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75-489: Kremenski Lakes is the largest lake group in Pirin, with a total area of 196,000 m and a combined volume of 1,560,000 m. Two of the lakes are the second and the fourth largest by area, as well as third and fifth by depth in the mountain range. The Icy Lake is the uppermost at an altitude of 2,359 m. It is small round-shaped with length of 120 m, width of 110 m and area of 10,000 m. The next two lakes are

150-487: 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

225-552: A boulder. It is very similar to mushroom idols from the local cities of Ples and Myshkin. Based on morphological details, the multifaceted cult function of this idol is assumed—fertility not only for the land and forest, but also fertility for humans. A form of the ancient, Slavic polytheistic religion was practised by the South Slavs (including the Croats and Serbs) prior to Christianisation. They came into contact with Christianity during

300-634: A complex near the site of the Zbruch idol ). 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

375-471: A cosmic duality was likely the reason that led to the exclusion of Veles from Vladimir's official temple in Kiev. Xors Dazhbog ("Radiant Giving-God") was the god of the life-bringing power of the sun. Stribog was identified by E. G. Kagarov as the god of wind, storm and dissension. Mokosh, the only female deity in Vladimir's pantheon, is interpreted as meaning the "Wet" or "Moist" by Jakobson, identifying her with

450-486: A dangerous situation in the war, they promise, if they are saved, to immediately sacrifice to God for their soul; having escaped death, they sacrifice what they promised, and they think that their salvation has been bought at the price of this sacrifice. They worship rivers, and nymphs, and all sorts of other deities, offer sacrifices to all of them and with the help of these sacrifices they also produce divination. Al-Masudi , an Arab historian, geographer and traveler, equates

525-409: 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

600-486: A museum, elements of the rituals are still performed). The dating of stone mushrooms is only approximate, most dating back to about 1000 AD. The stone mushroom idols are very similar to two Slavic stone idols from the northeastern regions: Sheksna idol (in Novgorod museum, Novgorod region, Russia) and Sebej idol (Sebej museum, Pskov region , Russia). These Slavic idols have a face and a phallic shape. Their characteristic feature

675-618: A number of reforms that he had already started by the 970s, and which were aimed at preserving the traditions of the kins and making Kiev the spiritual centre of East Slavdom . Perun was the god of thunder, law and war, symbolised by the oak and the mallet (or throwing stones), and identified with the Baltic Perkunas , the Germanic Thor and the Vedic Indra among others; his cult was practised not so much by commoners but mainly by

750-404: 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

825-510: A top level with four figures representing them, facing the four cardinal directions; a middle level with representations of a human ritual community ( khorovod ); and a bottom level with the representation of a three-headed chthonic god, Veles, who sustains the entire structure. The scholar Jiří Dynda studied the figure of Triglav (literally "the Three-Headed One") and Svetovid, which are widely attested in archaeological testimonies, as

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900-699: Is a glacial lake situated in the northern section of the Pirin mountain range, south-western Bulgaria . It is one of the eleven Popovi Lakes . The lake and its surroundings are among the most popular places for summer tourism in Pirin National Park . It is situated at the bottom of the Popovski cirque and is surrounded by the peaks Sivria (2,591 m), Dzhano (2,668 m), Kralev Dvor (2,680 m), Momin Dvor (2,723 m) and Dzhengal (2,730 m). The lake

975-498: Is a hat. An ancient Slavic stone idol was discovered on the territory of the Nikolo-Babaevsky monastery (Nekrasovsky district) in 2020. An ancient pagan place that existed before the monastery and churches is mentioned in the ethnographic materials of Bogdanovich. In that place, on Babayki, the idol of the supreme heavenly god was worshiped. The discovered Babaevsky idol has a clear shape of a large mushroom, completely carved from

1050-627: Is above 100 years at places. In Bulgarian language the name of the lake means the Lake of the Priest. There are two legends about it origin. According to the more popular one, a priest threw himself into the water because the Ottoman Turks had violated his daughter. His cap surfaced and made the little islet in the middle of the lake. The other legend suggests that after the Christianization of Bulgaria in

