Transcription
I am going to cut to the chase. Fully understanding Slavic pre-Christian paganism is impossible with the evidence that has survived.
Early Slavs did not have a writing system, and so there are no surviving sources from them that could tell us about their beliefs. Even once the Slavs started to write, usually due to their adoption of Christianity, they did not create any amalgamations of older stories or poems that would give us a greater understanding of pre-Christian Slavic mythology and beliefs. There are no surviving Slavic epic poems like Beowulf, no Poetic and Prose Eddas like those about Norse mythology, and certainly, there are no grand descriptions of Slavic gods and goddesses like those of Ancient Rome and Greece.
The study of Slavic paganism thus has to almost solely rely on short snippets of written evidence about Slavic pagan beliefs that have survived in external Christian and Muslim writings about the Slavs or in later Slavic Christian writings that scold other Slavs for still practicing paganism. All of these are naturally always derogatory towards paganism, but they nevertheless do give us valuable, even if short, snippets of information about pagan Slavic gods and rituals while they were still practiced.
There are also Slavic oral folktales that antiquarians have largely compiled in the 18th and 19th centuries, but these were written down at ‘a time when ethnic identity was transformed into national pride … for modern Slavs this meant communicating with their ancient Slavic predecessors; and if there was not enough material to call upon to strengthen this connection with their roots, the myths and legends had simply to be invented’ and so many were. In fact, even in the 21st century, fraudulent books are still being published that purport to present new sources about Slavic pre-Christian paganism when, in reality, they are just modern made-up mythologies in support of neopagan movements.
Some of these ‘pseudo-ancient stories of ancestors concocted’ in the modern period, primarily the ones based on oral tradition and written down by 19th-century antiquarians, do have snippets of Slavic paganism in them, which can be corroborated by some of the ancient sources. But, for the most part, these modern stories and traditions exist in a world where Christianity, nationalism, and simply just time have distorted them so greatly that it is impossible to use them independently as reliable sources for reconstructing any part of pre-Christian Slavic paganism. That is why my video will primarily focus on the limited medieval sources about Slavic paganism and will use modern folkloric traditions and stories only as an additional tool to see if they can perhaps give additional context.
Totally not racist. This video was made in collaboration with the Museum of the Origins of the Polish State in Gniezno, which is currently running an exhibition on the ‘Religion(s) of the Slavs. Paganism and Christianity in early medieval Poland’. Go check-out their website and YouTube channel. The links are in the description and the pinned comment. And, if you’re in the area and are interested in medieval history, maybe go visit in person. This collaboration with the Gniezno based museum was made possible thanks to the US Fulbright Program.
This video is also sponsored. BUY MY MERCH! Yes, I have finally made some merch for the M. Laser History channel, and it’s amazing. The merch includes some very comfortable hoodies, sweaters, and T-shirts with an embroidered of the M. Laser History crest. The embroidery looks and feels amazing and will last much longer than a simple printed logo. The design was inspired by Oxford and Cambridge college merch because I wanted my merch to have a sort of academic feeling that also invokes a sense of comradery like one has for their college. I also wanted the branding to be subtle enough that you could wear my merch anywhere, so I decided to go with just the embroidery of the M. Laser logo without any large tacky words. Anyways, please go check out the merch, link to the store in the description and the pinned comment. The store is also synced to my YouTube channel, and you should be able to see a preview of it below this video. So please check it out, trust me the quality of the merch pretty good as far as YouTuber merch goes.
The first thing that needs to be understood about Slavic paganism is that, just like most polytheistic religions, it wasn’t really unified. There is a reason why the Gniezno based museum’s exhibition about Slavic pre-Christian religion is called ‘Religion(s) of the Slavs’, indicating a plurality. There is a great geographical dispersion of Slavs and an even greater temporal dispersion of the sources about their paganism. When it comes to the earliest 6th-century records about Slavic paganism in the Balkans, it is hard to tell how similar or different these reported pagan practices of the Balkan Slavs were from the Slavs along the Baltic Sea or the Slavs around the Dnieper River. Plus, sources that mention aspects of Slavic paganism span the entire medieval period, and it would be quite inappropriate to think that pagan traditions described by Procopius in the 6th century were the same as the pagan practices described in the 11th century Kyivan Rus’ Primary Chronicle or the 14th century Czech Chronicle of Dalimil. Traditions, beliefs, mythologies, and overall cultural changes across time and space and Slavic paganism was no different.
