Lecture: Caresiell and his 12 dukes

1.Carnesiell - ("radiant fire") is ranked as an emperor and king of the East.

He is also said in various other Christian demonologies to be one of the thirty-six Elemental World Rulers as well as one of the seventy-two Spirits of Solomon.

An Aerial Devil and demon of the east, Carnesiel commands 1,000 great dukes, 100 lesser dukes, 12 chief dukes, and 50,000,000,000,000 other demonic spirits.

When summoned, he will appear with 60,000,000,000,000 servitors of varying ranks, and when you call any of the dukes, their entourage is sometimes 10 spirits, but never exceeds 300.

Carnesial can appear day or night.

His 12 most important demonic dukes are

Myrezyn, ranked as a duke and is listed as one of the twelve named Servitors of Carnesiel.

Omich, duke and is one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel

Zabriel, duke and is one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel. 

Zabriel commands no less than ten but no more than three hundred servitors.

In the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, Zabriel is a duke and is one of the twelve named Duke Servitors of Carnesiel. 

Zabriel commands no less than ten but no more than three hundred servitors.

Source: 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59.

Bucafas, an Aerial Devil, is named as one of the twelve duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

Benoham,

In the Theurgia Goetia, the second book of the
Lemegeton, Benoham, an AERIAL Devil, is listed
as one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel

Sources: 

Guiley, Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology, 37; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59;
Trirthemius, Steganographia, 49.

Arifiel,

In Theurgia Goetia, book two of the Lemegeton, Arifel is a duke and one of the twelve named

Cumeriel,

In the Theurgia Goetia, the second book of the Lemegeton, Cumerzel is named as one of the twelve duke Servitors of Carnesiel. 

He commands between ten and three hundred servants.

Sources: 

Guiley, Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology, 37; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59.

Vadriel, one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel. 

He commands ten chiefs and one hundred servitors and is most powerful during the ninth hour of the day.

Vadriel is one of the twelve named Duke Servitors of Carnesiel. 

He commands ten chiefs and one hundred servitors and is most powerful during the ninth hour of the day.

Sources: 

Davidson, Dictionary of Angels, 60, 84, 94, 180, 191, 303, 330; 

Gettings, Dictionary of Demons, 188, 245; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59; 

Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, 68.

Armany, duke and one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

In the Theurgia Goetia, book two of the Lemegeton, Armany is listed as a duke and one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

Sources: 

Eco, Infinity of Lists, 61; 

Guiely, Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology, 37; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 69.

Capriel, named as one of the twelve duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

In Theurgia Goetia, book two of the Lemegeton, Capriel is named as one of the twelve Duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

Sources: 

Belanger, Dictionary of Demons, 85; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59.

Bedary, one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

In the Theurgia Goetia, book two of the Lemegeton, Bedary is one of the twelve named Duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

Sources: 

Guiley, Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology, 37; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59.

Laphor, chief duke who commands between ten and three hundred servitors. 

An Aerial Devil, he is also listed as one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel.

The Theurgia Goetia, the second book of the Lemegeton, is ranked as a chief duke who commands between ten and three hundred servitors. 

An Aerial Devil, he is also listed as one of the twelve named duke Servitors of Carnesiel .

Sources: 

Eco, Infinity of Lists, 61; 

Guiley, Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology, 37; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59.

Servitors of Carnesiel

The Theurgia Goetia, book two of the Lemegeton, says there are 60,000,000,000,000 duke servitors of CARNESIEL, but it only names twelve of them: Arifiel, ARMANY, BEDARY, BenOHAM, Bucafas, Capriel, Cumerzel, Laphor,  Myrezyn, Ornich, VADRIEL, and ZABRIEL. 

Sources: 

Butler, Ritual Magic, 77; 

Eco, Infinity of Lists, 61; 

Gettings, Dictionary of Demons, 232; 

Pane, Hierarchy of Hell, 68; 

Peterson, Lesser Key of Solomon, 59-60, 69; 

Trirthemius, Steganographia, 1, 49; 

Waite, Manual of Cartomancy and Occult Divination, 97.

Lecture: World Horned deities

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about depictions of deities with horns. For the neopagan Horned God, see Horned God.

Deities depicted with horns or antlers are found in many different religions across the world.

