Three witches with one eye mythology. Forkiades

"Grayi"

Nowadays only philological professors write, and even then with their pens tangled in their words, about Gray’s myth. And in those long-dead times, any child could clearly and smartly tell the beginning of the story about the Grays. But the end of the story is hidden not only from professors, but even from children: it is in centuries unborn, where I invite you, prodigies, to follow me.

Three old women, named Graia, were appointed by Zeus to guard the mountain paths of Parnassus. The paths fell down, from heights to valleys. There, in the clouds, above the world stretching below, was hidden neither bridle nor whip, a winged horse - Pegasus. Under the golden hoof of Pegasus there was not a blade of grass, but, growing letter by letter, black unwritten and unread lines stretched from the ground into the azure, combed by the mountain winds: the winged one fed on them.

Zeus, cunning in his mind, knew that whoever took possession of Pegasus would also get the lined black-lettered meadows of the Parnassian slopes, raised by him, the ruler of the world, raised high above the smoke of the valley houses.

That is why he settled at the very top turns of the paths of the old evil Grays. There were three grays, but all three had only one eye. The old women were never separated. While one of them, having mastered the eye, peered down through the flight of clouds, the other two were impatiently waiting for their turn: to see.

Often the Grays fought over the eye, rolling around on sharp stones in a six-armed and three-headed ugly lump, snatching from each other the vision that passed from finger to finger. If the guarding Graia fell asleep, the other immediately, putting her hand under the drooping eyelid of the sleeping woman, stole her eye.

One day the Grays heard a barely perceptible noise: someone was climbing up the path from the lowlands, dropping small scree down. The step came and went again. Sighted Graia peered vigilantly down. The other two, alert, turned their empty eye sockets towards the noise.

What do you see?

Yarn of mists.

Give me your eye!

The sound of a crepe: someone, covered in darkness, was climbing up the cliffs; occasionally he stopped, as if in thought; and again - the roar of stones being dropped.

Clasping their hands, the Grays carefully moved down: one eye - six sockets. A sighted woman is ahead, two blind women silently follow. Danger interrupted the quarrels.

We entered the clouds. The blind Grays stumbled more than once, sliding their feet on wet granites.

The dark threads slowly unraveled. Below are the squares of the fields; gray thin stalks of smoke growing from chimneys; red spots on tiles.

The winding paths were empty. Sighted Graia, turning her eye to the right and left, was about to answer “no,” when she suddenly saw: there, behind them, at the cliff slope, separated from them by a narrow gap, stood a man. He hooked an iron hook embedded in a long stick onto a cliff ledge and calmly, without moving, watched Grai.

Whispering, the Grays moved towards the wicked man. On the way there is a gap of failure. Leading Graia, crouching on shaking knees, jumped.

And we, and us? - the rest muttered, stretching out their hands to their sister.

Blind, they did not dare to jump. Then the presenter Graya took her eye out from under her eyelid:

The sisters put their palms up. But there was something wrong in Graia’s movement: the eye, flashing a white light over the abyss, did not reach its other edge and sank into the abyss. Four crooked palms clenched and unclenched, feeling only emptiness.

Do you have an eye? - asked one.

No, you have,” the other hissed.

And the man, tearing the hook off the rock, began to carefully but quickly descend to the crevice. Graia, who had jumped over, was left alone and without an eye, and sensed fear.

For help! - she shouted to those remaining on the other side of the chasm. “Come to me!”

Then one of the eyeless ones made up her mind. The jump threw her light body across the abyss with sufficient force, but not in a straight line, but obliquely: and, not reaching the ground, the old woman, howling, fell into the abyss. The third one didn’t dare. The advanced Graia had no choice: there was an abyss behind and an enemy ahead. Blind and alone, she prepared to face death. Digging her nails into the cracks of the ground, covering her head under the sharp angles of her elbows, she meekly waited for the end. The pebbles spun under the impact of the foot right next to her ear. A sharp hook whistled through the air, and Graya, spreading her arms, fell down without a groan - following the eye and her sister.

