culture and Technology in the New Europe: Civic Discourse in Transformation in Post-Communist Nations. Laura Lengel, ed. Ablex, 2000.
T he Internet is a strange phenomenon in the history of technology: unlike its immediate technological predecessors, namely the press, telephony, and mass media, the Internet does not actually exist. That is to say, it does not have any boundaries, any definable physical existence or shape, nor does it have an owner, a designer, or even a representative. It is not necessarily a commercial enterprise, nor is it necessarily noncommercial. Despite its history, it does not belong to a single nation, political group, or ethnolinguistic group. Its motions and development are certainly not controlled by any identifiable individual. Its future is not being centrally planned, nor is it clear that anyone is capable of specifying the social roles the Internet will some day play. It even transcends our usual notions of a network, because in fact it is a virtual network of networks.

"Pagans or Heretics? The Scapegoat Process, Nezhit, and the Bulgarian Folkloric Vampire." Bulgarian Studies at the Dawn of the 21st Century: A Bulgarian-American Perspective. Sixth Joint Meeting of Bulgarian and North American Scholars, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, May 30 -June 2,1999. (Sofia: Gutenberg, 2000)
From this folk medicinal recipe, we may infer that a century ago, the condition known in Bulgarian as nezhit was, if not exactly a mild condition, certainly nothing fatal. Yet the name of this disease alone suggests something much more nefarious: etymologically, nezhit would seem to designate a condition from which one does not recover. How, we may reasonably ask, does it happen that a serious, perhaps deadly disease comes to be associated with an unpleasant, but not life-threatening gum disorder?...
"Internet Access & Training Program: A Model for Access in the Humanities Internet u Jugoslaviji i Jugoslavia na Internetu (Beograd, 28-29 May, 1997)
The Internet Access and Training Program (IATP) is a project devoted to the goal of establishing and maintaining cost-A free, public-access sites which provide full IP access and email services to scholars in the humanities. In addition to providing a venue for work with the Internet and World Wide Web, we also provide training in information search and electronic publishing. In our attempt to create viable sites, we have obtained a great deal of experience overcoming the difficulties of providing access in places with impaired or seriously reduced telecommunications infrastructure, among other problems.

Preface to J.L. Perkowski, Vampire Lore (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 2006)
Virtually any of the thousands of students who have taken Jan Perkowski’s courses on Slavic vampirism can tell you what an òpji is. Many others, however, unfortunate enough never to have studied in Austin or Charlottesville, remain unfamiliar with this odd variant of the word for ‘vampire’ among the Kashubs living in Ontario. An authentic extant Slavic folk belief in vampires was discovered in the New World almost by accident when Perkowski was doing sociolinguistic fieldwork for the Canadian government in the late Sixties. Were it not for that serendipitous happenstance, and Perkowski’s assiduous and prodigious follow-up research into Slavic vampire folklore over the next several decades, we might all believe that vampires come from Romania and that Vlad Dracula was a vampire...