Horned goddess Hathor

Hathor is commonly depicted as a cow goddess with head horns in which is set a sun disk with Uraeus. Twin feathers are also sometimes shown in later periods as well as a menat necklace. Hathor may be the cow goddess who is depicted from an early date on the Narmer Palette and on a stone urn dating from the 1st dynasty that suggests a role as sky-goddess and a relationship to Horus who, as a sun god, is "housed" in her.

Hathor had a complex relationship with Ra, in one myth she is his eye and considered his daughter but later, when Ra assumes the role of Horus with respect to Kingship, she is considered Ra's mother. She absorbed this role from another cow goddess 'Mht wrt' ("Great flood") who was the mother of Ra in a creation myth and carried him between her horns. As a mother she gave birth to Ra each morning on the eastern horizon and as wife she conceives through union with him each day.

Bat was a cow goddess in Egyptian mythology depicted as a human face with cow ears and horns. By the time of the Middle Kingdom her identity and attributes were subsumed within the goddess Hathor. The worship of Bat dates to earliest times and may have its origins in Late Paleolithic cattle herding. Bat was the chief goddess of Seshesh, otherwise known as Hu or Diospolis Parva, the 7th nome of Upper Egypt. The imagery of Bat as a divine cow was remarkably similar to that of Hathor the parallel goddess from Lower Egypt. The significant difference in their depiction is that Bat's horns curve inward and Hathor's curve outward slightly. It is possible that this could be based in the different breeds of cattle herded at different times.

Cult of the bull deities

In Egypt, the bull was worshiped as Apis, the embodiment of Ptah and later of Osiris. A long series of ritually perfect bulls were identified by the god's priests, housed in the temple for their lifetime, then embalmed and encased in a giant sarcophagus. A long sequence of monolithic stone sarcophagi were housed in the Serapeum, and were rediscovered by Auguste Mariette at Saqqara in 1851. The bull was also worshipped as Mnevis, the embodiment of Atum-Ra, in Heliopolis. Ka in Egyptian is both a religious concept of life-force/power and the word for bull.

Mnevis was identified as being a living bull. This may be a vestige of the sacrifice of kings after a period of reign, who were seen as the sons of Bat or Hathor (see:horned goddess Hathor), the ancient cow deity of the early solar cults. Thus, seen as a symbol of the later sun god, Ra, the Mnevis was often depicted, in art, with the solar disc of their mother, Hathor between its horns.

Ram deities in ancient Egypt

Banebdjedet

The ram was revered in ancient Egypt in matters of fertility and war. Early gods with long wavy ram horns include Khnum and the equivalent god in Lower Egypt, Banebdjedet, the "Ram Lord of Djedet" (Mendes), who was typically shown with four ram heads to represent the four souls (Ba) of the sun god. Banebdjedet may also be linked to the first four gods to rule over Egypt, Osiris, Geb, Shu and Ra-Atum, with large granite shrines devoted to each in the Mendes sanctuary. The Book of the Heavenly Cow describes the "Ram of Mendes" as being the Ba of Osiris, but this was not an exclusive association.

List of Egyptian gods associated with the ram:

• Khnum (one of the earliest Egyptian deities)
• Heryshaf (a ram god of Heracleopolis)
• Kherty (a variant of Aken, The chief deity in Egyptian mythology)
• Andjety (precursor of Osiris, Auf "Efu Ra").
• Horem Akhet (a god depicted as a sphinx with the head of a man, lion, or ram)
• Banebdjedet (ram god linked to the first four Egyptian gods: Osiris, Geb, Shu, Ra-Atum)
• Amun (the ram deity that inspired the cult of Ammon)

Cult of Ammon

Roman cast terracotta of ram-horned Jupiter Ammon, 1st century AD (Museo Barracco, Rome)

The worship of Ammon was introduced into Greece at an early period, probably through the medium of the Greek colony in Cyrene, which must have formed a connection with the great oracle of Ammon in the Oasis soon after its establishment. Ammon had a temple and a statue, the gift of Pindar, at Thebes, and another at Sparta, the inhabitants of which, as Pausanias says, consulted the oracle of Ammon in Libya from early times more than the other Greeks. At Aphytis, Chalcidice, Ammon was worshiped, from the time of Lysander, as zealously as in Ammonium. Pindar the poet honored the god with a hymn. At Megalopolis the god was represented with the head of a ram (Paus. viii.32 § 1), and the Greeks of Cyrenaica dedicated at Delphi a chariot with a statue of Ammon.

