Russian mythology. Brief sketch of Russian mythology
The most ancient gods of the Slavs were associated with the forces of nature and animals. They inhabited everything around: forests, fields, sky, ponds. One of the main deities in Ancient Rus' was Dazhdbog sunlight, warmth, fertility and happiness. His symbol was the solar disk. The Slavs believed that Dazhdbog lives in heaven in a golden palace and sits on a golden throne. Every morning, as a handsome young man, he leaves the palace on a golden chariot drawn by a dozen white fire-breathing horses. As the day comes to an end, Dazhdbog grows older and in the evening the gray-haired old man returns to the heavenly palace. However, the next morning the god is young again and full of strength. This is how people explained the daily cycle of day and night and the resurgent forces of nature.
Dazhdbog's wife was the beautiful Month. She came at the beginning of summer, but grew older every day and completely disappeared by winter. Dazhdbog became despondent and stopped warming the earth. The following spring, Mesyatsa returned to her beloved young and beautiful. This is how the ancient Slavs explained the change of seasons. The 12 signs of the zodiac were subordinate to Dazhdbog, and the Stars and Dawns served.
The Slavs considered the sun a deity under the name Horse. His symbol was also a golden disk, like Dazhdbog’s, but, according to the Slavs, the sun and light were completely different. The sun is just the embodiment of light. The word “horse” itself meant “circle”; from this word came “round dance”. In honor of Khors they organized spring holiday, which has survived to this day - Maslenitsa. On this day they baked pancakes, rolled set fire wheels, and danced in circles. All this was symbolized by the sun among the Slavs.
The deity of crops was Semargl. Its symbol was the so-called World Tree, often found in traditional Russian ornaments. Despite this, the Slavs represented the god Semargl in the form of a winged dog protecting crops from wild animals. The goddess of the earth, the harvest and the mother of all things was the goddess Makosh (Mokosh). All forest and aquatic life obeyed her: mermaids, goblins, mythical griffins and even Semargl himself. Makosh was also a patroness women's work: spinning, weaving, embroidery. To appease the goddess, Slavic girls threw yarn into a well or spring for her.
The male deity of fertility was Veles - the guardian of domestic animals, the god of wealth, and later the patron of trade. At different times he was represented either as a formidable god who punishes for violation of trade obligations, or as a bearded shepherd. Its symbols were grain and ox.
There were also female deities in ancient Russian mythology: Lada and Lel (Lelya). Lada was the goddess of marriage and abundance, she was worshiped in the spring and summer, and a white rooster was sacrificed. Lelya was the daughter of Lada, the deity of spring and the patroness of young girls, who in her honor organized a spring festival with round dances and wreaths. From Lelya’s name came many words that we still use today: lalya (doll), cherish (take care), cradle.
The gloomy female deity was Morena (Mara) - the goddess of the dead. In Russians folk tales she is mentioned under the name of Marya Morevna, and her name is consonant with the words “death”, “pestilence”. In addition, Morena was also a symbol of fertility, because without dying in nature, rebirth is impossible.
Brief sketch of Russian mythology
Pagan beliefs Slavic people in general can be divided into three tribal areas of mythical legends: southern, western and eastern (Russian) Slavs. Although these areas are closely connected both by the philological affinity of the language and by the common customs and rituals between them, they are nevertheless completely different from each other both in the external form of the cult and in its internal meaning. Each of them constitutes its own special and completely closed world of its tribal beliefs. These three tribal areas of Slavic mythology correspond to the three main stages of their pagan religion. The first of these steps is direct worship of nature and the elements; the second is the worship of deities who personify these phenomena, and the third is the worship of idols that already command them. The Western Slavs of the Baltic Sea and the banks of the Elbe belong predominantly to the latter, i.e., idolatry, while, on the contrary, the Serbs and Croats belong to the direct, immediate worship of nature, enlivened by popular imagination by crowds of collective spirits, as numerous as The manifestations in nature of the same laws are varied. Our Russian legends were destined to serve as a link between these two extreme stages of development Slavic myth and combine the idolatry of Western tribes with the worship of the elements and natural phenomena of the Southern Slavs. At this first stage of development of the anthropomorphic direction, man, not yet understanding common law unity of diverse but related phenomena and wanting to personify each individual phenomenon, each individual object in human form, creates in his imagination for each phenomenon a crowd of spirits that do not yet have an individual meaning, but are understood by him only as collectives of different manifestations of the same force of nature . The individual personality of the deity still merges into a general generic concept, but his collective has certain characteristics, such as, for example, the Water Grandfather, the Goblin, the Brownie, etc. Little by little, these countless collectives merge into one main individuality, which either absorbs them into itself, or subjugates him to his power. So, for example, until now all the names of demons and demons in all languages, with their collective meaning, have another meaning - the proper name of their main leader, the demon of demons, the devil.
Meanwhile, man, living and studying nature, acquires new concepts every day, flowing one from the other and fragmenting ad infinitum in his mind. In this continuous transition from generic concepts to more specific ones, in this fragmentation of human thought, lies the logical process of development of all polytheism, which clothes abstract concepts in visible images of gods and idols. At the second stage of its development, paganism for each general concept of a homogeneous phenomenon creates a separate person, identical with the phenomenon itself, and the meaning of such a person is determined solely by the meaning of the phenomenon specifically associated with it; so, for example, the god of thunder, the god of rain are nothing more than the very phenomena of thunder, rain, etc. Therefore, both the external forms and symbols of these deities are still very colorless, and even their very names indicate an undeveloped personality. The reason for this is that these names are either borrowed from the phenomenon itself, like weather - frost, or are composed of adjectives that define a general property not so much of a person as of a phenomenon and require the necessary addition of a noun god, lord, king and so on, to become the proper name of a deity, for example, Bel-God, Dobro-Pan, Tsar-Sea, etc. For these deities, folk fantasy creates its own images, oral tradition names them, and rituals explain their meaning; but, despite this, images, names and attributes still fluctuate in some mysterious uncertainty until, finally, architecture establishes various shades the concept of some deity and will not petrify him, so to speak, once and for all into certain forms.
Here comes the third period of mythical development. Idols, having ceased to be a means of representation that arouses popular reverence, become themselves objects of deification and worship, and, having lost the concrete unity of their images with the concepts they express, they completely accept individual meaning patrons and managers of those phenomena and forces of nature with which they were previously identical. Temples are built for these idols, entire castes of priests are established to make sacrifices to them and to perform worship; their names from adjectives expressing general properties nature, turn into proper names or are replaced by other, random and local names. In a word, idols receive a completely definite objective individuality.
The people, becoming more and more akin to their deities through their human forms, soon involuntarily convey to them in their imagination all their passions and revive their soulless idols through the physical activity of man. The gods begin to live an earthly life, subject, in addition to death, to all its contingencies, and from figurative objectivity they move on to real subjective existence: they enter into bonds of marriage and kinship, and new idols not only as concepts, by way of thought, flow from their prototypes, but are born from them by the physical birth of man.
In our opinion, the Slavic myth has not matured to this subjectivity of its gods, although many believe that this last degree of development is only lost in folk memory, but nevertheless once existed among us along with other peoples of antiquity. We will not dispute this opinion here, but the fact remains the same that for us, at the present time, this subjective life of Slavic idols does not exist.
So, according to its development, Slavic mythology can be divided into three eras: spirits, nature deities and idol gods.
This division is partly confirmed by the words of St. Gregory (Paisievsky collection), which clearly indicate three different periods of pagan worship: “The demands began to be laid on the clan and women in labor before Perun their god, and before that they laid demands on the upirs and bereginians.”
We will find confirmation of the same in the very gradual introduction of Christianity among the Slavs. So, for example, in the legends of the southern Slavs, who were the first to accept the Christian faith, predominantly collective spirits predominate, but they do not have idols at all. In Moravia, Bohemia, Poland and Russia, although some even idols exist, most of the gods are deities of nature belonging to the second era, when, on the contrary, among the Polabians and Pomeranians, groups completely disappear and the whole religion is concentrated on some of the main objective personalities of the Arkonian and Retrayan idols. Sometimes even with the predominance of objective idols, some signs of the gods’ transition to subjective life are noticed. So, for example, there was a belief about Svetovit’s horse that God himself rode it at night, and Perun in Novgorod spoke in a human voice and threw his club at Volkhov.
Paying attention to the very worship of Slavic paganism, we will also find in it complete confirmation of our opinion. In fact, although the information that has reached us about the liturgical rites of the Slavs is scanty and insufficient, for all that they clearly bear the stamp of some kind of diversity, which, in our opinion, can only be explained by different times of religious development. If we extend our general division of Slavic myth to the rites of worship, then we will not only confirm the proposed division, but also explain the very facts, which, taken together, often contradict each other.
In fact, in the first era of our myth, man, not even knowing personal gods, naturally had neither specific places of worship, nor specific persons to perform it, and just as the deities were inseparably merged with the very phenomena of nature, to which they served as allegories, so It is natural that man made his sacrifices directly to the phenomena themselves. Procopius already testifies that the Slavs made sacrifices to rivers and nymphs; and to this day the customs and rituals of throwing wreaths, food and money into rivers, wells and lakes have been preserved. “Do not call yourself a god, neither in stones, nor in students, nor in rivers,” says the “Word of Cyril,” and Nestor also directly mentions that “we offer sacrifices to the wells and lakes.” The custom of hanging gifts brought by humans to invisible spirits on tree branches and placing them on stones or at the root of an old oak tree fully confirms our idea that sacrifices were once made to natural phenomena themselves. These sacrifices were made by everyone, without the help of special priests appointed for this purpose; however, this position, on major national holidays, was perhaps performed by the elders, who always enjoyed great rights in the national and civil life of the Slavs.
With a more precise definition of the meaning of the deities of nature, the places of sacrifices and prayers began to be determined. Indeed, before the existence of idols and, therefore, before the construction of temples, the Slavs had Famous places, on which they are accustomed to pray to some deity. This is confirmed by many testimonies. Thus, Konstantin Porfirorodny says that the Russians made sacrifices on the Dnieper island of St. George; Sefrid speaks of an oak tree where some god lives, to whom sacrifices were made; Helmold, Dietmar, Saxon and Andrew, the biography of Saint Otgon of Bamberg, knew among the Polabian Slavs many sacred groves where they worshiped some sacred tree, which in later times was sometimes replaced by an idol of some god.
In the category of places dedicated to worship, one must also include the sacred mountains, hills and all the numerous settlements, and finally, as a transition to the last era of the Slavic myth, some temples, like the temple of Jüterbok, the structure of which clearly proves that there was no idol in it, but the appearance of the first ray of the rising sun was simply idolized. This temple was illuminated only by one small hole, which was facing the eastern side so that it was illuminated with light only at sunrise; The Arab writer Massoudi also mentions one Slavic temple, in the dome of which a hole was made to observe the rising of the sun.
In certain localities, certain persons had to exist to perform liturgical rites, but, probably, they did not yet constitute a closed caste of priests. Were they not the Magi, the Prophets and the Magicians (Wonders), persons who were not initiated into this title, but were called upon by momentary inspiration? The answer to this question can be the appointment of the Magi, who, like the priests of other nations, guessed and predicted the future.
With the appearance of idols, special rituals for worship are determined, rich temples appear and a whole caste of ministers and priests is formed, who, taking advantage of the people’s superstitious fear of the idol, not only enrich themselves with its gifts, but also often seize the political power of its kings. This was the case in Rügen and among the Redarians.
Holidays, sacrifices, rituals and fortune-telling - everything is concentrated around the idol and his servants and is surrounded for the people by some kind of inaccessible mystery, under which it is easy to find the cunning deceptions of self-interested priests. The last feature sharply divides the entire worship of our ancestors into two, completely separate halves: direct worship of natural phenomena and pure idolatry. The first, like faith in the spirits and deities of nature, has not yet been eradicated from the life of the common people: their holidays, songs, fortune telling, superstitions - everything bears the stamp of these times of paganism and serves us as materials for its study; whereas from the times of pure idolatry everything disappeared: the debauchery of Bacchic feasts, and outrageous bloody sacrifices, and rich temples, and monstrous idols - everything, often even the names of these idols. The very fact of erasing from people's memory everything that relates to last period our myth, proves to us the novelty of idolatry among the Russian Slavs, which had not yet had time to firmly take root among them, and was destroyed, along with the idols themselves, at the first appearance of Christianity. This may be the reason why Christianity not only met almost no resistance anywhere among the Eastern Slavs, but that the pagans themselves called for preachers new faith. It is impossible not to notice here that these two completely separate eras of the deification of natural phenomena and later idolatry were echoed in the information that has reached us (Russian mythology itself) in the division of this information according to their sources into popular beliefs and historical data. Some have come to us through oral tradition in superstitious rituals, fairy tales, songs and various sayings of the common people, while others have been preserved in chronicles and written monuments our historical antiquity.
The deities of oral tradition live to this day in popular superstition, and their names are known to almost every Russian commoner; We do not find the slightest recollection among the people about the idols of written tradition, and if they had not been preserved in the chronicles and spiritual works of our medieval literature, the names of these idols would have remained forever unknown to us.
Of the few proper names of idol gods that have come down to us, we have absolutely no information not only about the personality of these deities, but even about the external form of their idols. About Perun alone we know that he was made of wood with a silver head and a golden mustache, and that he had a club, which the Novgorod idol threw at Volkhov. These gods do not have special symbols or attributes, and our imagination cannot be guided by anything to recreate these idols when we encounter their names in our chronicles.
With such an absence of any definite appearance, it seems impossible to admit the existence of the subjective personality of these idols, and we would rather believe that they did not grow up to the individual life of Thors and Odins, Jupiters and Apollos, than to admit the assumption that the biographical myths (if we dare to put it that way) of our deities could have disappeared from people's memory to such an extent that even the external appearance of these gods was not preserved in our legends.
The only basis for the fact that our gods once lived a human life, entered into marriage and had children for themselves, is, for the defenders of such a thesis, the patronymic of Svarog.
The name of Svarog is found in our written monuments in only one place in the Ipatiev Chronicle, borrowed from the Bulgarian Chronograph and translated by him, in turn, from the Byzantine writer Malala. It is clear that we are talking about Egypt here; but just as in the Greek and Latin texts of Malala the names of Hephaestus - Vulcan and Helios - are inserted for explanation - Sol, in the same way, the names of Svarog and Dazhbog are inserted in the Slavic text: “And after the flood and the division of the tongue, the first Mestrom, from the family of Ham, began to reign, after him Ermiy, after him Theosta, who also called Savarog the Egyptians, and therefore the king’s son his name is the Sun, and he will be called Dazhbog.” And then: “The sun is king, the son of Svarog, who is Dazhbog.”
The form Svarozhich is found in the “Tale of Superstition”: “Ognevi pray, they call him Svarozhich.” Finally, the Baltic Slavs had an idol called Dietmar Zuarosici, which Saint Bruno also mentions in his letter to Emperor Heinrich II. For a long time this name was mistakenly read by Lvarazik and explained in many different ways, until finally Safarik decided the matter by identifying him with Svarozhich’s “Tales on Superstition.” From these data, some scientists a little arbitrarily produced Svarog into the Slavic Saturn, the partially forgotten god of the sky and the father of the sun and thunder, Dazhbog and Perun, whom they therefore call Svarozhich.
But to base this genealogy of our gods on the words of Malala would be to mistake Helios for the son of Hephaestus in Greek myth, and it is hardly necessary to divide Svarog and Svarozhich or Zuarazik into two different persons Western Slavs and definitely see in final form these latter are patronymics, of which our mythology does not provide other examples.
