In Viktor Kalashnikov's book Russian Demonology, an attempt is made to systematize the heroes and plots of Russian folk tales. This is done not because of the desire to create an encyclopedia of folklore, but in order to discern how the ancient Slavic epic, whose heroes were pagan gods and spirits, dissolved in children's fairy tales behind the layers of eras and cultures (Christianity, secular state).
Further, a fragment of the book by Viktor Kalashnikov "Russian demonology", dedicated to Koshchey the Immortal.
Koschey the Immortal (or Kashchei) is perhaps the most mysterious figure in Russian fairy tales. Afanasyev, for example, believed that the Serpent Gorynych and Koschey the Immortal, if not one and the same, then, in any case, an interchangeable character: “As a demonic creature, the serpent in folk Russian legends often appears under the name of Koshchei the immortal. The meaning of both in our fairy tales is completely identical: Koschey plays the same role as a stingy guardian of treasures and a dangerous kidnapper of beauties as a snake; both of them are equally hostile to fairytale heroes and freely replace each other, so that in one and the same fairy tale, in one version, the protagonist displays a snake, and in the other - Koschey.
But is it possible to confuse a living mummy and a dragon? They are so different! Anyway, what a strange name - Koschey? What does it mean? Afanasyev believed that it comes either from "bone", or from "blasphemy" - witchcraft. Other scholars, inclined to see in Russian words borrowings from the languages of neighboring peoples, believed that the name of a living skeleton comes from a Turkic word meaning "slave, servant".
If a slave, then whose? Indeed, in Russian fairy tales, the owner of Koshchei is not mentioned. This living skeleton may be captured by Marya Morevna, but like a prisoner chained to the wall, it is not a servant at all. How could the Russian Koschei have a Turkic name? What does his death mean, resting in a casket either under the cherished oak tree, or at the bottom of the sea? What does the help animals have to do with it?..
In a word, many questions arise, but there are no unambiguous answers. Maybe Afanasyev was right when he raised the name of Koshchei to blasphemers, that is, he called him, thus, a wizard. Well, really, who else could prolong his life so that people began to call him Immortal? Of course, the almighty magician. Or a person who turned to demonic forces for help, like, say, Faust. But Koschey in fairy tales is not at all a magician and not a man, he himself most likely belongs to the demonic world. So Afanasyev's explanation also suffers from approximation and imprecision.
Perhaps the most interesting conjecture is the assumption of L. M. Alekseeva, who wrote in "Aurora Borealis in the Mythology of the Slavs":
“Undoubtedly, Karachun belongs to the single world of the dead and cold. He is presumably considered a winter Slavic deity that has retained the features of the personification of death. At the same time, Belarusian beliefs clarify that Karachun shortens life and is the cause of sudden death at a young age. It is important for us that this image is associated with an objective and clear natural factor: Karachun is not only the name of an evil spirit, but also the name of the winter solstice and the holiday associated with it. Tracking the Sun requires a certain scientific qualification, if not all, then at least some members of society (Magi). In addition, the name of the deity introduces us to the circle of detailed plots of the East Slavic fairy tale: Karachun is one of the names of Koshchei the Immortal."
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That is, according to Alekseeva, Koschey is the god of death from cold, and a god, or rather a demon, is very ancient. To overcome him, you need to spin the wheel of times back, return to the very beginning of the world, when the Immortal was born. Then it is clear why in the fairy tale they consistently appear: the brown bear is the lord of the forests, then the birds are the hawk and the duck, which can often be seen in the northern tundra. Following them, the inhabitants of the earth and air, there is a water inhabitant, a fish, in this case - a pike. Maybe once upon a time it was not a pike, but a completely different fish?
Cover of Viktor Kalashnikov's book "Russian Demonology".
Let's say a beluga whale living in the polar regions. If this is so, then in a fairy tale we move not only in space from south to north, from the zone of dense forests through the tundra to the circumpolar seas, but also back in time - in the opposite direction along the path that our distant ancestors once passed, fleeing from the onset of the Great Glaciation. Simply put, fabulous animals point us to the north - to the place where the ancestral home of all Aryan peoples, Arctida, once existed.
Perhaps, there they paid tribute to the victims of the evil god of a fierce cold, Karachun, who was born at the very beginning of the creation of the world - from a golden egg laid by the miracle chicken Pockmarked. Then Karachun came out of obedience - the cold became more and more intolerable, took more and more lives, and the time came, leaving his homeland, which was covered with ice in front of our eyes, to follow the fish, after the birds to the distant mainland and go further and further, fleeing from the one moving on the heels Karachun-Koschei. They had to go into the forests, under the protection of trees, and the southern fields, where the frost was not so strong.
It was an exodus from the ancestral home, from the roof of the world, where heaven and earth almost touch each other, where the myth of the Golden Egg was born. Therefore, a trip from north to south also meant movement from the distant past to the present and future.
Our assumptions are not at all as fantastic as they might seem at first glance. According to numerous legends, everything emerged from the golden egg: not only Heaven and Earth, but also underground depths; not only a clear Day, but also a dark Night, not only Good, but also Evil. Following the logic of the myth, you need to go back to the very beginning of time in order to strike Evil in its embryo, while breaking … the needle. Why an igloo? In the book already mentioned, Alekseeva suggests that it is a spear - the main weapon of the northern peoples, with which they beat the sea animal and the polar bear. And to this day, whales are hunted only with harpoons - large spears, or, if you like, needles.
