Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Protective Spirits gathers three household or communal guardians from Balinese, Burmese and Slavic tradition, each requiring ongoing care from the people it protects.

Barong is the protective spirit of Balinese Hinduism, met as a masked and costumed figure carried by two dancers and treated as a resident of the temple that keeps him; the best known form, the Barong Ket, is a lion with a red face, gilt leather and a mirror studded coat, though village forms take a boar, a tiger or other animal shapes, and the mask itself is consecrated, kept in the temple and given offerings rather than treated as a costume. Nats are a large class of spirits venerated in Burmese tradition, tied to particular places, natural features, households or historical figures, believed to protect or, if neglected, to bring misfortune; a standard grouping of thirty seven Nats was formalized under royal patronage from a much larger body of local belief, and Nat veneration predates the country's Theravada Buddhism and runs alongside it rather than having been displaced by it, most visibly at the pilgrimage site of Mount Popa. The domovoi is the household guardian spirit of Slavic folk belief, an old bearded man who lives behind the stove or under the threshold and protects the house that hosts him; fed and respected, he keeps the household prosperous and warns of danger, while neglected he grows mischievous, and a family moving house was expected to formally invite their domovoi along rather than leave him behind.

All three share the same underlying bargain: protection offered in exchange for continued attention, withdrawn or turned mischievous when that attention lapses.