The fragments of Russian paganism, preserved for us in folk rituals, beliefs, signs, fairy tales, riddles, conspiracies and epic techniques and expressions of the ancient language - all directly relate to the very objects, laws and phenomena of nature. Thus, with these data we can completely recreate the degree of religious concept associated in the imagination of our ancestors with their physical knowledge of various forces and natural phenomena. The superstitious rituals of our pre-Christian antiquity point directly to the worship and sacrifice of the elements, such as jumping over fire and burning in fire, bathing and throwing into water, etc. Main characteristics Such legends of the Russian people represent a deep observational knowledge of nature and life in general. This knowledge is often hidden from the naked eye under the shell of an allegorical tale or an apt epithet, and is sometimes expressed by transferring (by comparison) an abstract idea to a material object, close to a person. Thus, this visible object becomes a symbol and emblem of abstract thought, the memory of which is inextricably linked with this object. So, for example, the black color, reminiscent of the darkness of the night, constantly serves as an image of everything gloomy, evil and deadening, while, on the contrary, white, red and yellow colors, like the colors of the day and the sun, not only become synonymous epithets of these phenomena, but are associated in the human imagination with all the concepts of good and good.
With this luxuriously epic view of man on nature, the deity-idols, who once personified the same forces and phenomena of nature, have come down to us in the colorless vagueness of empty names that say nothing to our imagination, so that in absolutely none of our idols we we will not find the fabulous legends that we are accustomed to meeting in the classical myths of Greece and Rome.
What a multitude of beliefs, signs, riddles and sentences we have, which define not only the natural, but also the superstitious and mythical qualities and properties of the heavenly bodies, natural elements and even many animals and plants, and meanwhile, as just noted above, about the most important idols of the Kyiv hill, whose names are constantly repeated by all chroniclers, we, in addition to this empty name, we know absolutely nothing.
Of all the places where Nestor talks about the pagan deities of our ancestors, the most important is where he mentions the idols set up by Vladimir in Kyiv. This place leaves its indelible stamp on all the later testimonies of our ancient writers on this subject. There, the name of the main god Perun is separated from other idols by the description of his idol; followed by Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Semargla and Mokosh (Mokosha). This order of calculating idols is maintained in the same place in our history and with the most minor changes in the Arkhangelogorod, Nikon and Gustin chronicles, in the “Degree Book” and in the German writer Herberstein, from where it goes to Polish historians, and later, with their changes, comes back to us, as we will see further. In the texts testifying to the beliefs of the Slavs in general, a description of the idol of Perun is published, but nevertheless he retains first place in them. Of the other deities, apparently, those whom the writers considered less important are sometimes released: Iakov names only Perun and Khors; Saint Gregory - Perun, Khorsa and Mokosha; in the Prologue, published by Professor Bodyansky, - Perun, Khors, Semargla (Sima and Rgla) and Mokosh; in the “Makaryevsky Menaia” - Perun, Khors, Dazhbog and Mokosh, and so on. and so on.
Since the influence of Polish chronicles on our writers, a completely new order of deities appears in the “Gustin Chronicle” (about the idols of the Russians), in St. Demetrius of Rostov and in Gisel’s “Kiev Synopsis”. In it, Perun occupies the first place, but to the description of his idol is added the remark that he was idolized on high mountains and that bonfires were burned in his honor, the extinguishing of which was punishable by death; the second deity is Volos, the third is Pozvizd, the fourth is Lado, the fifth is Kupala, the sixth is Kolyada. That this series of gods was directly borrowed from foreign sources is clearly shown in the “Gustin Chronicle” by the very name of Perun, called Perkonos in this place in the chronicle, when a few pages before that we immediately encounter Nestor’s pure text about the construction of idols in Kyiv. Even at the end of this alien order, we can still see the influence of Nestor, but already changed in its spelling: in addition to those demonic idols, also “and ini idols byahu, with the names: Uslyad or Oslyad, Korsha or Khors, Dashuba or Dazhb,” and other names Nestorov's idols. Uslyad came from an erroneous translation of words mustache zlat German traveler Herberstein. Further, the names Korsh and Dashub are also completely alien to our native writers, although the latter is partly explained by the spelling of the “Degree Book”: Dazhaba, but this, perhaps, is a typo, especially since in another place in the same book Dazhba is printed, probably derived from non-compliance with the title over the abbreviated god (ba).
Volos is not mentioned by Nestor among the idols built by Vladimir; but from Svyatoslav’s treaty it is clear that he occupied a very important place among the Slavic deities, almost equal to Perun, with whom he seems to be placed in parallel, which is why he occupies first place behind Perun Polish writers and their Russian followers. A similar rapprochement between Perun and Volos is also found in the words of the poet Yakov. From this evidence, repeated in the “Torzhestvennik” and in Makary’s “Cheti-Minea”, we can conclude that the idol of Volos was in Kyiv, probably even before Vladimir, which is why it was not mentioned by Nestor. This assumption is even more clearly confirmed by the evidence of the Book of Degrees, where, when creating the Kyiv idols, the chronicler, copying directly from Nestor, does not mention Volos; but, on the contrary, when they are destroyed, he lists everyone by name, and after Mokosh he also names Blasius, the cattle god. In the "Word of Saint Gregory" it appears mysterious name Villa in singular and the masculine gender: “and Khorsu, and Mokosha, and Vila,” which we take here for Volos on the basis that in the unpublished part of this “Word...” the Phoenician Baal is called Vilos: “There was an idol called Vila, and Daniel destroyed him. Prophet in Babylon."
In addition to the six main idols mentioned in the Laurentian Chronicle, several other nicknames of pagan polytheism of ancient Rus' are found in our oldest written monuments, such as Svarog, Svarozhich, Rod and Rozhanitsa, Ghouls, Beregini, Navii, Plowa, etc.
With the insertion in the “Bustin Chronicle” (about the idols of the Russians) and Gisel’s “Synopsis”, the literary treatment of Slavic mythology begins, the false direction of which flourished in our country for a long time, both in the fake chronicles of the 18th century (like Joachim’s) and in the writings of native mythologists the end of the last century: Popov, Chulkova, Glinka and Kaisarov. These works, under the influence of Polish-German scholarship of the 17th century and its extremely false direction, flooded our native fables with lists of gods, demigods, heroes and geniuses of all kinds and with a multitude of legends and details, based for the most part on arbitrary inventions or on facts taken from outside and completely alien to our region.
Most of the names found in these lists belong to the idols of the Western Slavs and partly the ancient Prussians, deified in the famous temples of Arkona, Retra and Romova. Kyiv idols are constantly mentioned in the non-Russian forms of Dashuba, Korsha, etc., clearly borrowed from foreign sources. From our folk superstitions and only a few of the most famous names were included in these lists of fairy tales: mermaids, goblins, brownies, Polkan, Koshchei and Baba Yaga. Titles national holidays Kupala and Kolyada were granted special deities of fruits and festive feasts, whose idols seemed to stand in Kyiv; in the same way, the Don and Bug rivers are elevated to some kind of special deification by our ancestors, although Great Russian songs and legends know nothing about the latter, when, on the contrary, the Danube, Volga and the fabulous Safat and Smorodina Rivers really have some right to attention Russian mythology. But hardly Messrs. Popov and Glinka knew about our ancient heroic epic when they did not even bother to check the German-Polish information about the Kyiv idols by comparing this information with the Russian sources available to them. The rest of the names on these lists belong for the most part to pure fiction. The forgery of many of them is now obvious to us, such as the above-mentioned Uslad, Zimtserla (the goddess of spring, who erased winter), Detinets, Volkhovets, Slovyan, Rodomysl and many others. But we are not always able to accurately point out the initial source of forgery or misunderstanding: where did the idol of the Strong God, described in such detail in Chulkov’s dictionary, come from? Where does the information about the Golden Woman, idolized by the Obdorians, come from? Where do the walls, lituns and kudas come from, which according to Glinka fell into the same category with brownies, goblins and devils in general, Belly, the keeper of life, and, finally, even Lel and his brother Polel, sung by Pushkin, these imaginary Castor and Pollux of the Slavic fable?
To this day, entire systems of Slavic mythology are based on such shaky foundations, not only by German scientists, like the mythology of Eckermann (1848), but also by many Slavic researchers, especially among the Czechs, such as Hanush, Jungmann and Tkani, in whose mythological dictionary ( 1824) Ilya Muromets is mentioned by the Russian Hercules, and Saint Zosimus of Solovetsky - Zosim Schuzgott der Bienen hex den Russen.