The man who defeated the Grai could continue to rise. A thunderstorm was throwing lightning towards us. The winds were howling. The clouds beat with gray wings. But the man walked and walked: from stone to stone, along the winding paths, along the ledges of rocks - to the Parnassian heights.

Clouds, lightning, winds remained below; A round sun shone with yellow rays above his head, and at his feet, long, short, ink-filled lines, sprinkled with graphite pollen, swayed, growing like letters from letters.

Between the lines of thin stems there were blurred blots. And knee-deep in words - a snow-white winged Pegasus: wings behind his back; in the teeth -

an armful of half-chewed lines: chewing, dropping a word, a letter, a syllable.

The daredevil wanted to lasso Pegasus, but he opened powerful wings rustling in the storm. Then the winner picked up two volumes of lines from the Parnassian meadow, and began to descend back to the dwelling.

When it became known in the lowlands that access to the Parnassian heights was free, people immediately climbed and climbed up the stones and paths.

In crowds. But the path along the ups and downs was difficult. Many had to slide down, moaning and groaning, giving up the idea. Those who returned complained to the elders. They ordered: to tear off the steep slopes, round the break in the paths, make them wider, and in dangerous places put up railings. And when everything was done according to the word of the elders, the people again - some alone, some with wives, children and servants, mit Kind und Kegel

They stretched out in a line from the valley to the heights.

The white snows of Olympus, trampled underfoot and pierced with sticks, turned gray and melted. Below, under the tiles, publishing houses opened, paying for each line torn and delivered from Parnassus at copper coin. Greed has taken over everyone. Lines and stanzas were torn by hand, cut with garden shears, mowed with scythes. In the bustle, other poems fell under the soles, broke and confused their rhymes. Then the line fee began to fall catastrophically; The newly organized commission for the improvement of Parnassus posted the rules on all the rocks and at the turns of all paths:

"1. Access to the top of Parnassus to all persons, except those who have presented a certificate with the seal of the College of the Big Pen, is absolutely prohibited from this date.

2. The title of poet is awarded to a person after passing the appropriate tests at the College of the Big Pen. Somehow: tests for running any phrase through all 24 meters and 1 ideology; exam on splicing rhymes, etc.

3. Unregistered: do not tear lines, do not take Muses with you. For every illegally torn letter, the perpetrators will answer before the Tribunal of Criticism, which is asked to take care of the implementation of these rules."

Before the decree, letters and lines grew from the ground at random: omegas and alphas interspersed with usas and azas. Next to the modest emuettes and the round omicron, lush dables and tiny triangles of izhits bloomed. Between the slender stems of iambic pentameter tragedy, with dewdrops of tears at the sharp ends, tangled up were weedy, separately looking verses and gazelles intertwined with rhymes.

The commission decided to eliminate the disorder: the Parnassian lines were sorted by alphabets, by poetic genera, types and subtypes, in compliance with strophic, rhythmic and metric classifications.

Pegasus remained elusive for a long time. Sometimes he will let you come close, a dozen lines, and suddenly - wings apart, hooves flashing: look for him on the far ledge. Then the Society for Correct Pegasus Hunting was founded; They approached Pegasus, armed with a multitude of goose and steel feathers and sharpened pencil graphites: whole clouds of them, eclipsing the sun, flew at Pegasus, piercing his neck, ears, and wings. Wounded, he tried to straighten them -

Hobbies: "ours". The wings were cut off. They put him in a stall. Now anyone, for a small fee, could ride a golden-hoofed horse around the sandy circle of the arena; persons with certificates - out of turn.

At first, the captive Pegasus was frightened by the crowds: they put on eye pads, and, lowering the black ovals of the eye pads to the ground, with a golden, limply drooping mane, apathetically trampled, under the whistle of the whip and the shouts of the grooms, the once winged, free horse along the closed path of the arena.

