Traditionally, it is believed that the classic of Russian poetry, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, took images for his work from the folklore of central and northern Russia. But not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance. Some little-known sources mention the meeting of Alexander Sergeevich with certain elders, servants of the ancient faith, who came from the Volga River.
They conveyed to Pushkin stories about the wonders and mysteries of the Samara Luka. The old women talked about various unusual phenomena of Samaroluchye, well known to local residents in those distant times. And it was these stories that formed the basis of the poetic creations of the father of Russian poetry. Can't believe it? But see for yourself:
- the testimony of A. S. Pushkin: "There are miracles: there the goblin wanders" corresponds to folk stories about meetings in the Zhiguli forests with a creature, one to one similar to the goblin from Russian fairy tales.
- the testimony of A. S. Pushkin: "There the forest and the valley of visions are full" - why is this not the famous Zhiguli Fata Morgana?
- the testimony of A. S. Pushkin: “There Tsar Kashchei withers over gold” in an interesting way transformed into popular ideas about the legendary robber king Stepan Razin, whose, according to legend, a boat filled with gold sank and could not rise to the surface.
And one more testimony of A. S. Pushkin: "There is a stupa with Baba Yaga" - this is just a classic of modern ufology in its Volga version. UFOs in the form of a "classic stupa" periodically catch your eye when flying over the Zhiguli and over the Volga waters.
There are many mysteries in Zhiguli, all of them are countless. And these riddles begin with the names. For the first time our mountains are mentioned in the “Book of the Big Drawing” of 1627 under the title of Devykh: “And along the upland side along the Volga from the mouth of the Sviyaga River to the mouth of the Samara River and up to Tsaritsyn by the bank of the mountain … - perhaps this is the first document in which our mountains are called Maiden. Perhaps they were called so because of the warriors of the Scythian-Sarmatian and Sauromat tribes, who left many legends about themselves in our places.
Even the most superficial acquaintance with the myths of the Samara Territory allows one to think about the fact that historical and modern legends are based on real facts and phenomena that are obvious to previous generations of local residents.
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For example, entering the territory of the Zhiguli, we see one of the most famous Zhiguli peaks - Molodetsky Kurgan, and next to it - Devyu Gora.
Folk legends often attribute these names to the era of Stepan Razin. Often, but not always. It is interesting that in the legends of the Samara Luka, the image of the keeper of the underground storerooms - the Mistress of the Mountains - emerges persistently and vividly. She, like the Mistress of the Copper Mountain in the Ural tales, owns all the treasures of the Zhiguli depths, hidden in the caves under the Zhiguli.
The cult of the Mistress may be an echo of the cult of Mother Earth (the feminine principle has always been attributed to the earth), one of the traces of matriarchy, which for some time was a form of organization among the tribes inhabiting Luka. One way or another, until the second half of the 18th century, the Zhigulevskie mountains were called the Devils. And legends, which are no less than half a thousand years old, tell about a group of heroic sisters, to whom "both good fellows and pedestrian kaliki came to measure their strength."
The legends about those days are still not forgotten among the people. People tell that the Hostess still protects the local places. And what is lost - mourns bitterly. The Tears of the Mistress break through the springs. She rarely cries, which is why there are so few springs on Samarskaya Luka. But there is no more healing water than spring water. They say that whoever drinks the spring water takes in a particle of the Zhiguli's soul.
And if the Mistress is especially bitter, her abundant tears fall from the Zhiguli slopes. Sometimes, among dry stones and among a dense forest, a crystal clear stream appears, as if from nowhere. This is the Mistress crying. And whoever had a chance to see her sadness, they call this miracle - the Waterfall of Tears. The Mistress will cease to be sad - and the waterfall disappears, as it never was. There are few such cases, but the stories about them (at least those that came directly to us) deserve surprise in the face of the unusualness of this rare phenomenon.
Shiryaevo village, summer, 1996
This is how the Togliatti journalist described (at her request I will only mention her name - Yulia) her personal experience of observing the “waterfall of tears of the Lady of the Zhiguli”:
“Once I was near the village of Shiryaeva with my relatives on the beach. I got tired of swimming, and I went to see the adits on Popova Gora. It was a weekday, there were no people in them. I went into the nearest passage, but decided not to go far - you never know … The silence and coolness inside the mountain just bribed me, I wanted to sit on a pebble, close my eyes and sit, sit, sit … The noise, as if from a strong stream water. My mind simultaneously gave out several possible reasons for this sound. The most striking was this: there was a collapse inside the mountain, and now I will be washed away by an underground river that burst out (they say that the Volga has a second - underground - channel).
