Bosnian mythology: THIRD EYE OR “STARS”

KARANĐOLOZ: The belief about this mythological creature was brought over to Bosnia by the Ottoman Empire. Karanđoloz as it is believed can be found at night on lonely intersections, when it surprises a traveller by jumping on his back and riding him like a horse. Besides being very heavy, Karanđoloz has an awful smell and reeks, and in that way deepens the traveller’s misery and suffering. If the Karanđoloz asks the traveller “Am I heavy?” the answer mustn’t be affirmative or this being of the night will become even heavier. The Karanđoloz won’t stop torturing the man until dawn; when the roosters call is heard in the morning the demonic being will disappear. People used to protect themselves against the being by going around the house or a stable in circles holding a walnut in each hand and clapping one against the other they uttered: “Tučem kućnog dušmanina, što berićet odnosi a musibet donosi!”. The famous Bosnian writer Mehmed Meša Selimović wrote about Karanđoloz.

NALETNJAK: Naletnjak is one kind of Jinn in Bosnia who possesses the power of transformation. He is very adaptable and he can pass through the smallest hole or opening. According to folk belief Naletnjak can be seen during the night if one goes onto a bridge. Naletnjak can jump onto a human in the form of a cat or a ram in the desire to be carried by the human or he appears in front of a human in the form of a horse and when the human mounts him he flies towards the sky, into the clouds, until the call of the rooster is heard. Frequently the Naletnjak would appear in the form of a black whirlwind that stretched all the way up to the sky. It was forbidden to whistle during the night inside a house or a yard since it was considered that Naletnjak communicated in such a manner and one could call them when whistling.

SIBJAN: One of the most powerful female demons of the old Mesopotamia was Labartu, the daughter of god Anu, who as legends claim lived alongside mountains, deserts and swamps. Her appearance, as the old records in cuneiform claim, was cold imperturbable and cruel, her hair unkempt, a lion’s face and naked breasts. She attacked local livestock out of the thicket as a habit and she would rip their bodies with her long claws. She was especially prone to attacking pregnant women and small children. Her greatest pleasure was, as legends claim, to cause miscarriage in women. With the advent of Islam the name of that demon was changed into Umma Sibjan and the belief in her arrived in Bosnia during the Ottoman period. According to belief Sibjan caused a disease in children which is called in Bosnia sibiluk and is manifested by a lot of crying, slight and temporary paralysis of the child’s body, loss of appetite, anaemia, insomnia,… Against her attack various prophylactic measures were undertaken like leaving a fish bone, a clove of garlic and a snake stone next to the child. If an attack by this demon took place the child would be treated by magical methods, the mother would carry the child along with a sugar cube under a chestnut tree, whose roots stretch on the earth’s surface, and there she runs the child three times underneath it. If she is unable to find such a tree she carries the child to a house that the child never visited and runs the child three times underneath the beams of the house.
The fear of negative influence by Sibjan on the mother and the child caused dozens of taboos that the young mother needs to follow during the first 40 days of pregnancy: she shouldn’t leave the house after midnight, she needs to carry a scarf on her head covering every single hair on her head, she mustn’t wash clothes, etc.

VUKODLAK or WEREWOLF: Among the Bosnian folk the name Werewolf is often used for a vampire even though we are talking about two separate mythological beings. According to legend, werewolf is created when an evil man is possessed by a demon and then he turns into a hairy night monster that kills livestock, mostly sheep and sometimes even humans. The belief in werewolf’s goes far back in time, the time when our forefathers the Illyrians inhabited Bosnia which worshiped the god of forests and mountains Vidasus which is described in legends as a male body completely covered in hair. A human being can become a werewolf in case of a demon intervention or a magical ritual. In Trebinje, according to ethnological data, a case of lycanthropy happened in the 19th century, the woman who practiced the ritual of transformation was a witch and she knew the secret pagan transformation rituals. Every time she wanted to transform into a werewolf she would take a rope and make a circle out of it on the ground. She would then take off all of her clothes and place it into the middle of the circle. She would then perform a forward somersault three times, making thus a circle with her body, in the meantime she would transform into a werewolf. She would repeat the same process if she wanted to transform back into a human. This case, like many others, wouldn’t be recorded if the witch in the form of a werewolf didn’t kill 40 sheep’s to some landowner and him reporting it to the local authorities who undertook a search and found the culprit and the way in which the crime unfolded.

