Letnitsa Treasure

Here are some very interesting metal plaques from the so called "Letnitsa Treasure", a 4th c. BC Thracian hoard discovered near Letnitsa, Bulgaria...

This one depicts one of the most common themes from Balkan fairytales: a princess being kidnapped by a dragon...

What happens next in Balkan fairytales is that a prince goes looking for the princess to rescue her. There are several metal plaques in the "Letnitsa Treasure" depicting a mounted warrior, like this one for instance...

Eventually, the prince finds the princess, living quite surprisingly, not unhappily, with the dragon...

What happens next in Balkan fairytales is that the prince manages to persuade the princess to help him defeat the dragon, by tricking the dragon into revealing his weakness...Dragon killed, princess saved, everyone happy. Particularly the princess who is sitting on the prince's laps with his hand up her skirt 🙂...As depicted on this last plaque from the "Letnitsa Treasure"...

Now how do we know that this is a dragon? It looks more like giant snake...With a crown...

Slavic folk tradition related to snakes, which consists of huge number of beliefs, taboos and rituals, is one of the most interesting and most complex in the world. And extremely old...

In Slavic mythology snake is closely connected to two mythological creatures: the Snake King and the Dragon...

And actually the only way to understand the meaning of the beliefs and rituals related to snakes is to look at them in correlation with beliefs related to the Snake King and the Dragon. And the other way round...

The snake king is an old male snake which wears a crown or a jewel on his forehead and usually guards a treasure...And sacred knowledge...

Like "Nemušti jezik" from Serbian folk tales. A language that a man can use to communicate with all living creatures in the world. You can't learn this language. You can only get the knowledge of this language if a Snake king spits into your mouth...

I talked about this in my posts "Glaucos" and "Kassandra"...

It was also believed that the Snake king commanded all the other snakes and told told them who to bite and kill...

Slavs recognized male and female snakes and actually have different words for male and female snakes. Female snake is called "zmija, zmeja"... while male snake is normally called "smuk,  smok"... They were believed to be husband and wife or brother and sister...

What is interesting is that "smuk, smok" is another word for dragon, besides the most common word "zmaj, zmej", which is the masculine form of the word for snake "zmija, zmeja". In Slavic mythology dragon is believed to be an "old male snake"...

This is very interesting as it shows direct link between snakes and dragons and shows that Slavs believed that dragons were actually male snakes.

Slavs also believed that snakes were directly linked to the sun and that they fed off the sun's heat...I talked about this in my post "Enemy of the sun"...

In Poland, people believed that Snake king lives among the roots of an old Hazel tree. Every autumn he gathers all the snakes, who then slither up the tree to its branches "to see the sun for the last time" before they go under ground...

Snakes are solar animals. They are in our world when sun is in our world (hot part of the year) and they are in the underworld when sun is in the underworld (cold part of the year)...I talked about this in my post "The chthonic animal"...

Slavs weren't the only Europeans that believed this. Some "esoteric" dudes, the preservers of the "ancient knowledge" blah blah blah...did too. Vipera Pythia, c. 1651, by Marco Aurelio Severino...

Snakes are symbol of the sun and the sun's heat. They are also symbols of the beginning of summer, as vipers, the most common Eurasian snakes, start mating in Apr/May, beginning of summer...

And dragons, old snakes, are symbol of the old sun, destructive summer sun which burns the land and causes drought. Steals and guards water...Which is why in Slavic mythology, dragon, always breathes fire...

This is actually spelled out in Russian folklore. Nicholas Roerich, "Victory over Gorynych the Serpent". Gorynych means "the fiery one, the burning one", from gori (burns)...

And which is why in the past, during spring droughts, Serbs used to go to mountain lakes, on St George's day, and pray for rain on lake shores "to the dragons living in the lake who swallowed the rain"...

I talked about this in my post "Dragon who stole rain"...

There is actually a Serbian belief that "a snake got wings when it lived over 100 years, after which it flew away to live in lakes and waters"...Just like a Dragon...

This is in addition to the belief from Ukraine and Poland that snakes once had wings and flew in the sky. But the sun burned their wings and they fell on the ground. I wrote about this in my article about Slavic belief in the link between snakes and sun...

Now check this out: Another applique from the famous Thracian Letnitsa treasure, dated to the first half of the 4th c. BC, featuring a maiden (princess) with a three-headed dragon, a common motif from Balkan (and not just Balkan) Slavic fairy tales...

