God Yarila and his father Veles obey the foresters, mermaids and brownies. These creatures are the descendants of ancient peoples who once inhabited the earth.
They were born together with animals and people in ancient times, they are related to people. Thus, many ancient families of mermaids (royal family) are the grandchildren of Lina Svyatogorovna and Ilmar (Ilm of the Sea). The most ancient royal families of gmurs, alves and druds (they are also called gnomes, elves and dryads) are the children of Alina Svyatogorovna and Ilmatyr (Ilm Svarozhich).
Then some descendants of Bogumir also joined the families of mermaids and foresters. They were born from his daughters and the spirits of the constellation Ursa Major, the children of Veles. Thus, the descendants of the sage Anta (Ont) Velesich and Priya Bogumirovna turned into tree spirits (mermaids and droods). Kukers, patrons of livestock and animals from Yarila's retinue, also forest people from the clan of foresters.
The retinue of Yarila and Veles also includes warriors—werewolfs (half-humans, half-wolves) and also berendei (who turn into a bear-bear).
According to the ancient Vedic tradition, the Wends (as well as Svans, Vainakhs, Lithuanians) revered the ox-kodlaks as their ancestors, and the Russian Cossack Berendey clans (also Polovtsian and a number of other Turkic clans) revered half-bear warriors as their ancestors.
Countless oral traditions and tales have been preserved about foresters. Written sources also tell about them. Compare the text of the “Book of Veles and the Arab writer of the 10th century Masudi. “And then, for the first time, the Slavs set up a prayer site in another city of Kyiv (Antsky)... And near it we settled in oak forests. And there the foresters began to sway on the branches, and their beards were strewn with hops, and their hair was in the grass...” (Gen. 1, 2:8). “Other... monkeys are found in northern countries, in bushes and reeds, near the land of the Slavs and other peoples living there, as we have already described this genus of monkeys and their great similarity to humans. (“Golden Meadows”, ch. 13, Abul Hasan Masudi).
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru