I’m sure you know nothing about Slavic paganism
Slavic mythology or Slavic paganism is the religious beliefs, myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century.
The South Slavs, who likely settled in the Balkans during the 6th–7th centuries AD, bordering with the Byzantine Empire to the south, came under the sphere of influence of Eastern Christianity relatively early, beginning with the creation of writing systems for Slavic languages (first Glagolitic, and then Cyrillic script) in 855 by the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius and the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 864 and 863 in Great Moravia. The East Slavs followed with the official adoption in 988 by Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus'.
The West Slavs' process of Christianisation was more gradual and complicated compared to their Eastern counterparts. The Moravians accepted Christianity as early as 831, the Bohemian dukes followed in 845, and the Slovaks accepted Christianity somewhere between the years 828 and 863, but the first historical Polish ruler (Mieszko I) accepted it much later, in 966, around the same time as the Sorbs, while the Polabian Slavs only came under the significant influence of the Catholic Church from the 12th century onwards. For the Polabian Slavs and the Sorbs, Christianisation went hand in hand with full or partial Germanisation.
The Christianisation of the Slavic peoples was, however, a slow and—in many cases—superficial phenomenon, especially in what is today Russia. It was vigorous in western and central parts of what is today Ukraine, since they were closer to the capital, Kiev. Even there, however, popular resistance led by volkhvs, pagan priests or shamans, recurred periodically for centuries. Popular resistance to Christianity was also widespread in early Poland, culminating in the Pagan reaction.
The West Slavs of the Baltic tenaciously withstood Christianity until it was violently imposed on them through the Northern Crusades. Among Poles and East Slavs, rebellions broke out throughout the 11th century. Christian chroniclers reported that the Slavs regularly re-embraced their original religion (relapsi sunt denuo ad paganismus).
Many elements of the Slavic indigenous religion were officially incorporated into Slavic Christianity (which manifested itself in the architecture of the Russian Church, icon painting, etc.), and the worship of Slavic gods has persisted in unofficial folk religion until modern times. The Slavs' resistance to Christianity gave rise to a "whimsical syncretism", which was called dvoeverie, "double faith", in Old Church Slavonic. Since the early 20th century, Slavic folk religion has undergone an organised reinvention and reincorporation in the movement of Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery).
The main idea of paganism and mythology of the Slavs is given primarily by historical and documentary sources (letopises and chronicles). The Tale of Bygone Years under the year 980 contains a story about the sanctuary in Kiev, built by Vladimir Svyatoslavich, and the idols of pagan gods installed there are mentioned:
And Vladimir began to reign alone in Kiev. And he placed idols on the hill outside the palace: Perun in wood with a silver head and a gold moustache, and Khors Dazhdbog and Stribog and Simargl and Mokosh. And they offered sacrifices and called them gods, and they took their sons and daughters to them and sacrificed them to the devils. And they profaned the earth with their sacrifices, and Rus’ and that hill were profaned by blood. But God the merciful, who does not wish the death of sinners, on that hill stands today the church of Saint Vasilij, as we will relate later.
Old East Slavic original text
И нача къняжити Володимиръ въ Кыевѣ единъ, и постави кумиры на хълму, вънѣ двора теремьнаго: Перуна древяна, а главу его сьребряну, а усъ златъ, и Хърса, Дажьбога и Стрибога и Сѣмарьгла и Мокошь. И жьряху имъ, наричюще я богы, и привожаху сыны своя и дъщери, и жьряху бѣсомъ. И осквьрняху землю требами своими; и осквьрни ся кръвьми земля Русьская и хълмъ тъ. Нъ преблагыи Богъ не хотя съмьрти грѣшьникомъ, на томь хълмѣ нынѣ цьркы есть святаго Василия, якоже послѣди съкажемъ.
—Primary Chronicle
The text mentions the deities Svarog, Yarilo and Veles. It is known that the idol of Veles stood in Kiev "under the mountain", probably on the Kiev Podol, in the lower part of the city, that is, in the trade and craft part of Kiev at the pier on the Pochain River. In the "Life of Vladimir" it is said that this idol was overthrown during the baptism of Kievan Rus in 988: "And Veles idol ... ordered to throw off the river in Pochaina".
