Book 5 of my Raven Son series is a plunge into regions we have not yet explored in the series, particularly the land of the dead and the Garden of the Heights of Aer. Since the world I’m describing is largely inspired by Slavic mythology, I’ve been doing some research into Slavic conceptions of life and death and the creation of the world.
Here are some of the ways ancient Slavs symbolized the cosmos, containing the lands of the gods, the living, and the dead. Some of these you’ve already seen in some form in my previous novels. But some are going to make their first appearance in The Throne of the Gods, book 5 of the Raven Son series.
Symbols of the Cosmos in Slavic Mythology
In the mythological systems of ancient peoples, both pagan and post-pagan, universal symbols or images played an important role. They united the spheres of the created world or personified forces that inspired either worship or respect. These universal symbols of the cosmos helped give people the categories with which to distinguish between good and evil, life and death, the world of the living and the world of the dead.
In the mythological tradition of the Slavs, these universal symbols were seen as the birthplace and land of the gods and of all dead ancestors. From these universal symbols comes the universe itself, the power of creation.
There were many legends and superstitions associated with these symbols of the universe. Not surprisingly, with the coming of Christianity, many of these symbols took on new life with the added cosmology and tradition of the Christian church.
Thus, for example, the Stone of Alatyr easily became the altar table in Christian churches. Also, the egg became associated both with resurrection and with the power of the devil. It is from eggs that basilisks are hatched, and the death of Koschei the Deathless hides inside an egg, on the tip of a needle.
The first, and most well know, is the Stone of Alatyr, which I have covered in detail in this previous post. Here are some other symbols of the world or the cosmos that appear frequently in the fairy tales of Russia. Some of these either have played their role in my Raven Son series, or will do so, especially in book 5, The Throne of the Gods.
The Land of White Waters
There’s often a strange phrase you’ll encounter in Russian fairy tales: “rivers of milk, banks of kissel (a kind of fruit jelly)”. The strangeness is not only in the imagery, but in the fact that it’s sometimes treated as nothing other than a kind of variation of a normal river. So, in the famous story “The Geese-Swans,” the girl stumbles onto the rivers of milk, the banks of kissel (which talk to her, but that’s another story). We’re just left to imagine what exactly this river is, because no explanation is forthcoming.
If we equate it with something like “the land of milk and honey,” then we’re getting closer to the mark. But that image is firmly from the Biblical tradition. This Russian image comes from the ancient land of white waters, a magical place that brought into physical expression the people’s dreams about a perfect place of happiness and rest. The rivers are white, as it turns out, because they flow from the udders of the heavenly cow. As for the banks of kissel… well, Russians have always liked berries…
The Island of Buyan
This mythological island was the center of the universe, and it’s often mentioned in Slavic incantations and stories. It is found far away, in the Ocean-Sea. This island has miraculous powers, being the home of various magical objects that help the hero overcome monsters in the stories. It is also the place where the Stone of Alatyr rests, from which the World Tree grows. However can find the Island of Buyan will have all his dreams come true.
Buyan and the World tree both figure prominently in The Throne of the Gods, book 5 of the Raven Son series.
Vyrai
Also known as the Garden of Iriy or Uray, this is the warm, sunny land of eternal greenery found beyond the sea to the East. It is a kind of pagan foreshadow of the Garden of Paradise. The World Tree in some tales is found here, not on the Island of Buyan. The Sirin live in the branches of this World Tree, and all birds come here to winter. The souls of dead, sometimes in the form of birds, also come here to rest.
There are many folk tales and songs about opening the garden of Vyrai with the key of spring to let the birds back into the world. Traditionally, the birds begin leaving on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14). In Ukrainian tales, the key is kept by the crow, but when it angered the gods, they gave the keys to another bird (either a cuckoo or a skylark).
There are also oral tales about a different kind of Vyrai, the Vyrai not of the birds, but of the snakes. That, as you can imagine, is a kind of hell, the land of the dead, under the earth.
