Kart
Andi · numen · Andi traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Kart is the monstrous old woman of Andic and Avar wonder-tales, a devourer of the unwary. She is described with copper or iron teeth and long breasts flung back over her shoulders, and she often meets the hero first in the guise of a hospitable crone before her cannibal nature shows. Encounters with her form a fixed episode of the heroic and magic-tale repertoire, in which cunning, a taboo broken or observed, and sometimes the hero's helper-animals decide whether he escapes her cave or is eaten.
Domains
- witchcraft
- cannibalism
Powers
- devour travellers and children
- take a kindly disguise
Epithets
- гӀадан-кваназеб карт — the man-eating hagСефербеков Р. И. Пантеон языческих божеств народов Дагестана. Махачкала, 2009. (secondary)
Sources
- A cannibalistic witch-hag of Avar and Andic magic tales, hideous, iron-toothed and man-eating, whom the hero must outwit or destroy.: Халидова М. Р. Мифологический и историко-героический эпос народов Дагестана. Махачкала, 1992. (primary)