🍃some interesting Lithuanian folk tales and motives🍃
🍃 forest spirits called laumės. they can be both beautiful and terrifying. laumės are known for having long thick hair, performing rain-calling rites while dancing naked under the full moon. they are also known as creepy women with elongated arms, fingers made of stone and sharp nails. their hair can be as tangled as the depth of forests. these laumės torture people whom they catch at night. they grind their bones and weave their hair, veins and entrails. laumės swap children. their own children are wise and can be few hundred years old. laumiukai often don’t talk for a fairly long time after they are swapped. laumės live in old abandoned bath houses deep in the swamps and swing on birch trees. they drink morning dew and ride on laumžirgiai (dragonflies)
🍃 one laumė named Vaiva gets married with thunder god Perkūnas and now lives in the sky. she is in love with a human though. they have a child whom Vaiva couldn’t take to the sky. she is hiding it from Perkūnas. thus Vaiva creates vaivorykštė (rainbow) that she uses as a secret passage to visit her child and beloved one
🍃 raganos are sorcerers who keep the balance in the world. they can turn people into stones, trees and animals. they often shape-shift too by turning into toads. they like to travel on brooms, goats and beehives. they can bring storms. raganos often control people’s destinies. they hold rites on top of hardly accessible hills and dress up as animals. raganos have their own goddess named Ragė who has crooked hog teeth, creepy bulging eyes, tangled hair and long sharp nails. she has a goblet filled with poison and a huge sword. the sword has three hideous evil spirits attached to it
🍃 goddess Veliona takes care of dead human and animal souls and leads them to the underworld. she can control the four main elements and has a lot of treasures in her vaults. sometimes she helps poor people by lending money to them. Veliona has her helpers vilutės that are souls living with her. she often asks them to accomplish people’s requests but vilutės sometimes forget to do it or just ignore them
🍃 sisters Giltinė and Laima. Giltinė is the goddess of death who watches people and kills them when the time comes. she is connected to owls whose haunting hooting betokens death. Giltinė is a tall skinny woman with blueish skin. her hair, eyelashes and eyebrows are white. Giltinė has a long poisonous tongue that she uses to kill people. she collects poison by licking corpses in the cemetery, then licks the people that she has to take away. Giltinė covers herself with a white cloak. she used to be a young beautiful woman until she was caught and locked in a coffin. her sister Laima is the goddess of birth and destiny. she is connected to cuckoos and lives in linden trees. Laima is young beautiful girl with cuckoo legs and wings. people often ask her help, especially orphan girls. she turns them into linden trees. sometimes she gives a person her glove. when thrown in the fire the glove turns into a cat that helps the person
🍃 Giltinės helpers are Maro deivės and pamėklės. Maro deivės are beastly women cloaked in white. they travel on horses and spread plague in towns. Pamėklės are white ghostly women. they collect skulls, hair and antlers, then bring them on hilltops. they set them on fire and follow the smoke direction. then spread the plague there by hitting on people’s houses and calling their names. pamėklės often travel in carriages
🍃 forest goddess Medeina is a beautiful young woman unwilling to get married. she is escorted by a pack of wolves. Medeina protects animals from hunters and sends her hares to lead hunters astray. even King Mindaugas of Lithuania stops the hunt when he spots Medeina’s hares. she cries when people start cutting trees
🍃 hunting goddess Medžiojima is a giant girl with a masculine face. she wears a bear pelt and carries a bow on her shoulder. Medžiojima lives on a hill. she, too, cries when people start cutting trees. she says that if people cut down the forests there will be no Lithuania
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