The World Mountain
Mountains have always been associated with union with God. In many mythological traditions, the qualities of the World Mountain become transmuted into the World Tree. In ancient times, people saw the mountain as a “microcosm” of the world, which reflects all the elements of the cosmos, but in miniature. The gods live at the summit, the people live at the foot of the mountain, and the evil spirits live under the mountain.
In Slavic mythology, there is often a dualistic opposition of two different mountains—a white mountain (the home of the White God) and a black mountain (the home of the Black God). This dualistic opposition is also found in such fairy tale characters as Sviatogor, the mountain-tall warrior and the dragon Zmei Gorynich (literally, son of the mountain).
Interestingly, though Christians used this ancient symbolism to great effect by building churches on high places, there was also an understanding of some high places as being nexuses of evil powers.
The World Tree
The World Tree is a characteristic image that captures the idea of the creation of the world. You can find it as an idea and a story element in many different mythologies. The ancient Slavs placed the World Tree in the center of the universe—whether that was a mountain, an island, a magical stone, or all of the above.
The World Tree, like the World Mountain, has three parts to it. The roots are the underground kingdom, the land of the dead. The trunk is the land of the living. Finally, the leaves and the crown is the kingdom of the gods. Similarly, these three parts are also associated with the past, present, and future, as well as the elements of fire, earth, and water.
In later stories, the coming of Christianity transformed the World Tree into the Tree of Knowledge, which was a symbol of the attainment of spiritual perfection.
In the Slavic myths, the World Tree is usually an oak of massive size that grows from the Stone of Alatyr in the middle of the Island of Buyan. On the top of the tree sits a falcon—a symbol of the heavens where the sun, the moon, and the stars live. Among the branches, there are not only birds, but bees, symbols of life on earth. The animal that symbolized the underground kingdom was the beaver, who lives among the roots. The World Tree has golden bark, and it gives off silver dew in the mornings.
This dew drips and causes the fountainhead of all waters to flow. (If you’ve read The Heart of the World, this should all be very familiar).
The World Ocean
These are the first-created waters from which the earth and the sky, and the rest of the universe, was created (see my previous post on more specific Slavic mythology concerning water in general). This World Ocean is a kind of force of nature, an incarnation of Chaos, and in some traditions existed even before the world was created by the gods.
The Spring-Lake
This magical lake is said to hide on an island with no people, in the middle of a dark forest. It is filled with fish, but no one dare catch them—whoever did could await immediate punishment. This is the lake that young women bathed in if they wanted to conceive. Typical of the Russian worldview, if you bathed in it in winter, you would never get sick. Instead, you would get even healthier.
This miraculous lake in later times became hidden underground, though it continued to give its miraculous powers to certain rivers and streams.
The World Egg
The egg is the source of life, just as the sun is. So, in the ancient past, it was a symbol of the sun and was honored by the ancient Slavs (and modern ones, who continue to color and bless eggs during the Easter season).
The World Egg is a mythopoetic symbol of many nations. In many myths, the universe is hatched from the World Egg, or the World Egg is the place where a hero or a creator god is grown and hatched. It is often described as golden (in its capacity as the image of the sun). In Finnish mythology, a duck lays the world egg, from which the universe comes to be.
However, the egg can also give rise to all kinds of evil powers—snakes, the devil, the house demon. Most famously, the death of the Deathless Koschei hides inside an egg. Perhaps there used to be two World Eggs, just as there were two World Mountains in some traditions.
The World Egg appears as a motif in Catherynne M. Valente’s novel Deathless, and it’s a major theme in the fourth book of my Raven Son series, The Forge of the Covenant.
If you enjoyed this post, I bet you’ll also like my essay “A Passport to Russian Fairy Land,” in which I guide you through the opening lines of Russian Fairy Tales, help you interpret cryptic fairy tale phrases, and introduce you to the infamous Baba Yaga herself! Enter your email and I’ll send your passport!