page_title: Dali (goddess)
section_title: Depiction
hierarchical_section_title: Dali (goddess) / Depiction
caption_attribution_description: English: Ushba (Georgian: უშბა) is one of the most notable peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. It is located in the Svaneti region of Georgia, just south of the border with the Kabardino-Balkaria region of Russia.
context_page_description: Dali is a goddess who appears in the mythology of the Georgian people of the Caucasus region. She is most prominently attested in the stories of the Svan ethnic subgroup in northwestern Georgia. Other groups in western Georgia had similar figures considered equivalent to Dali, such as the Mingrelian goddess Tkashi-Mapa. She is a hunting goddess who serves as the patron of wild mountain animals such as ibex and deer. Hunters who obeyed her numerous taboos would be assured of success in the hunt; conversely, she would harshly punish any who violated them.
  She was usually described as a beautiful nude woman with golden hair and glowing skin, although she sometimes took on the form of her favored animals, usually with some marking to differentiate her from the herd. She was said to reside in a cavern high in the mountains, where she kept watch over the hoofed game animals who live on the cliffs. Dali was styled with a variety of regional epithets reflecting her different roles and associations.
context_section_description: Traditionally, Dali lived in a cavern high up in the mountains, far away from human settlements. Some traditions specified her home was the distinctive double-peaked mountain Ushba, whose ice-covered south face was sometimes called Dalis panjara, the Window of Dali (Georgian: დალის ფანჯარა). The cave's exact location varied; it could be on the side of a glacier, or at the summit of the mountain. Sometimes the entrance was concealed by a rock door which Dali opened and closed to hide her dwelling. Rarely, Dali and her flock lived inside an enormous hollowed-out spruce tree. As a rule, Dali did not enter civilized spaces such as villages except on rare occasions, such as the funerals of her human lovers.
  Dali was usually described as a beautiful young woman with long braided hair. She was most often portrayed as nude, occasionally wearing gold jewellery. If she wore clothes, they were white. Her skin was so white it was literally radiant. Her beauty was extraordinary: "both irresistible and terrible," it could drive a man to madness if he even spoke to her.
  Dali's long hair was an important component of her mythology. Her hair was gold-colored; in some cases, it was actually made of gold, and shone like the sun. Some stories depicted this gleaming aspect as fire, describing the goddess leaving "little tongues of flame" in her wake, although this is less prevalent. She would sit on the cliffs combing her hair with a golden comb. In some tales, Dali used her supernaturally-strong hair to bind hunters who wronged her. In one story, she used it to strangle a hunter who had stolen one of her hairs to string his hunting bow.
  Although strong enough to string a bow with, her hair was not invulnerable; indeed, using Dali's hair to threaten, harm, or kill her was a recurring motif. Multiple tales depict hunters grabbing or cutting Dali's hair in order to subdue and rape her. This tactic did not necessarily prevent the goddess from later taking revenge for these wrongs. In a story about Dali's Mingrelian equivalent Tkashi-Mapa, the goddess agrees to marry a hunter when he threatens to cut off her luxurious hair. He eventually grows tired of her endlessly washing and combing it, and hides her prized comb so she will stop. She destroys his family, killing one of his children and stealing another, and curses his entire line of descendants in revenge.
  Women could also use Dali's hair against her. In one of the major Dali stories, a woman discovers her husband sleeping with Dali. She cuts Dali's hair off in a rage, killing her or banishing her from the world. A superstition recorded in 1971 described how a woman whose man had been away hunting too long might cut her own hair off, praying that God would cut Dali's hair in return, which would force the goddess to allow her husband to return home. In one unusual variation of the hair-cutting motif, a woman wishing to rid her son or her husband of Dali's influence sneaks up on the goddess while she is sleeping and washes her hair, sometimes in deer's milk. Dali is rendered so powerless, or so grateful, by this act that she becomes the woman's servant. Her Mingrelian equivalent could be dismissed with a similar method, using milk from a black cow instead of a deer.
caption: Ushba, the double-peaked mountain where Dali was sometimes said to live
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