Such was its reputation among the Classical Greeks that Alexander the Great journeyed there after the battle of Issus and during his occupation of Egypt, where he was declared the son of Amun by the oracle. Alexander thereafter considered himself divine. Even during this occupation, Amun, identified by these Greeks as a form of Zeus, continued to be the principal local deity of Thebes.

The Cyrenaican Greeks built temples for the Libyan god Amon instead of their original god Zeus. They later identified their supreme god Zeus with the Libyan Amon. Some of them continued worshiping Amon himself. Amon's cult was so widespread among the Greeks that even Alexander the Great decided to be declared as the son of Zeus in the Siwan temple by the Libyan priests of Amon.

Ram statues line the entrance to Amun's Temple

Although the most modern sources ignored the existence of Amun in the Berber mythology, he was maybe the greatest ancient Berber god. He was honored by the Ancient Greeks in Cyrenaica, and was united with the Phoenician/Carthaginian god Baal-hamon due to Libyan influence. Some depictions of the ram across North Africa belong to the lythic period which is situated between 9600 BC and 7500 BC.
The most famous Amun's temple in Ancient Libya was the temple at the oasis of Siwa. The name of the ancient Berber tribes: Garamantes and Nasamonians are believed by some scholars to be related to the name Amon.

In Awelimmiden Tuareg, the name Amanai is believed to have the meaning of "God". The Ancient Libyans may have worshipped the setting sun, which was personified by Amon, who was represented by the ram's horns.

In Carthage and North Africa Baal-hamon was especially associated with the ram and was worshiped also as Baʿal Qarnaim ("Lord of Two Horns") in an open-air sanctuary at Jebel Bu Kornein ("the two-horned hill") across the bay from Carthage.

Silver tetradrachmon (ancient Greek coin) issued in the name of Alexander the Great, depicting Alexander with the horns of Ammon.

The Egyptian god Ammon-Ra was depicted with ram horns. Rams were considered a symbol of virility due to their rutting behavior. The horns of Ammon may have also represented the East and West of the Earth, and one of the titles of Ammon was "the two-horned." Alexander was depicted with the horns of Ammon as a result of his conquest of ancient Egypt in 332 BC, where the priesthood received him as the son of the god Ammon, who was identified by the ancient Greeks with Zeus, the King of the Gods. The combined deity Zeus-Ammon was a distinct figure in ancient Greek mythology. According to five historians of antiquity (Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch), Alexander visited the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa in the Libyan desert and rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be the deity Ammon, rather than Philip. Alexander styled himself as the son of Zeus-Ammon and even demanded to be worshiped as a god:

He seems to have become convinced of the reality of his own divinity and to have required its acceptance by others ... The cities perforce complied, but often ironically: the Spartan decree read, 'Since Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god.' 

Horned deities by continent

Europe

Cernunnos on the Pillar of the Boatmen

Pan was a god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds and rustic music.

Depictions in Celtic cultures of figures with antlers are often identified as Cernunnos ("horned one" in Latin). The prime evidence for this comes from a pillar in Paris which also features the Roman god Jupiter.

Cocidius was the name of a Romano-British war-god and local deity from the area around Hadrian's Wall, who is sometimes represented as being horned. He is associated with warfare and woodland and was worshipped mostly by military personnel and the lower classes.

The horned figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron.

Eliphas Levi, the 18th century occultist, believed that the pseudohistorical god Baphomet (that the Roman Catholic Church had claimed was worshipped by the heretical Knights Templar), was actually the horned Libyan oracle god (Ammon), or, the Goat of Mendes.

For many years scholars have interpreted the Gundestrup Cauldron's images in terms of the Celtic pantheon. The antlered figure in plate A has been commonly identified as Cernunnos.

Africa

Ikenga Igbo

A ram-shaped oracle god whose name is unknown was worshiped by Libyan tribes at Siwa. The figure was incorporated by the Egyptians into depictions of their god Amun that's considered an "Interpretatio graeca" of the Greek Zeus-Ammon.

Adherents of Odinani (the traditional folk religion of the Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria) worship the Ikenga, a horned god of honest achievement, whose two horns symbolise self-will. Small wooden statues of him are made and praised as personal altars.

Asia

Indus god Pashupati

The Pashupati seal, a seal discovered during the excavation of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan has drawn attention as a possible representation of a "proto-Shiva" figure. This "Pashupati" (Lord of animal-like beings – Sanskrit paśupati) seal shows a seated figure with horns, possibly ithyphallic, surrounded by animals.

Influence on Demonology

Pan enjoying a goat

Baphomet of Mendes

The satanic "horned god" symbol known as the baphomet is based on an Egyptian ram deity that was worshipped in Mendes, called Banebdjed (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of Osiris. According to Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of ancient Egypt, the book's author Geraldine Harris, said the ram gods Ra-Amun (see: Cult of Ammon), and Banebdjed, were to mystically unite with the queen of Egypt to sire the heir to the throne (a theory based on depictions found in several Theban temples in Mendes).

Occultist Eliphas Levi in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles' Devil card and refigured the ram Banebdjed as a he-goat, calling it the "Baphomet of Mendes," (or, "Goat of Mendes"). The inaccurate description can be traced back to Herodotus' Histories Book II, where Herodotus describes the deity of Mendes as having a goat's head and fleece, when Banebdjedet was really represented by a ram, not a goat.

The Devil in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of Thelema, the mystical system established by Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century. Baphomet features in the Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church recited by the congregation in The Gnostic Mass, in the sentence: "And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET" (see: Aleister Crowley: Occult).

Lévi's Baphomet is the source of the later Tarot image of the Devil in the Rider-Waite design. The concept of a downward-pointing pentagramon its forehead was enlarged upon by Lévi in his discussion (without illustration) of the Goat of Mendes arranged within such a pentagram, which he contrasted with the microcosmic man arranged within a similar but upright pentagram. The actual image of a goat in a downward-pointing pentagram first appeared in the 1897 book La Clef de la Magie Noire by Stanislas de Guaita, later adopted as the official symbol—called the Sigil of Baphomet—of the Church of Satan, and continues to be used among Satanists.

Neopaganism

Francisco de Goya's Witches Sabbat (1789), which depicts the Devilflanked by Satanic witches. The Witch Cult hypothesis states that such stories are based upon a real-life pagan cult that revered a horned god

Few neo-pagan re-constructionist traditions recognize Satan or the Devil outright. However, many neo-pagan groups worship some sort of Horned God, for example as a consort of the Great Goddess in Wicca. These gods usually reflect mythological figures such as Cernunnos or Pan, and any similarity they may have to the Christian Devil seems to date back only to the 19th century, when a Christian reaction to Pan's growing importance in literature and art resulted in his image being translated to that of the Devil.

Image of a 19th-century Sabbatic Goat

Witch-cult hypothesis

Main article: Witch-cult hypothesis § Post-Murray

In 1985 Classical historian Georg Luck, in his Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, theorized that the origins of the Witch-cult may have appeared in late antiquity as a faith primarily designed to worship the Horned God, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos, a horned god of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan/Faunus, a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans, those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided the prototype for later Christian conceptions of the Devil, and his worshipers were cast by the Church as witches.

Beelzebub

Horned demon? (proto-Elamite 3000-2800 BC)

There is an implied connection between Satan and Beelzebub (lit. Lord of the Flies), originally a Semitic deity called Baal (lit. "lord"). Beelzebub is the most recognized demon in the Bible, whose name has become analogous to Satan. Occult and metaphysical author Michelle Belanger believes that Beelzebub (a mockery of the original name) is the horned god Ba'al Hadad, whose cult symbol was the bull. According to The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca, Beelzebub reigned over the Witches' Sabbath ("synagoga"), and that witches denied Christ in his name and chanted "Beelzebub" as they danced.

Beelzebub was also imagined to be sowing his influence in Salem, Massachusetts: his name came up repeatedly during the Salem witch trials, the last large-scale public expression of witch hysteria in North America or Europe, and afterwards Rev. Cotton Mather wrote a pamphlet entitled Of Beelzebub and his Plot.

