He Is a Dog, But I Am a Bigger Dog Than He Is<br>I toj pes, ama i jas ušte popes</br>

Abstract

The subject of this article is one specific ritual that has been practised in Macedonia during Orthodox New Year (Vasilica), when the village boys have violently beaten and expelled the village dogs. The goal of the investigation is to stress the social and the religious codes of the ritual related to the affirmation of the male principle, as well as the ambivalent relation of the humans towards the dog in general, that speaks in favour of the symbolic duality dog-wolf, which leads towards emphasised elements of the wolf cult in the New Year ritual cycle. In a certain sense the article is following the recent investigation of these phenomena done by Mirjam Mencej and others.