Demonisation of Gods: the Impact of Christian Dualism upon Turco-Mongol and Finno-Ugrian Religious Mythologies

This article deals with the problem of the influence of dualistic religions over non-dualistic ones. The main point of the author is that each non-dualistic religion contains some difficult and complex characters who are venerated as guardian gods but who could be easily demonised under the influence of the dualistic worldviews. The reason for such demonisation is a relative simplicity of dualism that explains everything in the categories as ‘ Good’ and ‘ Evil’ that do not exist in non-dualistic religions. Therefore, as the author argues, dualistic religion always affects the non-dualistic one when they meet. The research takes the example of Turco-Mongol and Finno-Ugrian mythologies, and the author observes characters of such gods as Erlik and Keremet before and after they were affected by the Christian narrative.