You can see that the dragon heads are depicted as snake heads, so this three-headed dragon is basically just a large three-headed snake...

This "dragon with snake heads" depiction is first found Mesopotamia, where according to their religious texts, summer lasted seven (hot) months...Which is why local dragon (dragon = symbol of summer), had seven snake heads (snake = symbols of sun's heat)...Oh, and look, we also have dragon killer(s) and the princess 🙂 I talked about this in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

We also find dragons depicted with snake heads in Bronze Age Bactria where dragons are literally depicted as snakes with wings:

This is my favourite Bactrian seal depicts a snake with two heads: a dragon (left) and a bull (right)...Symbolically equating dragon (summer sun) and bull (summer starts in Taurus) and linking both with the sun's heat, symbolised by a snake body...I talked about this in my post "Bactrian snakes and dragons"...

 

We find this same equating of dragons with bulls among Balkan Slavs. 

Christian and Muslim Serbs also sacrificed young girls at the lake under Trojan fortress on Pešter highland, to a three headed dragon, or in another version of the legend, to a water bull...I talk about this in my post "Water bull"...

Some people will say that none of these monsters is Zmaj but that they are Aždaja. However, Serbian Aždaja (Aždaya) or Aždaha is another name for a dragon, which comes from Azhi Dahāka, which comes from Aži (nominative ažiš) is the Avestan word for "serpent" or "dragon"...

I talked about this in my post "Snake god from Hatra":

Azhi Dahāka? Aždaha? Zahak? Arimanius? Ahriman? Angra Mainiu? Nergal? Dragon? Lion? Sun. Destructive sun of summer, which causes drought and death. 

Summer which starts in Apr/May, when vipers start to mate...Hence two snakes coming out of his shoulders. Also snakes are symbol of sun's heat. On this Bactrian seal we find this depiction of the Sun God with heat (sun) rays coming out of his shoulders, holding snakes...

And on this one, heat (sun) rays on one shoulder are actually replaced by a snake, explicitly equating the two as symbols...

Now, there is an interesting Slavic word "jar" which means young, green, spring...It is the root of the name of the Slavic sun god, Jarilo (pronounced Yahreeloh)...He is the life giving spring and early summer sun that brings back life to the frozen earth...Here is a depiction of Jarilo painted by Russian artist Andrey Shishkin...

Jarilo is the original Green Man...This is Zeleni Jura (Green Jarilo) walking the earth. Part of Jurjevanje, celebration of the spring return of Jarilo, Sun god, from the land of the dead...Bela Krajina, area inhabited by descendants of Serbians who migrated here during Turkish invasions of the Balkans. Today split between Croatia/Slovenia...

But the root "jar" can also mean "brightly burning" and "raging, furious"...

This means that Jarilo can also mean "The Scorcher", the life destroying burning sun of the late summer and early autumn...

Two suns, young and old, the life creator and life destroyer...In one...

Jurjevo, the celebration of the return of Jarilo, is today known as St George's day. St George is basically Christianised Jarilo...

Jurjevo is the celebration of the beginning of the summer, the domain of the sun...And dragons...Because as the summer goes on, and the sun gets hotter and hotter, snake, the symbol of sun's heat, grows older and older and eventually turns into dragon, the symbol of destructive sun's heat...

Jarilo, The Scorcher, The Dragon...To whom Serbs, sacrificed rams during droughts, on St George's day, with blood poured into the lake, for the dragon who stole rain...

Funny...

St George = Jarilo = Dragon...

By the way, Serbs believed that the Snake King, who is "An Old Male snake", The Dragon, also had a "green branch in his mouth"...

Interesting right? 

Snake King = Dragon = Jarilo = Green man...

By the way, the dragons who steal princesses in the Balkan fairytales usually live in palaces...They are kings...Snake kings...

I believe that Jurjevo, Jarilo's day, is at the same time the celebration of good spring sun and bad summer sun. The day of thanks for the spring and prayers for the summer...Anyway, on that day spring ends, summer begins...

And every year, on The Day of Jarilo, The Day of Dragon, the Young Spring Earth, Vesna, is "sacrificed" to the Young Sun, Jarilo (The Dragon). Spring (the princess) is "sacrificed" (it ends) so that Summer (The Dragon) can begin???

But wait, St George is a dragon killer!!! Well, what's the best way to Christianise Jarilo, The Sun, The Scorcher, The Dragon, than to turn it into it's opposite...The Dragon Killer...

