‘Alive’ and ‘Dead’ in the Scottish Witching Mythology of the Early Modern Period

Abstract. The purpose of the paper is to reconstruct the complete image of mythological thinking in the Witch-hunting period. The witching mythology is peculiar to its plasticity, eclecticism and abundance of the most diverse, often very contradictory components. In order to overcome this dissonance the author attempted to identify and characterize the steady structure-forming concepts underlying witching practices. These concepts form a kind of coordinate system which operated through mythological thinking of Early Modern Scottish people. The location of every object on the coordinate axes determines its status, nature of attitudes with other objects, function within witching practices and a place in a set of witching manipulations. Visualization and schematization of the Scottish witching mythology helps to overcome the chaos of perception, giving a systemic characteristics and qualities to it.

Keywords: Early Modern Scotland, Witch-Hunting, Mythology of Witchcraft, Witching Practices, Structure of Mythological Thinking, Categories of the Scottish Mythology in the Witch-Hunting Period.