The ancient Slavic goddess of winter, death and night, Morena, belonged to the spiritual world of our ancestors. (By the way, the Slovak writer Margita Figuli had the pseudonym Morena). Morana, Muriena, Hejhana,

Marmuriena, Kyseľ or Kyselica – embodied the negatibe attributes of winter. The harsh winter was associated with death and was a test of survival, but at the same time it symbolized a constant recurring cycle before the arrival of spring. The light representing the spring in the form of fire, which burned the ugly figurine of Morena, was to overcome death, darkness and blackness. Morena, lifted, burned, drowned, sacrificed, gave way to a new life embodied in the form of spring. It was originally a pagan ritual, the main principle of which was to favour nature in order to maintain the good health of farmers and animals, and generous harvest. They carried Morena at the head of procession, facing directly, towards the end of the village, or the settlement to the stream, where they tore its clothes from her, threw them into the flowing spring water and threw stones. If they carried Morena facing the farm, it would mean misfortune and disease for all its inhabitans. Her ritual firing, drowning and washing away in the water freed up space for the arrival of spring and rebirth in all its forms. Despite the thousand-year suppression of pagan rituals, the ritual of bringing out Morena has been preserved to this days. The habits of our ancestors remain alive for us, and that is good. If a nation has a past, it also has a future.