# Gifts from Birds 2. Geese-Swans and Slavic conception of the Universe



## Sasyexa (May 28, 2021)

Second part of Gifts from Birds. Here V. Orlov goes deeper into the Geese-Swans fairy-tale. Translation with some context:

_Knowledge my is not from books,
In truth is the immortal spring -
The tales of old realization bring
Symbols are wherever you look._

From Sufi poetry.

I finished the first part of "Gifts from Birds", sent it to the editor, sat and thought and slapped myself on the knee - why didn't we go deeper into the fairy tale "Geese-Swans", although we were spinning around the bush? And this tale is not as simple and schizophrenic as it might seem at first glance. This work is not about a negligent girl and not about the clinical death of her brother - it is much deeper!

I decided to fix this flaw. The tale "Geese-Swans" is now circulating in the main two versions - the folk one from the collection of A.N. Afanasyev and the version of A.N. Tolstoy. It is clear that for the analysis we will take Afanasiev's version, which did not suffer from Tolstoy's irrepressible "talent". And in order not to miss small details, we will tear the tale into fragments and give them article-by-article comments.

It begins with a completely everyday scene. Some dad and mom are absent by necessity and instruct the main character to look after the younger brother. This girl is no Mary Poppins, disdaining the duties of a nanny assigned to her, she runs away to the street to play with her friends. At this time, the swan-geese that have come from nowhere dive at the brother left unattended:

_*An old man lived with an old woman; they had a daughter and a little son. “Daughter, daughter! - said the mother. - We will go to work, bring you a bun, sew you a dress, buy you a handkerchief; be smart, take care of your brother, do not go out of the yard. " The elders left, and the daughter forgot what she was ordered to, put her brother on the grass under the window, and she herself ran into the street, played a lot, took a walk. Geese-swans flew in, grabbed the boy, carried him away on their wings.*_

*The girl came back, lo and behold - there is no brother! She gasped, rushed back and forth - no! She called for him, burst into tears, lamented about the punishment from her father and mother - my brother did not respond! She ran out into the open field; Geese-swans darted in the distance and disappeared behind a dark forest. Geese-swans have long acquired a bad reputation for themselves, they were naughty and stole small children; the girl guessed that they had taken away her brother, rushed to catch up with them.*

A negative characteristic was stuck to the geese right away (or rather, on the fly): "Geese-swans have long acquired a bad reputation for themselves, they were naughty and stole small children." But we know from the previous part that, firstly, the swan geese are the personal birds of Svarog, which means that they cannot be unambiguously negative characters in their status. And, secondly, like any migratory birds, they are engaged in the transportation of baby souls and, like a bird, they are indifferent to which direction to carry the baby - from heaven to earth or from earth to heaven.





Geese-swans in the fairy tale of the same name are represented by unambiguously negative characters, but in fact, they are neutral; after all, they didn’t eat the unfortunate child​It's just that in this case, the feathered logistic system worked in the “wrong” direction from the point of view of mortals, and the negligent sister has no choice but to set off in pursuit. Her path lies through a dark forest...

Then begins Pelevin-like surrealism. In the forest, a girl meets a furnace... There seems to be no logic in this episode! What can a furnace do in a forest?

_*She ran and ran, and there is a furnace. "Furnace, furnace, tell me, where did the geese fly?" - "Eat my rye pie, I'll tell you." - "Oh, we don't eat wheat food by my father *_(or priest)_*!" The furnace didn't tell her.*_

Of course, this mythologeme should not be taken literally. The furnace in this context symbolizes the whole kingdom - Pekel (Пекельное). This is the Kingdom of the Dead; the fabulous Third-ninth kingdom - the Third-tenth state. This is, in a way, the antipode of Svarga. If Svarga is in the highest, seventh heaven, then the Pekel kingdom is located at the very bottom of the Lower World, on the seventh level of the underworld. Vyi (Вый) reigns in the Pekel kingdom - the guardian of souls that have left the body. We know Vyi, thanks to N.V. Gogol's Ukrainian soft vocalization, as Viy (Вий). Vyi's weapon is a deadly gaze with which he is able to incinerate entire cities. Fortunately, this look is hidden by huge eyelids and long, up to the nose, thick eyebrows. But, all the same, anyone whom Vyi's gaze fell on at least once, even if he survived it directly with, sooner or later will fall into his possession.