Anyway, as I said, in AD Balkan Slavic fairytales, prince kills the dragon, gets the girl and lives with her happily ever after...Any BC myths like these?

BTW, this link between sun, snakes and dragons from Slavic mythology allows us to decipher meaning of snakes and dragons from other mythologies too...They are animal calendar markers. Snake is the animal calendar marker for the beginning of summer (Apr/May), when Eurasian snakes begin to mate. And dragon, the old snake, which was sometimes depicted as a lion with snake head(s), is the animal calendar marker for the end of summer (Jul/Aug), when Eurasian lions begin to mate, and snakes get old...

You can read more about snakes, dragons and lions in my posts "You will trample great lion and serpent", "Chimera", "Lion killing snake", "Jörmungandr", "Bactrian snakes and dragons", "Seven headed dragon", "Khafajeh vase", "Nude winged hero dominating snakes", "Winged superhuman hero", "Tiger and dragon", "Eagle snake struggle", "Wolf vs snake"...

More about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here then check the rest of the blog posts I still didn't add to this page, and finally to to @serbiaireland and check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Balluderon Stone

This is the Balluderon Stone, otherwise known as Martin's Stone. It is a class II Pictish cross slab in situ at Balluderon, Angus, Scotland.

 Local tradition associates the slab with the Legend of the Nine Maidens who were devoured by a dragon which was subsequently slain by a hero named Martin. Folk etymology names this as the origin of Strathmartine (Strike Martin), the valley in which the slab stands...

The legend is believed to have originated between the seventh and ninth centuries, when the Picts farmed the land in Tayside. I have come across two versions...

In one, recorded by the antiquarian John Pinkerton (1758–1826), the 9 maidens were daughters of a certain Martin. They are killed by a dragon and their father then avenges their death by killing the dragon:

In the other one the maidens were daughters of a local farmer. They are killed by a dragon and St Martin then avenges their death by killing the dragon:

Is this the actual meaning of this story?

I talked about the link between snakes and sun, sun's heat in many articles on my blog. Snakes our in our world during warm part of the year and in the "otherworld" during cold part of the year...Dragon is just another name for the "great serpent"...Basically the sun, sun's heat...

One very interesting thing about the Balluderon stone is this detali. What is this symbol? It most likely represents the beginning and the end of the snake period, considering that it is depicted upward at the head and downward at the tail...

At the first glance this stone looks so much like early medieval Balkan "Stećak" standing stones. And believe or not the same symbol is found on many of these Balkan standing stones. One example:

What is very interesting is that in the Balkans this symbol has "legs" and looks like anthropomorphic plant. Could this be Jarilo, Young sun from Slavic mythology, the bringer of life, the bringer of Spring? His name means Bright Hot one but also Young Green one...

In Croatia he is called "Zeleni Jura" (Green Jarilo) and is during Jurjevo (St George's day, but really Yarilo's day, Beginning of Summer festival) played by a man disguised as a green bush. This is the original Green Man...

So the symbols marking the beginning and the end of The Great Serpent (The Dragon) could actually mark the arrival and the departure of Jarilo (Sun). Jarilo, who was believed to spend winter in "the land of the dead", where he is "reborn" on Winter Solstice...I talked about this in my post "Young god".

Jarilo's day (St George for Christians) marks of the beginning of summer, the time when sun's heat becomes destructive. Jarilo (Whose name means The Bright Hot Raging one) is "The Dragon"...Dragon that has to be killed or the world will be burned too cinder...

And so St George kills The Dragon (Yarilo) 🙂 Hilarious. And very clever. Turning god into god killer...But also necessary and inevitable (thank god) or we would be living in a lifeless roasting desert...

In reality dragon killing is done by Perun, at the other end of summer. It is him who inflicts the deadly wound with his thunderbolt (spear, arrow, axe, club)... But Dragons are "nasty beasts" 🙂 and they don't die easily...

So it is at the end of autumn that they finally go "to the land of the dead"...By "coincidence" the same time when the sun goes to the "land of the dead" too...

Interesting: Annotated drawing of the Strathmartine recumbent grave-slab (no 2), and the reverse and obverse of the Balluderon cross-slab. From the James Skene sketch album, page 15. Date c. 1832 

Water bull

This is Pešter highland. Located in South-Western Serbia, it is one of the best grazing lands in Europe. The area is also known as Raška, Ras. This area was during the Early medieval time a Serbian heartland, the land of Rasi, Rasci, Raci, as Serbs were known at the time.

