ENCOUNTERS AT A BAD TIME AND AT A BAD PLACE

Abstract

It may be said that a society can establish contacts with the opposing world of the supernatural in two indirect ways; one way is through the ritual as the mediator, that is through the symbelic forms of behaviour determined by the community; the other roundabout way of establishing contact of the two mutually exclusive worlds may be traced by an individual who, at a bad (evil) time and at a bad {dreadful} place, encounters with the "otherwordly”, generaily inaccessible to the society. While the ritual, as a rule, serves to preserve and reaffirm the existing positions of the society, the latter form of indirect communicaiton also opens up a possibility for the society to move on, that is a possibility to conguer the otherwise inaccessible, impassable supernatural world. In this paper, taking into consideration the selected examples from the traditional Serbian religion, direct contacts of the humans with the supernatural beings are discussed, showing that a man usually comes out of these mysterious encounters as a loser, for only the exceptional and the greatest among the humans are able to, in inexplicable manner, transform the “otherworldly” evil courses into their own potentiality.