Zmey

 

The Zmey is the Bulgarian equivalent of the dragon, and even though they have many characteristics in common, they also differ on many levels. While the dragon is usually seen as a monster and an enemy of humans, the Bulgarian Zmey has an ambivalent nature: one of his most important aspects is that of a guardian of villages, a helper.

He is associated with thunder and lightning, thunder being his voice coming from the skies. With water, too, since he takes care of rain and crops; he chases away the Lamia or the Hala (the creatures that bring hailstorms and rob the harvest).

The Zmey lives around lakes and springs, inhabits mountain peaks, forests and caves. He commands the bowels of the earth, so he’s a guardian of treasures of silver and gold.

            He is a top-class shape-shifter. In his dragon-like shape he looks, well, like a dragon. He’s also described as half man – half snake. He can appear as different kinds of animals as well, a snake being the most common (the Bulgarian word for “snake” is “zmiya”, so the connection is obvious, but the snake has other important roles in the folklore as well, so I will dedicate a separate post to it), or even as different objects, like a silver belt, a peacock feather, or a posy of flowers. But in many tales he looks just like a human man – young, handsome, strong, with fair hair and sporting wings on top of it all, but in a clearly non-angelic sense, if you get my meaning.

            He is also connected to the element of fire; he’s often described as “shining like the sun”, and if a woman has a Zmey for a lover, a mysterious light can be seen emanating from the windows of her room at night.    

            And the love between a Zmey and a woman is a recurring theme in Bulgarian folklore, but that’s understandable, since it’s a juicy one.

            So, the story begins with the Zmey falling in love with a woman. He starts paying her night-time visits, during which he appears in his human shape, but only his beloved can see him. He’s invisible for the rest; they can only hear his voice when the lovebirds are having a nocturnal conversation. Of course, the feelings are not always mutual, which reveals the dark side of the Zmey. In these cases the woman starts to wither, might show signs of a mental disorder and pull away from society. She can escape her tyrannical lover with the help of special herbs and other magical techniques. But if she returns his feelings, the relationship can be very happy and quite intellectual; in some stories he teaches her herb lore and magic, sharing his powers with her, initiating her into his secret knowledge.

            If the woman is already married, the Zmey only visits her at night in her home. If she is a maiden, he either kidnaps her, or comes to take her from home with a proper wedding procession of Zmeys riding white horses or sitting in golden carriages. In both cases the union can result in a winged kid or two.

            Up until now I’ve been speaking about the Zmey only as a male creature. There exists also the Zmeitsa, his female companion, but her character is not so widespread throughout the mythology, and she combines features of the Zmey and the Samodiva, so I won’t go into further detail now.

            Actually, I think the Zmey himself has very much in common with the Samodiva. To me they express the same thing in its masculine and feminine aspects. They are both wild (I’m using the term in the sense of being close to nature and beyond the limitations of the dominant culture of the time), they are both very wise and possess supernatural powers, they have a highly developed sexuality and are generally the embodiment of freedom and of the non-mundane. I can’t help but see them as archetypes. They can be easily recognized as the kind of person we might fantasize about when we are bored with the mundane. But on a more subtle level, if we treat myth characters as aspects of our own psyche, then we can find both the mundane human and the supernatural wild-child lover in ourselves. Perhaps the strong drive the former has for the latter represents our deep longing to be wild again and transcend the limitations of the culture we live in? Or is it an allegory for our attraction to the Unknown, both in the world around us and within ourselves? Maybe in some cases it’s the other way around; maybe the fantasy world inside us is attracted to the simple human, because it needs to be anchored and grounded? In any case I suspect it’s all about the subconscious urge of the Self to become integrated and balanced.

 

The main source of information for this post is the book “Zmey. Zmeitsa. Lamia and Hala”, compiled by Vihra Baeva, Albena Georgieva, Valentina Ganeva-Raicheva, Doroteya Dobreva, Nikolay Vukov and Svetla Petkova.

 

Image credit: Upper one: me, lower one: Vlad https://www.instagram.com/vlad_tapas_/