In general, Slavic mythology in its Germanic processing has remained to this day in the field of outdated classicism, which certainly sought to bring it under the level of Greek theogony and, at all costs, to find among us deities corresponding to the famous gods ancient world.
The second significant mistake of this direction is the generalization of any purely local legend: without taking into account at all that often the same deity appears in different places under different names, the scientific methodologist tries to recreate from each similar synonym new identity, to which he immediately attributes, in his imagination, a meaning corresponding to one or another deity of classical legends. With each new work written in this spirit, the number of deities in our country increased with new, if not fictitious, then in Russia, at least, positively never-existent names. That is why it seems to us that the first modern task of science is to cleanse our Russian traditions of sediments alien to them and finally determine the correct distinction between Russian and non-Russian sources.
In general, in Russian myth proper names For the most part, they play the very last and insignificant role, as we will try to prove this later. Much more important are the rituals and celebrations of the common people and, in particular, their superstitious concepts and views on natural phenomena, luminaries and elements, mountains and rivers, fabulous plants and animals, about which our poems and songs, conspiracies, fairy tales, riddles and jokes still speak to this day. For example, rituals of plowing or the death of a cow, the calling of spring, the production of a living king of fire, beliefs about the flight of fiery kites or the blossoming of ferns on Midsummer night and, finally, the most ancient legends about the creation of the world, the island of Buyan and the mysterious “Pigeon Book”.
In childhood, humanity fearfully and reverently worships those objects and natural phenomena that more than others amaze its physical senses, and therefore it is natural that celestial phenomena, like the sun and stars, thunder and lightning, become the primary objects of superstitious adoration. But when, with a settled life, a person becomes acquainted with arable farming and the cultivation of fruits, a sense of personal benefit forces him to turn his attention to the earth and the fruitful force plant nature, then in his religion the gods of heaven gradually yield their primacy to the representatives of the earth. That is why among the Western Slavs, who lived a settled life before ours, the worship of earthly nature was more clearly formulated in the deification of the goddesses Zhiva and Mora, who divided among themselves the entire annual cycle of earthly vegetation.
Zhiva’s share was the share of half a year of nature’s fruitful summer life, while Mora’s share was the time of her fruitless winter rest. The concept of everything young, bright, powerful, warm and fruitful merged with the idea of \u200b\u200bZhiva; with the representation of Mora - everything dark, cold, frail and barren.
If we in Rus' have not preserved the memory of two goddesses sharing the annual life of earthly nature, like the Western Slavs, then the reason for this should be sought in the predominance of the religion of the male creative power of heaven over the deification of the passive female element of the earth. The sun, in its beneficial and harmful relation to earthly nature, is in the same way divided into two faces: the winter and summer sun, the bright god of ardent fruitful rays (Belbog) and the god of the unwarming, barren period of darkness and cold (Chernobog). Among the Pomeranian Slavs, the idols of all solar deities were represented with two or four faces or heads, indicating the two main halves, summer and winter, or all four seasons. Massoudi in his travels around Slavic lands I saw somewhere by the sea an image whose members were made of precious stones four genera: green peridot, red ruby, yellow carnelian and white crystal; his head was made of pure gold. These colors clearly hint at green spring, red summer, yellowing autumn and snowy winter; the golden head is the most heavenly body. The names of the Pomeranian sun gods all end with a common nickname Vita, just as the multi-colored members of an idol end in one common golden head; and not without some probability we can assume that the first half of these names contained precisely the private meaning - spring, summer or winter, when the word Vit meant the general concept of a god or person. For example, Gerowit - Jerowit involuntarily pushes us to the word yar, which has retained the meaning of spring to this day: spring bread, ravines (spring gullies), the Russian deity Yarylo, etc., when, on the contrary, Korevit or Khorevit resembles the Russian Khors (Korsh) and Karachun.
Of the Kyiv idols mentioned in our chronicles, the names of the sun gods are Dazhbog and Khors, which, as Professor Bodyansky noted, in almost all texts stand inseparably next to each other, as synonyms of the same concept; and both of them, according to their word production, are one from Doug- day (German Tag), another from sur or korshid- the sun, are identical in meaning.
Of these two main personifications of the sun, its formidable meaning is as the winter Saturn, Cityvrat or Krt (Krchun) of Slavic-Germanic beliefs Central Europe belongs to us in Rus', apparently, to Khorsu. This formidable meaning of the winter sun is inextricably linked in the world of fairy tales and superstitions with the concepts of death, darkness, cold and powerlessness; the same concepts are also combined with the representation of the deity of a destructive storm, blizzard and cold western wind in general as the antithesis of the warm wind of the summer half of the year. This is why the winter and summer sun deities could easily merge into one representation with their corresponding wind deities, or at least exchange names and meanings with them. Thus, in the Alekseevsky Church Slavonic Dictionary the word choir explained by the western wind, and in Sredovsky’s “Sacra Moraviae historia” Chrwors(our Horse, or Korsha) is interpreted by Typhon.
In general, the predominance of the deities of the sky and the air element over the deities of earthly fertility indicates the most ancient period of nomadic life, when cattle breeding provided the only wealth to a person not yet familiar with arable farming. That is why all the gods are patrons of livestock in their original meaning as sun deities. Epizootics are still expressed in our word fad, directly pointing to the most ancient view of man on the air element as the cause of every disease. Thus, Stribog (whose meaning as the god of the wind, according to “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, is beyond doubt) passes from Sredovsky to Trzibek- god of pestilence; among the Carpathian Slovaks a similar meaning is attached to Karachun. Our Saturn - Horse appears in the meaning of the western wind - choir, when the Serbian Hora is the wife of the wind god Posvist, whom Sredovsky, in turn, calls Nehoda and translates in words Intemperae. Thus, the gods of not only the cold winter wind, but also the winter sun are also the gods of the deadly pestilence regarding the animal kingdom. Remarkable in this regard is the Czech nickname of Krta (Saturn) Kostomlad, that is, the bone thresher, which partly corresponds to our Russian Koschey the immortal, who constantly in fairy tales bears the cosmogonic meaning of the maleficent principle of the winter sun. In the same way, on the other hand, the bestial god Volos (Veles, Blasius), like Yegor the Brave of our songs, is nothing more than the personification of the same sun, but in the beneficial meaning of warmth and summer.
Thus, under the influence of this dualism, every natural phenomenon appears to man from two perspectives. various sides its beneficial and harmful influences. If, in the ever-renewing struggle between good and evil, the final victory always remains for the good principle, then this is only because a person, studying the laws of nature, is convinced by them that there is no absolute evil and that every apparently harmful phenomenon carries within itself the germ of new good The falling fruit, through its rotting, releases the grain stored in it to life, and sleep and rest, through their lifelessness, renew the strength of both man and nature.
With similar conviction, the Russian man looked at his own death, not as final destruction, but saw in it, on the contrary, a continuation of the same earthly life, only under a different one, to the naked eye invisible, form.
Nowhere in our pagan legends do we find the slightest hint of the idea of special heavenly or underground dwellings of the dead. In the grave, they continue to live an earthly life, patronize their living descendants, and directly share with them all the joys and worries of their earthly existence. That is why the patron spirits of the family and home: Rod, Chur (Shchur) and Grandfather Domovoy are connected by family ties with their living descendants and the real owners of the hut. The owner is often used in the sense of Domovoy, so that the actual owner is the earthly representative of his deceased ancestor - Grandfather, or Shchur - ancestor.
The grave is considered the permanent home of the dead, which is why the expressions: go home in the sense of dying, home, home- a coffin, sometimes a cemetery; so the very nickname Domovoy rather carries the meaning of the afterlife than the patron of the house, especially since in rural common life this last word, in the sense of housing, is not commonly used, being replaced by the expressions: hut, hut, smoke, nest or yard:“You are the sun, the clear sun! you rise, rise from midnight, you illuminate all the graves with a joyful light; so that our dead don’t sit in darkness, don’t grieve in misfortune, don’t live in melancholy forever. You are already a month, a clear month! you rise, rise in the evening, you illuminate all the graves with a joyful light, so that our dead do not destroy their zealous hearts in the darkness, do not grieve in the darkness for the white light, do not shed burning tears in the darkness.”
