#horseandhare

Juniper smoke keeps the beasties at bay in traditional Slavic folklore and pagan beliefs: Kikimora (nightmare bringer), Strzyga (a vampiric creature) and the like. 

This translates very well into other uses: preventing nightmares, protection, cleansing and curse undoing. The juniper protects and purifies, removes remnants of the awful and prevents their return. 

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“Who’s re-arranging their room? Me! Who’s slightly regretting this...”

Ah, the age old tradition of starting to clean and regretting it half way through but there's not turning back because everything is everywhere and if you leave it now it would be just Too Much to return to

Exactly!

tho, bold of you to assume I wouldn’t just pass out amidst the garbage like

In Slavic folklore, the horse is everything and nothing at all. It’s a spectre stepping out of a grave, carrying the underworld and the very concept of death on its back. It’s the pierce of lightning through bruised clouds heavy with sleet. It’s a thunderstorm, a sacrifice, a beast of divination, the wisest companion and the very concept of life itself.

Folktales of the horse are always told around the transmutable times of the year. They’re whispered during the longest night, while ember sparks float through the black of frigid, winter air. When the sun hangs in the sky for what feels like infinity, tales of the horse gallop between groups celebrating the summer solstice. Words curl around your ears during the equinoxes as the russet, bronze and ecru leaves finally fall from the trees, and as fields wake in a menagerie of life and colour. The foal is born, it lives and dies with the year, as the world turns on.

A horse will give you sage advice, bring messages from the underworld and divine from the net of fate what the future heralds and what course to take. Listen, and heed, what words it brings.

In Polish folklore the Elder was a tree of demons, of inconceivable dark power and yet protection and curse banishment.

Polish witches used the flowers, berries or leaves for:

Hag flight and flying ointments

Protection from all bewitchments

Pouring out all despair and disease onto an Elder bush. The demon that lives within its roots will feed mightily and prevent any returns.

She screams in the dark, this haggard crone, stealing your repose, your dreams and your sleep. This barbed shadow sits in your cellar, your attic, behind your stove, biding her time until her howls and cries thumb down your spine, thunking down each vertebrae with only the abysmal protection of just a thin sheet between you and… her.

But crying and moaning are not all that the Kikimora does. During the day she takes her gnarled, twisted fingers and takes up your yarn, for spinning thread is her second favourite activity. A sure sign of her presence lurking is finding your wool, your thread, your yarn in a tangled, netted mess. If that doesn’t keep her occupied, beware. She’ll crawl through your keyhole and sit on your chest, riding you, suffocating you as you’re paralysed by sleep. Some stories speak of the Kikimora as the soul of living witches flying through the night.

There are some ways to protect yourself from this beldam. The old Slavic people would make charms of smashed ceramic and pottery, string, wool, thread and hag stones. The smoke of juniper was used to cleanse the house of her presence, as was salt and decoction of fern leaf (a plant of great power and mystery in Polish and Slavic cultures, I’ll expand in the future, I promise). But beware, the Kikimora latches on like few other demons or spirits can.

The fire slept, smouldering embers dozing in their nest of ashes. The wooden rafters groaned and settled into the night, beginning the  long wait for dawn. 

Everyone, everything, dreamt.

In the heavy, pressing dark something stirred. Stone rasped against stone in the graveyard of the hearth and soon, from the tangible black, two amber eyes burned. From the now revealed hole below the hearthstone, a grumbling old man heaved himself out. A grumbling old man of 2 feet tall. His downy, white beard tumbled from a black hood and worn, lined, working hands rested on his hips as he threw his discerning gaze round the room.

At the sight his withered face either sprang into a satisfied grin or crashed into an imposing frown (no easy feat for a being so small).  If the former, he’d walk to the thick slice of bread smothered in butter, to the neatly sliced apple, to the modest table scraps left for him, and devour them with joy behind his sparking eyes. He would hum to himself in low, soft tones and help in return, in anyway he could. 

If the latter…