8/20/2013

Utve with golden wings or Utve zlatokrile

In Bosnian mythology mystical being are mentioned and described as half women half bird which has golden wings. They are called utve with golden wings and according to mythological classification they belong to beings of positive action which help individuals during hunt or other activities, entire villages or even nations. According to belief utve are immortal and from the beginning there is always a same number of them, which still remains unknown, which brings us to a conclusion that they don't have the ability to reproduce.
The people describe them as beautiful girls with luscious breasts and from the stomach downward they have bird's legs and feathers. They are adorned with golden wings of a wide span and while they fly they spread light in a large circle. According to the legend about the king which conquered the Indus people in certain parts of Bosnia believed that utve had bird's heads and chests and legs and backsides like a woman. According to legend utveescaped from India into Bosnia after a powerful king invaded India with his army, in that "cursed land" and there he came across beings with a head of a rooster and a body of a man which offered resistance for months and warred against him until he conquered them.
But since people often connect directly or indirectly utve and faeries it is then completely clear that their appearance was more feminine and beautiful, i.e. that they had female heads and breasts with bird legs. In support of this thesis is the lack of any data that utve gave birth to a child or had a love relationship with a human being.
People recount about utve that they are like faeries who escaped into the mountains and hard to reach places from the time when guns and cannons appeared because they couldn't take the sound of guns which only brings evil and death.
Analyzing the tradition about utve we come to a conclusion that after all we are dealing with an ancient myth which probably comes from Persia and is based on the belief in Amenta Spentas, forerunners of angels of monotheism. Amenta Spentas are seven immortal winged beings whose purpose is to preserve the harmony in nature among the humans, spreading justice and truth. Belief in them was taken over by the Jews, Christians and in the end Muslims calling them Arch-angels.