There are miracles: there the devil wanders,
The mermaid sits on the branches …
A. S. Pushkin, the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila"
As agreed, today we will digress from the Togliatti reality, take a look deeper into our historical past and make an attempt to conduct a kind of cryptobiological investigation.
We humans live in two worlds at the same time - real, which can be touched and measured, and fabulous, which is inhabited by characters invented by the rich fantasy of our ancestors. But if you take off your magic glasses and take a closer look at the inhabitants of the fairy-tale world, you can see how the outlines of real and quite familiar creatures appear through a bizarre touch of magic. I invite you to join me and conduct such an experience with a whole host of mythological characters from different cultures and times. First, let's just list them. So,…
Ancient Greek demigods - Pan, satyrs, Silenos and fauns.
The characters of Russian fairy tales known to all are the goblin, brownies, water, mermaids, as well as bannichki, ovinnichki and other garden scum. Eastern powerful spirit - div. Half-fairy, half-religious devils and devils. Let us include here not at all fabulous "snow people", or yeti (however, for the latter, each nation has its own name). Surprisingly, all these creatures, despite their attitude to different cultures and times, may well turn out to be relatives within the same not at all mythological tribe. And, if you put together different pieces of the historical mosaic, you get a completely coherent and logical picture.
Satyr on a vase found during excavations of ancient Carthage
Promotional video:
Let's start with historical sources, which, at first glance, should not be related either to the fairy-tale world, much less to the "Bigfoot". Here, say, the Bible, the book of the prophet Isaiah (13: 19-22): “And Babylon, the beauty of the kingdom, the pride of the Chaldeans, will be overthrown by God, like Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never settle in, and there will be no inhabitants in it for generations. An Arab will not pitch his tent, and the shepherds and their flocks will not rest there. But the beasts of the desert will dwell in it, and the houses will be filled with owls; and the ostriches will settle and COSMAT will gallop there. …"
Ibid (34: 13-14): “And her palaces will be overgrown with thorny plants, nettles and thistles - her stronghold; and it will be a dwelling place for jackals, a haven for ostriches. And the beasts of the desert will meet with wild cats, and LESHIES will echo one with the other …"
Among the listed animals, everyone is known, except for the goblin. It is generally accepted that the goblin is an exclusive belonging to the pagan culture, the followers of which understand by this word mythical (i.e. invented) creatures, guardian spirits of the forest. Why are they spoken of in the Bible, and it is spoken of as completely ordinary creatures living in the wild?
The Hebrew original Bible uses a word that literally means "shaggy" - in fact, that's how it is translated. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, this word - "seirim" - has the following explanation: it is a kind of supernatural creature that lives in desert places. It corresponds to the "shaggy demon of mountain passes" in ancient Arab superstitions. So why did the Russian translators apply the Russian word "goblin" to the biblical "shaggy" living in the desert? It turns out that in the Old Slavonic text of the Old Testament, both the Hebrew "shaggy" and the Russian "goblin" are named in one word - "demons". A natural question arises - why in the religious tradition they began to call the devil's offspring demons, in the sense of "the antipode of man"? Part of the answer lies in the question itself: the devil is the one who is beyond the line, who is separated from the person. Besides,man has always been frightened by the parapsychological abilities of this creature - supernatural, i.e. located "beyond the limits of human nature."
In the Latin translation of the Bible and in a number of Western European religious texts, the word "satyrs" is used to convey the same concept (again, a reference to creatures who were considered demigods in ancient times). By the way, in the "Description of the ancient Slavic pagan fable" M. Popov points out about brownies: "These dreamy demigods were called geniuses by the ancients, among the Slavs they were defenders of places and houses, and among today's superstitious simpletons they are revered as domestic devils." Why did they begin to be called just devils? In the Ural folklore, for example, it is clearly said on this score: “The little house should be the same shishiga, then the devil, at least he used to be a shishiga, but now it seems he has become Russified” (you must understand, he was domesticated).
Returning to the satyrs, let us recall what important characteristic Pliny the Elder gives them in his Natural History: "Satyris praeter figuram nihil moris humani" ("Satyrs have nothing human, except physique"). Raymund Llull, the famous Spanish philosopher, theologian and writer who lived in the 13th century, in his book "The Great and Precious Science by God of His Eminent Teacher Raymund Lully" gives the following teaching: "You should know that not every creature with the image of a human man. Satyrs, or shaggy woods, are human-like, but not human. Monkeys, similar to many other people, are not human beings either. Not according to the flesh and face, but according to reason and providence, a true man is known."