There are grinning mouths all around:

But the eye dropped by Graia did not die: after lying for centuries and centuries at the bottom of the gorge, it was carried by rain streams to the lowland, to the outskirts of the human settlement.

There, buried in the ground, Gray's eye lay for another hundred years, and in the hundred and first spring it froze and began to sprout: first, a white and loose axial process of a thin, hair-sized nerve fiber crawled from the eye root. The fiber thickened slightly and began to be divided into dull transparent fibrils, spreading to the right and left in an increasingly complex network. A cloudy glassy shoot pushed upward from the pupil: parting the layers of sand and clay stuck to the stem, it boldly looked into the sun. Another week, and the tiny rainbow circles that surrounded the stem suddenly burst into colorful petals. The eye lay somewhere in an abandoned courtyard, where rarely anyone went, near the tine, among thickets of weeds and tall dusty grasses. No one noticed the birth of the strange tree.

Little by little branching and lifting the growing crown from the ground, the tree stretched upward, rising above the heads of grass and weeds. Autumn was approaching: the ovals of plums were turning chenille on the plum trees; on the apple trees the apples turned golden; and on the strange tree, hanging on white axial fibrils, small, glassy-white eyeballs, hanging down with their pupils, were rounded, gradually filling up and filling with nervous juice.

The first person to see the tree was an eight-year-old ragamuffin named Tek. He served as a guide to an old blind beggar named Cecus and helped him in collecting alms. That day, from early morning, they wandered between the houses of the village, hiding people’s meager donations in a bag and a colorful wooden cup. In the evening, having reached the outskirts, they found an uninhabited courtyard, as it seemed to them, and here, near the tine, having crushed the grass, they began to settle down for the night.

The first to discover the location of the tree, Gray, oddly enough, was a blind old man. Tek's eyes did not leave the bottom of the painted cup, which the old man carried, not trusting the guide, and greedily counted and counted the coins that jingled in the cup. The old man, before sinking to the ground, cautiously moved his long, gnarled staff around: the staff poked into the tyn, felt the ground, rustled through the grass and suddenly ran into something strange. The old man straightened up on his half-bent knees.

What is this? - He turned to Tek, quickly pulling away the stick. Tak looked: three steps away from them, in the gray air of the twilight, some strange round fruits were white, densely clinging to the branches of a low tree. The boy took a step forward. He stretched out his hand: something slimy and cold touched his fingers. He pulled the white thread-like stalk and brought it to his eyes: from his hand he looked directly at him - now dilating, now narrowing the pupil - a human eye. Tak screamed and threw his eye away.

Well... what's there?..- Tsekus asked with growing impatience.

But the boy, crying, buried his face in the old man’s dress and could not utter a word. Then he, groping through the air with his hands, moved towards the tree: when his fingers jumped along the slippery branches, feeling the round pupils of the eyeballs, which slightly trembled from the touch of the rough skin, intense curiosity appeared on the face of the blind man. Tak begged to leave, but the old man muttered: “No, no,” and did not move. Night was approaching. Tak jumped over the fence and took a nap on the other side.

Through the holes in the fence darkened the motionless, stooped figure of Tsekus, covering the terrible tree. Now to Tek the adventure seemed a little funny. Smiling, he raised his eyelids again: the old man stood motionless, bent over the eye tree. And Tak's eyelids stuck together.

Night. For Tsekus it is always night: just as it came thirty years ago, there is still no dawn. Tsekus was not born blind: the disaster in the mine took away his eyes: one, under the right eyelid, was dead, the other was leaking. Now, standing by a tree with incomprehensible fruits, the blind man was dreaming. Every time Caekus was left alone, he tried, with the power of his memory, weakening from day to day, to turn touches into visibility and again light the sun in the midst of eternal night: it rose -

the gray-yellow, cloudy, powerless Sun of the blind stretched from the low faded arch in short rays to the unclear silhouettes of the mountains, looming spots of people and the shaky outline of houses and trees. An hour passed like that. The old man squatted down and moved close to the tree. Quiet. Tak is sleeping. The hand felt again: eyes - two - three. Pressing the thumb of his left hand into his left eyebrow, Tsekus carefully pulled the stuck together dead eyelid of the leaking eye and, overcoming the dull pain, began to squeeze the elastic and slippery eye, torn from the tree, into the hollow of the empty eye socket. The eye, which at first was only painfully rubbing against the eyelid and tearing small blood vessels, suddenly twitched in the fingers and firmly moved into the orbit: at that same second something painfully hit the brain, blue sparks began to beat in the eye and around the eye, and Tsekus, scared to death, lost consciousness .

