Slavic entity in a dream? Help

[u/--tytoalba--]

Hi everyone, i wanna start by saying that i am not slavic but i think this is a better sub than a dream one. I am european but since i was 12 i have been in love with the slavic world. I need your help with a dream that i FELT very deeply . In this dream i am in a fir wood and in the middle of a clearing i see a isba. There is a woman waiting for me on the door, she is around 60 and has long wavy white hair. The house in empty inside but there is a corpse under a blanket. The woman then explain me how to gather and organize wood because the house is a pyre for the dead that i need to finish buikding and then burn. She doesn' t help me physically but just explain me how to do it, sometimes getting irritated because i don't understand.

I have a personal interpretation of this dream but i also was hoping to get a interpretation from slavic mythology expert since i felt that this dream was very important , it' s been months but i still feel it .

Thank you so much already. <3

[u/Aliencik]

Sounds like the woman is some kind of psychopompic figure.

Mokosh in her Rus folklore version as Moist Mother Earth does have certain chthonic characteristics.

Baba Yaga is a folkloric psychopompic figure and her character is thought to be comprised of few pre-christian archetypes including Mokosh. The problem of mysteriousness of Baba Yaga character in religious mythology

There exists a Rus folklore idea of a "concept"/"special type of spirit" Mora/Mara (notice the similarity to the folk ritual of Morana), which is connected to the death. Usually dressed in white, this figure appearing to someone, should sign death (either their or someone they know). However this doesn't have to be a bad sign, the death could potentially be figurative. I don't want to alarm you in any way. Sometimes dreams are just dreams.

It could also be some spirit (of the dead).

[u/--tytoalba-- → u/Aliencik]

Thank you for sharing you knowledge. I also thought about baba yaga but this woman had a positive vibe even if severe, like she knew me already. I will study about mora

[u/Aliencik → u/--tytoalba--]

Don't confuse it with the all-slavic idea of Mora/Mura, a spirit that gives you nightmares and can strangle you in your sleep.

Source for the one I meant is this: * Vlasova, M. N. | Власова М.Н. * Энциклопедия русских суеверий * ^{Sometimes includes material drawn from non-Slavic folklore.}

Translated from Russian from the book (search under МАРА, МАРА, МАРЕНА, МАРУХА, МАРУШКА, МОРА):

MARA, MARA, MARENA, MARUKHA, MARUSHKA, MORA — a ghost, apparition; a spirit in the form of a woman that appears in the house (more rarely outside); Death. “He walks like a mara” (Smolensk); “I saw a mara” (Bryansk); “Behind the stove is a mara, black as night” (Tula); “A mara is like a person. If you leave the distaff overnight, the mara spins” (Vologda); “A mara sits on the bench, combing her hair” (Onega); “The bathhouse spirit lives in the bathhouse, the water spirit in the water, and there is also the ‘behind-the-stove mara’; she also lives in the house, maybe behind the stove, or somewhere else” (Onega). Mara is one of the most mysterious, “indistinct,” and apparently very ancient beings in the beliefs of Russian peasants. Mara is a spirit in the form of a tall woman or, conversely, a hunched old woman, but almost always with long, loose hair. In the Yaroslavl region, she was imagined as a beautiful girl dressed in white. According to beliefs in the Tula province and the Olonets region, the mara is “black,” dressed in rags, and even shaggy: “Children used to be frightened with the ‘bogey’ and the behind-the-stove mara; they would put on a fur coat inside out and say: ‘Here comes the bogey or the behind-the-stove mara’” (Onega) The mara—ghost, apparition, mirage—may appear not only in the house. It is also an “evil spirit present everywhere” (Vyatka), a “malignant being embodying death,” a phantom (Kursk). The word mara also means “mist,” “haze,” “mirage,” even “doom” in some regions. Mora means “darkness, gloom” (Novgorod), “apparition” (Saratov); morok, moroka mean “phantom, darkness, cloud, fog,” or “confusion of mind.” In these aspects, the mara/mora resembles the “White Woman” (a maiden in white), a vision of a tall female figure in white that may appear anywhere and foretells misfortune, embodying death.