In the old days, pagans of many nationalities had their own goddesses of death in mythology. They were feared and worshiped in order to protect their home from illnesses and grief associated with the loss of loved ones. Our ancestors were no exception in this regard. The Slavic goddess of death bore the name Marena, which abbreviated sounded like Mara. In Sanskrit, the word "mara" means "annihilating," "killing." The roots of this name stretch to the Indo-European "mar / pestilence" associated with pestilence and the epidemic. Note that the goddess of death in the mythology of the Slavs was related not only to the transition to the world of the dead, but also to the rituals of invoking the rain and to the seasonal periods of the resurrection and dying of nature.
Genealogy
According to one of the myths, Mara is the daughter of the Black Serpent, who guards the transition across the Kalinovy Bridge from Yavi to Nav, and the granddaughter of Lizard, the father of universal evil and the lord of the underworld. Her husband is Koschey (one of the images of Chernobog), who is her sibling by her father. From him, the death goddess gave birth to daughters: Ledyanitsa, Nemocha, Vodyanitsa, Zamora, Snezhana and others related to crop failure, dying, pestilence, etc.
The image of Mary
In Slavic beliefs, the attitude to this character is dual in nature. In some myths, the goddess of death appears in the form of a hunched old woman with her hair loose and long or a shaggy tall woman dressed in rags and all black. In other tales, Marena is a beautiful dark-haired girl in white or red clothes, which sometimes appears among ripening breads. From this we can conclude that for the Slavs, the goddess of death was neither good nor evil. For ancestors, she was the embodiment of not so much
a nightmare as fate, on which the changes in the lives of the inhabitants of the house depended. On the one hand, it brings death, but at the same time it also gives new life. Maren's favorite pastime is needlework. Moreover, the
ancient Slavs believed that she used the yarn of the fate of the creatures living on earth. Depending on how they are woven into the pattern created by the goddess, certain turning points in life will occur. And if the thread is cut, then a person or other living creature will cease to exist.
Mara's abilities
The Slavic goddess of death is able to stop the passage of time, both locally and globally. Her possibilities are infinitely great: she rules the death and life of not only ordinary creatures, but also immortal gods. In addition, Mara is a wonderful sorceress, able to unrecognizably change the world, but only for a short time.
How to worship the goddess of death
In honor of Marena, it was not customary to erect temples. The death goddess had several permanent places in which honors were given to her. At the same time, the rituals took place not just like that, in the open, but in an idol carved from wood. In addition, for the same purposes, a straw image of Mary, surrounded by stones, was sometimes installed on the ground. After the rite was completed, all this was disassembled and either burned or thrown into the river. They honored Maren on February 15, and brought straw, flowers, and various fruits as a gift. Very rarely, only during the years of large epidemics, animals were sacrificed to the goddess of death, depriving them of their lives directly at the altar itself.