In steppe villages they place the first pancake on the dormer window and say: “Our honest parents! here for your darling." In Belarus, on the grave, poured with honey and vodka, food is served and the deceased are greeted: “Holy Rodzitseli! Hodzitsa to eat bread and salt for us.” On Easter they go to celebrate Christ with their deceased parents at their grave, and they immediately bury red eggs in the hole; orphan brides go to their parents’ graves to ask for the blessings of the deceased for marriage.
Finally, in Rus' we have many special days and weeks dedicated to folk customs for visiting graves, such as: large and small parental, Radunitsa, Krasnaya Gorka, Naviy day; that was the case ancient meaning Maslenitsa. On such days, often a whole family, gathered at their own grave, has their meal on it in the superstitious belief that the dead man shares it and is present in an invisible way between them. On the brownie's name day (January 28), porridge and all sorts of treats are placed on the table for him at night with the thought that when everyone in the house falls asleep, he will certainly come to his relatives to celebrate his name day.
In close connection with a similar view of the afterlife and folk beliefs about werewolves and ghosts, ghouls (vampires) sucking blood at night, strangers (dashing) brownies playing out their bad jokes over sleeping households, wolfhounds prowling at night as fierce beasts, and galloping navias spreading pestilence with their very appearance. The very word Navii(navy day, go to Nava) carries in itself the concept of death and the afterlife ghost, also the brownie, as noted above, is a synonym for the afterlife; exactly the same genus sometimes used in regional dialects in the sense of spirit, image, ghost; finally, the ancient name of the goddess of death Mora or Morena retained almost the same meaning in Little Russian Mara (ghost) and in beliefs about kikimors. We still have a belief that evil sorcerers, after their death, rise from their graves at night to suck blood from sleepy people, why, in order to prevent such a disaster, a deceased person suspected of witchcraft is dug out of the grave, beaten with stakes and burned, or, in other localities, they drive a stake into his heart and bury him in the grave again. There are also many stories about drowned men and women and about children who died without baptism, who, after their death, continue their earthly existence in the form of water men or mermaids -
Straw Spirit!
My mother gave birth to me
Buried an unbaptized woman -
the latter sing, running all night through the fields and groves. Finally, there is a story about a mermaid (a drowned woman), who, visiting her living parents, told them various details about her underwater life.
G. Soloviev rightly reveres mermaids as dead people and with this meaning explains their nickname in one song as earthlings, that is, underground inhabitants of graves. This nickname, apparently, identifies the mermaids with the beregins, whom St. Gregory mentions along with the ghouls: “And before that they laid the demand for the upirs and beregins.” In this rapprochement of the Ghoul with Rod and Beregini with Rozhanitsa, both Rod and the Ghoul are dead. Therefore, it is very likely to assume that the bereginii, as mountain, earthly spirits, had partly the same meaning. In ancient times, mounds were built over graves, and in particular, coastal ones were chosen for this place, near large rivers; the very word breg - shore sometimes has the meaning of a mountain (compare German Berg), and in regional expressions the word mountain, on the contrary, it means the bank of a river or even land (not water).
In general, in Slavic paganism there are many fantastic creatures that, despite their human duties, are endowed by superstitious tradition with some higher supernatural (divine) power. They cannot be called deities, and, meanwhile, they are not mere mortals.
In those nations where, even in fabulous times, historical figures of sages or conquering kings managed to stand out from the crowd, their names are often elevated by popular memory to the realm of mythical deities; In our country, in the absence of any personality, apparently the same thing happened with some purely human positions and duties, which, decorated by popular imagination with the supernatural divine gift, produced a special demonological sphere of intermediary spirits between man and deity. With the above view of death and the afterlife, such supernatural intermediaries could easily be imagined as dead people of purely human origin. Thus, the fabulous personality of Rod or Grandfather of the Brownie corresponds to the duties of the householder and head of the family; Likewise, the position of the liturgical priest corresponds to the concept of Vedun - Magician. And just as under the name of Family and Grandfather a person imagines the real personality of his long-deceased great-grandfather, in the same way he could assume about the sorcerers that they were deceased priests and elders, famous for their wisdom during their lifetime. Witchcraft is a simple human craft, probably dating back to pagan priesthood; witchcraft is already witchcraft, which has passed through death into the realm of fantastic supernaturalism.
The influence of Christianity in the first centuries of its appearance in Rus' did not destroy pagan superstitions among the people, but deprived them only of their good properties, combining all these beliefs into the general idea of an evil spirit, devilish power. But if we remove the coloring given to them by Christianity from these mythical personalities, we will clearly see both from the names and from the actions attributed to them that the Sorcerers are nothing more than priests of ancient worship, elevated to the realm of fabulous demonology.
How medicine man derived from know, similar witchcraft And sorcerer have their beginning in know whence other derivatives, like prophetic, prophet, broadcast, foreshadowing, veche(people's court) and witch as the female form of a sorcerer.
Sorcery is entwining, encircling with enchantment, that is, with supernatural ties or traits. The outline of a circle on the ground takes magical power chains and bonds, just as charm is the binding of a person by invisible bonds (such as, for example, the gaze of a beauty). In its primitive meaning, enchantment is nothing more than the descent of divine help onto a person through charmed prayers and sacrifices.
Witchcraft And witch have their origin in the root kold, klud, meaning purification, rebirth (through fire) and sacrifice; in Czech cludity- to cleanse, in Serbian kudipi- speak. Ours also belongs here at its root. judge- judgment, also purification in its moral meaning. Philologists derive the name Magus from Sanskrit shaft- to shine, to shine, just like priest derived from eat, burn; the victim is consumed by fire, which is why our eat, and the altar in this regard is vent(throat) of consuming fire. When belief in pagan rituals disappeared, folk humor gave priestly sacrifices the vulgar current meaning of the verb eat; the verb suffered the same fate lie that is, to charm the disease with divine prayer, hence the words doctor, healing, just as from miracle workers, conductors of divine miracles, the concepts magician And where, in the meaning of evil witchcraft, and even more often simple tricks and antics.
In the times of paganism, religion embraced all the abilities and gifts of the human mind, all the mysterious knowledge of its observational study of nature, all the activities and concerns of its daily life. The area of religion included wisdom and eloquence, poetic inspiration, singing, the prophetic power of sorcery and knowledge of the future; it overshadowed the justice of the court, the healing of illness and the happiness of home, and all this was embodied in one general representation of the things of the wisdom of the Magus - the Sorcerer. But since the Sorcerer is only an intermediary between man and the highest deity, the miracles performed by sorcerers and witches do not come directly from them, but are sent to man through their mediation from the highest deities, with the help of conspiracies, sacrifices and ordinary rituals.
The only supernatural quality that relates directly to the characteristics of sorcerers and witches themselves is the ability to fly through the air and were a werewolf; but even here there is a belief that witches keep wonderful water, boiled with ashes from the Bathing Fire, and that in order to fly through the air, they must sprinkle themselves with this water, and some kind of conspiracy was probably assumed. The werewolf also required knowledge of well-known conspiracies and mysterious rituals:
It was during this time that Volkh learned wisdom:
And I learned the first wisdom
Wrap yourself in a clear falcon,
Volkh studied another wisdom
Wrap yourself in a gray wolf
Volkh studied the third wisdom
Wrapping yourself in a bay aurochs means golden horns.
His own deity did not need fortune telling to find out the future, just as he would not need to learn wisdom for a werewolf. And indeed, the Serbian pitchforks and the Khorutan Rojanits predict the future without any fortune-telling, which indicates the immediacy of their divinity. Domovoi, mermaids and sorcerers do not make prayers and do not make expiatory sacrifices; and if sometimes gifts and offerings are presented to them, such as hanging yarn on trees for mermaids, leaving dinner for the brownie, or laying out cheeses, breads and honey in honor of Rod, then all these customs are pure character treats or funerals for the dead, not the victims.
Painting by Boris Olshansky.
A long time ago, in Soviet times, somehow I thought about this. I know Greek myths well, Hindu, Arab, Chinese and Scandinavian myths are a little worse, and I have an idea about some others. I asked myself the question: do I know Russian mythology? At first I even doubted: does it exist? I thought there should be one, but I didn’t know it at all. Almost nothing.