When he woke up, he thought: I dreamed. And in fact, the night grew black all around: as always. Tsekus raised his hand to his eye: what is this? Some strange five-pointed outline was quickly approaching him. The old man froze with his hand raised, and several seconds passed before he realized that he could see his fingers.

Caekus regained his sight at night. Rising to the elbow, squinting his eyelid from acute pain, he made out a black hovering low above him, stretching into the distance. Under the black overhang a narrow, semicircular curved strip appeared. “The fence,” whispered Tsekus and chuckled quietly. Rising from his knees, he, straining his vision, discerned (whether close or far, he did not know) some dark transparent silhouettes hanging from the overhang: wide at the top, narrow at the bottom.

Trees,” Tsekus muttered, holding his hand on his heart.

True, the strange shape of the trees, hanging in their butts from somewhere above, like stalactites from the black vault of a cave, slightly puzzled him, but the flow of new sensations did not allow him time to ask “why.” He remembered that it was a two-minute walk from the trees to the fence, and the trees immediately moved to a certain place in space.

Cekus was happy. The brightest southern afternoon, whimsically dressed in a variegation of colors and innumerable sun rays, never gave anyone as much awe as this hazy, moonless and starless autumn night, looming here and there with a meager outline and outline, gave to old Cekus. And a vague weave of grass, and a narrow strip of fence, and slightly tinged with the pre-dawn blue

(only, strangely, from somewhere below) the brightening sky seemed like heaven, revelations higher meanings and joys: and when the sun (again strange: as if falling like a disk downwards), dressing the world in colors and glare, gave itself to the eye, old Caecus, exhausted from the excitement of the night, slept soundly. His toothless gums were unclenched with a smile of happiness.

The rumor about the wonderful tree and Tsekus's epiphany ran, mincing words, along all the paths and paths of the country. Crowds followed Tsekus. In a wooden mug next to the coppers there were white silver coins. They asked questions.

But the one who had regained his sight was somehow strangely absent-minded and unsteady in his vision: he walked with an unsteady step, as if he were placing his feet in the void. He looked not at his feet, but somewhere up. His eye, avoiding people's faces, squinted at the toes of their shoes. When they asked if he was happy about the miracle, he remained silent, moving his dry lips angrily. And finally (Tek had never known this habit from the old man before), he loved to sit by the lake, or even just by a puddle, and look - for hours at a time - at the reflections in the water.

One day, walking between the market stalls, Tsekus told Tek to buy a mirror, but, looking into it, he threw the glass onto the stones. People laughed. But Tak did not laugh: he did not leave old Tsekus, because he felt that Tsekus, in his insight, needed a guide more than before, during the years of blindness.

People did not think long about what had happened: they surrounded the apple tree with the eyeballs with an iron fence, placed a guard on the fence and entrusted the miracle to a special commission of doctors and opticians. Tak often thought about what had happened, but his weak childish brain couldn’t handle the truth.

Meanwhile, the matter was explained very simply: in the lens, set in the human eye, there lives a mischievous manner - to turn the world that enters it with rays - upside down. But behind the brain, which receives the overturned world from the lens, there is an equally mischievous habit - to overturn the overturned.