So what happens? It is clearly seen that the ancient researchers did not equate satyrs (goblin) and monkeys, but compared both with humans.
Karl Linnaeus
Let us move our attention to St. Petersburg, where in 1804 the "System of Nature" by Karl Linnaeus was published for the first time in Russian, who quite reasonably placed a man in one squad with monkeys.
Everything would be simple and classically scientific, if not for one "but" - Linnaeus described not one, but two types of man: "Homo sapiens, or day", and "Man of the night, or troglodyte (caveman)". I draw your attention to the fact that the second kind of man is not a monkey at all! It is this "troglodyte man" who is presented by the author of "Systems of Nature" as a link that unites Homo sapiens with apes of the order of primates. Academician Alexander Sevastyanov, who prepared this work for publication in Russian, writes: “That this animal is not fictional or rediscovered, ancient and recent writers have sufficiently proved. In ancient times, a certain special kind of man was known, which was placed in the middle between the human and animal species and was called a satyr. Ancient poets made them demigods and called them fauns … Plutarch writes,that Sulla once received such an animal as a gift, and Diodorus of Siculus assures that several satyrs who had long hair were sent to the tyrant Dionysius … time did not have time to make him a perfect man … Perhaps, the Holy Scripture mentions these animals under different names of spirits. It should be noted that these words of A. Sevastyanov, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, were published 5 years before the birth of Charles Darwin.that God was engaged in the creation of this animal on the eve of Saturday and that, due to the shortness of time, he did not have time to make him a perfect man … Perhaps, the Holy Scripture mentions these animals under different names of spirits. It should be noted that these words of A. Sevastyanov, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, were published 5 years before the birth of Charles Darwin.that God was engaged in the creation of this animal on the eve of Saturday and that, due to the shortness of time, he did not have time to make him a perfect man … Perhaps, the Holy Scripture mentions these animals under different names of spirits. It should be noted that these words of A. Sevastyanov, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, were published 5 years before the birth of Charles Darwin.
Ivan Turgenev
Mention of such creatures did not shy away, and the well-known "Word about Igor's Campaign", in which it is called "diva" - is a creature whose description one to one coincides with the description of the modern Bigfoot. Div, foreshadowing the failure of Igor's campaign against the Polovtsians, "calls out to the tree, orders the unknown lands to listen, Vlze and Pomorie, and Surozh, and Korsun and you, Tmutorokansky blvan".
In comments to this historical work, academician Dmitry Likhachev writes that "… most researchers consider the diva a mythical creature (something like a goblin …)". Thus, we again come to the devil, but not the one whom our grandfathers feared, but the one whom our ancestors used for their own purposes.
Quite unexpectedly, confirmation of this can be found in the works of the 12th century Azerbaijani poet and thinker Nizami Ganjavi "Iskandername". Describing the battle of the rooms with the Russians (i.e. Russians) in the Caucasus region, the poet mentions that the Russians used a diva in battle, tied by the leg with a chain and armed with an iron stick with a hook.
Another interesting detail is indicated in Iskander-name - the diva prefers to sleep on the branches of trees (this feature is noted always and everywhere) - this is what allowed the Russians to capture him, sneaking up on the sleeping person, entangle him with ropes and pull him off the tree. Let me remind you that it is the primates who simply love to sleep on the branches of trees …
In connection with what has just been said, I will also note the following: traditional Slavic culture cannot be imagined without goblin, brownies and mermaids. However, a careful reading of Slavic folklore reveals completely unexpected details that indicate a connection between the so-called "snowmen" and all those mythological creatures that are listed at the beginning. Here are some quotes.
In the book of the middle of the XIX century "Life of the Russian people" (St. Petersburg., 1848) A. V. Tereshchenko writes that "many insist that they happened to see mermaids many times." And later people said that “this trash has been transferred, they say, now. My grandfathers told me that in those times when there were more forests and swamps with bogs, it’s better not to go into the forest at night: this rubbish will meet you, and that's all”(Maksimov S. V., Sobr. cit., С-Птб., 1912). Yes, not only mermaids, and about the goblin they said that “now there are much fewer of them than it was before, which can be explained by the appearance of firearms, which the Mankvy (as the Mansi people called the goblin), especially loaded with copper bullets, are most afraid of” (Gondatti N. L., Traces of paganism among foreigners of North-Western Siberia, M., 1988).
