In polish it's called Mara Nocna, so I will assume Natt means night, right? Nocna means nocturnal, while mara would be something like a ghost, entity, spectral. It was depicted as a monster that sits on your chest during the night (thus problems with breathing)
Yeah, there are a bunch of 'demons' connected to it in folklore, and people who believe in being able to tread the astral plane also tie it to some sort of supernatural phenomenon of a another spirit, or specifically a bad one either trying to enter your vacant body or siphon energy from it. It would be fun to believe in, just because the phenomenon does leave you with this ominous feeeeelllzzz, but cha its an explainable event with teh science.
Thats cool that people that wasnt really connected in anyway, from different parts of the world actually believed in the same thing. But science, science ruined everything Now the only thing I have to be afraid of when wandering in the forest or entering abandoned building is bald eastern european with sharp metal stuff. Now im curious from where the world mara, mare originated from. I know that mare means sea in latin if im not mistaken, but that doesnt seem to be origin of the thing we are talking about
Not really in Swedish folklore the symptoms of sleep paralasyis were named "Marriden" meaning that the demon rides you when you cannot move... The mixing of folklore in europe or any anicent culture isn't all that strange really...a professor at the Stockholm University were I studied religious history explained it something like this. In the absence of a scientific explanation then the "best" myth would most likely be the one that people accepted and started using to explain things and that would be the one that would also be spread on to other nearby cultures hence why ancient cultures in certain parts of the world had so much myths and legends that were very similar at times.
I think the most badass / creepy myths won just because they were "fun" to talk about, then everybody tried to fit it the best in their folklore and culture. I know pretty well scandinavian pantheon of gods, giants I dont think I really heard about your demons. It's different in slavic culture, there is not many sources that you can learn about our gods, but there is plenty of monsters and demons, probably thats why Witcher has a lot of shit to do right now
The word is old enough to be the same in russian (mara), although I've never heard anybody using it. 'Nightmare' itself is obviously from 'mare' too, in russian it's 'koshmar' ('kosh' is funny enough from french 'caucher' - to weigh down, cause the demon sits on your chest). Different languages suck, go esperanto! But realistically, go chinese!
REMOVE LANGUAGES I would be fine if the only existing languages would be one of those: russian, finnish or japanese (i might not like anime, but language sounds really nice lol).
Well there you go just proves the theory is very valid and especially when it deals with a real topic. Since sleep paralysis is a real phenomenon it is not strange that a mythological viewpoint has been spread and shared to such a great extent between cultures to The point of it almost being no differance. It can be compared to The different thundergods found in early polyteistic religions almost worldwide sharing The same attributes since they were made up to explain The same, real, phenomenon.
saranghae oppa ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