> The *underworld* is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.
> 
> The concept of an underworld is found in almost every civilization and "may be as old as humanity itself". Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld, often for some heroic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the recently dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose. Persons having social status were dressed and equipped in order to better navigate the underworld.
> 
> A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination. Imagery of such journeys can be found in both ancient and modern art. The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors".





> This strange character of Ukrainian folklore, Viy, was studied by such outstanding Soviet scientists as V.I. Abaev, E.A. Grantovsky and G.M. Bongard-Levin. Analyzing Gogol's Viy, they associated it with Scythian (Iranian) roots. Thus, V.I. Abaev came to the conclusion that the image of Viy goes back to the ancient East Slavic god Vey (Ukrainian Viy), which corresponds to the Avestan god of death and wind Vay in the pantheon of the ancient Iranians (Scythians).
> 
> The correspondence of the image of Viy and Koshchey the Immortal is possible. According to E. Dmitrieva, the traits of the pagan god Veles were transferred to the image of Viy.
> 
> Researchers have suggested some correspondence between Viy and individual characters from Celtic mythology. So, these parallels were noted by the ethnographer N.F. Sumtsov. According to the Irish mythological tradition, the leader of the Fomorians Balor had the nickname "Evil Eye", because the look of his only eye could kill like lightning. He could slay an entire army with his deadly gaze: "Against a handful of soldiers, an army of many thousands who looked into this eye could not resist." In Welsh mythology, an analogue of Balor is known - this is the giant Yspadadden Penkawr. His name means "Lord of the Giants", he had such huge and heavy eyelids that they had to be lifted with metal supports so that he could at least see something. According to the linguist V.V. Ivanov, Viy is a mythological character, not a hoax, but he is not associated with the Indo-Iranian god of the wind, but belongs to the narrower, East Slavic-Alano-Celtic mythological (demonological) isogloss, although in a later work, he already accepts the etymological hypothesis of Abaev. According to the Indologist Ya.V. Vasilkov, the spread of a mythological character having common features in various cultures and traditions arose due to the geographical proximity of peoples, which supposedly took place when the Slavic tribes were surrounded from the south by the Iranians, in the north they were adjacent to the Balts and in the south west of the Celts .



It is not in vain that our heroine first of all runs to inquire whether the brother kidnapped by the geese-swans is in the Pekel kingdom - where else can he be, if not in the Kingdom of the Dead? Ask, why not in Svarga? - This will be discussed later...

A cunning furnace, in exchange for information, invites the girl to taste her rye pie. I hope you recognized this dish as a traditional dish of the Slavic memorial meal without me. And in this case, the stove invites the girl to taste the food of the dead. Of course, a polite refusal follows, which is due not to the disrespect of our heroine, but to the fact that she realizes that this procedure will irrevocably introduce her to the World of the Dead. It is far from the fact that she will find the desired brother there, but she will absolutely not be able to return to our World.

After refusing to taste the pies, the furnace loses all interest in its potential victim; the girl runs further and meets an apple tree:

_*She ran further, there is an apple trees. "Apple tree, apple tree, tell me, where did the geese fly?" - "Eat my forest apple, I'll tell you." “Oh, we don't eat garden food by my father too!”...*_

This plant is also found here for a reason. Having "dived" from our World to the Lower and making sure that the brother is not there, our heroine now needs to find out if he is in the Upper World. There is only one way to get from the Lower World to the Upper World - along the trunk of the World Tree, which is the spine of the Slavic-pagan Universe.



> The *world tree* is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereby connecting the heavens, the terrestrial world, and, through its roots, the underworld. It may also be strongly connected to the motif of the tree of life, but it is the source of wisdom of the ages.
> 
> Specific world trees include _égig érő fa_ in Hungarian mythology, Ağaç Ana in Turkic mythology, Modun in Mongol mythology, _Yggdrasil_ in Norse mythology, Irminsul in Germanic mythology, the oak in Slavic, Finnish and Baltic, Iroko in Yoruba religion, _Jianmu_ in Chinese mythology, and in Hindu mythology the _Ashvattha_ (a _Ficus religiosa_).