Then I could name several dozen heroes of Greek myths, and tried to remember the names of Russian gods. I strained my memory and realized that I only remember two or three. Even I felt ashamed myself.
They say that every cultured person should know Greek myths for general development. I won’t argue, this is probably true, but every person first of all needs to know HIS OWN, native, primordial. And you need to know your mythology at least twice as well as any other.
But in those days it was almost impossible to find out anything about Russian mythology. We had to wait for better times.
About seven years ago, I finally discovered wonderful world Russian myths, and I was simply stunned by the enchanting picture that opened up to me - as if the indescribable beauty of the City of Kitezh had emerged from unknown waters in front of me. There was a truly Russian spirit here, there was a smell of Russia.
Almost immediately I found paintings by magnificent artists who painted on these themes: Boris Olshansky, Viktor Korolkov, Vsevolod Ivanov, Andrey Klimenko, Vladimir Suvorov, Nonna Kukel, Viktor Krizhanivsky. The genius Konstantin Vasiliev has become clearer to me, he also has images of mythical Rus'...
Below is a very brief description of the main gods and goddesses of Russian mythology:
"Heavenly Family" - artist Nonna Kukel.
GENUS. Born from the Golden Egg, created by the thought of the Almighty. He in turn created the entire visible world. Divided the world into three parts: upper, middle and lower. The top one is in the heavens. The gods live there and rule over people. They do what is right, and therefore the inhabited heavens are called Rule. Below is the human world, which we clearly see - that’s why its name is Reality. Nizhny is the world of the past, Nav. The ancestors went there.
"Svarog" - artist Viktor Korolkov.
SVAROG. Creator of earth and heaven. Svarog is the source of fire and its ruler. He creates not with words, not with magic, unlike Veles, but with his hands, he creates the material world.
TRIGLAV. This is a threefold god. This main symbol expressed the very essence of our ancient faith: God is one, but he has many manifestations. Most often, it combined three main hypostases - Svarog, Perun and Svyatovit (Sventovit). It was believed that Triglav vigilantly monitors all the kingdoms: Rule, Reality and Navy.
Great Horse" - artist Viktor Korolkov.
HORSE. Ancient Slavic god of the Sun, son of Rod, brother of Veles. Khors is the god of solar, yellow, light. In Rus' there were at least three sun gods at the same time: Dazhdbog, Khors and Yarilo. Their difference was as follows: Dazhdbog personified the heavenly light spilling onto the earth, into the world of Reveal. Khors is the god of solar, yellow, light. Yarilo was the god of spring light, sometimes personifying the sun.
"Veles" - artist Andrey Klimenko.
VELES (Volos). One of greatest gods ancient world, son of Rod, brother of Svarog. He set the world created by Rod and Svarog in motion. He was called the god of material wealth, wealth, well-being, the patron of domestic animals, fertility, and was considered an underground god, the Serpent, the ruler of the Underworld. Veles is the owner wildlife, master of Navi, powerful wizard and werewolf, interpreter of laws, teacher of the arts, patron of travelers and traders, god of luck.
"Dazhdbog" - artist Nonna Kukel.
DAZHDBOG. Giver of heat and light, god of fertility and life-giving force, the time of harvest ripening.
"Perun" - artist Nonna Kukel.
PERUN. Perun - god of thunderclouds, thunder and lightning; the manager god, the god who punishes for non-compliance with laws, can cause rain. The most famous of the Svarozhich brothers. The thunder god Perun was represented as a middle-aged, strong man with a gray, silver-plated head, and a golden mustache and beard. He rode across the sky on a horse or on a flaming chariot, armed with lightning, axes or arrows. He commanded the clouds and heavenly waters.
YARILO. God of spring, spring light, warmth, fun; young, impetuous and uncontrollable force; deity of passion and fertility.
"Stribog" - artist Viktor Korolkov.
STRIBOG. The lord of the air elements, the lord of the winds, shoots them with arrows from the sea. He can summon and tame a storm and can turn into his assistant, the mythical bird Stratim. The air in Rus' was considered as a container of seven winds, seventy vortices and seven hundred winds.
"Sventovit" - artist Konstantin Vasiliev.
SVYATOVIT (Sventovit). The four-headed god of prosperity and war. Its symbol is the cornucopia. And although Dazhdbog commands the sun, he is not as influential as Svetovit. Svetovit's four heads observe the universe in all directions. Svetovit was counting on supreme power, but Perun was thinking the same thing: they are eternal rivals.
ROOF. Among the ancient Russian gods, Rod, Svarog, Perun and others, Kryshny is usually missed, but meanwhile, he is one of the main ones. The son of the Almighty and the goddess Maya, he is the brother of the very first creator of the world, Rod, although he was much younger than him.
"Semargl" - artist Anna Zinkovskaya.
SEMARGL (Simargl). Son of Svarog, god of fire and the moon, fire sacrifices, home and hearth, keeper of seeds and crops. Could turn into a sacred winged dog. Satellite of the sun Dazhdbog.
"Belobog" - artist Nonna Kukel.
BELBOG (Belobog, Belun). The embodiment of light, the personification of the daytime and spring sky. The God of luck, happiness, goodness, goodness, He is also considered the giver of wealth and fertility.
CHERNOBOG (black Serpent, Koschey). God is the destroyer. God of cold, destruction, death, evil; the god of madness and the embodiment of everything bad and black. Chernobog is the ruler of Navi, Darkness and the Pekel kingdom. The Slavs believed that the brothers Belobog and Chernobog were eternal rivals - like good and evil, light and darkness, life and death. They follow a person everywhere and write down all his deeds, good and evil, in the books of fate.
KITOVRAS (Polkan). Half-horse - centaur. This is the builder god, wizard, scientist and inventor. It has supernatural power. The legends about Kitovras date back to the most ancient times of pan-Aryan unity and are therefore known to many peoples. The Slavs believe that Kitovras guards the solar horses of Sventovit.
KOLYADA. Ancient God fun feasts. Teacher of the Third Law of Life. He told people about the Great Kolo of Svarog, about the Day and Night of Svarog, and also established the first calendar.
OWL. Kolyada's younger twin brother. He got the role of putting into practice the divine knowledge that Kolyada taught people.
"Chislobog" - artist Viktor Korolkov.
NUMBERGOD is the ruler of the current time.
“Lel” - (there are doubts about the artist’s name, sorry, that’s why I’m not writing (.
LEL (Lel, Lelya, Lelyo, Lyubich). In the mythology of the ancient Slavs, the god of love, the son of the goddess of beauty and love Lada. He was depicted as a golden-haired, winged baby, like his mother: after all, love is free and elusive.
"Makosh" - artist Nonna Kukel.
MAKOSH (Mokosh). Goddess of the earth, fertility, mother of harvests, Fate, as well as the patroness of sheep breeding, women's handicrafts and prosperity in the home. Mother of the gods, possibly the wife or incarnation of Veles-Mokos-Mokosh.
"Bereginya" - artist Boris Olshansky.
BEREGINYA. The great ancient Slavic goddess who gave birth to all things. She is accompanied everywhere by luminous horsemen, personifying the sun.
"Lada" - (the artist is unknown to me, alas).
LADA. Goddess of love and beauty. By the name of Lada, the ancient Slavs called not only the original goddess of love, but also the entire system of life - Lad, where everything was supposed to be okay, that is, good. Perunitsa is one of the incarnations of the goddess Lada, the wife of the thunderer Perun. She is sometimes called the thunder maiden, as if emphasizing that she shares power over thunderstorms with her husband. Lada is the goddess of marriage and love, abundance, and the time of harvest ripening.
"Madder - Winter Mother" - artist Nonna Kukel.
MARENA (Mara, Morena, Marana). Goddess of winter and death, the world of the dead. Daughter of Lada, sister of Zhiva and Lelya. She is Koshchei's wife.
"Devana" - artist Pyotr Orlovsky.
DEVANA (Zevana, Dzevana). Goddess of the hunt, wife of the forest god Svyatobor. The ancient Slavs represented Devan in the guise of a beauty, dressed in a rich marten fur coat, trimmed with squirrel; with a bow and arrows drawn. Instead of an epancha (outerwear), a bear skin was worn, and the head of the animal served as a hat.
