Meat in the Diet of the Dead (According to Material from the Traditional Period of the Bulgarians)

Abstract

On the basis of archive material that has preserved the basic traditional notions of the Bulgarians, the study comments on the relation ship between the souls of the righteous and the souls of sinners through the culinary code of one food, meat.

The souls of the righteous consume meat that comes from a ram (either lamb, hogget or mutton) and is perceived as a pure product; this raw material is always cooked and used to prepare kurban a dish with a distinctly sacrificial character. The Bulgarians conceive this dish as especially necessary for the dead, and by preparing and feeding it to them, the dead maintain the ‘correct’ direction of passage, guaranteeing their soul’s place among the righteous in the afterlife. The souls of the greatest sinners tend to feed on blood and flesh. Such consumption is perceived by man as impure, conceptually matching the being who practices it. The living never provide flesh and blood to the most sinful souls, they do their best to interrupt this feeding process, and conceive the desire to consume both substances as asign that the deceased has changed the proper direction of their movement and become part of the category of demons.

Thus, throughout the elements of the culinary code, the living keep the boundaries between the levels of the organised cosmos closed maintaining the mythological equilibrium within it.