Neopaganism

In 1933, the Egyptologist Margaret Murray published the book, The God of the Witches, in which she theorized that Pan was merely one form of a horned god who was worshiped across Europe by a witch-cult. This theory influenced the Neopagan notion of the Horned God, as an archetype of male virility and sexuality. In Wicca, the archetype of the Horned God is highly important, and is thought by believers to be represented by such deities as the Celtic Cernunnos, Indian Pashupati and Greek Pan.^{[citation needed]}

Horned God in Wiccan based neo-pagan religions represents a solar god often associated with vegetation, that's honored as the Holly King or Oak King in Neopagan rituals. Most often, the Horned God is considered a male fertility god. The use of horns as a symbol for power dates back to the ancient world. From ancient Egypt and the Ba'al worshiping Cannanites, to the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and various other cultures. Horns have ever been present in religious imagery as symbols of fertility and power.^[42][43] It was not until Christianity attributed horns to Satan as part of his iconography that horned gods became associated with evil in Western mythology:

Many modern neo-Pagans focus their worship on a horned god, or often "the" Horned God and one or more goddesses. Deities such as Pan and Dionysus have had attributes of their worship imported into the Neopagan concept as have the Celtic Cernunnos and Gwynn ap Nudd, one of the mythological leaders of the Wild Hunt

Lecture: Mare (folklore)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Mare (Old English: mære, Old Dutch: mare; mara in Old High German, Old Norse and Old Church Slavic) is an evil spirit or goblin in Germanic and Slavic folklore that rides on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on bad dreams (or "nightmares").

The mare is often similar to the mythical creatures succubus and incubus.

Etymology

The word "mare" comes (through Middle English mare) from Old English mære, mare, or mere, all feminine nouns. These in turn come from Proto-Germanic *marōn. *Marōn is the source of Old Norse: mara, from which are derived Swedish: mara; Icelandic: mara; Faroese: marra; Danish: mare; Norwegian: mare/mara, Dutch: (nacht)merrie, and German: (Nacht)mahr. The -mar in French cauchemar ("nightmare") is borrowed from the Germanic through Old French mare.

The word may ultimately be traced back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *mer-, "to rub away" or "to harm". Hungarian folklorist Éva Pócs endorses an alternative etymology, tracing the core term back to the Greek μόρος (Indo-European *moros), meaning "death".

In Norwegian and Danish, the words for "nightmare" are mareritt and mareridt respectively, which can be directly translated as "mare-ride". The Icelandic word martröð has the same meaning (-tröð from the verb troða, "trample", "stamp on", related to "tread"), whereas the Swedish mardröm translates as "mare-dream".

Beliefs

The mare was also believed to "ride" horses, which left them exhausted and covered in sweat by the morning. She could also entangle the hair of the sleeping man or beast, resulting in "marelocks", called marflätor ("mare-braids") or martovor ("mare-tangles") in Swedish or marefletter and marefloker in Norwegian. The belief probably originated as an explanation to the Polish plait phenomenon, a hair disease.

Even trees were thought to be ridden by the mare, resulting in branches being entangled. The undersized, twisted pine-trees growing on coastal rocks and on wet grounds are known in Sweden as martallar ("mare-pines") or in German as Alptraum-Kiefer ("nightmare pine").

According to Paul Devereux, mares included witches who took on the form of animals when their spirits went out and about while they were in trance (see the Icelandic example of Geirrid, below). These included animals such as frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds and often bees and wasps.^[4]

By region

Scandinavia

The mare is attested as early as in the Norse Ynglinga saga from the 13th century. Here, King Vanlandi Sveigðisson of Uppsala lost his life to a nightmare (mara) conjured by the Finnish sorceress Huld or Hulda, hired by the king's abandoned wife Drífa. The king had broken his promise to return within three years, and after ten years had elapsed the wife engaged the sorceress to either lure the king back to her, or failing that, to assassinate him. Vanlandi had scarcely gone to sleep when he complained that the nightmare "rode him;" when the men held the king's head the it "trod on his legs" on the point of breaking, and when the retinue then "seized his feet" the creature fatally "pressed down on his head." 