It is only thanks to this double somersault that a rather serious world is obtained, where the top is above and the bottom is below, where the floors are the bottom - the roots from below, and the roofs - the butt - the clouds from above, and so on. But the old eye and ancient brain of the old women of Grai no longer had the strength to overturn the worlds (how easy is that!), to drop the starry sky, as the Diamond Letter of Trismegistos testifies, to the ground only to raise his grief again. And that is why the Grays saw the top of the cliff, entrusted to them by Zeus, like everyone else, above the running of the clouds; for them, as for everyone else, the lowlands were below, in the gaps of the clouds. But when Grai’s powerless eye fused with nerve fibers to the human brain, then everything went differently: Grai’s eye gave the world seriously, without turning over a single highlight in it, and the human brain, as always, took it mischievously: and in front of Tsekus’s dilated pupil the mountains rose to their peaks, the trees stretched, like stalactite shoots, with their butts down; The sky with stars dropped into the abyss began to yawn under his feet, melting clouds crawled out from under the very sole of his shoe, and only thanks to some ongoing miracle, as the superstitious Tsekus thought, his foot did not fall through the cloudy jelly into the gaping voids. And from above, a low-hanging black layer of earth pressed down, with houses with their roofs thrown back, constantly threatening to collapse along with the people into the starry abyss.

Birds fluttered in the air, overturned on their backs. And only the body of Caekus, switched off by tactile, muscular and somatic sensations from the general feeling of the overturning of all things, found itself alone and helplessly lost in this absurd and incomprehensible world - on the contrary. The one who had regained his sight hid his eyes from him, bending over the mirrors of lakes and puddles: their surfaces, again overturning the overturned world, gave him, Tsekus, even in the slightest, even inside the puddle, a cloudy and wavering likeness of that former, hoped-for world to which Tsekus had become accustomed since childhood and about which he dreamed throughout the thirty years of his disability.

“Before,” Tsekus thought bitterly, “I was a cripple, I alone, now I am healed, but hasn’t the whole world become a pitiful cripple: they threw God’s stars down, rested the earth hanging on their heads, like crutches, on their overturned mountains and trampled their tops, like foul grass, are clear rays grown from the sun..."

Meanwhile, the optical medical commission was meeting. And she sat again.

Several eyeballs were dissected with a scalpel and cut along their longitudinal and transverse axes. We studied it - outside and inside.

They recorded: “Eyes are like eyes.” Old Cecus was placed for observations and experiments in an isolated chamber in an ophthalmology clinic. He complained as best he could about the upside down world, asked to remove the ceiling from under his feet, begged to be saved. One day, in a fit of despair, the old man, sobbing pathetically, began to ask for his blindness to be returned: the Grays took revenge. Doctors and physicists shrugged their shoulders. A subcommittee was appointed. The subcommittee ordered three more eyes to be torn off: they cut along the auxiliary and lateral axes. The lenses were removed and the retina was examined down to the last molecule. They recorded: “Eyes are like eyes.”

Then it was decided, taking into account that the eyes are grown by a tree, to seek the opinion of a scientific pomologist.

The pomologist turned the eyeball over in his hands, licked it with his tongue and, putting it in place, announced: “The eye is simply not ripe yet. Tsekus was in a hurry. If you let the eyes ripen, then...”

People nodded their heads joyfully: the reason had been found.

By September, the eyeballs began to fall of their own accord onto the pre-made notched bedding. The optician on duty, making his morning rounds, always found two or three eyes on the ground, their pupils staring at him. At the general meeting of the commission and all subcommittees, it was decided: to tear off every single eye and begin broadly conceived eye planting experiments.

All the blind people were gathered from hospitals, almshouses, and charity homes into one place. There were no volunteers yet.

The press debated the question: two or one eye per person. There were few eyes, many cripples. We started experiments. Those healed for the most part showed the same - Tsekusov - symptoms of specific anxiety and depression. But they were quickly isolated in a special sanatorium for habituation, from where they, already partly reconciled and resigned to the fact, dispersed, however, with the same Tsekus-like, somewhat unsteady and confused gait, with their eyes dangerously raised upward, along all the radii of the country's roads.

Little by little, applications began to arrive from those who voluntarily decided to undergo the operation. The supply of eyes was running low. At this time, a new fruit harvest produced several hundred eyeballs.