1125-555: 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

1200-502: Is situated at an altitude of 2,234 m. Popovo Lake is Pirin's largest by area and volume, and also the deepest one in the massif. It has the shape of irregular pentagon and features a small islet. The maximum length is 480 m; the width is 336 m. Its surface area is 123,600 m , which places it fourth among Bulgaria 's glacial lakes by total area, after Smradlivo Lake , the Upper Fish Lake and Bliznaka , all of them in

1275-580: Is the largest in the group and the second largest in Pirin, after the Popovo Lake . The lake has elongated shape with length of 500 m and width of 275 m. The area is between 98,000 m and 100,000 m. Reaching depth of 27 m, it is the third deepest in the mountain range, following Popovo Lake and the Tevno Vasilashko Lake . Its water volume is 1,000,000 m. Further downhill there are six more small lakes, some of them larger than

1350-487: 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 ,

1425-503: 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

1500-592: The Icy Lake , that are poorly researched. Two of them dry out in summer. The main tourist routes in the area circumvent the Kremenski cirque and its lakes, which make them relatively less known to tourists. The lakes are most easily reached from the valley of the river Retizhe and the summit of Dzhano. There are two trails from there, both leading to the two lowermost Kremenski Lakes at an altitude of 2,140 m. Popovo Lake Popovo Lake ( Bulgarian : Попово езеро )

1575-929: 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

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1650-502: The Rila mountain range. It is 29.5 m deep is second in the country after Okoto Lake in Rila, which reaches depth of 37.7 m. Its volume is around 1,270,000 m . In summer the water temperature reaches 14–16 °C at the surface and decreases to 5–6 °C in the deeper layers. Popovo Lake takes water from rainfall, snowfall and two tiny springs which pour into the southern end of

1725-727: The Slavs and the Antes , are not ruled by one person, but since ancient times they have lived in the people's rule (democracy), and therefore their happiness and unhappiness in life is considered a common cause. And in all other respects, both of these barbarian tribes have the same life and laws. They believe that one of the gods, the creator of lightning, is the lord over all, and bulls are sacrificed to him and other sacred rites are performed. They do not know fate and generally do not recognize that it has any power in relation to people, and when they are about to face death, whether they are seized by illness or in

1800-496: The psychopomp in the underworld. Svetovid is interpreted by Dynda as the incarnation of the axis mundi in the four dimensions of space. Helmold defined Svetovid as deus deorum ("god of all gods"). Alongside Triglav and Svetovid, other deities were also represented with many heads. This is attested by chroniclers who wrote about West Slavs, including Saxo Grammaticus ( c. 1160–1220). According to him, Rugievit in Charenza

1875-414: 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

1950-539: The "six-petaled rose inside a circle" (e.g. [REDACTED] ), 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

2025-555: 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

2100-533: 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

2175-519: The 9th century, a priest decided to climb the Pirin mountain and expel the Slavic god Perun . He found him but Perun was enraged by his audacity and threw him into the lake. Again, his cap emerged from the water and formed the islet. Slavic mythology Slavic paganism , Slavic mythology , or Slavic religion is the religious beliefs, myths , and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation , which occurred at various stages between

2250-705: 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

2325-571: 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 * perk ("to strike", "splinter"), signified both the splintering thunder and the splintered tree (especially the oak ; the Latin name of this tree, quercus , comes from

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2400-514: 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

2475-546: 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 into modern times. The Slavs' resistance to Christianity gave rise to a "whimsical syncretism", which was called dvoeverie , "double faith", in Old Church Slavonic . Since

2550-409: 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 Kiev , the capital of Kievan Rus'. Even there, however, popular resistance led by volkhv s , pagan priests or shamans, recurred periodically for centuries. Popular resistance to Christianity

2625-730: 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

2700-570: 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

2775-754: 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 process of Christianising the West Slavs 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

2850-402: 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

2925-441: 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 the survival of Slavic religion, and Slavic gods were interpolated in the translations of foreign literary works, such as