It turns out that goblin and mermaids actually lived almost everywhere where an ordinary person lived? In some places, they were even more familiar to humans than their other closest relatives, the monkeys. Here is one of such curious testimonies: “I had to talk with an old Trans-Baikal hunter who said:“I don’t know if there are monkeys in the world, maybe they were invented, but I saw the devil with my own eyes, and more than once”(K. K. Platonov, "The Psychology of Religion", 1967).
By the way, the people believed that the goblin (as well as the water ones) and the mermaids are heterosexual representatives of the same species, and therefore the folk culture practically does not make a difference between them. True, the folk imagination depicts the goblin and the aquatic in the form of scary creatures, and in the mermaids they are used to seeing green-haired beauties. However, this also has its own peculiarities. Close encounters with mermaids are described not only in folklore, but also in classical literature. Ivan Turgenev has a not too widely known story "Horror", where he allegorically describes his own experience of meeting with such a creature, which happened in his young years. Turgenev allegorically calls the hero "he", although he himself was hiding under this designation.
“While still young, he once hunted in the Russian forest. He wandered all day and in the evening came to the bank of a quiet river. (…) Having undressed, he threw himself at her. He was tall, strong, strong and a good swimmer. (…) Suddenly someone's hand touched his shoulder. He quickly turned around and saw a strange creature who was looking at him with eager curiosity. It looked like a woman or a monkey. He had a wide, wrinkled, grimacing and laughing face. Something indescribable - two sacks of some sort, obviously breasts - were dangling in front; long matted hair, red from the sun, framed her face and fluttered behind her. He felt a wild fear, a chilling fear of the supernatural. Without hesitation, without trying to understand, to comprehend what it is, he swam with all his might to the shore. But the monster swam faster and touched his neck, back and legs with a joyful squeal. Finally, the young man, distraught with fear, reached the shore and ran as fast as he could through the forest, throwing away his clothes and a gun. The terrible creature followed him; it ran just as fast and still squealed. The exhausted fugitive - his legs were shaking with horror - was about to collapse when a boy armed with a whip came running, grazing a flock of sheep. He began to whip the hideous humanoid beast, which took off, letting out a cry of pain. Soon this female gorilla-like creature disappeared into the thicket. "The exhausted fugitive - his legs were shaking with horror - was about to collapse when a boy armed with a whip came running, grazing a flock of sheep. He began to whip at the hideous humanoid beast, which took off with a cry of pain. Soon this female gorilla-like creature disappeared into the thicket. "The exhausted fugitive - his legs were shaking with horror - was about to collapse when a boy armed with a whip came running, grazing a flock of sheep. He began to whip at the hideous humanoid beast, which took off with a cry of pain. Soon this female gorilla-like creature disappeared into the thicket."
It turns out that the shepherds have been feeding this creature for as many as thirty years. But … these same mermaids behave in about the same way, whose image gradually transformed into the image of a "green-haired beauty with a fish tail" … In reality, these beauties look like "Turgenev's nightmare", and the horror experienced by the writer was "panic horror", that is, the one that is felt when meeting with the god Pan."
It is interesting that the historical evidence and the stories of contemporary eyewitnesses are internally completely consistent. This also applies to information about the color of the coat, and about the growth of the creature, and about its behavior, etc. Eyewitness accounts correspond to modern ideas about the genetics and ecology of primates and do not depend on the sex, age and nationality of the eyewitness. They also correspond to modern ideas about the features that are inherent in endangered biological species, such as the predominance of males, and, most importantly, rare encounters with cubs.
Suppose that this creature is already dying out, so we encounter it less and less. However, analyzing folklore, it is possible to restore its habitat, lifestyle, habits, ways of relations with the outside world, including with people. Moreover, the character of the description of the sought-after creature in myths depends on the degree of prescription of the event, in other words, on the strength of the historical memory of mankind.