The name of one of the oldest and strangest breeds of sheep, "Racka" sheep, literally means "The sheep of Rasi, Rasci, Raci (Serbs)" or Serbian sheep. They are depicted on a fresco from the 14th c. Serbian monastery in Kosovo.

One of the oldest Serbian churches, the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, is located in Stari Ras, the old capital of Raška

But Raška, Ras was a holy land even before the conversion of the Serbs into Christianity. The pictures of the Pešter highlands were taken from a peak called Trojan (another name for Triglav (Three-headed), old Serbian and Slavic supreme god. You can read more about Triglav in my post "Triglav Trojan Triniti Trimurti". 

This is the peak Trojan (1374 m). 

It lies at the edge of the Pešter highland, and from it you can see the whole highland. It was once probably an important pagan site. This can be deduced both from its name (Trojan- Triglav) and from the legends associated with the site

According to the local legends, there once was a lake below the peak. The lake was a home to a three headed (!) dragon, or in another version of the legend, to a water bull...Every year the local people sacrificed a young girl to the monster, so that it would leave them in peace. One year, it was Serbian king's daughter's turn to be sacrificed. But at the last moment, a knight, St George, arrived, killed the monster and saved the girl.

Interestingly, at the bottom of the Trojan peak lies Djurdjevica well (St George's well). This well is holly to both Christians and Muslims who live in the area, and they gather around every year on St George's day, to celebrate the Saint's day together...

The legend about the peak Trojan could be a depiction of the Christianisation of the Serbs in Old Ras...

The "Three-headed dragon" here is Triglav, the old God of the Serbs who was "killed" by the Dragon-Slayer, St George.  "A knight and a dragon" by Walter Crane

But it could be something else entirely...

The fact that the "monster" to whom the young girls were sacrificed was identified as both dragon and bull is very interesting. Dragon represents the destructive power of the burning summer sun. And summer starts in Taurus (Bull)...

Summer starts on the 6th of May, Jarilo day, Beltine (middle of Taurus). Jarilo represents the sun's heat, symbolized by the snake and the dragon. Funnily Jarilo was Christianized into St George, the Dragon killer, who kills Dragon-Bull :) 

You can read more about this in my post "Dragon killing Snake" and my post "Two crosses".

Every Year, in the middle of Taurus (Bull), the Young Earth, Vesna, is "sacrificed" to the Young Sun, Jarilo (literally the burning, the raging one). Spring (the princess) is "sacrificed" (it ends) so that Summer (bull, dragon) can begin. 

I wrote about Vesna in my post Flower Girls.

Similar legend about a water bull to whom girls were sacrificed is found in Bulgaria. 

The Belogradchik Fortress is an ancient fortress located on the north slopes of the Balkan Mountains, close to the town of Belogradchik, Vidin Province, Northwestern Bulgaria. 

The fortress was built by Romans around a natural rock outcrops

In the flatlands visible from the fortress lies Lake Rabisha, the largest inland natural freshwater lake in Bulgaria.

According to the local legend, the lake was once a home to a terrifying monster: Water Bull. 

The Water Bull was a giant with the human body, the head of a bull and the tale of fish. It terrorised the local area attacking the people and cattle. In order to placate the beast, the local people would, once a year, offer as a sacrifice to it the most beautiful young girl in the entire region. The girl would be taken to the lake shore in a procession. There she would be put on a boat together with many wonderful gifts and would be pushed into the lake where she would fall pray to the monster.

The terrible story of the annual sacrifices to the Water Bull actually has a happy ending. The most gorgeous girl in the world was born one day in the village of Rabisha. When she grew up and the time came to offer her as sacrifice, she was placed in a boat and pushed to the middle of the lake.

However, when the Water Bull saw her, he was so enchanted by her that instead of killing her, he fell in love. He asked his sister, who was a sorceress, for help, and with her powers she made the beautiful girl immortal. The Water Bull took his young wife to the bottom of the Lake, and never came back for more prey. The two of them are still believed to be living happily down there.

These two legends, I believe, can help us understand two important classical legends: Minotaur and Europa stories. But more about that some other time. 

By the way, water bull is also found in Scottish and Manx folklore, but apparently the Gaelic monster preferred local cows to local young girls...