One of the female deities revered by the ancient Russians was the daughter of Svarog and Lada, Mara - the goddess of death. She was also called Morana or Morena. As you know, the rites and rituals of the pagans are closely related to certain "critical" periods of the year.
Indeed, in those harsh times, the life of people directly depended on the future harvest, and people tried to appease the gods, beg from them favorable weather conditions for their crops and a rich offspring of livestock. The goddess Morena was identified with the general dying in nature, which occurs with the arrival of winter, and was also the embodiment of human destinies.
Many sacred rituals are associated with the name of Mary. For example, the most ancient ritual holiday, Ivan Kupala, has survived to our times, and, like on Maslenitsa, on this day it was customary to burn an effigy that personified Morena. And once upon a time, in early spring (March 1), women armed with brooms drove out of their gardens the hateful Mara, mistress of winter, thereby "sweeping away" the cold.
They portrayed Mara-Morana in different ways. Either she appeared in the guise of a young beauty, then she hid under the guise of a shaggy, unattractive old woman. It is interesting that in the early versions of Russian fairy tales Vasilisa the Beautiful, whom Kashchei so persistently courted, and Marya-Morevna, the beloved of Ivan Tsarevich, are the same inexorable and insidious Mara, in whose existence our ancestors were sure.
Deities and characters similar to Mara can be found in myths of other peoples. In Celtic legends, for example, the name of the goddess Morrigan sounds, who takes the souls of slain warriors from the battlefield and also has the ability to turn into a crow. And in the legends of King Arthur, the not-too-kind fairy Morgana appears, his half-sister, who was far from being unfriendly towards the young king. Nevertheless, it was Morgana, along with the queen of the Lost Lands and the queen of the Northern Storms (again associations with winter), who took the dying Arthur on a black ship to the island of Avalon.
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And in some versions of the legends, it is indicated that Morgana is even the very ruler of Avalon.
Again, if we draw an analogy between the ancient Slavic beliefs about Mara and the legend about King Arthur, then we can draw attention to the fact that the day of Morena was celebrated in Russia, it is also Navi day. Recall that for our ancestors, Nav was the land of the dead, and Lady Morgana from Celtic legends takes away the mortally wounded king on a dark ship to the mysterious Avalon.
Now back to the Slavic legends. The famous Buyan Island, invariably appearing in many ancient Russian fairy tales, was a place inaccessible to ordinary people, and served as a place for storing valuable treasures.
Here, on Buyan, according to the ideas of the Slavs, there is the same "navel of the earth" - the Alatyr-stone, from under which all rivers emerge and all roads begin. In addition, this stone combined other functions, it was both the throne and the altar of the supreme gods. It was on Alatyr Mountain, according to ancient legends, that Kashchei the Immortal and Morena crucified Dazhbog, who fell in love with an insidious lady and lived with her in a legal marriage for some time.
The god of death by the name of Mara, but already in male form, is also present in the oldest of the world's religions - Buddhism. According to Buddhist texts, the Buddha on the night of his enlightenment defeated Mara, who tried to frighten him with terrible spirits of evil. However, Gautama simply did not notice these terrible creatures, or the daughters of Mara, who appeared in the guise of beautiful seducers. Unable to frighten or tempt the Buddha, Mara backed down and admitted defeat.
Thus, it can be noted that in the epics of various peoples there are deities like Mara, and often with consonant names. In the pantheon of gods, Mara-Morana was assigned one of the main roles - the termination of the life cycle. But, despite such a dark role, Morena was a harbinger of another BEGINNING, which inevitably had to be reborn.