From ancient times, dense forests were famous in Russia. The forest conceals many mysteries, and people make up legends about its mysterious inhabitants. Goblin, mermaids, midday, water, siblings - this is not a complete list of creatures that people living near the forest had to encounter not so long ago.
Many of us have heard stories of encounters with strange forest people, and some have met them ourselves. They are popularly called foresters or forest owners. Usually foresters behave peacefully and come to the aid of a lost traveler: they show him the way, sometimes they treat a person who has been injured in the forest, take care of him for a while and feed him with the fruits of the forest, and after recovery, which happens surprisingly quickly, they disappear just as unexpectedly how they appeared. According to eyewitnesses, their clothes are always worn, but clean and fresh, they give the impression of elderly but not decrepit people. They speak unhurriedly and speak Russian, with a characteristic overlap on "o". They use archaic phrases that have long gone out of use.
Magus - Kosh.
Many meetings with them are described during the war, when they came to the aid of the wounded. So, they say, about a tall old man in white, who not only brought water, treated the wound and stopped bleeding, but also reported how the relatives of the wounded man live and what awaits him in the future. As a rule, foresters do not talk about themselves, they even prefer not to name their names.
Questions about age are passed on deaf ears, although one tourist who strayed from the group and ended up in the forester's house was told that he was over 1000 years old, which, of course, she did not believe.
The origin of these people becomes clear if you know the history and Vedic tradition of the ancient Slavs.
In the 18th century work, Zusima's Walking to the Rahmans, it is said that the Rahmans (the name of the Vedic priestly caste) live for 1600 years, and you can enter the Rahmans when a person turns 300 years old.
The sorcerer could not imagine himself without a forest - if his community left or died, he could not leave his place and remained in the forest forever, becoming an Immortal Koschei.
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The sacred animal of ancient Egypt, which was worshiped by people many centuries ago, in Russia was called koshaks (cats), and it is no coincidence that these royal animals are often found in another famous character in fairy tales - Baba Yaga (which we will talk about later in the following articles).
What led to the ousting of the kosh cult from the Slavic traditions? The reason was, most likely, the secrecy of their knowledge by the koshas-sorcerers - and a whole layer of culture was rejected along with their carriers. To prolong a kind of koshas, they were forced to kidnap girls, which turned those around them against them. This was reflected in Russian folk tales and epics.
The established tradition - to secret their knowledge not only from other castes, but also within their priestly caste, led to isolation from society and, as a result, to the inevitable replacement of a complex ancient religion with more accessible religious beliefs.