After talking about one of my favorite demons last week, the Płanetnik, this week’s Slavic Saturday takes a much more somber tone. Today, we’ll be talking about the male Latawiec and female Latawica, demons who are the souls of children lost during or before birth.
(June 2021 Updated) Note: If you enjoy Slavic mythology, check out A Dagger in the Winds, the first book in my Slavic fantasy series called The Frostmarked Chronicles. You can also join my monthly newsletter for updates and free novellas (such as the prequel, The Rider in the Night) set in the world of the series.
It may seem odd that a demon could be thought to be the soul of a child, yet these types of demons are rather common in Slavic mythology. Navky, Poroniecs, and multiple other demons are related to the death of children, and it was believed that some people were doomed to be a demon from birth. Regardless, most demons in Slavic myth come from people living incomplete or immoral lives or dying unnatural deaths. So, in this case, it seems never having the chance to live cursed their souls. It is also important to remember that the word “demon” to the early Slavs meant an entirely different thing than it does to Christians and was not entirely negative (though it often was).
To take a step back, what are Latawiecs specifically?
A Latawiec is the soul of a stillborn or aborted child. Their name means “kite” in modern Polish, and they are typically pictured as birds (a common theme for lost souls). Usually they appear as black ones such as ravens. Like most demons and gods in Slavic myth, though, they are shape-shifters and can appear also as birds with a child’s face or as a human with the wings of a bird.
Storms or any time with strong winds brought Latawiecs, as they are demons of the wind. Like the winds, they were often unpredictable and could do harm through them. At their most destructive, Latawiecs could call lightning strikes that started fires and caused massive damage.
In another form of the myth (especially among east Slavs), Latawicas were beautiful winged women who could seduce any man, and the Latawiec could do the same to women. The seduced person would abandon everything they knew to follow the demon, and the only way to resist was to carry garlic.
All of this being said, offerings and bribes could win over the demon’s favor. Friendly Latawiecs could direct winds to be calmer or to help windmills, and they could also become house spirits. This dynamic made them be considered more neutral than evil, despite the harm they could do.
The Latawiec fits a theme that I’ve noticed the more I study Slavic mythology (and mythologies in general). Tragedies are part of life and society. We have medicine and scientific understandings now, but to the early Slavs, the world was mysterious and frightening outside. Stories like Dziwożona‘s changelings, diseases caused by various demons, and the lost souls of the Latawiecs were meant to try to find some explanations for both tragedies and difficult to grasp events. Losing a child was and is one of the most horrific things that can happen, but the idea that a raven flying freely on the winds could be that same child’s soul may have been a comfort. I might be wrong. Stories and myths, though, were and still are our ways of rationalizing what we see and experience. The sorrow the Latawiec represents is a part of that.
In my own stories, the Latawiec isn’t in A Dagger in the Winds, but it will eventually make an appearance. The name of the series’s first book reveals a theme of the winds, and with the Latawiec’s flight and control of them, it will have a role to play when the time comes.
That’s all for this week’s Slavic Saturday. Be sure to keep a lookout for more posts next week, and if you haven’t seen the full series of posts, be sure to check them out.
*As always just a quick disclaimer. Slavic mythology is broad and not written in many if any primary sources, so there’s a variety of interpretations. The interpretations I’m using here are from the sources I’ve found to be reliable and as well as some creative freedom for my book series.