Beliefs
The section of the traditional beliefs gathers testimonies on popular mythology, superhuman beings, magic and witchcraft, superstitions, miracles and astronomical and agro-pastoral beliefs. However, as we have been aware of, the permeability of traditional oral genres shows the difficulty in classifying and distinguishing thse testimonies from other narrative subgenres such as the popular story, the legend, events...etc. In general, we consider traditional beliefs those that evidence the presence of a magical and concrete thought. Lévi-Strauss describes it as:
"Magical thought is not a beginning, a draft, an initiation, a part of an whole that yet has not been realized; it forms a well articulated system, independent, relative to this, of that other system that constitutes science, except for formal analogy that unites both and that makes the first a type of metaphoric expression of the second. Therefore, instead of oppsing magic and science, they should rather be put parallel to each other as two modes of understanding, different s to theoretical and practical results (since, from this point of view, it is true that science is more successful than magic, although magic precedes science in the sense tht it also succeeds sometimes) but not in the type of mental operations that both suppose, and that differ less as to the nature than to the function of the type of phenomena that they explain."
But in general terms, in the narrative of beliefs, the testimony is predominant. Its sources are non-official and not properly formulated (without structural repetitions and without fiction protocol ...etc.). Its structure therfore is varied although the conflict of the narration usually is minimum and may even have disappeared turning into a description. The attitude of the informant that insists on the validity of the testimony and his beliefs is crucial, all the same, this maximum tension and minimum distance to the testimony hs gradually evolved generally to more esceptical positions. The time-space organization is as precise as in Events with respect to space but not to time.Human characters coexist with others of superhuman, spellbound characteristics. As to the language, ther is an absence of dialogue and the insistence on the mysterious is perceived. The characters own names is not rejected however, on many occasions they have been lost through oral transmission. Many of them belong to night context. The interpretation of these testimonies, as Clifford Geertz advises should be done with a dense description that concerns symbolic, social and endocultural values.
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