Dimensions of folklore orthodox Christianity: The door of the temple (Present-day practices in Samokov and its region) Cover Image

Основни измерения на фолклорното православно християнство: I. Вратата на храма (Наблюдения на съвременни процеси в град Самоков и котловината му)
Dimensions of folklore orthodox Christianity: The door of the temple (Present-day practices in Samokov and its region)

Author(s): Konstantin Rangochev
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Асоциация за антропология, етнология и фолклористика ОНГЬЛ

Summary/Abstract: The research suggests a new look to the Bulgarian folklore culture and consider it as a system of an unequilibrium type in which dissipative structures dominate. Beside equilibrium state of the system, the consumption of energy turns into a source of an arrangement and the dissipation creates new states of the system. From this point of view in the present research poses the problem about some practices connected with the gates of churches. There are practices recorded in the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century in Samokov town and the villages in Samokov hollow. Nowadays there is a belief in these places that if someone has a problem, he can help himself by unlocking with his own hands the gates of the parish church. In the article is mentioned that for the inhabitants in Samokov hollow the gates of the church are not only a border (as it is the traditional belief) but it is also the entrance to the Far World. This example shows that very often the Orthodox Christianity in its concrete shows and the Bulgarian folklore culture doesn’t contradict one another. They are no in conflict, but the opposite – there is a direct congruence between them. Therefore the theological view to the Bulgarian folklore culture is most adequate and analytical. The Bulgarian ethnos is in the centre of the Orthodox civilization more than of a thousand and hundred years. That’s why the Bulgarian folklore culture could be understand and analyzed adequate only in the light of the Orthodox Christianity.

  • Issue Year: 2013
  • Issue No: 5
  • Page Range: 160-177
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: Bulgarian