modern rural Greece, away from the reassuring space of the village.
All these exotikáare thought to be either incarnations of the Devil or
among his minions. Here is a short list (I omitted some):daoútis,a
goat-devil that couples with flocks;drákoi,huge ogres who abduct
young women; fandásmata, ethereal creatures that transform them-
selves into cattle, donkeys, goats;gelloúdes,female demons that eat
young children;gorgónesor mermaids;kallikántzaroi,very ugly goblins
with tail and horns;monóvyza,one-breasted giant women;stríngla,an
old woman who transforms herself into an owl and drinks the blood of
children; vrykólakas,a vampire whose flesh is not decayed and who
[82] generally comes back to haunt his own family;neráides,very beautiful
dancers seen dancing in outlying places, who drive young men insane;
smerdáki,a small demon that attacks flocks; and finally thelámies,very
beautiful females, writes Stewart, with only a couple of minor blem-
ishes: a cow's foot and a goat's foot.^8
These odd features, the violations of kind-concept information, are
addedto ontological violations. They are features associated with the
supernatural concept though not indispensable to its representation.
For instance the implications of the existence of spirits would not be
changed much if people in Mayotte started believing that spirits drink
gasoline instead of cologne. But the change would be far more drastic
if they became convinced that spirits cannot talk through people
because a spirit does not have a mind. In the same way, the crucial fea-
ture of the exotikáis that they appear and disappear at will, undergo no
biological process—they do not get old or die—and are agents of a
hugely powerful Devil. That they have cow's feet or goat's horns are
details that make them even more salient but do not contribute to
inferences about their interaction with people, and this is why such
details change a lot from place to place and over time, as Stewart
reports. Indeed, anthropologists have long documented short-term
changes in surface details of religious concepts, as well as differences
within a group. Such changes and differences are generally limited to
the surface oddities added to the ontological violation and maintain
the crucial violation.
Memory effects do not change (much) with cultureDo these memory effects work in similar ways in different cultures?
This assumption has been very much taken for granted in my expla-
nation so far. I compared concepts from very different places and sug-RELIGION EXPLAINED