We know from Ancient Greek Mythology that the Swan was the symbol of Hyperborea
The sea deity Forky - the son of Gaia-Earth and the prototype of the Russian Sea tsar was married to the titanide Keto. Their six daughters were born in the Hyperborean confines and were originally revered as beautiful Swan Maidens. But much later, for ideological reasons, they were turned into ugly monsters - grays and gorgons.
Apparently, even before the migration of proto-Hellenic tribes to the South began, some of them underwent a reorientation to new ideals and values. This was especially evident in the example of the most famous of the three gorgons - Medusa (Medusa). Like many other well-known names of mythological characters, Medusa is a nickname meaning "mistress", "mistress".
The daughter of the Sea King Forkias, the beloved of the lord of the sea element Poseidon, the beautiful-faced Swan Maiden Medusa ruled over the peoples of the northern lands and seas (as Hesiod put it, “near the end of the night”).
But in the conditions of the prevailing matriarchal relations, Power did not get along with Wisdom: Athena became Medusa's rival. The sparse fragments of ancient legends make it possible to restore only the general outline of the unfolding tragedy.
The two warrior maidens did not share the power over Hyperborea. The struggle was fierce - not for life, but for death. The first act of destroying the rival was the transformation of the beautiful Swan Princess Medusa into a disgusting monster with boar tusks, hair from snakes and a look that turns all living things into stone.
But women's vengeance knows no bounds. It was not enough for Athena to morally destroy Medusa - she also needed the head of her rival. That is why, some time later, she sends back to Hyperborea her half-brother Perseus and, according to the testimony of many, she herself accompanies him.
Fraudulently, Perseus and Athena dealt with the unfortunate Medusa together: at the instigation of Pallas, the son of Zeus and Danai cut off the gorgon's head, and Athena tore off her rival's skin and pulled it on her shield, in the center of which she placed the image of the head of the unfortunate Sea Maiden. Since then, the shield of Athena has been called "gorgonion". The face of Medusa also adorned the aegis (armor or cape) worn by Zeus, Apollo and all the same Athena.
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The unbridled cruelty of the Olympian Gods was extremely sophisticated, although it must have reflected the most common norms of behavior of that distant era.
After the canonization of the Olympians, in the memory of subsequent generations, the elements of bloodlust seemed to be erased. The nickname of Athena - Pallas - is considered sweet-sounding and poetic. And few people remember that it was received on the battlefield, where the merciless Warrior Maiden tore the skin from the giant Pallas (Pallant) alive, for which Athena was awarded the seemingly so poetic epiclesis (nickname) - Pallas. Other Olympians also resorted to killing exercises. The punishment to which Apollo subjected the Phrygian Marsyas, who took it into his head to compete with the Sun God in playing the flute, is well known: the skin of the opponent was also ripped off alive.
The symbol of the defeated Medusa continued to play a magical role for the Hellenes in subsequent centuries. Her images were very often placed on pediments and carved stone slabs in temples.
From the point of view of archeology of meaning, the root basis of the name Medus is also of interest.
The word "honey" in the sense of the sweet food produced by bees from nectar sounds the same in many Indo-European languages. Moreover, similar words in sound terms, meaning "honey", are found in the Finno-Ugric, Chinese and Japanese languages. Perhaps it is permissible to speak of the totemic meaning of "honey" or "bee" for some pre-Indo-European ethnic community. (As for the names "metal", "copper", the entire spectrum of concepts associated with the words "medicine", "medium", "meditation", "meteorology", "method", etc., the names of Medea and Midas, the people Medes and the countries of Media, as well as Mitania, then they are all interconnected with a common ancient root base "honey".)
Thus, in the phrase Gorgon Medus, four Russian roots emerge: "mountains", "gon", "honey", "mustache" ("uz"). Two of them bring to mind the memories of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, and the mountain essence of the gorgon leads to a possible reading (or interpretation): Gorynya, Gorynishna, although the Indo-European semantics of the root basis of "mountains" ("gar") is polysemantic, and in the Russian language a whole a bouquet of meanings: "to burn", "grief", "bitter", "proud", "throat", "city", "hump", etc.
The memory of the Gorgon Medus among the peoples who at all times inhabited the territory of Russia has never been interrupted. The serpentine Virgo Goddess, who, together with Hercules, was considered by the Greeks to be the progenitor of the Scythian tribe, is nothing more than a transformed image of Medusa.
The best proof of this is not the free arrangement of myths in Herodotus' History, but the original images found during the excavation of burial mounds.
Until recently, similar faces of serpentine maidens in the form of traditional Russian Sirins were also found on the pediments and platbands of northern peasant huts. One of these carvings adorns the folk art department of the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg). Another image of Medusa has survived in Russian culture: in the 18th century popular prints, she appears as Meluza (Meluzina) - literally “shallow” (see V. Dahl's Dictionary): the vocalization of a word with the replacement of consonants is made according to the type of folk rethinking of a foreign language word "Microscope" and its transformation in Russian dialects into a "small scope".