"Rusalia" - artist Boris Olshansky.
Collected by A.Ziborov
(Based on materials from Russian media)
In his work “The War with the Goths” (553) he wrote that the Slavs are people “ enormous power" And " tall“He noted that they worship nymphs and rivers, as well as “all sorts of deities.” The Slavs make sacrifices to all of them and “make fortune telling” with the help of these sacrifices.
Where are the Slavs' ideas about the world reflected?
One of the first to talk about our ancestors was the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea. He left us rare and invaluable information about the Slavs. During the creation of the work "War with the Goths" they barely entered the world stage. At that time, the Slavs still lived as a separate culture, which was far from the culture of antiquity. Our ancestors will touch upon its achievements much later. This will happen after our country adopts Christianity.
In the meantime, they flourished. They reflected the Slavs' ideas about the world. The ancient myths of Rus' tell us about gods who are directly related to nature. Today it is hardly possible to imagine the overall picture of the Slavic pantheon. Many legends and ancient myths of Rus' are forgotten and lost. Only a few names of the gods have survived to this day.
Russian fairy tales brought to us the poetic beauty of the Slavs’ ideas about the world. And today they color our childhood with poetry. We get acquainted with such heroes as brownies, goblins, water creatures, mermaids, Miracle Yudo, Baba Yaga, etc. Moral principles were often presented in a personified form to ancient people. These are, for example, Falsehood, Truth, Woe and Misfortune. Our ancestors even depicted death as a skeleton dressed in a shroud with a scythe in his hands. The name of God was the word “chur,” which is used today in the form: “Church me!”
The fight of Perun with Veles, heroes of the myths of Ancient Rus'
Among the ancient Slavs, Perun was the highest deity. This is the one who lives on the top of the mountain. Ancient myths of Rus' depict Veles as his enemy. This is an evil, treacherous god. He kidnaps people and livestock. Veles is a werewolf god who could turn into both a man and an animal. Myths and legends of Ancient Rus' tell that Perun constantly fights with Veles, and when he defeats him, fertile and life-giving rain falls on the earth. He gives life to all crops.
Note that the word “god,” which probably comes from “rich,” is often associated with the names of various deities. There were, for example, Stribog and Dazhdbog. Myths and epics of Ancient Rus' also tell us about such heroes as robber nightingales, ghouls, kikimoras, the Serpent Gorynych, divas, Lel, the winds of Yarila, etc. Sometimes the names of numbers acquire divine meaning. In particular, even is a positive beginning, while odd is a negative beginning.
Characterizing the myths of Ancient Rus' briefly, one cannot help but dwell in more detail on the topic of the creation of the world. Our ancestors had very interesting ideas about him.
world creation
One of them says that Svarog and Svarozhichi, after the battle of the gods with the Black Snake, sank to the ground. They saw that it was mixed with blood. It was decided to cut Mother Earth, and she absorbed the blood. After this, the gods began to arrange the world, as evidenced by the myths of Ancient Rus'. What did the god Svarog create? Where the Serpent harnessed to the plow laid furrows, the rivers Danube, Don (Tanais) and Dnieper (Danapris) began to flow. The names of these rivers contain the name of Dana, the Slavic Mother of Waters. Translated from Old Slavic, the word “da” means “water”, and “nenya” is translated as “mother”. However, rivers are not all that the gods created.
Heavenly kingdom of the gods
The Riphean Mountains appeared at the site of the battle of Svarog and the Svarozhichi with the Serpent. It is in these places, above the White Alatyr Mountain that the winner of the Snake established Svarga. This was the name of the heavenly kingdom of the gods. After some time, a sprout rose on the mountain. He grew into the sacred Elm that connects the whole world. The tree stretched its branches to the very sky. Alkonost made a nest on its eastern branches, and the Sirin bird built a nest on its western branches. The Serpent stirs in the roots of the World Elm. Svarog himself, the heavenly king, walks near its trunk, and after him comes Mother Lada. Near the Alatyr Mountain, in the Riphean Mountains, other magical trees began to grow. In particular, the cypress tree rose on Hwangure. This tree was considered the tree of death. Birch began to grow on Mount Berezan. This is the tree of poetry.
Irian Garden
Svarog planted the Iriysky Garden on Alatyr Mountain. A cherry tree grew in it, which was dedicated to Vyshny. The Gamayun bird flies here. A sunny oak tree appeared next to him. It grows with branches down and roots up. The Sun has its roots, and 12 branches are the 12 Vedas. An apple tree also grew on Alatyr Mountain. Golden fruits grow on it. Whoever tries them will receive power over the entire Universe and eternal youth. Mountain giants, snakes, basilisks and griffins guard the approaches to this garden. And the dragon Ladon guards the apple tree itself.
Descriptions of Iria, the Slavic paradise, are found in many songs. It is also in the legend about Father Agapia, and is also placed in a book called “Monuments of the Ancient Rus' XII century" (Moscow, 1980).
Riphean Mountains
The name "Ripa", according to scientists, is of Greek origin. Gelannik wrote about the Hyperboreans as a people who lived behind these mountains. Aristotle also noted that the Rhipaean Mountains are located under the constellation Ursa, beyond the outermost Scythia. He believed that it was from there that the largest number of rivers flowed, the largest after the Istra. Apollonius of Rhodes also mentions the Rhipaean Mountains. He says that in them are the sources of the Istra. In the 2nd century AD e. Claudius Ptolemy summarized the historical and geographical facts known at that time. According to this researcher, the Ripaean Mountains were located between 63° and 57°30" (approximately in the middle). He also noted that they were bordered by the settlement zone of the Boruscans and Savars. A large number of medieval maps were created based on information from Ptolemy. The Riphean Mountains were also marked on them.
White Alatyr Mountain
It is known that in Russian conspiracies and the works of ancient Russian authors, Alatyr the stone is “the father of all stones.” He was in the Center of the World. This stone in the verse about the “Pigeon Book” is associated with the altar located on the island of Buyan, in the middle of the sea-ocean. This altar is located in the very center of the world. Here is the (throne of world control). This stone has magical and healing properties. Healing rivers flow from under it all over the world.
Two versions of the origin of Alatyr
Alatyr, according to ancient legends, fell from the sky. The laws of Svarog were carved on this stone. And where he fell, Alatyr Mountain appeared. This stone connected the worlds - the earthly, the heavenly and the above. The book of the Vedas that fell from the sky and the bird Gamayun acted as an intermediary between them.
A slightly different version is put forward by other myths of Ancient Rus'. Its summary is as follows. When Svarog created (cooked) the earth, he found this magic stone. Alatyr grew after God cast a magic spell. Svarog foamed the ocean with it. The moisture, thickening, became the first dry land. The gods were born from sparks when Svarog hit Alatyr with a magic hammer. The location of this stone in Russian folklore is inextricably linked with the island of Buyan, which was located in the “Okiyan-sea”. Alatyr is mentioned in conspiracies, epics and Russian folk tales.
Smorodina River
Kalinov Bridge and are often mentioned in conspiracies and fairy tales. However, in them this river is most often called simply Resin or Fiery. This matches the descriptions presented in fairy tales. Sometimes, especially often in epics, Currant is called the Puchai River. Probably, it began to be called that because its boiling surface swells, seethes, and bubbles.
Currant in the mythology of the ancient Slavs is a river that separates two worlds from each other: the living and the dead. The human soul needs to overcome this obstacle on the way to the “other world.” The river did not get its name from the berry bush known to us. In the Old Russian language there was a word "currant", used in the 11th-17th centuries. It means stench, stench, pungent and strong odor. Later, when the meaning of the name of this river was forgotten, the distorted name “Currant” appeared in fairy tales.
Penetration of Christian ideas
The ideas of Christianity began to penetrate our ancestors in the 9th century. Having visited Byzantium, Princess Olga was baptized there. Prince Svyatoslav, her son, buried his mother according to the customs of Christianity, but he himself was a pagan and remained a follower of the ancient gods. As you know, it was established by Prince Vladimir, his son. This happened in 988. After this, the struggle with ancient Slavic mythological ideas began.