3000-510: The aristocracy . Veles was the god of horned livestock ( Skotibog ), of wealth and of the underworld. Perun and Veles symbolised an oppositional and yet complementary duality similar to that of the Vedic Mitra and Varuna , an eternal struggle between heavenly and chthonic forces. Roman Jakobson himself identified Veles as the Vedic Varuna, god of oaths and of the world order. This belief in

3075-452: 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

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3150-407: The colours that were attributed to the three worlds, also studied by Karel Jaromír Erben (1811–1870): white for Heaven, green for Earth and black for the underworld. It also represents the three dimensions of time, mythologically rendered in the figure of a three-threaded rope. Triglav is Perun in the heavenly plane, Svetovid in the centre from which the horizontal four directions unfold, and Veles

3225-483: The confluences of rivers. The biographers of Otto of Bamberg (1060/1061–1139) inform that these temples were known as continae , "dwellings", among West Slavs, testifying that they were regarded as the houses of the gods. They were wooden buildings with an inner cell with the god's statue, located in wider walled enclosures or fortifications; such fortifications might contain up to four continae . Different continae were owned by different kins, and used for

3300-517: The death of sinners, on that hill stands today the church of Saint Vasilij, as we will relate later. 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

3375-520: The deity was believed to manifest in nature itself. Such locations were characterised by the combined presence of trees and springs, according to the description of one such sites in Szczecin by Otto of Bamberg. A shrine of the same type in Kobarid , contemporary Slovenia , was stamped out in a "crusade" as recently as 1331. Usually, common people were not allowed into the presence of the images of their gods,

3450-495: The early 20th century, Slavic folk religion has undergone an organised reinvention and reincorporation in the movement of Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery). One of the first written sources on the religion of the ancient Slavs is the description of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (6th century), who mentioned sacrifices to the supreme god-the thunderer of the Slavs , river spirits ("nymphs") and others: These tribes,

3525-399: The fact that these idols had no face, they were not destroyed. According to the beliefs of the local population, such stone idols had healing properties, so they were regularly visited. On certain days, people brought gifts to them, and in order to receive healing from an illness, they had to sit on an idol. The stone mushroom was respected and protected. Disrespectful attitude towards this idol

3600-474: The growing centralised state. Vladimir canonised a number of deities, to whom he erected a temple on the hills of the capital Kiev . These deities, recorded in the Primary Chronicle , were five: Perun , Xors Dazhbog , Stribog , Simargl and Mokosh . Various other deities were worshipped by the common people, notably Veles who had a temple in the merchant's district of Podil of the capital itself. According to scholars, Vladimir's project consisted of

3675-420: 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

3750-399: 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

3825-446: The lake. The biggest amount of water can be observed in late spring during the snow melting from surrounding peaks. The water that pours out of the lake forms the river Retizhe , a right tributary of the Mesta . The Retizhe flows to the seven Fish Popovski Lakes and drains the whole Popovski cirque. The area around the lake is dotted with meadows and mountain pine ( Pinus mugo ), whose age

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3900-435: The largest. The Upper Kremen Lake is located 700 m south-southwest of the summit of Sivria at an altitude of 2,357 m. The lake has length of 335 m, width of 270 m, with an area varying between 66,100 m and 70,000 m. It is 13.9 m deep and a considerable volume of water estimated at 478,000 m. The Lower Kremen Lake is located 725 m east of Sivria at an altitude of 2,306 m and

3975-564: The law of reason. Western European authors of the 11th and 12th centuries gave detailed descriptions of the sanctuaries and cults of Redigost ( Radegast , Svarozhich ) in Rethra , Svyatovit (Svetovid) in Arkon ( Jaromarsburg ), Triglav in Szczecin , Chernobog , the sanctuary in Volyně , etc. The identification of a number of Eastern European monuments with Slavic sanctuaries is a matter of dispute ( Peryn ,

4050-504: 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

4125-516: 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

4200-600: The northeastern Slavs looked like mushrooms, without a face and with a clearly distinguished hat. Moreover, such idols were made by hand through turning a boulder upside-down and giving it the shape of a mushroom. The medieval manuscript of the 11th–14th centuries "The Word of St. Gregory, Invented in Toltsekh" contains a direct indication that the Slavs worshiped such phallic idols. According to some researchers, such idols were dedicated to Rod or Veles (according to local old folklore, stone mushrooms are dedicated to Veles). Due to