Ancient Russian teachings against paganism can also serve as sources. In this genre, three of the most famous monuments are known: The Word of St. Gregory about idols, The word of a certain Christ-lover and the punishment of the spiritual father (about submission and obedience) and The Walking of the Virgin in torment.
In the absence of original mythological texts, Slavic paganism can only be understood through secondary sources, such as archaeological findings and non-Slavic historical texts, which then have to be analyzed via the comparative method and subsequent reconstruction, a means used by many historians, including Evgeny Anichkov, Dmitry Zelenin, Lubor Niederle, Henryk Łowmiański, Aleksander Gieysztor, Stanisław Urbańczyk and others.
Reconstruction, however, only gained momentum at the beginning of the 20th century, with Slavic sources being compared to sources on other Indo-European cultural traditions (Baltic, Iranian, German, etc.), where the works of Vechaslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov are among the most prominent.
The richest sources for the study of Slavic paganism as a cultural model and the reconstruction of Ancient Slavic ideas remain the linguistic, ethnographic and folklore studies of Slavic traditions from the 19th and 20th century, although some of these studies are contested due to historical inaccuracies. Many traces of Slavic paganism are thought to be left in European toponymy, including the names of settlements, rivers, mountains, and villages, but ethnologists such as Vitomir Belaj warn against hasty assumptions that the toponyms truly originate in pre-Christian mythological beliefs, with some potentially being derived from common vocabulary instead.
Twentieth-century scholars who pursued the study of ancient Slavic religion include Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Marija Gimbutas, Boris Rybakov, and Roman Jakobson, among others. Rybakov is noted for his effort to re-examine medieval ecclesiastical texts, synthesizing his findings with archaeological data, comparative mythology, ethnography, and nineteenth-century folk practices. He also elaborated one of the most coherent pictures of ancient Slavic religion in his Paganism of the Ancient Slavs and other works. Among earlier, nineteenth-century scholars there was Bernhard Severin Ingemann, known for his study of Fundamentals of a North Slavic and Wendish mythology.
Historical documents about Slavic religion include the Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kiev around 1111, and the Novgorod First Chronicle compiled in the Novgorod Republic. They contain detailed reports of the annihilation of the official Slavic religion of Kiev and Novgorod, and the subsequent "double faith". The Primary Chronicle also contains the authentic text of Rus'-Greek treatises (dated 945 and 971) with native pre-Christian oaths. From the eleventh century onwards, various Rus' writings were produced against[dubious – discuss] the survival of Slavic religion, and Slavic gods were interpolated in the translations of foreign literary works, such as the Malalas Chronicle and the Alexandreis.
The West Slavs who dwelt in the area between the Vistula and the Elbe stubbornly resisted the Northern Crusades, and the history of their resistance is written down in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Latin Chronicles by Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, and Helmold, three German clergymen, as well as in the twelfth-century biographies of Otto of Bamberg, and in Saxo Grammaticus' thirteenth-century Gesta Danorum. These documents, together with minor German writings and the Icelandic Knýtlinga saga, provide a detailed description of northwestern Slavic religion.
The religions of other Slavic populations are less well-documented as texts about them, such as the fifteenth-century Polish Chronicle, were only produced later, after Christianisation, and contain a lot of sheer inventions. In the times preceding Christianisation, however, some Greek and Roman chroniclers, such as Procopius and Jordanes in the sixth century, sparsely documented some Slavic concepts and practices.
The linguistic unity and negligible dialectal differentiation of the Slavs until the end of the first millennium AD, as well as the lexical uniformity of religious vocabulary, witness a uniformity of early Slavic religion. It has been argued that the essence of early Slavdom was ethnoreligious before being ethnonational; that is to say, belonging to the Slavs was chiefly determined by conforming to certain beliefs and practices rather than by having a certain racial ancestry or being born in a certain place. Ivanov and Toporov identified the Slavic religion as an outgrowth of a purported common Proto-Indo-European religion, sharing strong similarities with other neighbouring belief systems such as those of the Balts, Thracians and Phrygians.
