Morana

Morana (Marzanna in Poland, Morena in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Mara or Marena in Ukraine and Russia) is the fearsome, solemn, beautiful and necessary Slavic goddess of harsh winter, of cutting frosts, of the temporary barrenness of the earth, of the dark night, of physical death and of the cyclical rebirth of nature in ancient and medieval Slavic mythology. As an archetypal personification of the frozen season that covers cultivated fields with a shroud of white snow and paralyzes rivers under carapaces of impenetrable ice, Morana was not feared by the Slavs as a malevolent demon to be hated, but revered as a primordial cosmic force, inescapable in the natural order of the seasons: without the icy rest of winter imposed by her mantle, the earth could not rest and the seeds would not gain the vital strength needed to germinate and flower in spring. Her most celebrated and moving ethnographic rite, which has survived without interruption from the pagan Middle Ages to the contemporary villages and towns of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, is the festival of the ‘Drowning of Marzanna’ (Topienie Marzanny), celebrated on the day of the spring equinox (21 March): an anthropomorphic effigy of dry straw dressed in white or black bridal garments is ceremonially burned with torches and cast into the running waters of the rivers to drive out winter and open the way for the triumphant arrival of Yarilo and spring. Wife and cyclical antagonist of the fertility gods, Morana embodies the biological transience of all living things and the sacred mystery that death in nature is always the silent seed of a new and more radiant life.

14 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

The straw effigy, the ice, the scythe and the white mourning garb

Primary sources

• Jan Długosz, The Annals of Jan Długosz (Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae). translation: Maurice Michael, IM Publications, 1997.
• Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicle of the Czechs (Chronica Boemorum). translation: Lisa Wolverton, Catholic University of America Press, 2009.

Studies

• Radoslav Katičić, Gazdarica na vratima: tragovima svetih pjesama naše pretkršćanske starine. Matica hrvatska, 2011.
• Kazimierz Moszyński, Kultura ludowa Słowian. Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1934.