Evil, Cosmological Capture, and Magical Disorder in Cyprus

The magical idiom of evil occupies an important position in numerous Christian societies. Cosmological capture refers to a historicized process through which Christian narratives and institutions attempt to integrate evil into dualist and oppositional cosmological schemas. This article begins by addressing the way that biblical stories of defeated magicians contribute to modern dynamics of cosmological capture. It then proceeds to address the role of evil in Cypriot society through narratives and descriptions of everyday rituals and events. As these narratives and rituals show, capture remains incomplete, and as evil extends beyond the limits of dualist categorization, the result is a situation of 'magical disorder': a cosmological arrangement in which evil manifests as an indifferent and inhuman force, which nevertheless conditions everyday experience and social relations. Keywords: Christianity, cosmology, Cyprus, evil, evil eye, magic, religion
As Peter Brown (1970) shows through historical analysis, the establishment of the Christian churches imposed new cosmological taxonomies, and specifically, the antithesis of magic and religion, onto preexisting beliefs and [...]