On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for August 21st
The Lesser Monster Among Us
There are many folklore stories from Europe that many believe to be myths. There are the major monsters that even haunt us to this day, like the vampire, werewolf, the undead, and golems. Many other monsters are less than popular, and some of these monsters walk among us.
Here are some you may know from Slavic folklore.
Ovinnik
This little skinny guy loves fire, destroying gardens, and sludge metal. They are the uber skinny metal heads wearing denim vests with no shirt under. They live at night with stringy, thin, long hair and patchy, shitty beards.
They are metal vegans. They will viciously attack you for enjoying a steak or even a plant that an animal was fucked with. They will burn your vegetable garden if they think you aren’t worthy.
Careful, Ovinnik loves fire. To keep them from burning your raised vegetable bed, slaughter a chicken.
Leshy
These are giants who live in the woods. They are across from a hippy and a redneck. They might listen to the dead and dabble in tinctures, but they love to hunt, fish, and fight.
Leshy loves to confuse other hunters and hikers by making the trees move and the trails disappear. They will make it rain to ruin campers’ weekends. They can even make the sun go down faster, so it’s dark before you can get your tent up and the fire going.
Leshy cast no shadow, so even though they are over 6 feet, you might not know one is standing right by you. You’ll see them a lot at taverns near popular hunting spots, drinking cans of beer alone.
Domovoi
These are tree spirits that come with the house if the wood was used to build the house. They are usually someone’s friend who needed a couch to stay on for a night or two, but is now there four months later.
They spend a lot of time cleaning things, so it doesn’t seem too bad that they are there until they feel they are being taken for granted.
Then they leave and talk mad shit about you across the whole world, or they will destroy your house.
So be grateful for a Domovoi, for it might destroy your place, and then you can’t get your deposit.
Kikimora
These are very similar to the Domovoi, but much wilder. They break things but never admit to it. They will borrow your stuff without acknowledging it, and you’ll never see them again. If you do, they’ll be broken beyond repair.
They usually are your roommate, so you can’t just easily kick them out. You have to deal with their messes while they criticize your messes. They will have some obnoxious nickname like Can or Spoon, and if you ask them to do something, they will call it traumatizing.
They will even borrow your sex toys and put them back without you knowing.
Iikhos
These are ghosts of despair. Just talking to one makes you feel that all of life – especially the things you are into – is pointless. They are ugly creatures that can take the form of a beautiful human that attracts you and then sucks all hope and passion out of you.
The rock scene is full of these demons. They dress well and seem to be very accepted by the scene, and this will be part of the bait that you will fall for. Suddenly, you are wearing a polo shirt and looking to buy golf clubs.
Most of the victims of the Likhos are called wives or husbands.
Rusalka
These beautiful creatures have one goal with you: to bankrupt you financially, emotionally, and spiritually. Unlike the Likhos, which targets one prey at a time, these sirens try to take as many victims down at the same time.
They love to play people off each other in jealousy and suspicion. They isolate a victim for long enough to be friendless after releasing them. These creatures stalk poly-cules for their victims.
These monsters feed on the ego and uncertainties of most human beings.
Koschei the Deathless
These are the old guys who continue to show up to rock shows in their rock vests and long grey hair. To a young man, this seems incredible for an older guy to not give up on rock, but to the Koschei, this is unbearable to show up night after night and just be unsatisfied with life because rock and roll does nothing for others.
They either think this is the only way to get laid or the only way they can keep their much younger girlfriends.
A Koschei is hard to kill, and many have tried, but the only way to kill a Deathless is to find his soul, which he has detached from his body and put into a single needle. This needle is hidden in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in a chest, which is buried under a green oak on the legendary island of Buyan.
Or he will die of alcoholism.
Baba Yaga
These are the old women who show up at the shows. They are bitter and feel that this is the only place where she can find her prey: young, impressionable rockers. She will eat them. They are the nemesis of the Koschei, but are there for the same reasons: to hold on to their immortality for as long as possible, and that means turning young rockers into empty husks.
You think these young men have gone off to Asheville, Austin, Boston, or Oakland, but the cranky lady at the hardcore show in the basement of a punk house has digested them.
The Gamayun
These are people who swear things are going to shit in a hand basket unless something drastic changes. You will be at a show, a bar, or the grocery store, and small talk can lead to the entire future being prophesied, unless we vote for a third-party candidate or abolish taxes.
They are part bird under their human disguise, so that’s why they sound shrill and crazy.
Don’t humor them. They’ve been humored for far too long, so by telling them they are crazy, they may be able to rest and turn into a bird and fly away.