Beliefs concerning planetniks in the Carpathian region at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

In the article, an attempt is made at a typological analysis of Carpathian beliefs regarding planetniks at the end of the 19^th - beginning of the 20^th century. Based on the field materials collected by members of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, the author considers bailichkas about encounters with planetniks as realization of a plot about struggle of two parties against each other, where a planetnik might act either as the protector from hailstorms or, on the contrary, as a creature (in contrast to the impersonal, non-demonized element) bringing the storm forward, or as both - depending upon the class of characters it belongs to typologically. Remarking upon the peculiarities of Carpathian data in comparison to the neighboring Polish and Southern Slavic traditions, the author performs a typological classification of planetnik characters as found in the field data from the beginning of the 20^th century (ordinary members of the community using common apotropaic magic; professional witch doctors; demonological characters sui iuris ) and concludes that the typological variants of the planetnik might not come from a single original invariant but be, on the contrary, the outcome of the convergence of the invariants originally differing both typologically and dialectally. It is the dialectological analysis of Carpathian data that is proposed by the author as the cornerstone of their further study.