Slavic Evil Spirits. From Nature Spirits and Malicious Entities to Guests from the Afterlife

A detailed study of the 'lower' mythology of the Slavs by Marina Golubeva, candidate of philosophical sciences and author of the book 'The True History of Magic'. A continuation of the series 'Myths from A to Z'.

Mermaids, witches, house spirits, and guardian spirits... Amazing, mysterious, and eerie supernatural beings of the ancient Slavs. Here, folk beliefs and legends, eyewitness accounts, and descriptions of the evil spirits with which our ancestors lived side by side are collected. Were these beings good? How did they influence people's lives and the surrounding world? What did they look like? You are in for an exciting journey through Slavic mythology and a whole section dedicated to applied demonology.

From the author
From ancient times, people were convinced that beside them, on the thin boundary of reality, lived many beings with supernatural abilities. Some were considered beings from another world, others inhabited the realm of death, and some lived next door to humans. These mysterious beings were very rarely kind, they influenced people's lives and the surrounding world, could control the elements, or inhabit the living and the dead.

Ideas about these beings and their abilities were passed down from generation to generation and became part of mythology. Mythology is divided into high — fantastic stories about gods, cultural heroes, the creation and structure of the world, and low — ideas about spirits and demons living alongside humans.

This book is dedicated to Slavic demonology — an amazing, mysterious, and often eerie world of supernatural beings in which the ancient Slavs believed. And this belief turned out to be more resilient than the faith in Perun and Veles; it could not be crushed by a thousand years of Christian dominance, scientific and technical progress, or the social storms that swept over the Slavic lands in the 20th century.