[1] Like the Svan hunting goddess Dali, who is attested in northwestern Georgia, Samdzimari was traditionally depicted as a beautiful blond-haired seductress with dominion over wild spaces.
[8] Anthropologist Kevin Tuite disputed that connection to an extent, stating that "the symbolic opposition imposed on these personnages [Giorgi and Samdzimari] has no precedent in Orthodox hagiography".
[13] Author Michael Berman regarded her role in these situations as essentially shamanic, serving as an intermediary between the mortal world and the divine.
[5] Both were seen as retaining characteristics of this corrupt origin, which sometimes resurfaced to make them dangerous, as in Samdzimari's grotesque transformations after sexual intercourse.
Farmers whose dairy products had spoiled would be advised to make sacrifices to Samdzimari, with her underworld origins, to prevent it from reoccurring.
Because of these associations, Georgian folklorist Mikheil Chikovani considered her to be the northeastern equivalent of the Svan hunting goddess Dali.
[6] Like Dali, she was also a patron of untamed spaces: one Khevsur legend describes a shepherdess accidentally encountering Samdzimari in an untouched clearing.