The world tree has many faces: among the Sumerians it is huluppu (willow); among the Aryans - ashvattha (fig tree); for the Scandinavians - ash; among the Mesoamerican Indians - in general, a cactus (blue agave)... Alexander Sergeevich called it a green oak and localized it somewhere “near the Lukomorye”; in folklore, this is also an oak, though not green, but mokretsky (that is, saturated with juices, alive), growing on the island of Buyan; and in Russian fairy tales, the World Tree can appear in the form of a birch, spruce, pine, and even be a representative of the legume family. Our fairy tale "The Rooster and the Magic Millstones" or its imported version "Jack and the Beanstalk" tells about the latter version - both there and there the main character goes to heaven through a giant pea / bean sprout, where he receives magical gifts.



> In the Dove Book and other medieval Russian books, *Buyan* (Russian: Буя́н, sometimes transliterated as *Bujan*) is described as a mysterious island in the ocean with the ability to appear and disappear using tides. Three brothers—Northern, Western, and Eastern Winds—live there, and also the Zoryas, solar goddesses who are servants or daughters of the solar god Dazhbog.



Despite such an abundance of avatars, the World Tree, in whatever guise it appears in the narrative, is not difficult to identify - in legends it grows (often overnight) from earth to sky. It is in this, and not in fruiting, that the main function of the World Tree lies - it connects all the Worlds of our Universe, from the depths of the underworld to the heavenly abode of the gods of the light Svarga. Along its trunk, the gods descend from heaven to the sinful earth, and in order to get into the underground world, you need to go down into the cave located between its roots.




The Cyrillic letter "Live (Живете)" symbolizes the branches and roots of the World Tree; the point at which its constituent lines intersect is our unsightly World.​
From the point of view of banal logic, the World Tree can be considered an oak only conditionally, since not only acorns grow on it, but also all conceivable and inconceivable fruits. According to fairy tales, the most famous “fruit” growing on the World Tree are rejuvenating apples. They are golden and return to the one who ate them youth and health. Therefore, there is no contradiction in the fact that in the fairy tale "Geese-Swans" the World Tree appears to us in the form of an apple tree.

The apple tree on the path of the heroine symbolizes the fact that not finding her brother in the Lower World, she found herself at the crossroads of Worlds. Like the furnace, the apple tree invites her to taste its fruits. In other conditions, it would be an extremely valuable gift, because her apples give a person immortality - remember, at least, how much strength and nerves Ivan Tsarevich spent from the fairy tale "Rejuvenating Apples" to get such a means of rejuvenation for his elderly father. However, our heroine cannot accept this gift.

The pagans did not have death familiar to us, people of the Christian circuit. Their death was limited to the migration of the soul from one World to another - higher or lower. The effect of the rejuvenating apples was that they blocked this process. If our heroine ate the fruits offered to her, she would remain forever at this fork, out of time and space. Therefore, the welcoming apple tree is rejected.

_*She ran on, there is a milk river, *__*kissel*__* banks. "Milk river, kissel banks, where did the geese fly?" - "Eat my simple kissel with milk, I'll tell you." - "Oh, we don't eat cream by my father too!"*_

As we expected, not finding her brother in the Lower World, the sister, looking for him, rushed along the World Tree to the Upper World and ended up on the kissel banks of the Milk River.

The milk river - the kissel banks encircle Iriy and is the sacred border of Svarga. We, mortals, can only see a small stretch of the milky river from Earth, which we call the Milky Way. This is where the sister had to climb in search of her brother! Descend to the seventh bottom of the underworld and ascend to the seventh heaven, reaching the residence of Svarog!

The worst thing is that there was no brother here either! The honor of staying in Svarga still needs to be earned, but the brother, in view of his youth, which is especially emphasized in the tale, apparently did not have any merits. Probably, he has not even gone through the initiation ceremony, and therefore he has no place next to the gods. For Christians, any child up to six years old is automatically considered an angelic soul, but among pagans, the selection is tougher - child, not a child - if you haven't fulfilled your earthly destiny, you go to Nav!

But from Nav, from the Lower World, from the Pekel kingdom, we began to look for the kidnapped child - he was not there! Nor is he among the ancestors in Svarga, in the Upper World... Where is he? It's time to despair and curtail the search...

However, our heroine does not give up. She rejects another offering - kissel with milk. Again, I hope you don’t need to explain that kissel is the same regular at funeral feasts, like rye pies. That is, the milk river, just like the furnace before, invites the girl to take communion with the food of the dead and join them in Svarga. But until the brother is found, this is not for her.