Those healed, after three or four months of melancholy and fear, usually established a certain calmness and even a strange and somewhat wild gaiety. True, in their views, way of life, daily habits and religious beliefs, the gray-eyed people differed sharply from other people - but they, like everyone else, for example, got married (most often to each other) and gave birth to offspring.

The new generation of gray-eyed people no longer showed signs of special melancholy and confusion, so characteristic of people lost between two worlds: one hidden in memory, the other given by the torment of surgery; young gray-eyed ones confidently walk over the clouds and stars, trampling them calmly, but when talking about the earth and puddles, they look up.

There is no need to rush to conclusions about the viability of gray-eyed creatures: they are just emerging. There are still few of them. And to the question: where is the truth, in the first or second two-words of the ancient trismegic inscription “The sky is above -

the sky below” there are four possible answers: “Here”, “There”, “Both here and there”, “Neither there nor here”.

Sigismund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky - Grayi, read the text

See also Krzhizhanovsky Sigismund Dominikovich - Prose (stories, poems, novels...):

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Witches and witchcraft have taken over the minds, from angry villagers wondering why city women have suddenly gained a sense of independence, to the average man in the street wondering whether last night's herbal tea was a potion or just really bad tea. Scary witches have acted as a source of wisdom and evil in folklore for many generations.

Kikimora

Kikimora, home spirit funny name which must, above all, be respected. She is the female equivalent and wife of a brownie, and her presence is always revealed by wet footprints. So what's so scary about Kikimora? She is quite harmless, but if she is not given respect, she will whistle, break dishes and throw things around. If your property is valuable to you, it is better to remain on good terms with Kikimora.

Kirk (Circe)

A famous character from Homer's Odyssey, Circe was a witch who lived on the island of Aea. She had a peculiar hobby - she turned sailors passing by into wolves, lions and other animals with the help of a potion. Some collect stamps, while others turn people into animals.

When Odysseus arrived at Aea, Circe turned his warriors into pigs, but Odysseus had a magical plant given to him by the gods, which prevented Circe from bewitching him too. Odysseus demanded that Circe swear not to betray him, after which he and his men lived under Circe's protection for a year before sailing back to Ithaca.

Witch Morgana

Most people are generally familiar with the legend of King Arthur and his companion the wizard Merlin, but few of us remember the heroine named Morgana the Fairy. In myth, she works tirelessly to kill the good Queen Guinevere, who forbade her from court when she was younger. She tries to betray Guinevere's lover, Sir Lancelot, and interfere with the campaigns of King Arthur's knights. Morgana's final fate is unknown, but she will eventually reconcile with King Arthur and bring him to Avalon after his final battle.

The Witch of Endor

The Witch of Endor was not evil, but the fate she foretold could not be ignored. As the story goes, King Saul came to her for answers on how to defeat the Philistines. The witch summoned the ghost of the prophet Samuel, who did not say how to defeat the Philistines, but predicted that he would be defeated and join his three sons in afterlife. Saul, wounded in battle the next day, kills himself out of fear. And although the witch did not technically force Saul to commit suicide, she certainly contributed to it.

Chedip

It is difficult to understand whether she is a witch or a vampire. But there is little pleasant about it. If a woman dies an unnatural death, during childbirth or commits suicide, she becomes a Chedip, the Indian equivalent of a succubus. She rides on a tiger in the light of the moon and if she enters the house, no one notices it. She then sucks the life out of everyone in the house through their toes and disappears without a trace.

Jenny Green Teeth

Depending on the area of ​​England, this cruel witch is also known as Ginny, Jenny, or Wicked Jenny. Jenny Greenteeth was a witch who deliberately drowned both young and old just for fun. In some legends, she devours children and old people. Other times, she is simply a sadist who enjoys the pain of her victims. She is often described as having a green complexion and razor-sharp teeth. Like many creepy images of folklore, it was probably used to scare naughty children, including to prevent them from swimming in ponds and drowning.