Local development of the ancient Slavic religion, especially in places like Russia, likely also included several influences from the neighbouring Finnic peoples, which contributed to local ethnogenesis. Slavic (and Baltic) religion and mythology is considered more conservative and closer to the purported original Proto-Indo-European religion than other Indo-European derived traditions, due to the fact that, throughout the history of the Slavs, it remained a popular religion rather than being reworked and sophisticated by intellectual elites, as had happened to other Indo-European derived religious cultures. For this reason, Slavic religion is invaluable for understanding other Indo-European beliefs.
The affinity to Proto-Indo-Iranian religion is evident in shared developments, including the elimination of the term for the supreme God of Heaven, *Dyeus, and its substitution by the term for "sky" (Slavic Nebo), the shift of the Indo-European descriptor of heavenly deities (Avestan daeva, Old Church Slavonic div; Proto-Indo-European *deiwos, "celestial", similar to Dyeus) to the designation of evil entities, and the parallel designation of gods by the term meaning both "wealth" and its "giver" (Avestan baga, Slavic bog). Much of the religious vocabulary of the Slavs, including vera (loosely translated as "faith", meaning "radiation of knowledge"), svet ("light"), mir ("peace", "agreement of parts", also meaning "world") and rai ("paradise"), is shared with Iranian.
According to Adrian Ivakhiv, the Indo-European element of Slavic religion may have included what Georges Dumézil studied as the "trifunctional hypothesis", that is to say a threefold conception of the social order, represented by the three castes of priests, warriors and farmers. According to Marija Gimbutas, Slavic religion represented an unmistakable overlap of any purported Indo-European-originated themes with ancient religious themes dating back to time immemorial. The latter were particularly hardwearing in Slavic religion, represented by the widespread devotion to Mat Syra Zemlya, the "Damp Mother Earth". Rybakov said the continuity and gradual complexification of Slavic religion started from devotion to life-giving forces (bereginy), ancestors and the supreme God, Rod ("Generation" itself), and developed into the "high mythology" of the official religion of the early Kievan Rus'.
As attested by Helmold (c. 1120–1177) in his Chronica Slavorum, the Slavs believed in a single heavenly God begetting all the lesser spirits governing nature, and worshipped it by their means. According to Helmold, "obeying the duties assigned to them, [the deities] have sprung from his [the supreme God's] blood and enjoy distinction in proportion to their nearness to the god of the gods". According to Rybakov's studies, wheel symbols such as the "thunder marks" (gromovoi znak) and the "six-petaled rose inside a circle" (e.g. ), which are quite common in Slavic folk crafts and which were still carved on edges and peaks of roofs in northern Russia in the nineteenth century, were symbols of the supreme life-giver Rod. Before its conceptualisation as Rod, Rybakov claims, this supreme God was known as Deivos (cognate with Sanskrit Deva, Latin Deus, Old High German Ziu and Lithuanian Dievas). The Slavs believed that from this God was preceded by a cosmic duality, represented by Belobog ("White God") and Chernobog ("Black God", also named Tiarnoglofi, "Black Head/Mind"), representing the root of all the heavenly-masculine and the earthly-feminine deities, or the waxing light and waning light gods, respectively. In both categories, deities might be either Razi, "rede-givers", or Zirnitra, "wizards".
The Slavs perceived the world as inhabited by a variety of spirits, which they represented as persons and worshipped. These spirits included those of waters (mavka and rusalka), forests (lisovyk), fields (polyovyk), those of households (domovoy), those of illnesses, luck and human ancestors. For instance, Leshy is an important woodland spirit, believed to distribute food assigning preys to hunters, later regarded as a god of flocks and herds, and still worshipped in this function in early twentieth-century Russia. Many gods were regarded as the ancestors of individual kins (rod or pleme), and the idea of ancestrality was so important that Slavic religion may be epitomised as a "manism" (i.e. worship of ancestors), though the Slavs did not keep genealogical records.
The Slavs also worshipped star-gods, including the moon (Russian: Mesyats) and the sun (Solntse), the former regarded as male and the latter as female. The moon-god was particularly important, regarded as the dispenser of abundance and health, worshipped through round dances, and in some traditions considered the progenitor of humanity. The belief in the moon-god was still very much alive in the nineteenth century, and peasants in the Ukrainian Carpathians openly affirmed that the moon is their god.