_*And for a long time she would run through the fields and wander through the forest, but, fortunately, she caught a hedgehog; she wanted to push him, but she was afraid of being pricked and asks: "Hedgehog, hedgehog, haven't you seen where the geese flew?" - "There!" - he pointed out.*_

This meeting is a special subject. To begin with, the hedgehog is far from the most popular character in Russian folklore. I found, literally, a couple of fairy tales, with the participation of hedgehogs, yes, and even then in none of them he is the main character.




The zealous, reasonable and good-natured hedgehog was loved by Soviet storytellers and animators - in Russian folklore he practically does not occur.​The hedgehog is revealed to the maximum in the Voronezh version of the fairy tale "Terem of the Flies" (the profane name "Teremok"). There he finds himself among the inhabitants of the house and... saves it from the encroachments of the bear. When the bear wants to grab the inhabitants of the house and puts his paw under the door, the hedgehog heroically throws himself into his palm, pricks it with thorns and forces him to retreat.

In existential interpretations, the hedgehog is polarly dual. On the one hand, he is expressed as a chthonic, that is, a creature connected to the earth. This must be partly why Tolstoy was able to relatively painlessly replace the hedgehog in his version with another chthonic monster - the mouse. In this hypostasis, the hedgehog appears as a secretive, stingy, thieving tramp, who does not hesitate to profit from vegetable fruits in the master's gardens. Proceeding from the latter prejudice, excessively fanatical Christian theologians, masterly mastering the art of bringing any idea to the point of absurdity, identified hedgehogs with, no more - no less, the devil. Say, "the devil steals away Christian souls, just like a hedgehog steals ripe berries."




An illustration from a medieval bestiary: a devil in the guise of a hedgehog kidnaps lost souls, represented by grapes, from a garden that symbolizes the kingdom of heaven.​By the way, a reference from related fields of knowledge. Contrary to the ingrained delusion, hedgehogs do not carry loads on their backs; they cherish the only means of self-defense given to them by nature - needles. The only thing that hedgehogs willingly string on them are rotten apples. But this is done not for gastronomic reasons, but for hygienic reasons: the organic acids of the apple juice released during this process disinfect the hedgehog's skin and help against parasites.

However, in any subject, everyone sees what he wants to see; for some the glass is half empty, for others it is half full. If the Christian scholastics managed to see the devil in the hedgehog, then, for example, the Aryan sun worshipers saw in a living ball bristling with needles a clear resemblance to the Sun ball emitting rays.

It is the Sun that is symbolized by the hedgehog in the fairy tale in question. Well, who else can freely travel around all the Worlds and be informed about everything that happens in them? Having passed all three Worlds and not finding a brother anywhere, a grief-stricken sister begins to beg the Sun for help. A normal act of a normal pagan woman - many in similar situations do the same:

(no rhyme this time)
_For his bride
Prince Elisey
Gallops around the world.
No, no! He cries bitterly
And whoever he asks,
No one can answer;
Someone laughs at him
Others turn away;
To the red sun at last
The fellow addressed:
“Light is our sun! You walk
All year round in the sky, you replace
Winter with warm spring
You can see all of us under you.
Will you deny me the answer?
Didn't you see where in the world
Is the young princess?
I am her fiancé. - "You are my light, -
The red sun answered , -
I have not seen the princess.
Know, she is no longer alive.
Moon, my neighbor,
Should have met her somewhere
Or noticed her trail. "_

Elisey was not lucky - his dead princess was quietly buried by the seven heroes without witnesses on a moonless night. Our heroine was more fortunate - the omniscient hedgehog knows the whereabouts of the boy stolen by the geese-swans; The sun either saw where they took him, or already guesses where to look for the missing child:

_*She ran - there is a hut on chicken legs, it stands and turns. In the hut sits the Baba Yaga, with an old muzzle, a clay leg; and the brother sits on a bench, playing with golden apples.*_

Of course, if the brother is not in the three Worlds, it means that he is stuck somewhere at their crossroads. Here, on the border of the Worlds, there is only one creature - the owner of the hut on chicken legs, known to us under the pseudonym Baba Yaga.