In those moments when, under the influence of this sound and imaginary creepy pictures, as if I were floundering in the stream, and he carried me out of the cave, looked around, my attention was attracted by the flickering and overflow opposite the entrance to the adit. Above - think - a strong stream of water really flowed! She shimmered in the sun, she was crystal clear, transparent. There was a lot of water !!! I rushed to the exit, afraid that I would be immediately flooded, but in those few tens of seconds while I was running, the stream of water … disappeared. Little of! Everything was dry around! I still didn't understand what happened to me. I don't seem to suffer from glitches. And it looked and sounded too real."
It is interesting that in Samarskaya Luka there are indeed places that can be attributed to waterfalls. They are active in summer, and in winter frosts appear in the form of ice stalactites.
Legends about Mother Earth, the mistress of these places, about the heroic sisters were gradually replaced by stories about witches. This often happens in history - the guides of the later faith try to discredit the previous faith, to humiliate its symbols in order to turn people away from it and turn their attention to themselves.
They sleep, as the legends say, a long sleep in secret places under the Zhiguli. And on a rare night, legends say, witches fly out from under the water on their stupas, only to return later and fall asleep again before the appointed hour. Apparently, a certain convergence of myths led to the emergence of such legends - the convergence, and then the unification of mythological lines.
One of these lines has its origin in the historical fact of the existence of matriarchy, and the other, perhaps, testifies to a long history of observations of unidentified flying objects of clearly inhuman genesis, in appearance resembling the once widespread household item - stupas.
Perhaps there is another reason for the appearance of legends about witches, and it lies in the fact that some inhabitants of Samara Luka possess strange properties and supernatural powers. Whether these are our fellow citizens, or is it some other people - so far we can only guess. And again, facts from life force us to assume this.
Togliatti, June 19, 2001, half past four in the morning
Our phone rang. An old acquaintance called. Her voice trembling with emotion, she told the details of the event that had just happened to her.
Here is how it was. Half an hour before that, i.e. at about 3 am, both Anna and her husband woke up as if from a jolt - they themselves did not understand why. A couple of minutes after waking up, the doorbell rang - sharp, continuous and insistent. Anna went to the door and asked: "Who is there?" The answer is silence. She repeated the question, and an unfamiliar female voice said, "Open up, we have a message for you." To the clarifying question: "Who are you and what kind of message?" followed again by an insistent demand to open the door, and nothing more. Anna, naturally, did not open the door.
As if in revenge for disobedience, there was a strong pop in the room, like a balloon burst. Then a loud knock was heard in the son's room (the son was asleep), and the window glass vibrated long and disgustingly. Anna rushed onto the balcony and, looking out through the balcony window, saw how a very hunched figure, almost twisted by a wheel, was quickly running away from their entrance.
Something from women's clothing dangled on her, like a skirt, with a length below the knees (only for this detail, and for her voice, Anna called her a woman). The arms also dangled, and they were unusually long. This creature was small in height, about one and a half meters, and ran along the house towards the stop on Primorsky Boulevard.
It must be said that often in such cases one kind of anomaly is not enough. So it was here. Anna calmed down a little as she spoke. When asked how she had not guessed to look through the peephole, she was even a little offended: how, they say, had not guessed? She was watching! But for some reason the light on the landing was not on. Although in the evening everything was still in order. By the way, there was no need to change the lamp - by morning the light above the door appeared again.
And the continuation of the conversation, which took place in the evening of the coming day, revealed another anomaly. In the evening, her husband brought Anna a bouquet of completely fresh lilac flowers. So, by the morning they were not what they withered - they dried up like hay! Yes, and the potted flower standing on the window not far from the bouquet, although not dry, was almost completely soft and died (apparently, because it was somewhat further from the epicenter of events).
Judge for yourself how dangerous such events can be for people. Meeting with such a creature is not the only one; in the next issues you will be able to get acquainted with other similar events. They took place in some villages of Samarskaya Luka, which received the status of "witchcraft" among the people.
Of course, a lot has been invented about such villages - modern folk mythology sometimes resembles a vinaigrette of anomalous phenomena, erroneously interpreted natural phenomena, folk superstitions, and when artificially fed by local dreamers. And, nevertheless, it is still better not to meddle in such places for sharp impressions.
A significant part of our UFO investigations is occupied by the study of just such places. It is not easy to figure out when the roots of modern ideas about the "witchcraft power" of certain settlements go back centuries and into folk traditions, and when they have a phenomenological nature.
One of these places is the village of Askuly, more precisely, the territory, the epicenter of which is this village. In 1997, the entire regional inquisitive community was stirred up by the story that "witch circles" and a certain strange tree appeared near this village.
Tatiana Makarova