ZDUHAČI or STUHE: The wealth of Bosnian mythology is certainly reflected in numerous names for various beings from the folklore such as guzenzuba, previdi, more, leptirice, plakavac, div, buka, kučibaba, kamenica… Though Bosnia and Herzegovina is a relatively small country often a few names signify one mythological being such as bird-child soul called Plačo, Plakavac, Buka, Meknjača, or for example name for a witch: leptirica, naletnica, sihirbaza, guzenzuba, etc. Certain mythological beings are tied to geographically small areas such as kamenica and are therefore relatively unknown or there is only mention of them in folk stories. Such is the case with divovi (giants) which among the Bosnian people exist solely in folk tales and stories (Folk short stories, author Munib Maglajić, Esma Smailbegović, Svjetlost, 1978) where cannibals are described while in folklore there is no mention of any memorable giants or a belief about them. But, when we talk about stuhe or zduhači it is very interesting to mention the data that in BiH, where we come across a widespread belief in stuhe or zduhače, together with border territories of Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia, we can find tombstones. This information is very important since it leads to a conclusion that stuhe or zduhači were probably guardians of tombstones, which was modified after the Middle ages into the belief that stuhe are guardians of a place. In the parts of Bosnia where there are no findings of tombstones there is no mention of stuhe nor mention of a local zduhač, no matter the religious affiliation.

Three demonic beings which were used to scare people are karanđoloz, kučibaba and psoglav. Karanđoloz is a dark demon from the Turkish folklore about which there is a belief in Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is believed that he wears an iron shirt and that he smells horribly. Karanđoloz has a habit of jumping on one’s back at an intersection in order to be carried around. He is a nocturnal being and appears only then.

Kučibaba: Among the Bosnian Catholics and Orthodox there is a belief in a grandma with a hook, which is called kučibaba or grandma kukača. This mythological being was used to scare little children to prevent them from approaching a well or the bank of a river since they could be caught by the grandma with her hook and they could be pulled towards her. Psoglav: Psoglav (doghead) is a mythological being of Bosnian Orthodox which stems from Russia. It is described as a human being with legs of a horse and the head of a dog. It has teeth of steel and an eye on the middle of the forehead. It is used to scare disobedient children.

AŽDAHA: Another mythological being about which there are a lot of stories and beliefs in Bosnia is Aždaha which is described by people to be fat and round as a stump, it can devour a goat, has no wings and can be heard when an hour away. “Wherever it comes it will create havoc or evil”. According to mythology aždaha which devoured the sun was called Sap. A long time ago there were three suns in the sky and the aždahe which lived in the lake ate two and cut into the third one. People shot cannons at them in vain. Then a gypsy came and said: “Don’t do it like that, slaughter a hundred sheep, skin them, fill them with plaster and throw them into the lake in order for aždaha to come out.” When they threw plaster the aždahe thought it was a sheep, they ate them and died.

PLAGUE or MUBAREĆIJA: Plague is considered to be a female demon amongst the folk. It is called Mubarećija (euphemism, which means lucky) and it is described as a woman in a white dress with skinny legs or in a shape of a goat. She travels all over the world, goes from one house to the other and quizzes people on everything. She hates lies and that’s why one needs to tell her the truth at all times. Sometimes she communicated to people in their dreams in order to warn them that she will be visiting their village or city and that they should move out. Plague is afraid of dogs and when she is attacked by them she curls into the fetal position and waits for the dogs to leave. Like the Karanđoloz the plague also requires that a human that she meets along the way has to carry her on her back. If the human obeys the plague spares him and his family. Humans protected themselves from the plague by cleanliness and garlic.