> In Slavic folklore, *Baba Yaga* (/ˌbɑːbə ˈjɑːɡə/; Russian: Баба-Яга, tr. _Bába-Jagá_, IPA: [ˈbabə jɪˈɡa] (listen)) is a supernatural being (or a trio of sisters of the same name) who appears as a deformed or ferocious-looking old woman. In Slavic culture, Baba Yaga lived in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs.
> 
> Baba Yaga may help or hinder those that encounter her or seek her out. She may play a maternal role and has associations with forest wildlife. According to Vladimir Propp's folktale morphology, Baba Yaga commonly appears as either a donor, villain, or may be altogether ambiguous. Her depictions vary greatly across tales, ranging from a child-eating monster, to helping a protagonist find his missing bride.
> 
> Andreas Johns identifies Baba Yaga as "one of the most memorable and distinctive figures in eastern European folklore", and observes that she is "enigmatic" and often exhibits "striking ambiguity". Johns summarizes Baba Yaga as "a many-faceted figure, capable of inspiring researchers to see her as a Cloud, Moon, Death, Winter, Snake, Bird, Pelican or Earth Goddess, totemic matriarchal ancestress, female initiator, phallic mother, or archetypal image"



Actually, the folk version of the tale and its modification performed by Tolstoy differ the most in this place. The bloodthirsty Tolstoy motivates the finding of the child with Baba Yaga by the fact that she wants to fry and eat him. In the folk version, Baba Yaga and the boy just sit in front of each other. Moreover, the boy is playing with golden apples! Remember those? These are the same fruits of the World Tree that give youth and prolong life - rejuvenating apples! It is not for nothing that earlier in the text, the World Tree in this fairy tale appeared in the form of an apple tree, not an oak or a guava.

And don't you think that Baba Yaga gave the boy golden apples not just to hold, but to eat them?! By doing this, she slowed down his transition to the World of the Dead - she saved him! She left him with her, despite the fact that the birds of Svarog were supposed to deliver him to their immediate master. But, if the child got to Svarog, the way back to earth would be closed to him. What, did not expect such a turn?

To understand her act, one must remember who Baba Yaga was in her best years. If, according to academician Rybakov, a fairy tale is a desacralized myth, then Baba Yaga is a desacralized Makosh.



> *Mokosh* (Old East Slavic: Мóкошь) is a Slavic goddess mentioned in the Primary Chronicle, protector of women's work and women's destiny. She watches over spinning and weaving, shearing of sheep, and protects women in childbirth. Mokosh is the Mother Goddess.
> 
> Mokoš was the only female deity whose idol was erected by Vladimir the Great in his Kiev sanctuary along with statues of other major gods (Perun, Hors, Dažbog, Stribog, and Simargl).



Makosh - Slavic, pagan goddess of fate; giver of the lot. Makosh has two sisters - Dolya (Srecha) (good destiny, when something good is given or have happened) and Nedolya (Nesrecha) (cruel destiny, when something bad is given or something is taken away). All three of them are weaving goddesses who spin the threads of human destinies. The leader in this trio, of course, is Makosh, and her sisters (or emanations) Dolya and Nedolya only correct the work of Makosh, weaving good and evil events into her thread. At the same time, Dolya and Nedolya have very poor eyesight and they add more good to someone, and to someone evil - that's why everyone has their own fate.

Reminds me of three fates


> In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the *Moirai* (/ˈmɔɪraɪ, -riː/, also spelled *Moirae* or *Mœræ*; Ancient Greek: Μοῖραι, "lots, destinies, apportioners"), often known in English as the *Fates* (Latin: _Fata_), were the incarnations of destiny; their Roman equivalent was the Parcae (euphemistically the "sparing ones"), and there are other equivalents in cultures that descend from the Proto-Indo-European culture. Their number became fixed at three: Clotho ("spinner"), Lachesis ("allotter") and Atropos ("the unturnable", a metaphor for death).
> 
> The role of the Moirai was to ensure that every being, mortal and divine, lived out their destiny as it was assigned to them by the laws of the universe. For mortals, this destiny spanned their entire lives, and was represented as a thread spun from a spindle. Generally, they were considered to be above even the gods in their role as enforcers of fate, although in some representations Zeus, the chief of the gods, is able to command them.
> 
> ...



In fairy tales (not without the influence of Christianity), Yaga appears mainly as a guide to the Kingdom of the Dead - without her advice, the hero's mission is impossible, and his victory is not possible. In order for the hero to be able to enter there, it is not enough to show him the way - he himself must become like the dead. And Yaga performs a ritual over him (it is standard in all fairy tales): first, washing in the bath correlates to the washing of the deceased, and then food and drinks - the hero eats the food of the dead and becomes one of them for a while. Therefore, in the kingdom of Vyi, he does not arouse suspicion in anyone and successfully fulfills his task.