With that said, there are some common threads, some common practices, and certain names of gods that seem to come up across all the Slavic lands, so let’s delve deeper into these seemingly common attributes of pre-Christian Slavic paganism. The most common Slavic god that seems to come up in the sources about all the Slavs, that is Western, Eastern and Southern Slavs, is the god Perun. Perun was described as the god of lightning, the sky, rain, and war. He was also the keeper of oaths and was represented by an oak tree. The earliest mentions of Slavs in the 6th century by Procopius talk about how the Slavs ‘believe that a single god, creator of the lightning bolt, is the sole lord of all things and they offer him sacrifices of cows and all manner of victims … nevertheless, they also venerate rivers, nymphs, and other divine beings and make sacrifices to them too and perform practices of divination during those sacrifices.’ According to Procopius, the ‘creator of the lightning bolt’, that is, Perun was the ‘sole lord of all things’ even though Slavs did pray to other divine beings. This showcases just how important Perun was in Slavic paganism, but as it will become clear later, he certainly wasn’t the ‘sole lord’ as Procopius erroneously seemed to have believed, nor was Perun always the most important god. Perun seems to have been venerated by all Slavs, but just like in Ancient Greece, where each city venerated different patron gods like Athena in Athens or Poseidon in Corinth, so did different Slavic settlements and tribes put more or less emphasis on different Slavic deities while still recognizing the importance of other major deities one of whom was Perun. Whether Perun was the king of all gods, kind of like Zeus, or he was more of a son of a king god like Thor, or whether the Slavic pantheon even had a monarchic structure rather than a more democratic one, we simply don’t know.
Another very important god, or perhaps gods that seem to come up in all areas of the Slavic world, is Svarožić, Svarog, and Dažbog. We don’t really know what exactly the interrelation between these three gods is or whether these three names from medieval sources actually represent three different gods rather than only two gods or possibly even one god with three different names. Svarog and Dazbog are only mentioned in Eastern Slavic sources, while Svarožić is mentioned in multiple Slavic areas. However, Svarožić’s name, with the common Slavic suffix of ić, means Svarog’s son. To add to the confusion, there is an Eastern Slavic source which mentions that Dazbog is Svarog’s son, but it does not mention Svarožić, who literally has the name Svarog’s son. There is a possibility that the ić suffix could be a diminutive in old Slavic, meaning Svarožić would simply just mean small Svarog rather than Svarog’s son, but in that case, why would sources about the Eastern Slavs use both a diminutive name of a god and an actual name and why would sources about the Western Slavs only use the diminutive and also never mention Svarog’s son Dashbog? Perhaps the Western Slavs used both the diminutive and the real name of Svarog, just like the Eastern Slavs did, and may have even venerated Svarog’s son Dasbog, but the sources for that have simply not survived. All of this, though, begs the question of whether Svarog has two sons or if Svarozic and Svarog are the same god, just with two different names. Unless new sources of information are found, we will never know.
As for the role of these gods in Slavic paganism, according to an anonymously added explanation in one version of a 12th-century Primary Chronicle, Svarog was the god of the forge and smithing, and his son Dazbog was the god of the sun. On top of that, two medieval Eastern European sermons that argue against paganism mention that ‘Svarozic’ the ‘god of fire’ should not be worshipped. In the Western sources, the bishop Thietmar only mentions that ‘the most important of [the gods] is called Svarožic and he is honored and worshiped by all the [Polabian Slavic] pagans above all else’, but there are no surviving mentions in western sources about the role of Svarozic. As you can see, all three possible gods, Svarog, Svarožić, and Dazbog, have a unifying mythological theme as they are gods of the forge, fire, and the sun, respectively. Whether this unifying theme exists because they are related or because they are the same god in one way or another, with different name variations, is impossible to tell. In fact, it is not uncommon for polytheistic religions to have gods that, over time, meld into one god or for one god to appropriate the job of another. Considering the vast geographical and temporal nature in which Slavic paganism operated, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that all these gods evolved and changed differently in different parts of the Slavic world.