4275-629: The paganism of the Slavs and the Rus' with reason : There was a decree of the capital of the Khazar khaganate, and there are seven judges in it, two of them from Muslims, two from the Khazars, who judge according to the law of Taura , two from the Christians there, who judge according to the law of Injil , one of them from the Slavs, Russ and other pagans, he judges according to the law of paganism, that is, according to

4350-523: The reign of emperor Heraclius (610-641), continued by Rome, and baptization process ended during the rule of Basil I (867-886) by Byzantine missionaries of Constantinople Cyril and Methodius . In 980 CE, in Kievan Rus' , led by the Great Prince Vladimir , there was an attempt to unify the various beliefs and priestly practices of Slavic religion in order to bind together the Slavic peoples in

4425-418: 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

4500-401: The respectively three-headed and four-headed representations of the same axis mundi , of the same supreme God. Triglav itself was connected to the symbols of the tree and the mountain, which are other common symbols of the axis mundi , and in this quality he was a summus deus (a sum of all things), as recorded by Ebbo ( c. 775–851). Triglav represents the vertical interconnection of

4575-644: The ritual banquets in honour of their own ancestor-gods. These ritual banquets are known variously, across Slavic countries, as bratchina (from brat , "brother"), mol'ba ("entreaty", "supplication") and kanun (short religious service) in Russia; slava ("glorification") in Serbia; sobor ("assembly") and kurban ("sacrifice") in Bulgaria. With Christianisation, the ancestor-gods were replaced with Christian patron saints. There also existed holy places with no buildings, where

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4650-749: 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

4725-460: The sight of which was a privilege of the priests. Many of these images were seen and described only in the moment of their violent destruction at the hands of the Christian missionaries. The priests ( volkhv s ), who kept the temples and led rituals and festivals, enjoyed a great degree of prestige; they received tributes and shares of military booties by the kins' chiefs. Some of the stone idols of

4800-406: 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

4875-415: The spirits, which were believed to have periods of waxing and waning throughout the year, determining the agrarian fertility cycle. The cosmology of ancient Slavic religion, which is preserved in contemporary Slavic folk religion, is visualised as a three-tiered vertical structure, or " world tree ", as is common in other Indo-European religions. At the top there is the heavenly plane, symbolised by birds,

4950-462: 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

5025-476: The sun and the moon; the middle plane is that of earthly humanity, symbolised by bees and men; at the bottom of the structure there is the netherworld, symbolised by snakes and beavers, and by the chthonic god Veles . The Zbruch Idol found in western Ukraine (which was at first identified as a representation of Svetovid ) represents this theo-cosmology: the three-layered effigy of the four major deities— Perun , Dazhbog , Mokosh and Lada —is constituted by

5100-458: 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

5175-474: The three worlds, reflected by the three social functions studied by Dumézil: sacerdotal, martial and economic. Ebbo himself documented that the Triglav was seen as embodying the connection and mediation between Heaven, Earth and the underworld. Adam of Bremen ( c. 1040s–1080s) described the Triglav of Wolin as Neptunus triplicis naturae (that is to say, " Neptune of the three natures/generations"), attesting

5250-416: 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

5325-411: 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

5400-493: 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

5475-402: Was not allowed. The keepers of traditions and rituals performed around the idol were elderly women, and the tradition was passed down through generations. There are also beliefs that such stone mushrooms provided fertility for the soil and people. Therefore, in some places, the worship of these idols persisted for centuries until the end of the 20th century (and even after being transferred to

5550-413: 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

5625-406: Was represented with seven faces, which converged at the top in a single crown. These three-, four- or many-headed images, wooden or carved in stone, some covered in metal, which held drinking horns and were decorated with solar symbols and horses, were kept in temples, of which numerous archaeological remains have been found. They were built on upraised platforms, frequently on hills, but also at

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