Makosh (traditional embroidery): on her apron there is the World Tree, on the right and on the left there are alternating swastikas denoting the Sun of the living and the Sun of the dead (that is, the goddess herself stands on the boundary line between the World of the living and the World of the dead), in her hands are birds (the same geese-swans).​And since Yaga is a spinner, it is not surprising that the hero receives a magic ball of threads from her instead of a compass. Look in a new way at the depth of symbolism: Yaga gives the hero a ball and the hero arrives at the destination only when the ball is completely unwound and the thread ends. The meaning of this: the Yaga's ball, like the goddess of fate, is entwined not from a simple thread, but from the thread of the hero's fate. The thread-fate leads the hero through the dark forest - the future. Accordingly, when the thread of life ends, he enters the Kingdom of the Dead. Everything is logical and beautiful!

Makosh spins the threads of our destinies at night. Before, the spinners had a prejudice that you couldn't leave the yarn overnight, otherwise Makosh would spin it away. In fact, human yarn could hardly be of interest to Makosh, since she was spinning not from wool or flax, but from sunlight - a golden tow. That is why she worked, despite myopia, only at night - during the day she prepared raw materials for future work. “… And here is my present for you: a silver base, a golden spindle; if you spin a tow, the golden thread will stretch” (“Finest - the brave falcon”).

As we found out in the previous part of this study, when a person is born on earth, Svarog opens a window in the sky through which he releases a bird with the soul of a newborn and then watches this person all his life. To the inhabitants of the earth, these windows are visible like stars. It is to the personal star that Makosh ties the thread of fate. Mortals are allowed to touch only a short piece of this thread - the umbilical cord. Therefore, the umbilical cord must be protected - neglecting it can anger Makosh and it will shorten life proportionally.

And then Makosh spins, and Dolya and Nedolya help her, weaving a bit of happiness and unhappiness into the main thread. They spin until the goddess of death Morena cuts the thread of someone's life with her sickle. Morena, despite being Mokosha's, Dolya's and Nedolya's niece, gladly spoils the work of her aunts, but they themselves are not very interested in this. Therefore, Baba Yaga in the fairy tale "Geese-Swans" does everything to give the kidnapped boy a second chance - she detains him in her hut, gives him magical food that keeps his soul at the crossroads of Worlds, and, subsequently, gives her sister the opportunity to steal him back:

_*Sister saw him, crept up, grabbed  him and carried away; and the geese flew in pursuit of her; the villains will catch up, where to go? There is a milk river, kissel banks. "Mother river, hide me!" - "Eat my kissel!" Nothing else to do, she ate it. The river hid her under the bank, the geese flew by.*_

If, in search of her brother, our heroine refused all offers to eat or drink something, then on the way back, her actions are opposite. This is due to the fact that if on the way there, the girl could not, without finding her brother, enter any of the Worlds, so as not to get closed down there forever, on the way back they, on the contrary, have to go through them all. They must incarnate in each of the Worlds; as if to confirm their existence.

The path of the sister and brother home is presented in the form of a descent through the sacred Worlds: milk river (Svarga, Upper World) - apple tree (World tree) - furnace (Pekel kingdom, Lower World). Everywhere follows the standard procedure of eating food belonging to one or another World, and entering it (or rather, passing through):

_*She came out, said: "Thank you!" and again runs with her brother; and the geese returned, flying towards them. What to do? Trouble! There is an apple tree. "Apple tree, mother apple tree, hide me!" - "Eat my apple!" She ate it quickly. The apple tree covered her with twigs, covered her with leaves; the geese flew by. She went out and ran again with her brother, and the geese saw them - and went after them; they fly close, they beat them with their wings, almost snatching him from her hands! Fortunately, there is a furnace on the road. "Madam furnace, hide me!" - "Eat my rye pie!" The girl quickly put a pie in her mouth, and herself in the oven, sat down in it. The geese flew, flew, shouted, shouted and flew away empty-handed. And she ran home, and it's good that she managed to come in time, both father and mother came home.*_

The swan-geese that missed their prey, of course, prevent the transition of our heroes from nothingness to existence, but their efforts are in vain. Children return home, parents too, family reunites, a happy end...