For example, in the legends of the peoples of our north there are references to "a huge beast with two horns and one long" arm "(trunk) instead of a nose" (did you recognize the mammoth?). Its disappearance did not occur at once in all places, therefore, mentions of this animal in the legends of some territories are very vague, and the image of the beast is provided with many fantastic details, and in other places where the mammoth managed to live for a longer time, its description is almost one hundred percent really. And fairy tales are just an echo of the real memory of people about the mammoth, which was known to their immediate ancestors as a subject of hunting.
So, the longer the phenomena - the prototypes of legendary plots - disappeared, the more distorted, idealized their description in folklore. Judging by the legends, goblin, mermaids and other "evil spirits" also disappeared gradually, and their real image also gradually acquired fabulous features. And in those places where these creatures are found to this day, there is nothing fabulous in the descriptions of eyewitnesses - neither a mermaid's tail, nor horns on the crown …
So what signs did the folk memory consider important for the goblin, mermaids, brownies, water animals and the like of our “neighbors on the planet”?
Firstly, it is shaggy hair, which often had a green tint, and "fish tail". According to D. K. Zelenin (Essays on Russian Mythology, Petrograd, 1916), long hair loose over the shoulders is one of the main distinctive features of mermaids. It is not for nothing that among all peoples, disheveled women were compared to mermaids or goblin. The greenish hair color of mermaids and mermaids is apparently connected with the fact that they love to swim in water bodies and, therefore, stain their hair with duckweed and algae. Their passion for swimming is noted by almost all peoples - they are excellent swimmers and divers, much better than people (although who among us would refuse to splash in a warm backwater?). Mermaids, by the way, were often spotted near the water, where they sat and combed their hair with a comb. These ridges were found. They turned out to be fish ridges. An original device, I must say,but quite in the spirit of primitive tools of labor …
Moreover, by the nature of the description of mermaids in legends, one can trace how long ago they became extinct (or began to disappear) in a given place. The more ancient the last legends are, the more beautiful and fish-like mermaids are (up to the legs that have grown into a fish tail) - i.e. people have already forgotten the true appearance of mermaids. And the closer to our time the people met with mermaids and mermaids, the more real their appearance: “They look mermaids, they say, black, and everything is covered with wool”, “Vodyanik is a tall, hefty man; from his face he is black, his head is like a haystack."
The second distinctive feature among the people was considered their traces.
Vladimir Dal writes about mermaids: “The footprints of these playful girlfriends occasionally remain on the wet sand; but this can only be seen by taking them by surprise; otherwise they dig through the sand and smooth over their tracks”(just like animals can do it). But it will not be superfluous to mention that the presence of the well-known "Bigfoot" is most often detected only by the footprints left by him on soft soil or in the snow.
We must not forget about the famous whistle of the Nightingale the Robber, with which he fell trees and knocked down the heroes. According to B. Porshnev, one of the famous researchers of the relict hominoid, among the various sounds he emitted, one stands out, which is heard in the mountains over great distances. This is a sonorous, piercing, usually prolonged, sometimes abrupt sound - not a cry, but rather a whistle, reminiscent of a human, only stronger. Indeed, why not the whistle of the Robber Nightingale?
Hairiness all over the body is another important sign. After all, only Hans Christian Andersen had the Little Mermaid with soft smooth skin, and the real, let's say, mermaids wore "natural fur coats". And not only among mermaids, but also among other mermaid relatives too. Moreover, the wool is seen in various shades - from white (for example, Rustam, the hero of Ferdowsi's poem "Shahname", fights with the White Diva) to black, but there are also ashy, "fair-haired", red, spotted; and "fur coat" suggests that this creature is accustomed to living in a cold climate, and many popular names - "kosmatka" (kosmatka - as applied to mermaids), "shaggy", "hairy" - were applied to both mermaids and devils, and to the leshachi.
With an impartial analysis of some, it would seem, completely fantastic, unreal details of the appearance or behavior attributed by the people to these creatures, these details acquire a completely obvious physical nature. For example, in Western Siberia, stories about a humanoid shaggy wild man in gold chain mail and with a gold forehead are not uncommon - apparently, these stories were formed about a fiery red yeti. In Central Asia, there is even a special name for such creatures, which translates as "copper claws, copper forehead", which additionally confirms the distribution area of red yeti over the territory covering Western Siberia, Central and part of Southeast Asia.