Unambiguously associated in the popular worldview with the sea, the Russian Medusa-Meluza turned into a fabulous fish, without losing, however, neither human nor monstrous features: in popular prints she was depicted as a royal maiden with a crown on her head, and instead of serpentine hair she had legs and a tail turned into a serpent. There is practically nothing fishy in the very image of the Russian Meluza-Medusa - the fish simply surround it, testifying to the marine environment.
It seems that the Russian pictorial version is much closer to that original pre-Hellenic archetype of the beautiful Sea Princess, who was turned into a miracle Yudo in the process of the Olympic religious revolution.
The memory of the ancient Hellenic-Slavic Medusa is preserved in the medieval legends of the Virgin of the Gorgonia. According to Slavic legends, she knew the language of all animals. Later, in the apocryphal manuscripts, the female image of the Gorgon turned into the "beast Gorgon": its functions remained largely the same: it guards the entrance to paradise (that is, in other words, it is the guardian of the passage to the Isles of the Blessed).
Medusa appears in a slightly different guise and with different functions in the famous ancient Russian “serpentine” amulets. The magical character of the head of Medusa, depicted in the serpents radiating from her in all directions, does not cause any doubt, its protective and protective purpose is the same as on the shield of Pallas Athena or the aegis of Zeus. (The cultural idiom that has survived to this day "under the auspices" essentially means "under the protection of the Gorgon Medusa.") It is also significant that the secret esoteric meaning of pre-Hellenic and Hyperborean beliefs has survived on Russian amulets almost to our days: exact dating even later finds is extremely difficult. In the Christian era, the ineradicable belief in the magical power and effectiveness of the face of Medusa was compensated bythat on the reverse side of the medallion with her image there were reliefs of Christian saints - the Mother of God, Michael the Archangel, Kozma and Demyan, etc.
Until now, no satisfactory explanation has been given for the origin and purpose of the Russian "serpentines". The modern reader knows practically nothing about them: in the last half century, with a few exceptions, a reproduction of the same medallion, however, the most famous, which once belonged to the Grand Duke Vladimir Monomakh, which he lost while hunting and was found by chance only in the last century, has been published. … In fact, many "serpentines" (including those of Byzantine origin) are known, described and published44. And from each of them the magical gaze of the Guardian Virgin of the Gorgon Medusa, which is a taboo totem, looks at us.
The image of the Swan Maiden Gorgon Medusa reveals the most typical features of totemic symbolism - the heritage of the almost unattainable depths of human prehistory, preserved to this day in accordance with the unwritten laws of the transmission of traditions and beliefs from generation to generation.
LEBEDIA - the land of the ancient Russ
The Hyperborean times are irrevocably a thing of the past - however, the symbols they gave birth to. Among them is the swan - one of the birds most revered by the Russian people.
Together with the falcon, he became almost the personification of Russia. And not only impersonation. According to the Byzantine historian of the 10th century, Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the very territory where the ancient Russians lived was called Lebedia. Subsequently, this gave Velimir Khlebnikov the right to call the new Russia "The Swan of the Future."
In the same way, the Slavic-Scythians, described by Herodotus, were called "chipped", that is, "with [o] kolotami" - from the Russian word "falcon". In the transmission of Arab geographers, who described our ancestors long before the introduction of Christianity, their self-name sounded almost in Herodot's way: "Sakaliba" ("falcons"). Hence the famous "Saki" - one of the names of the Slavic-Scythians - "wanderers" - nomads.
Why exactly a swan and why a falcon are two so different birds, in constant struggle with each other? The falcon attacks, pursues; the swan is saved, protected. But is it always like this? Not at all! In Pushkin's "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", entirely built on the images and subjects of Russian folklore, the Swan-bird finishes and drowns the villain-kite. In folk symbolism, a kite is the hypostasis of a falcon, and all birds of prey are one.
In “Zadonshchina” - the Word of Zephany the Ryazan, falcons, gyrfalcons, hawks collectively personify the warriors of Dmitry Donskoy and are listed separated by commas: there were also eagles before). Then Alexander Blok will repeat this: "Above the enemy's camp, as it happened, // And the splash and pipes of swans." The swan is also largely a collective symbol. In Russian folklore, the undivided image of "geese-swans" is generally considered the norm. In "Zadonshchina" they were superimposed on the Mamaev horde. Historically, this is understandable: similar bird-beast symbolism is common among different peoples.
Where did it come from? Like other “eternal images”, the Russian swan and the Russian falcon are the legacy of those ancient beliefs and customs of human prehistory, when humanity itself, its proto-language and proto-culture were undivided, and instead of the modern palette of peoples, the world of totems, totemic thinking and totemic attachments reigned.
In those distant times, people did not separate themselves from nature, they saw their own kind in animals and plants - protectors and allies.