Some Slavic deities are related to Baltic mythology: Perun/Perkūnas, Veles/Velnias, Rod/Dievas, Yarilo/Saulė. There was an evident continuity between the beliefs of the East Slavs, West Slavs and South Slavs. They shared the same traditional deities, as attested, for instance, by the worship of Zuarasiz among the West Slavs, corresponding to Svarožič among the East Slavs. All the bright male deities were regarded as the hypostases, forms or phases in the year, of the active and masculine divine force personified by Perun ("Thunder").
Perun's name, from the Indo-European root *per or *perkw ("to strike", "splinter"), signified both the splintering thunder and the splintered tree (especially the oak; the Latin name of this tree, quercus, comes from the same root), regarded as symbols of the irradiation of the force. This root also gave rise to the Vedic Parjanya, the Baltic Perkūnas, the Albanian Perëndi (now denoting "God" and "sky"), the Germanic Fjörgynn and the Greek Keraunós ("thunderbolt", rhymic form of *Peraunós, used as an epithet of Zeus). From the exact same root comes the name of the Finnish deity Ukko, which has a Balto-Slavic origin. Prĕgyni or peregyni, despite being rendered as bregynja or beregynja (from breg, bereg, meaning "shore") and reinterpreted as female water spirits in modern Russian folklore, were rather spirits of trees and rivers related to Perun, as attested by various chronicles and highlighted by the root *per.
Slavic traditions preserved very ancient elements and intermingled with those of neighbouring European peoples. An exemplary case are the South Slavic still-living rain rituals of the couple Perun–Perperuna, Lord and Lady Thunder, shared with the neighbouring Albanians, Greeks and Arumanians.
The West Slavs, especially those of the Baltic, prominently worshipped Svetovid ("Lord of Power"), while the East Slavs prominently worshipped Perun himself, especially after Vladimir's 970s–980s reforms. The various spirits were believed to manifest in certain places, which were revered as numinous and holy; they included springs, rivers, groves, rounded tops of hills and flat cliffs overlooking rivers. Calendrical rituals were attuned with the spirits, which were believed to have periods of waxing and waning throughout the year, determining the agrarian fertility cycle.
The South Slavs, who likely settled in the Balkans during the 6th–7th centuries AD, bordering with the Byzantine Empire to the south, came under the sphere of influence of Eastern Christianity relatively early, beginning with the creation of writing systems for Slavic languages (first Glagolitic, and then Cyrillic script) in 855 by the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius and the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 864 and 863 in Great Moravia. The East Slavs followed with the official adoption in 988 by Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus'.
The West Slavs' process of Christianisation was more gradual and complicated compared to their Eastern counterparts. The Moravians accepted Christianity as early as 831, the Bohemian dukes followed in 845, and the Slovaks accepted Christianity somewhere between the years 828 and 863, but the first historical Polish ruler (Mieszko I) accepted it much later, in 966, around the same time as the Sorbs, while the Polabian Slavs only came under the significant influence of the Catholic Church from the 12th century onwards. For the Polabian Slavs and the Sorbs, Christianisation went hand in hand with full or partial Germanisation.
The Christianisation of the Slavic peoples was, however, a slow and—in many cases—superficial phenomenon, especially in what is today Russia. It was vigorous in western and central parts of what is today Ukraine, since they were closer to the capital, Kiev. Even there, however, popular resistance led by volkhvs, pagan priests or shamans, recurred periodically for centuries. Popular resistance to Christianity was also widespread in early Poland, culminating in the Pagan reaction.
The West Slavs of the Baltic tenaciously withstood Christianity until it was violently imposed on them through the Northern Crusades. Among Poles and East Slavs, rebellions broke out throughout the 11th century. Christian chroniclers reported that the Slavs regularly re-embraced their original religion (relapsi sunt denuo ad paganismus).
Many elements of the Slavic indigenous religion were officially incorporated into Slavic Christianity (which manifested itself in the architecture of the Russian Church, icon painting, etc.), and the worship of Slavic gods has persisted in unofficial folk religion until modern times. The Slavs' resistance to Christianity gave rise to a "whimsical syncretism", which was called dvoeverie, "double faith", in Old Church Slavonic. Since the early 20th century, Slavic folk religion has undergone an organised reinvention and reincorporation in the movement of Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery).
