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believed

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  I close my eyes , I once believed the world was nothing but darkness. But with each new day, I started to find hope and glimpse the world's beauty. No longer trapped in self-doubt, I opened my eyes to embrace life's radiance. 814 x1080 px 300dpi Hand-drawn digital painting

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  lightning.

  Based on Serbian folk tradition, we can see that there was a widespread belief in dragons (ЗМАЈ), mythical creatures that are imagined differently in various places and occasions. Not to be confused with Ala or Aždaja, those were completely different beings. According to beliefs about appearance and some characteristics, we can divide them into three groups: dragons that identify with meteorites, dragon-men, and dragon-serpents. What they all have in common is that they are not evil beings, although there are exceptions, and they are not that rare. The appearance of the dragon was shaped by the popular imagination in different ways, connecting it with traditions and giving it certain attributes, so sometimes it's hard to even imagine what they looked like. Sometimes they change shape, sometimes they share common elements from all three mentioned groups, while sometimes they are talked about without any details at all. Yet we can list a few examples. In eastern Serbia, it was believed that the dragon was some kind of bird with a ram's head and a snake's tail which flies at night and lightens up the sky like a shooting star. There is also a belief that the dragon is born from a carp (fish), when it reaches forty years of age, because that's when it gets legs and wings. Sometimes, again, the dragon is imagined as an eagle fighting with Alas and Aždajas, which then creates stormy clouds and lightning. At last, a dragon can also have a human appearance. In eastern Serbia, certain people were believed to be dragons. They defend their village and region from the elements. For many figures from our folklore, it's been said that they were dragons or to have been born from a dragon and a fairy, or an ordinary human woman. It was believed that there are ordinary people who are dragons, and when disaster strikes, they die and seem to fall asleep, and from their bodies then a spirit (or a duplicate) comes out, which goes to fight with the thunderclouds. According to this belief, dragons could be both male and female. Likewise, it was believed that the dragon was stronger younger, it was even thought that the strongest dragon would be the newborn baby that hadn't even been nursed yet. It is clear from the whole description that the dragon from our folk mythology is a greatly anthropomorphized being, having the same characteristics as a human. He thinks and works like an ordinary man, he just has other certain characteristics, he can fly, he has enormous strength, he has the ability to shape-shift from one form to another (from a man he can become an eagle and vice versa; or he can leave the body in the form of a spirit and go fight with other demons) etc. To a large extent , the dragon represents our exceptionality, because of his uniqueness and differences in relation to the mythologies of other Slavic peoples.