Samodiva

 

         This first article in the blog will be dedicated to the Samodiva. She’s a particular favorite of mine, a mythical creature that has fascinated me since childhood. I was lucky enough to be raised in a family sporting a good number of strong and independent women, so I grew up with the idea that this is a great thing for a woman to be. I remember reading Nikolay Raynov’s collection of fairytales as a kid and admiring the Samodivas – these free, wise, wild women of the forest, who could never be tamed, who weren’t made to be domesticated. Even at this young age I could feel that the attitude of the humans towards the Samodivas, both in and out of the fairytales, was weird; nobody called them bad, but nobody called them good either. Their behavior was too unacceptable for human society, they were too free to be called good, and too feared to be called bad. It wasn’t until later, as I was growing up, that I realized that even a perfectly human woman could easily be feared if she was too free. But, apparently, more and more men come to me for a Samodiva tattoo, so kudos to all the guys who are not afraid of a wild woman!

            So, Samodivas are female beings of exceptional beauty, similar to nymphs or fairies, with long hairs and graceful bodies. (It is believed that they look like humans only at night; during the day they take the shape of whirlwinds.) They are dressed in white shifts and wear waist-belts in the colors of the rainbow. If a man manages to steal a Samodiva’s shift while she’s bathing, she loses her powers, turns into a human woman and the man can make her marry him, although she would do none of the housewife chores like weaving, cleaning the house etc. In the fairytales the man goes to great pains to hide the shift, so she can stay with him forever, but eventually she finds it and makes her escape. This motif can be found in many other mythologies – there are similar stories about the   Tennyo in Japan, the Selkies in Scotland, the Hulder in Scandinavia. In some folk songs the Samodiva is described as riding a grey deer bridled with snakes, she’s armed with a bow and arrows and she’s a friend and helper to the epic heroes.

            Samodivas live in forests or high mountains, close to rivers or lakes, in trees like oak and beech, in rosehip or blackberry bushes, or they hide among the leaves of the wild geranium, mistletoe or ivy. Their favorite plant is fraxinella (Dictamnus albus). They like to hang out under the shade of old trees or at liminal spaces like the borders between fields, bridges, crossroads, or deserted churches and water-mills. If you happen to come across a ring of trampled or dry grass, according to mythology, this might be the dancing ground of Samodivas and you should be careful not to tread on it; if you show disrespect for their space, they can make you get sick, blind, deaf or paralyzed. They inhabit our world only from spring to autumn though. They spend the winter at the end of the world, where the earth and the sky touch.

            Samodivas are believed to be guardians of water springs; they can stop the water, if crossed. So, in the past, whenever people went for water, they would leave a small offering for them by the spring, or tie a thread from their clothing on the trees nearby, which was an appeal to the Samodivas to heal them if they were sick. Another way to ask for their help as healers was to leave for them bread and honey at a place they were supposed to inhabit, or to sleep at such a place for a night.

            Samodivas love music and are enchanting dancers. It’s their habit to kidnap the occasional young shepherd and make him play on his wooden flute for their midnight parties. There’s usually a wager – if the Samodivas get tired from dancing before the shepherd gets tired from playing, he can have the youngest and prettiest of them, but if it’s the other way around, they would take his life. (The motif of the musician killed by the wild women has its roots in the Orphic myth about the Maenads who dismembered Orpheus in their rage.) I guess it was worth the effort; if the lad managed to survive to see the dawn, he would have just had the most unforgettable night in his life.

            In the case of a fight between a human hero and a Samodiva, if the man kills her, a tree grows out of the ground where she fell, her eyes turn into lakes and her hair to green grass. This shows the Creatrix aspect of her, her connection to the ancient Mother Goddess, whose flesh and bone is the Earth itself. Samodivas are intrinsically connected to nature; they are inseparable from it. For this reason I felt that thinking of them as evil somehow limits our understanding of them, although they’re obviously not the girls you want to cross. They seem to be scary, cruel and merciless, but nature itself can be scary, cruel and merciless, too, especially if we show disrespect to it. And yet we don’t call it evil. It’s just how it is. Perhaps that’s the mythological message of the Samodiva: if you live with respect for nature, you’ll be awarded with her blessing and you’ll be made part of her mighty wonders.

 

    The main source of information for this post is the splendid book “Bulgarian mythology” by Ivanichka Georgieva. 

 

 Image credit: me