The main idea of paganism and mythology of the Slavs is given primarily by historical and documentary sources (letopises and chronicles). The Tale of Bygone Years under the year 980 contains a story about the sanctuary in Kiev, built by Vladimir Svyatoslavich, and the idols of pagan gods installed there are mentioned:
And Vladimir began to reign alone in Kiev. And he placed idols on the hill outside the palace: Perun in wood with a silver head and a gold moustache, and Khors Dazhdbog and Stribog and Simargl and Mokosh. And they offered sacrifices and called them gods, and they took their sons and daughters to them and sacrificed them to the devils. And they profaned the earth with their sacrifices, and Rus’ and that hill were profaned by blood. But God the merciful, who does not wish the death of sinners, on that hill stands today the church of Saint Vasilij, as we will relate later.
Old East Slavic original text
И нача къняжити Володимиръ въ Кыевѣ единъ, и постави кумиры на хълму, вънѣ двора теремьнаго: Перуна древяна, а главу его сьребряну, а усъ златъ, и Хърса, Дажьбога и Стрибога и Сѣмарьгла и Мокошь. И жьряху имъ, наричюще я богы, и привожаху сыны своя и дъщери, и жьряху бѣсомъ. И осквьрняху землю требами своими; и осквьрни ся кръвьми земля Русьская и хълмъ тъ. Нъ преблагыи Богъ не хотя съмьрти грѣшьникомъ, на томь хълмѣ нынѣ цьркы есть святаго Василия, якоже послѣди съкажемъ.
—Primary Chronicle
The text mentions the deities Svarog, Yarilo and Veles. It is known that the idol of Veles stood in Kiev "under the mountain", probably on the Kiev Podol, in the lower part of the city, that is, in the trade and craft part of Kiev at the pier on the Pochain River. In the "Life of Vladimir" it is said that this idol was overthrown during the baptism of Kievan Rus in 988: "And Veles idol ... ordered to throw off the river in Pochaina".
Ancient Russian teachings against paganism can also serve as sources. In this genre, three of the most famous monuments are known: The Word of St. Gregory about idols, The word of a certain Christ-lover and the punishment of the spiritual father (about submission and obedience) and The Walking of the Virgin in torment.
In the absence of original mythological texts, Slavic paganism can only be understood through secondary sources, such as archaeological findings and non-Slavic historical texts, which then have to be analyzed via the comparative method and subsequent reconstruction, a means used by many historians, including Evgeny Anichkov, Dmitry Zelenin, Lubor Niederle, Henryk Łowmiański, Aleksander Gieysztor, Stanisław Urbańczyk and others.
Reconstruction, however, only gained momentum at the beginning of the 20th century, with Slavic sources being compared to sources on other Indo-European cultural traditions (Baltic, Iranian, German, etc.), where the works of Vechaslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov are among the most prominent.
The richest sources for the study of Slavic paganism as a cultural model and the reconstruction of Ancient Slavic ideas remain the linguistic, ethnographic and folklore studies of Slavic traditions from the 19th and 20th century, although some of these studies are contested due to historical inaccuracies. Many traces of Slavic paganism are thought to be left in European toponymy, including the names of settlements, rivers, mountains, and villages, but ethnologists such as Vitomir Belaj warn against hasty assumptions that the toponyms truly originate in pre-Christian mythological beliefs, with some potentially being derived from common vocabulary instead.
Twentieth-century scholars who pursued the study of ancient Slavic religion include Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Marija Gimbutas, Boris Rybakov, and Roman Jakobson, among others. Rybakov is noted for his effort to re-examine medieval ecclesiastical texts, synthesizing his findings with archaeological data, comparative mythology, ethnography, and nineteenth-century folk practices. He also elaborated one of the most coherent pictures of ancient Slavic religion in his Paganism of the Ancient Slavs and other works. Among earlier, nineteenth-century scholars there was Bernhard Severin Ingemann, known for his study of Fundamentals of a North Slavic and Wendish mythology.