Unlike Greek mythology, which already from the 7th century BC became the object of literary processing and creative enrichment by priests, poets, writers and special mythographers, Slavic mythology, as the “life of the gods,” remained undescribed.
What we know about Slavic mythology is mainly richest world lower spirits and magic that surrounded the Slav. This world of spirits and magic underlay the worldview of the Slavs from ancient times until the end of the Vedic period (the end of the Vedic period was marked by the Christianization of Rus'). Russian medieval writers - chroniclers and church preachers - followed the traditions of the ancient Christian church fathers, who castigated and ridiculed Vedicism, but did not describe it as it was around and in reality. Old Russian authors did the same. They addressed an audience that was full of Vedic thoughts, actions, and constant witchcraft spells, which avoided church services and willingly participated in colorful festivities and popular Vedic games. Therefore, they did not so much describe as blame.
In the 15th - 17th centuries, Slavic historians had already overcome their predecessors’ disdain for the mythological ideas of their ancestors and began to collect written and ethnographic data about the ancient Vedic gods and details of the cult of the Slavic peoples.
Unfortunately, in these Renaissance works by various authors, be it the Pole Jan Dlugosz or the Russian author of the Gustyn Chronicle, the main idea was comparison with such an international standard as Greco-Roman mythology. Essentially, from the total sum of Slavic and foreign sources we can reliably draw only a list of the names of Slavic gods and goddesses. Russian chronicles name the gods whose cult was established by Prince Vladimir in 980 - these are Perun, Stribog, Dazhbog, Khors, Semargl and the goddess Makosh. In addition, Veles, Svarog, Rod and women in labor are mentioned. Ethnography already in the 17th century added several mythological characters such as Lada and Lelya.
Catholic missionaries in Western Slavic lands call the gods Svyatovit, Svarozhich, Yarovit, Virgo, Zhiva, Radogost and other gods. Since the actual Slavic texts and images of gods and spirits have not been preserved due to the fact that Christianization interrupted Vedic tradition, the main source of information is medieval chronicles, teachings against Vedicism, chronicles, archaeological excavations, folklore and ethnographic collections. Information about the gods of the Western Slavs is very scarce, for example, the “History of Poland” by Jan Dlugosz (1415 - 1480), which gives a list of deities and their correspondence from Greek and Roman mythology: Perun - Zeus, Nyya - Pluto, Dzevana - Venus, Marzhana - Ceres, Share - Fortune, etc.
Czech and Slovak data on the gods, as many scientists believe, need a critical attitude. Little is known about the mythology of the southern Slavs. Having early fallen into the sphere of influence of Byzantium and other powerful civilizations of the Mediterranean, having adopted Christianity before other Slavs, they largely lost information about the former composition of their pantheon. The mythology of the Eastern Slavs has been most fully preserved. We find early information about it in the “Tale of Bygone Years” (XII century), which reports that Prince Vladimir the Holy (? - 1015) sought to create a national Vedic pantheon. However, his adoption of Christianity in 988 entailed the destruction of the idols of the so-called Vladimirov pantheon (they were solemnly thrown into the Dnieper), as well as the ban on Vedicism and its rituals. The old gods began to be identified with Christian saints: Perun turned into Saint Elijah, Veles into Saint Blaise, Yarila into Saint George. However, the mythological ideas of our ancestors continue to live in folk traditions, holidays, beliefs and rituals, as well as in songs, fairy tales, conspiracies and signs. Ancient mythological characters such as goblin, mermaids, merman, brownies and devils are vividly imprinted in speech, proverbs and sayings.
Developing, Slavic mythology went through three stages - spirits, nature deities and idol gods (idols). The Slavs revered the gods of life and death (Zhiva and Moran), fertility and the plant kingdom, heavenly bodies and fire, sky and war; not only the sun or water were personified, but also numerous house spirits, etc. - worship and admiration was expressed in the offering of bloodless sacrifices.
In the 19th century, Russian scientists began to explore Russian myths, tales and legends, understanding their scientific value and the importance of preserving them for subsequent generations. Key to the new understanding of Slavic mythology were the works of F. I. Buslaev, A. A. Potebnya, I. P. Sakharov, such works as the three-volume study of A. N. Afanasyev “Poetic views of the Slavs on nature”, “Myths of Slavic paganism” and “A Brief Essay on Russian Mythology” by D. O. Shepping, “The Deities of the Ancient Slavs” by A. S. Famintsyn and others.
The first to arise was the mythological school, which is based on the comparative historical method of study, the establishment of an organic connection between language, folk poetry and folk mythology, the principle of the collective nature of creativity. Fyodor Ivanovich Buslaev (1818-1897) is rightfully considered the creator of this school.
“In the most ancient period of language,” says Buslaev, “the word as an expression of legends and rituals, events and objects was understood in the closest connection with what it expresses: “the name imprinted a belief or event, and from the name a legend or myth arose again.” "Epic ritual" in the repetition of ordinary expressions led to the fact that what was once said about any subject seemed so successful that it no longer needed further modification. Language thus became a "faithful instrument of tradition."
A method originally associated with comparing languages, establishing general forms words and raising them to language Indo-European peoples, for the first time in Russian science, was transferred by Buslaev to folklore and used to study the mythological legends of the Slavs.
“Poetic inspiration belonged to everyone and everyone, like a proverb, like a legal saying. The whole people were poets. Individuals were not poets, but singers or storytellers, they only knew how to tell or sing more accurately and skillfully what was known to everyone. The power of tradition reigned supreme over the epic singer, not allowing him to stand out from the group. Not knowing the laws of nature, neither physical nor moral, epic poetry represented both in an inseparable totality, expressed in numerous similes and metaphors. Heroic epic is only further development primitive mythological legend. The theogonic epic gives way to the heroic at that stage of the development of epic poetry when legends about the affairs of people began to join pure myth. At this time, an epic epic grew out of the myth, from which the fairy tale subsequently emerged. The people preserve their epic legends not only in epics and fairy tales, but also in individual sayings, short spells, proverbs, sayings, oaths, riddles, signs and superstitions."
These are the main provisions of Buslaev’s mythological theory, which in the 60-70s of the 19th century gradually developed into a school of comparative mythology and the theory of borrowing.
The theory of comparative mythology was developed by Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev (1826-1871), Orest Fedorovich Miller (1833-1889) and Alexander Alexandrovich Kotlyarevsky (1837-1881). Their focus was on the problem of the origin of myth in the very process of its creation. Most of the myths, according to this theory, go back to the ancient Aryan tribe. Standing out from this common ancestral tribe, the peoples spread its legends throughout the world, therefore the legends of the “Dove Book” almost completely coincide with the songs of the Old Scandinavian “Elder Edda” and the most ancient myths of the Hindus.
The comparative method, according to Afanasyev, “provides a means of restoring the original form of legends.” Epic songs are of particular importance for understanding Slavic mythology (this term was introduced into use by I.P. Sakharov; before that, epic songs were called antiquities). Russians heroic epics can be placed next to heroic myths in other mythological systems, with the difference that the epics are largely historical, telling about the events of the 11th-16th centuries. The heroes of the epics - Ilya Muromets, Volga, Mikula Selyaninovich, Vasily Buslaev and others are perceived not only as individuals related to a certain historical era, but above all - as defenders, ancestors, namely epic heroes. Hence their unity with nature and Magic power, their invincibility (there are practically no epics about the death of heroes or about the battles they fought). Initially existing in an oral version, as the work of singer-storytellers, epics, of course, have undergone considerable changes. There is reason to believe that they once existed in a more mythologized form.
Slavic mythology is characterized by the fact that it is comprehensive and does not represent a separate area of the people's idea of the world and the universe (like fantasy or religion), but is embodied even in everyday life - be it rites, rituals, cults or the agricultural calendar, preserved demonology (from brownies, witches and goblin to banniks and mermaids) or a forgotten identification (for example, the Vedic Perun with the Christian Saint Elijah). Therefore, practically destroyed at the level of texts until the 11th century, it continues to live in images, symbolism, rituals and in the language itself.
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