Three Prophetic Sisters

Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of the great poet's main plays, replete with brilliant characters and stories full of magic, betrayal and fear. But the central heroines of the story, around whom the plot develops, are the Prophetic Sisters. Of course, they are quite strange and unusual, but in this case they are both fateful and fatally determining destinies. They act as a destructive force: they not only condemn Macbeth to torment due to fears and vices, but also send the entire country to war just to deprive one person of power.

Witch Bellov

The Bell Family Witch is the most famous witch American folklore, her story is one of those told around the campfire. According to one version, she was a poltergeist , which appeared in the house of John Bell Sr. in 1817. The witch bullied family members, destroyed furniture, cursed and used foul language, and eventually poisoned John Bell by slipping him a bottle of poison under the guise of medicine.

Grays and Moiras

The Graias are the ancient Greek spinners of the threads of fate. They are often lumped together with the Moirai, as they share attributes and functions. The fate of everyone, even the fate of immortals, depended on these three sisters.

The Graias were the evil relatives of the Gorgons (Medusa and her two less famous sisters). They had one eye for all, which they used in turn. The Grays also knew about the unknown and about fate, but they did not have the power to change anything in destinies.

Hecate

Hecate - ancient Greek goddess witchcraft . She was also the goddess of witches and poisonous plants, as well as many other witchcraft attributes. Hecate was the daughter of the Titan Persian and is still worshiped by Greek polytheists. They say that the very concept of the evil eye came from her. Shrines were erected in her honor to ward off the wrath of evil demons and spirits. One of her names is Chthonia ("belonging to the underworld").

If it existed, it probably wouldn't have been too fond of the ancient European custom of persecuting and burning alive "witches" (who were most often just innocent victims of ignorance).

1. Kikimora.

A witch with a very funny name - Kikimora - is a house spirit, a kind of brownie, only female. Her presence can be recognized by wet footprints on the floor. Why is kikimora considered a witch with whom it is better not to deal? In fact, kikimora is harmless, but if you don’t respect it, it can turn your house upside down: break dishes, scatter things. Therefore, you better respect this witch.

2. Pickaxe, or Circe


Circe, one of the famous characters in Homer's Odyssey, was a witch who lived on the island of Aea. Her hobby was turning passing fishermen into various animals - wolves, lions and others. Before that, she drugged them. When Odysseus found himself on the island, Circe turned his people into pigs, but she could not bewitch Odysseus himself, since he had a magical plant from the gods. After this, he made Circe swear that she would not betray him, and until his return to Ithaca, Odysseus and his men were under Circe's protection.

3. Fairy Morgana


Few people know the heroine of the legend of King Arthur, Fairy Morgan. The myths say that she constantly improved her magic in order to destroy Queen Guinevere, who one day drove her out of her court. Fairy Morgana tried to betray Sir Lancelot, Guinevere's lover, and upset all the plans of King Arthur. In the end, she does make peace with King Arthur and brings him to Avalon after his final battle.

4. The Sorceress of Endor


The Witch of Endor may not have been evil. According to legend, King Saul came to her for advice on how to defeat the Philistines. She called for help the ghost of the prophet Samuel, who did not answer this question, but said that victory would be for the king, after which he would go to the next world to his three deceased sons. Wounded in battle, Saul killed himself out of fear. And although the sorceress did not force Saul to kill himself, she was involved in his death.

5. Jenny Greenteas


If you've been to England, you've probably heard about the evil witch Ginny. This witch drowned people young and old for fun. According to other legends, she ate children and the elderly. They also say that she was a real sadist who loved to enjoy the pain of her victims. According to the description, she had a green face and sharp teeth. Usually they used it to scare children so that they would behave well and not go far into the water.

6. Chedip


Chedip is a woman who died during childbirth or committed suicide. She is the Indian equivalent of a succubus. Chedip rides a tiger in the moonlight and when entering the house, no one suspects that she is there. Chedip sucks the life out of every person through their toes and disappears without a trace.