Historical documents about Slavic religion include the Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kiev around 1111, and the Novgorod First Chronicle compiled in the Novgorod Republic. They contain detailed reports of the annihilation of the official Slavic religion of Kiev and Novgorod, and the subsequent "double faith". The Primary Chronicle also contains the authentic text of Rus'-Greek treatises (dated 945 and 971) with native pre-Christian oaths. From the eleventh century onwards, various Rus' writings were produced against[dubious – discuss] the survival of Slavic religion, and Slavic gods were interpolated in the translations of foreign literary works, such as the Malalas Chronicle and the Alexandreis.
The West Slavs who dwelt in the area between the Vistula and the Elbe stubbornly resisted the Northern Crusades, and the history of their resistance is written down in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Latin Chronicles by Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, and Helmold, three German clergymen, as well as in the twelfth-century biographies of Otto of Bamberg, and in Saxo Grammaticus' thirteenth-century Gesta Danorum. These documents, together with minor German writings and the Icelandic Knýtlinga saga, provide a detailed description of northwestern Slavic religion.
The religions of other Slavic populations are less well-documented as texts about them, such as the fifteenth-century Polish Chronicle, were only produced later, after Christianisation, and contain a lot of sheer inventions. In the times preceding Christianisation, however, some Greek and Roman chroniclers, such as Procopius and Jordanes in the sixth century, sparsely documented some Slavic concepts and practices.
The linguistic unity and negligible dialectal differentiation of the Slavs until the end of the first millennium AD, as well as the lexical uniformity of religious vocabulary, witness a uniformity of early Slavic religion. It has been argued that the essence of early Slavdom was ethnoreligious before being ethnonational; that is to say, belonging to the Slavs was chiefly determined by conforming to certain beliefs and practices rather than by having a certain racial ancestry or being born in a certain place. Ivanov and Toporov identified the Slavic religion as an outgrowth of a purported common Proto-Indo-European religion, sharing strong similarities with other neighbouring belief systems such as those of the Balts, Thracians and Phrygians.
Local development of the ancient Slavic religion, especially in places like Russia, likely also included several influences from the neighbouring Finnic peoples, which contributed to local ethnogenesis. Slavic (and Baltic) religion and mythology is considered more conservative and closer to the purported original Proto-Indo-European religion than other Indo-European derived traditions, due to the fact that, throughout the history of the Slavs, it remained a popular religion rather than being reworked and sophisticated by intellectual elites, as had happened to other Indo-European derived religious cultures. For this reason, Slavic religion is invaluable for understanding other Indo-European beliefs.
The affinity to Proto-Indo-Iranian religion is evident in shared developments, including the elimination of the term for the supreme God of Heaven, *Dyeus, and its substitution by the term for "sky" (Slavic Nebo), the shift of the Indo-European descriptor of heavenly deities (Avestan daeva, Old Church Slavonic div; Proto-Indo-European *deiwos, "celestial", similar to Dyeus) to the designation of evil entities, and the parallel designation of gods by the term meaning both "wealth" and its "giver" (Avestan baga, Slavic bog). Much of the religious vocabulary of the Slavs, including vera (loosely translated as "faith", meaning "radiation of knowledge"), svet ("light"), mir ("peace", "agreement of parts", also meaning "world") and rai ("paradise"), is shared with Iranian.
According to Adrian Ivakhiv, the Indo-European element of Slavic religion may have included what Georges Dumézil studied as the "trifunctional hypothesis", that is to say a threefold conception of the social order, represented by the three castes of priests, warriors and farmers. According to Marija Gimbutas, Slavic religion represented an unmistakable overlap of any purported Indo-European-originated themes with ancient religious themes dating back to time immemorial. The latter were particularly hardwearing in Slavic religion, represented by the widespread devotion to Mat Syra Zemlya, the "Damp Mother Earth". Rybakov said the continuity and gradual complexification of Slavic religion started from devotion to life-giving forces (bereginy), ancestors and the supreme God, Rod ("Generation" itself), and developed into the "high mythology" of the official religion of the early Kievan Rus'.