At one time we invented a simple test by which any work of folklore is checked for sacredness - this is the number of characters; there should be 7. So it was in Kolobok, so it was in Repka, so it was in Hen Ryaba, so it should be in this example. Let's count!

We do not take into account the talking furnace, apple tree and river - these are inanimate objects that symbolize not personalities, but whole kingdoms, or even Worlds. And without them, it turns out that there are seven animated characters in the fairy tale! Here they are, in order of appearance on the stage:

father
mother
sister
brother
collective character - geese-swans
Hedgehog
Baba Yaga
The test is passed, the sacred seven is found!

Why did we have to additionally prove the sacredness of the fairy tale "Geese-Swans"? The point is that conceptually it is not unique. In our folklore, out of any three fairy tales, at least two narrate about the journey of the hero / heroine to the Third-ninth kingdom - the Third-tenth state, that is, to the World of the Dead. But this, as a rule, is the end of the matter - the hero finds himself only in the World of the Dead and nowhere else. "Geese-Swans" - if not the only, then the main and most detailed fairy tale, in which the character passes through all the Worlds of the pagan Universe; descends to the very bottom of the Lower World and along the trunk of the World Tree reaches the top of the Upper World. This tale is a coded synopsis of the cosmological concepts of our ancestors. Moreover, this is not only a guide to their Universe, but also an instruction on behavior at each of its levels; analogue of the Egyptian or Tibetan "Book of the Dead".

I often come across the statement that nothing is left of Slavic paganism. Well, that is, nothing at all! And all our current ideas about paganism are either taken from the ceiling by armchair theorists who are greedy for scientific degrees, or sucked out of the finger by self-proclaimed neo-pagan false prophets. Say, since the written primary sources have not reached us, then there is nothing to talk about - you can only shrug your hands with sympathy and sadness.

This implies the following postulate: since nothing came to us, it means that there was nothing to begin with. Look, the ancient Egyptians or Hellenes, for example, have branched mythology and a whole freak show of heroes. And the Slavs?

And it is quite reasonable in this place to ask the question: “Who were the Slavs? "(c). And to answer to myself in an internal dialogue: “These are barbarians, people who speak an incomprehensible language, these are second-class people, they are almost animals” (c). And these "almost animals" have nothing in common with complex philosophical concepts and developed cosmological schemes?!

This is such a sad picture... which easily collapses with one children's fairy tale about geese-swans, which tells how our ancestors imagined their Universe!

Do you know what the real value of this tale is? It’s not at all that it sets out the questions of the pagan world order, but that it testifies that these questions worried our ancestors! That they have drained their brains in search of answers to these questions. That they were trying to comprehend something that is incomprehensible even for today's scientists with their hubbles and colliders. That they knew how to think abstractly about things distant, detached and not having a utilitarian meaning. This alone should show, to put it mildly, the inconsistency of all conversations about "barbarism" and "second-rate" of our ancestors, since neither animals, nor "almost animals" (c) the ability of abstract thinking, as you know, do not possess - this is the quality of higher beings...

Vladimir Orlov


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## davtash (May 29, 2021)

Sasyexa said:


> Second part of Gifts from Birds. Here V. Orlov goes deeper into the Geese-Swans fairy-tale. Translation with some context:
> 
> _Knowledge my is not from books,
> In truth is the immortal spring -
> ...


A truly fascinating thread. I read this to my russian daughter scores of times. Now Slavic paganism, words fail me, is no longer here. Yet Slavic land is huge.


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## Alexandra (May 30, 2021)

It sounds a bit like the fairytale of Hansel und Gretel. Evil witch in the woods, eating something, the stove,  and white birds to escort them back.

I have this feeling that "they" (? ...who controls the narrative of our history) want to hide or whipe out the influence of the Russians on our history in Western Europe.


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## Sasyexa (May 30, 2021)

Alexandra said:


> I have this feeling that "they" (? ...who controls the narrative of our history) want to hide or whipe out the influence of the Russians on our history in Western Europe.


It attests more to our connection as peoples. Common origin, but categorized as different. I'm interested in where that point of separation was, because even in the names that opposition is apparent.
Славяне (Slavs) comes from the word слово (word) - people, who speak the same words.
Немцы (Germans) comes from word немой (mute) - people, who can't speak normally


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