That are ancestors, the Illyrians, were a warlike, mystical people, with shaman cults is known regardless of the fact that there is little data about them. But, the thing that is more interesting is the fact that it has been written by Roman historians, such as Pliny, that among the Illyrians there were many magicians, healers and clairvoyants of high regard, known across the Roman Empire.
Illyrian religion constituted numerous shaman cults where among the most important deities were those that represented symbols of the cult of fertility – god Vidasus (Cernunnos, Pan) and Tana (Diana, Aradia). Similarly, among the numerous spirits and god’s of the earth (nature) and sky, the dominant place was occupied by the snake, incarnation of the Grand Mother, to whom the hearth and threshold were dedicated. Still today in Bosnia it is traditionally believed that every house has its own snake protector, which protects the home and family from evil and bad luck. That this belief is not one of the many but very important, but also holly, is confirmed by its taboo – if the snake is accidentally or on purpose killed, the owner of the house will die.
According to a legend the snake is not only the protector of the house but also planet earth. Namely, in Bosnian mythology it is mentioned that above earth there is a gigantic snake which formed a circle with its body (bit its own tail) around the planet and in that way it protects it from all danger and bad luck, which additionally justifies her name of a protector.
Illyrian are equally prone to worshiping both earth spirits and gods as well as celestial ones, among which we will single out sun and moon as well as the stars. Belief of the Illyrians that stars are the seats of the human soul reveals an intriguing fact that our ancestors considered that they stem from another planet, i.e. space.
Traditional belief about Bosnia claims that one should not gaze at the stars at night because of the fear that at that moment one of them doesn’t “fall”, because if it happens to be the star of that person, the person will die immediately?! Analysing certain segments of Illyrian legends and beliefs, such as the one about the black dragon, god of evil, which attacks the sun and moon trying to swallow them (black out), we can see parts of the ancient myth about the demise of a civilization or even planets from which the ancestors of the Illyrians escaped.
Representation of the snake as the Grand Mother, symbol of life, and protector of humans from one side and the black dragon, god of evil, which constantly attacks sun and moon, trying to devour them and cause the end of life on earth, and humans themselves, is an ancient myth about the struggle of good and evil. But, behind it all is something much deeper and mystic. We could refer here to the theory of David Icke about the reptilian race of earth, which is present from the ancient times of Sumerian and Babylon, whose symbols are represented in various segments of the ruling families throughout the world.
If we recap the history of religion at its very beginning we will come to an obvious fact that today’s monotheistic god is twice as young as all pagan gods, and that the teaching of monotheism cannot be taken seriously in the attempts to fathom the history of the human race and its genesis, irrespective of the fact that monotheism, especially Christianity, took numerous segments of the pagan religion. The oldest religious movement which is familiar to us is the Neolithic cult of the Grand Mother, which is called the first and oldest deity in human history. And the Grand Mother is what connects the Illyrians with the reptiles (snake, dragon, salamander) and their alien heritage or ancient race from which they stem.

What connects Bosnia and India?

There is a large possibility that the Illyrians had some connection or even common heritage with the people from India, which can be grasped if we analyse certain legends from Bosnian mythology. The most interesting tale about the mysterious creatures called utve zlatokrile – half humans, half birds, which didn’t have sexual distinctions. It is claimed that they have escaped to Bosnia from India, “that cursed land”.
Another rarity of the Bosnian people but also connection with India is located in the traditional belief in the migration of the human’s soul into an animal and vice versa (reincarnation), which is actually the basic concept of the Bogomils in Bosnia during the Middle ages. How much this belief was widespread and accepted from the folk is best witnessed from the fact that still today in the 21^st century, there are old people who prolong the belief about the migration of the soul. In Velika Kladuša there are still old ladies from which you can hear the claim that evil people, especially murderers and thieves, turn into cows after death, horses, pigs, etc. so that they could repay their sins in the new life, serving other people. This traditional belief, which is found in total opposition about the classic monotheistic maxim of the soul leaving to heaven or hell, clearly points to the deep rooted belief about reincarnation among the Bosnian people.

Third eye or stars

In the end, we will return to the beginning of the text which speaks about the Illyrians as skilled mages and clairvoyants and the part about the belief in the connection of humans and stars in the sky and we will compare all that with the hinduistic teaching about chakras. Ajna or the sixth chakra is located in the middle of the forehead, above the eyebrows, and is connected with the pineal gland which is inactive in most humans, and it gives the ability of telepathy, clairvoyance, astral projection, etc. to mystics. This sixth chakra is often called the third eye and can be seen on ancient drawings of numerous deities.
In Illyrian-Bosnian tradition the third eye is called “star” which has the function to connect man with its star in the sky, seat of the soul. In practice this belief is widespread among the stravarke which annul negative energy while performing the ritual, using molten lead, covering their forehead with their hand i.e. their “star” for fear of negative energy blocking their invisible connection with the star in the sky. As each one of them claim, if that would happen, it could be possible for them to lose their mind and fall ill physically.
This ritual process directly goes in favour of the assumption that the Illyrian believed that they stem from another planet, with which they stayed in contact through the “star” on their forehead or the third eye. Or that their astral bodies descended to earth and populated it in the bodies of some ancient human beings. From that event it is easy to assume that through the generations they lost the precise detail from which part of the universe and from which planet they came so they considered all of the stars to be seats of the soul and their genesis.