The Slavic household spirit that brought wealth, hatched from a black hen's egg

In principle, anyone at all might hatch from such an egg. The Slavs, for instance, had a deity of sorts: a house spirit and enricher that served people entangled with sorcery and brought them riches taken from other people. It was called the shkryatok, the khovanets or the rarasek, it could resemble a dragon with a flat head, and it was hatched from the egg of a black hen, carried under the arm for nine weeks by its master, who in all that time neither washed nor prayed

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

The Slavic household spirit that brought wealth, hatched from a black hen's egg

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s