However, another thing is interesting. Have you ever thought about the phrase "bald devil"? I’m sure not. And there is something to think about. First, in the Komi-Zyryan folklore, the goblin is usually called “shaggy-eared”, in contrast to the “bare-eared” - a person, thereby emphasizing that there are not so fundamental differences between them. But the most interesting thing is that the yeti with age … go bald. In Ancient Greece, there was even a specific difference in terms: the young hominoid was called there a satyr, and the old balding one was called Silenus (i.e., the old satyr). Thus, the bald spot in the "snow", like in humans, is a sign of age. So much for the "bald devil" …
Horniness, attributed to a trait, upon careful study, also finds a completely biological - more precisely, a physiological background. Have you noticed that in the East the devas were often depicted as one-horned - with a horn growing in the middle of their forehead? Well, he is not a rhino, in fact … However, let us look into the works of another ancient author - Strabo, who, referring to Deimachus and Megasthenes, claims that the "lords of India" have a wedge-shaped head. According to N. A. Gondatti, who is much closer to us in time, the mankvos have a pointed head. NI Tolstoy also writes about "a line with an elongated head with a shish" and says that such names of demons as "shish, bump, shishiga" were given to him by the people in the shape of the head. And in fact, almost all modern eyewitnesses claim that his head is crowned with a protruding bone crest, which is covered with skin. Hence, reality must be sought in the anatomy of the skull of this creature. But, alas, scientists do not yet have a sample …
And, finally, the main thing is the SMELL !!! For the utter stench of the devil, or the devil, they just nicknamed "unclean", simply - "unwashed"!
So, among the people there is almost an equal sign between a goblin, a mermaid and other forest or house evil spirits, which is organically included in folk culture (on the one hand), demons and demons as characters of folk mythology (on the other hand), and monkey-humanlike creatures that make up a special species and are exclusively belonging to our material world (on the third side). This relationship is reflected in the language. For example, the Chuvashs use such names for these creatures - "arsuri" (half-man), "upate" (monkey). The Tajiks of the Zeravshan valley described the demon albasti as similar to a monkey (maymun), and in Max Vasmer's dictionary, published in 1964, the following connections are given for the word “demon”: “Primordially related to lit. baisa - fear, baisus - disgusting, vile, terrible, foedus - vile, Greek. Pithekos is a monkey."
There is a downright "international" connection of evil spirits with a monkey with a certain degree of kinship to both people. Whoever we consider ourselves to be among such relatives …
But we did not mention one of the most important features of this species - parapsychological abilities. And here it is desirable to pay attention to some "incomprehensible" details in the behavior of the Yeti.
The first of these details is the ability to “look away”, to appear as some other creature, but not personally. In the Slavic tradition, there is even a kind of subdivision according to the types of “diversion”. The brownie, for example, takes the image of a simple peasant, or an old man, or a terrible black man (in wool). Brownie, it happens that at night in the house "crushes" a person, sometimes physically injures him. You can be friends with him, and it is better not to quarrel.
Leshy, most often appearing in the form of a fine-looking old man, sits on a sleigh or on a cart. In this case, the horses stop, and the efforts of the coachman cannot move them.
By the way, BF Porshnev suggested that the Yeti possesses the strongest methods of biological protection, which, by the way, should have been used by representatives of the prehuman herd, judging by the remnants of such abilities in certain representatives of Homo sapiens. Prior to the development of the verbal language, a person, as B. Porshnev believed, universally possessed para-abilities: telepathy, clairvoyance, suggestion. The development of speech switched our thinking to the left hemisphere, we paid for the acquisition of the gift of speech by the loss of intuitive (i.e. right hemisphere) perception of the world.
B. F. Porshnev believed that the relict hominoid possesses suggestion, i.e. strong-willed suggestion. That is why eyewitnesses claim that Bigfoot talked to them without opening his lips. They don't see articulation. When asked what language the conversation was in, most often they answer: "I don't know, but I understood it."
The ability to harbor what some call biofields, so as not to be felt, discovered - one of the most miraculous properties of the "Bigfoot", which especially makes him related to the idea of an unknown, impure and cross power. It was it, apparently, that helped the animal to hide from man at the level of myth for millennia.
Like this. As they say, a fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it … For those who want to understand in more detail how the Little Mermaid turned out to be the Snow Woman, I strongly recommend the works of M. Bykova, B. Porshnev, and - especially - D. Bayanov.
Tatiana Makarova