As attested by Helmold (c. 1120–1177) in his Chronica Slavorum, the Slavs believed in a single heavenly God begetting all the lesser spirits governing nature, and worshipped it by their means. According to Helmold, "obeying the duties assigned to them, [the deities] have sprung from his [the supreme God's] blood and enjoy distinction in proportion to their nearness to the god of the gods". According to Rybakov's studies, wheel symbols such as the "thunder marks" (gromovoi znak) and the "six-petaled rose inside a circle" (e.g. ), which are quite common in Slavic folk crafts and which were still carved on edges and peaks of roofs in northern Russia in the nineteenth century, were symbols of the supreme life-giver Rod. Before its conceptualisation as Rod, Rybakov claims, this supreme God was known as Deivos (cognate with Sanskrit Deva, Latin Deus, Old High German Ziu and Lithuanian Dievas). The Slavs believed that from this God was preceded by a cosmic duality, represented by Belobog ("White God") and Chernobog ("Black God", also named Tiarnoglofi, "Black Head/Mind"), representing the root of all the heavenly-masculine and the earthly-feminine deities, or the waxing light and waning light gods, respectively. In both categories, deities might be either Razi, "rede-givers", or Zirnitra, "wizards".
The Slavs perceived the world as inhabited by a variety of spirits, which they represented as persons and worshipped. These spirits included those of waters (mavka and rusalka), forests (lisovyk), fields (polyovyk), those of households (domovoy), those of illnesses, luck and human ancestors. For instance, Leshy is an important woodland spirit, believed to distribute food assigning preys to hunters, later regarded as a god of flocks and herds, and still worshipped in this function in early twentieth-century Russia. Many gods were regarded as the ancestors of individual kins (rod or pleme), and the idea of ancestrality was so important that Slavic religion may be epitomised as a "manism" (i.e. worship of ancestors), though the Slavs did not keep genealogical records.
The Slavs also worshipped star-gods, including the moon (Russian: Mesyats) and the sun (Solntse), the former regarded as male and the latter as female. The moon-god was particularly important, regarded as the dispenser of abundance and health, worshipped through round dances, and in some traditions considered the progenitor of humanity. The belief in the moon-god was still very much alive in the nineteenth century, and peasants in the Ukrainian Carpathians openly affirmed that the moon is their god.
Some Slavic deities are related to Baltic mythology: Perun/Perkūnas, Veles/Velnias, Rod/Dievas, Yarilo/Saulė. There was an evident continuity between the beliefs of the East Slavs, West Slavs and South Slavs. They shared the same traditional deities, as attested, for instance, by the worship of Zuarasiz among the West Slavs, corresponding to Svarožič among the East Slavs. All the bright male deities were regarded as the hypostases, forms or phases in the year, of the active and masculine divine force personified by Perun ("Thunder").
Perun's name, from the Indo-European root *per or *perkw ("to strike", "splinter"), signified both the splintering thunder and the splintered tree (especially the oak; the Latin name of this tree, quercus, comes from the same root), regarded as symbols of the irradiation of the force. This root also gave rise to the Vedic Parjanya, the Baltic Perkūnas, the Albanian Perëndi (now denoting "God" and "sky"), the Germanic Fjörgynn and the Greek Keraunós ("thunderbolt", rhymic form of *Peraunós, used as an epithet of Zeus). From the exact same root comes the name of the Finnish deity Ukko, which has a Balto-Slavic origin. Prĕgyni or peregyni, despite being rendered as bregynja or beregynja (from breg, bereg, meaning "shore") and reinterpreted as female water spirits in modern Russian folklore, were rather spirits of trees and rivers related to Perun, as attested by various chronicles and highlighted by the root *per.
Slavic traditions preserved very ancient elements and intermingled with those of neighbouring European peoples. An exemplary case are the South Slavic still-living rain rituals of the couple Perun–Perperuna, Lord and Lady Thunder, shared with the neighbouring Albanians, Greeks and Arumanians.
The West Slavs, especially those of the Baltic, prominently worshipped Svetovid ("Lord of Power"), while the East Slavs prominently worshipped Perun himself, especially after Vladimir's 970s–980s reforms. The various spirits were believed to manifest in certain places, which were revered as numinous and holy; they included springs, rivers, groves, rounded tops of hills and flat cliffs overlooking rivers. Calendrical rituals were attuned with the spirits, which were believed to have periods of waxing and waning throughout the year, determining the agrarian fertility cycle.
26-30, F