Although the immortal demon of the cold, of course, is not a bear, not a walrus, or even a whale. You can't take it with an ordinary harpoon, something more powerful is needed here. For example, a magic wand is the same magic wand that is spoken about in almost all fairy tales.
And again the question is - why not turn this magic wand against Koshchei, so that, having uttered spells, take his life? Why should the rod be broken? Yes, for the simple reason that this rod, apparently, belonged, if not to Koshchei himself, then to the high priest of his cult. Only by destroying the wand can the thread of the life of the ancient, but by no means immortal demon be cut off. What Ivan did in the fairy tale, although Koschey was sure that he was not given his mind to reach such wisdom. Bessmertny was sure that the Russian people had forgotten where they came from in the woods. But no, they did not forget: they remembered at the right moment, and then Koshchei came "karachun" - that is, the end.
There is another suggestion about what the cherished Koscheev needle is. The immortal is not completely alive, but also not completely dead, it is as if he is in the middle of the path between this and this light, that is, it is practically the same as the walking dead; their bodies were buried, but they rise from their graves and come haunted to their homes to harass their relatives.
There was only one known way to protect oneself from the annoying dead: to dig their grave at midnight, find an invisible "navya" bone and destroy it, breaking it, or rather, burn it. And then the dead man calmed down, died completely. If the needle hidden in the egg is considered a "navya" bone of Koshchei himself, then it is clear why death overtook him.
Perhaps in ancient times there was some kind of ritual that promised a person the acquisition of immortality. In any case, in the grave of the founder of the city of Chernigov excavated by archaeologists (let's not forget that the servants of Chernobog were called Chernigami in Russia), Prince Cherny, a scene depicted in a fairy tale was found: a deadly needle in an egg, an egg in a duck, a duck in a hare, a hare - in the treasured chest.
And here we come to an understanding of what, in fact, is immortality. Is it punishment or good? The ritual of gaining immortality itself has long been forgotten, but its symbol has survived - immortelle flowers, about which, recalling his native village Antonovka, Mirolyubov wrote: “In Antonovka, it was customary to sow immortelles on graves, special rough, dry to the touch flowers, yellowish, reddish and, it seems bluish, which could be plucked and put in a glass of water, and they could stand like this for months; if they were placed in a vase without water, they also stood for months. Life in them, apparently, was, but as if it was not.
Since I was still a boy at that time, I was interested in why the peasants prefer to sow them in the cemetery. The "old people" answered me that "immortelles are the flowers of dead relatives, because they are like dead ones during their lifetime." Old Trembochka, a woman in the village, like a healer, explained differently:
“Those flowers are blooming in the hole! They are from the pit, and everyone whom the pit takes can communicate with us through those flowers. These flowers are between us and them, like a devil (border), and we touch them here, and they are there. Death does not take them. Torn off or not, life for them, like death, is one and the same. These flowers are without death. Another woman, who lived near the bridge over the Zheltye Vody river, said: “Ottozh, if God did light, he took it and began to chew the earth, but death did not want to. Then God mounted a horse and began calling for death, and she armed herself with all sorts of knives, iron claws, clubs, a gun and went against God. The fight lasted forever. Either God conquers, or she, damned, and while God fought against death, He worked in fits and starts, now and then another. God will do, but death will destroy!
Finally, God lay in wait for death when she gape, and killed her. But, falling, Death clutched at bushes, grasses, branches, and what it grabbed at, it withers. She grabbed hold of the immortelles and began to tear them up by the roots. God told them to grow stronger so that she could not pull them out, and the flowers grew around the lying death only so much that they closed it by half, and God could not hit death so that it would stop moving! Then He said: "Well, then be without life and without death!" And the flowers stayed like that forever. And they put them on the graves to announce to the deceased that “There is no death! She is killed by God! " But since death has not stopped moving and is still killing people, the flowers remind the dead about life, and the living about death!"
Indeed, I had to observe later - the peasants did not like to keep immortelles in the house. They were grave flowers. There was an almost religious attitude towards them. Having picked several such flowers, I came home from the cemetery, where children gathered to play in the spring, and wanted to put flowers in the water, but the servant, noticing them, took them away and threw them into the fire.
Well, this is perhaps the best explanation of Koshchei's immortality, which is no longer life into life, and death is unattainable; he was stuck between these two worlds and remained there until Ivan Tsarevich delivered him from eternal torment and granted the blissful oblivion of death.
If Koshchei is considered a slave, then he was a servant of his accursed immortality. Yet he, rather, belonged to the other world, because he recognizes the appearance of Ivan by the smell of the living: "It smells of Russian bone!" For the dead, as you know, the smell of the living is intolerable, just as the smell of carrion is disgusting for the living. Ethnographer V. Ya. Propp wrote about this in his Historical Roots of a Fairy Tale: “Ivan smells not just like a person, but like a living person. The dead, disembodied do not smell, the living smell, the dead recognize the living by their smell … This smell of the living is extremely disgusting to the dead … The dead generally feel fear of the living. No one alive should cross the cherished threshold."
In Russia, excessive centenarians were suspected of involvement in witchcraft, it was believed that they "heal" (that is, take away) someone else's age. The most correct thing was considered to die in due time, surrounded by a large family. Immortality attracted no one. What is it for if people with an immortal soul continue their endless existence in a new, happier world, Blue Svarga, a country in the sky where our ancestors live?
V. Kalashnikov. Russian demonology - M.: Lomonosov, 2014.