7. “Prophetic Sisters” or Three Witches


Macbeth" is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays with amazing characters, filled with magic, fear, betrayal. Its first characters, who set everything in motion, are the Prophetic Sisters. They personify the destructive force that makes Macbeth spin in a spiral of paranoia and corruption, and then go to Scotland to fight a war for the sake of killing one person.In other words - the Sisters of Fate are the personification of evil.

8. Bell Family Witch


The Bell Family Witch is the most famous witch in American folklore. It is her story that everyone tells around the fire. It is believed that she was a poltergeist who came to the home of John Bell Sr. in 1817 and began attacking members of his family. As a result, she poisoned John Bell himself with poison disguised as medicine.

9. Hecate


Hecate is the daughter of the titan Persian, the Greek goddess of witchcraft, witches, and poisonous plants. To this day, many Greek polytheists worship her. It is believed that the concept of the evil eye came from her. Many temples were erected in her honor. And one of her names, “Chthonia,” means “from the underworld.” Why is she considered so intimidating? Thanks to the fact that she is a witch. If it existed, it would hardly approve of burning witches at the stake. After all, many of those women were innocent.

10. Grayi\ Morai


The Graii and Morai are trinities of different types of witches, and they are often confused.
The Morai weave the tapestry of fate, and the fate of every person is tied to their tapestry, even the fate of immortals.
The Grays are three evil sisters, relatives of the Gorgons, who have knowledge of the unknown and of fate, but they do not control it.

Witchcraft and witches captured the minds: from villagers to city dwellers. In folklore different nations world, witches acted as a source of evil and wisdom. Let's look at the most terrible witches in mythology.

Witch Morgana

Almost all adults are generally familiar with the legend of King Arthur and the wizard Merlin. However, only a few remember this legend about the fairy Morgan. In fairy tales, she constantly engages in witchcraft with the goal of destroying the good Queen Guinevere, who forbade her to be at court when she was young. In films, Morgana is usually portrayed as an attractive girl. But in reality her appearance is terrible. In order not to frighten people, she only temporarily takes on the appearance of a beautiful girl. According to legend, Morgana betrayed Sir Lancelot and thwarted the campaign of the Knights of the Round Table. The legend does not say what the final fate of the witch is.

Chedip

It is difficult to determine who the chedip really was. One legend says that she is a vampire, and another that she is a witch. No matter who she is, there is nothing pleasant about her. If a woman commits suicide, dies during childbirth, or dies an unnatural death, then she turns into a chedip - the Indian equivalent of a demoness. She is rightfully considered one of the most terrible witches. Chedip rides around on a creature that looks like a tiger and is looking for a victim. Among other succubi, she is distinguished by increased cruelty. If she enters a home, no one notices. People who are in the house become its victims. Chedip sucks life out with his toes and then disappears without a trace.

Witch Bellov

In American folklore, this witch is the most terrible. The story of this sorceress is one of the main ones among those that are usually told around the fire after dark. One urban legend says that the witch was a poltergeist that appeared in the home of wealthy planter John Bell. The sorceress used foul language, cursed, destroyed furniture and bullied family members. Exorcism rites were performed several times, but all attempts were in vain. Then the Bells decided to put up with their unpleasant neighbor. However, the witch's actions became more dangerous every day. If before she simply frightened the residents of the house, then they began to be threatened with death. And so it happened - she poisoned the head of the family, slipping him a bottle of poison under the guise of a medicine. Then the witch disappeared.

Grayi

According to ancient greek mythology, The Grays are a trinity of archaic goddesses. Grays were the personification of old age. In some epics, the Grays are depicted as three vile old women. In one of the legends they are represented as spinners of the threads of fate. The lives of all people and even immortal beings depended on these witches. There was no worst one among them; they were equally disgusting. The old women's relatives were the Gorgons: Medusa and her two lesser-known sisters. The Gray had one eye for three, so they had to take turns using it. The Grays knew the future, but they could not influence it.