Leshy Quotes

manticore, wyvern, fogler, aeschna, ilyocoris, chimera, leshy, vampire, ghoul, graveir, werewolf, giant scorpion, striga, black annis, kikimora, vypper…so many I’ve killed.

I visited towns and fortresses. I looked for proclamations nailed to posts at the crossroads. I looked for the words ‘Witcher urgently needed.’ And then there’d be a sacred site, a dungeon, necropolis or ruins, forest ravine or grotto hidden in the mountains, full of bones and stinking carcasses. Some creature which lived to kill, out of hunger, for pleasure, or invoked by some sick will. A manticore, wyvern, fogler, aeschna, ilyocoris, chimera, leshy, vampire, ghoul, graveir, werewolf, giant scorpion, striga, black annis, kikimora, vypper… so many I’ve killed. There’d be a dance in the dark and a slash of the sword, and fear and distaste in the eyes of my employer afterward.

A manticore, wyvern, fogler, aeschna, ilyocoris, chimera, leshy, vampire, ghoul, graveir, werewolf, giant scorpion, striga, black annis, kikimora, vypper… so many I’ve killed.

We have lived in Oblya before it was even Oblya... When there was only the long, flat steppe that fell into the sea with nothing to stop it. Since the days of the bogatyrs and their gods, when you couldn't pass by a stream without rusalka calling to you sweetly, when you left your third-born sons in the woods for the leshy, and when you prayed in four directions to please the domovoi that lived in the cupboard.

And, while a leshy and a waldgeist were both known to carry clubs, a djinni didn’t bleed.  But if it wasn’t a djinni altogether, but a dragon… Holy Mother, but her head was beginning to hurt. Squinting through the wriggling tendrils of glass fogging the edges of her vision, Imelda glanced over her shoulder at the place where Angus Ross had claimed to see a flash of ‘blackness so deep it ate the light.’  Her spine was still tingling from hearing that bit of information.  The last documented case of a void-walk had been in over three centuries ago, by a wounded bastet. 

No pasa nada —le dijo Vasia a Mysh—. Eso no se come a los caballos, sólo a los viajeros ingenuos. La yegua movió las orejas, pero echó a caminar vacilante. —Leshi, lesovik —murmuró Vasia cuando pasaron por delante, e hizo una reverencia desde la cintura. Era el leshi, el guardián del bosque, que casi nunca se acercaba tanto a los hombres. —Quiero hablar contigo, Vasilisa Petrovna. La voz del guardián era el susurro de las ramas al amanecer.

Understand this if you understand nothing: it is a powerful thing to be seen. We found ourself venturing timidly from the Ada's mouth, telling him about us, how we were a misplaced god, how we were not human, how we had divided the Ada's mind. Leshi looked at the Ada in soft awe - even a priest can be ministered to.

Upenskij appears to have done a fantastic job of showing that the Cult of the Bear, the Leshi (forest spirit), and the Cult of St. Nicholas all underwent significant mixing with the Slavic pagan deity Volos in rural Russia.

The Leshi deserves some discussion. In many North Eurasian folk traditions, the Cult of the Bear is connected with the idea of a “Master of the Forest.

It should seem fairly clear that the Leshi is related to the wolf shepherd and the bear spirit, as well as the deity Volos. It’s time to move on to St. Nicholas - another critical figure examined in the research done by Upenskij. To start things off, we can identify St. Nicholas as one of the major “wolf-shepherd” Saints. Particularly in Poland, and sometimes in Russia. One of the attributes of the East Slavic “Nicholas” was his association with the last patch of grain harvested from the field. Often called the “Beard of Volos” in Russia, it could also sometimes be called the “Beard of Nicholas.”76 However, the most strikingly pagan practice associated with St. Nicholas in Russia was perhaps the bull sacrifice on his feast day on December 6th

The footprint reminded me of grass and trees, the green of the forest. It could point to Vodyanoy, the old Water Lord out in the rivers who dragged people underwater and enslaved rusalkas. There were the rusalkas themselves, drowned maidens turned sirens unable to let go of the Land of the Living. There were other sprites, nymphs, and spirits—the poleviki and poludnitsy of the fields and meadows, the treelike leshy, mushroom-topped lesovichki, Wild Ones, and vily fairies of the forests. But like the gods, these spirits had not been seen in a very long time and never by me.

Ce sera un immense Empire. La richesse du paysage et la diversité des régimes seront intrinsèques à l'État. Le principe de l'Empire doit être réhabilité. Outre le système trifonctionnel (philosophes, guerriers et paysans), l'Empire peut inclure des enclaves d'une variété de créatures allant des Amazones aux êtres à deux têtes, sans jambes, sans tête, les gitans, les Evenki, etc. Il pourrait même y avoir une république de sirènes ou une forêt Veche gouvernées ensemble par une assemblée de Domoviye et de Leshie. On peut aussi imaginer un congrès d’Anges ou de Tatar Kurultai." Alexandre Douguine