Lower Slavic Mythology Art Series

Slavic lower mythology has always felt more exciting to me compared to the higher mythology. Unlike higher mythology, it doesn't feature high gods, cosmic creators, well-defined structures, or matured, elevated stories. Instead, it is messy, down-to-earth, and always in your immediate vicinity. The house spirit (domovoy) lives behind the stove in your log cabin, the water demon (vodyanoy) grabs your leg when you swim in the village lake, and you might catch a glimpse of the leshiy (forest spirit) when you are out collecting firewood.

Modern analyses often eliminate the mystery and charm. We now have explanations for most of the common motifs, which largely fall into two categories: prescriptive and explanatory functions. The prescriptive function warns us, "Don't go into the deep, dark woods—there are monsters there," while the explanatory function reasons, "He didn't just get drunk and drown in the lake; the lake spirit drowned him." Yet, even with all this knowledge, I wonder how long my modern, rational mind would hold up if I had to live out in the neck of the woods, alone in a simple hut, before finally giving in and letting magic and myth back into my mind.

Mythology inevitably factors in the environment where people live. These days we know that the Slavic people originated in the 4th to 5th centuries in the Pripyat River basin and Polesia—a land of lowlands, marshes, and forests. This was followed by an extraordinary expansion in the 6th and 7th centuries in all directions, reaching the subarctic forests in the north, the Upper Volga River and steppe margins in the east, the Balkans in the south, and the Elbe and Austrian Alps in the west. The Slavic expansion swept across waterlogged lowlands and marshes, fertile continental river valleys, dense primeval forests, subarctic taiga, alpine and highland mountain ranges, and the arid, rocky karst landscapes of the Mediterranean coast. Naturally, all these environments were factored into their folklore and localized mythology. We see traces of this in folklore: less sunny regions tend to have a grimmer touch, while sunnier, southern regions have a more uplifting tone. Cultural exchange with neighboring non-Slavic peoples contributed to local mythologies diverging as well. 

Following the period of Slavic expansion came Christianization. While it displaced Slavic higher mythology, the Christian assimilation of lower mythology was far less successful. People still had to deal with day-to-day problems, and Slavic lower mythology still offered the right, time-tested toolkit to do just that.

Drawing characters from Slavic lower mythology presents a unique challenge—the sources are extremely sparse and heavily affected by Christian assimilation. The characters' appearances are either unremarkable (the leshiy might look just like an ordinary, middle-aged man, which is an unexciting description) or elusive and fleeting (the leshiy might reveal himself as a sudden gust of wind, or you might only catch a glimpse of a shadow between the trees). Nevertheless, I tried to stay true to our sparse sources and capture that elusive atmosphere. Only a couple of times did I digress from this path, following my artistic instinct instead.

Slavic Lower Mythology Illustrations