According to the Vatnsdæla saga, Thorkel Silver (Þorkell Silfri) has a dream about riding a red horse that barely touched ground, which he interpreted as a positive omen, but his wife disagreed, explaining that a mare signified a man's fetch (fylgja), and that the red color boded bloodiness. This association of the nightmare with fetch is thought to be of late origin, an interpolation in the text dating to circa 1300, with the text exhibiting a "confounding of the words marr and mara."

Another possible example is the account in the Eyrbyggja saga of the sorceress Geirrid accused of assuming the shape of a "night-rider" or "ride-by-night" (marlíðendr or kveldriða) and causing serious trampling bruises on Gunnlaug Thorbjornsson. The marlíðendr mentioned here has been equated to the mara by commentators.

As in English, the name appears in the word for "nightmare" in the Nordic languages (e.g. the Swedish word "mardröm" literally meaning mara-dream, the Norwegian word "mareritt" and the Danish "Mareridt", both meaning Mare-ride or the Icelandic word "martröð" meaning mara-dreaming repeatedly).

Germany

In Germany they were known as mara, mahr, mare.

German Folklorist Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn records a Westphalian charm or prayer used to ward off mares, from Wilhelmsburg near Paderborn:

Hier leg' ich mich schlafen, Keine Nachtmahr soll mich plagen, Bis sie schwemmen alle Wasser, Die auf Erden fließen, Und tellet alle Sterne, Die am Firmament erscheinen! [Dazu helfe mir Gott Vater, Sohn und heiliger Geist. Amen!]

Here I am lying down to sleep; No night-mare shall plague me until they have swum through all the waters that flow upon the earth, and counted all stars that appear in the skies. [Thus help me God Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen!]

Such charms are preceded by the example of the Münchener Nachtsegen of the fourteenth century (See Elf under §Medieval and early modern German texts). Its texts demonstrates that certainly by the Late Middle Ages, the distinction between the mare, the alp, and the trute (drude) was being blurred, the mare being described at the alp's mother.

Slavic countries

In Polish folklore, zmora or mara are the souls of living people that leave the body during the night, and are seen as wisps of straw or hair or as moths. Accordingly, Polish mara, Czech můra denote both a kind of elf or spirit as well as a "sphinx moth" or "night butterfly". Other Slavic languages with cognates that have the double meaning of moth are: Kashubian mòra, and Slovak mora.

In the north-western Russian and South-Russian traditions, the mara means a female character, similar to kikimora. Mara is usually invisible, but can take the form of a woman with long flowing hair, which she combs, sitting on a yarn. According to other sources, the mara is black, shaggy (olonets, tul.), And also a terrible and disheveled creature (Kaluga).

In Croatian, mora refers to a "nightmare". Mora or Mara is one of the spirits from ancient Slav mythology. Mara was a dark spirit that takes a form of a beautiful woman and then visits men in their dreams, torturing them with desire, and dragging life out of them. In Serbia, a mare is called mora, or noćnik/noćnica ("night creature", masculine and feminine respectively). In Romania they were known as Moroi.

It is a common belief that mora enters the room through the keyhole, sits on the chest of the sleepers and tries to strangle them (hence moriti, "to torture", "to bother", "to strangle"). To repel moras, children are advised to look at the window or to turn the pillow and make a sign of cross on it (prekrstiti jastuk); in the early 19th century, Vuk Karadžić mentions that people would repel moras by leaving a broom upside down behind the door, or putting their belt on top of their sheets, or saying an elaborate prayer poem before they go to sleep.

Other

In Hungarian, the creature is known as éjjeljáró or "night-goer." In Estonia the mare-like spirit is called Painaja (presser) or Külmking (cold-shoe). In Thailand this phenomenon is well documented and called ผีอำ (pee ahm), pee meaning "ghost". Buddhist residents wear amulets (พระเครื่อง) blessed by monks to ward off spirits such as these. In Turkey the mare is known as Karabasan (tr) (ominous-presser).

See also

• Mara in Buddhism
• Mara (Hindu goddess)
• Alp (folklore)
• Batibat
• Lietuvēns
• Maya (illusion)
• Marzanna (Slavic goddess of death and winter)
• Moroi
• Moros
• Nightmare
• Pesanta
• Sleep paralysis, medical term for the condition the mare is thought to cause.
• Slavic fairies