With that said, despite the somewhat ambiguous nature of these fire and sun gods, it is very clear from the medieval sources that Slavic pagans worshipped the fire and sun in one way or another. A medieval Muslim writer talks of the Eastern Slavs as ‘fire-worshippers’, and a 13th-century source from today’s Croatia talks about how around the winter solstice and new year, the locals bring great logs of wood and set them on fire, which ‘brings them great joy’. A 15th-century Polish Sermon says that ‘all are warned that on Holy Wednesday they may not light the grumathky bonfires, which are lit following the pagan ritual’. Lastly, a medieval Christian Eastern Slavic source talks about how the pagan Slavs ‘worship the noon sun and bow towards it.’ None of these sources mention why the pagan Slavs were doing these rituals, what is the symbolism of the rituals, or to what specific deity are the rituals for, but it is safe to assume that both the fire and the sun were very important to the pagan Slavs which is why they worshipped them and most likely had specific deities that represented them.
The same can be said about the moon. Early medieval Slavic archaeological sites often have many lunulae, crescent moon-shaped amulets, and medieval sources have multiple mentions of the pagan Slavs worshipping the moon; like this passage from a medieval anti-pagan Polish sermon stating that ‘Take heed the naive who on the night of the full moon kneel down and pray, because they fall or could easily fall into the error that advised people to worship the hosts of heaven, for the moon, sun, or sky must not be worshipped.’ Sadly, there are no sources explicitly mentioning a Slavic lunar god, but considering all the evidence, it is safe to assume that the Slavs worshipped the moon and there was some kind of a lunar deity.
The few gods discussed up until now are the only ones attested across multiple Slavic areas, while the rest of the Slavic gods mentioned in medieval sources are only referenced in specific geographical areas. This does not mean these gods weren’t worshipped in other Slavic areas; it just means we have no evidence for them being worshipped there, but considering how sparse the medieval sources are about Slavic paganism, lack of sources shouldn’t necessarily be considered as evidence. Perhaps the most prominent goddess that is only attested in Eastern European records and nowhere else is Mokosh. Mokosh was described as one of the primary goddesses in Vladimir’s pantheon before his conversion to Christianity in the 10th century. There are no surviving medieval records that tell us what Mokosh was the goddess of. However, in modern oral tradition, she is the goddess of the earth, mud, and fertility. In that sense, Mokosh was perhaps the quintessential Indo-European earth mother goddess like Gaia.
Other gods mentioned in only specific geographical areas include Triglav, literally meaning the three-headed one who was attested to be worshipped in Szczecin, Veles or Volos, an Eastern Slavic god of cattle, and possibly also the underworld and music; Redigast a god of oracles worshipped by Polabian slavs, and the last one I’ll mention is Sventovit who was worshipped on the island of Rugen. He had four heads and was another oracle god, also perhaps a god of agriculture and war. There are a myriad of other pagan Slavic gods sparingly and with very little context mentioned in medieval sources, but it is impossible to know from the sparse sources what kind of gods they were, what they did, and how they related to each other. (Rugevit, Chernobog, Stribog, Jarovit, Zhiva, Rod, and Roženicy.)
These gods often had temples in urban centers inside of which there were idols of the pagan gods mostly made of wood. These temples were taken care of by Slavic pagan priests who could communicate with the gods and who oversaw venerations, rituals, and festivals dedicated to the gods. The name of the priests in eastern Slavic lands is attested to be volkhv but there is no mention of this word outside of the Eastern Slavic area.
Other than gods, however, Slavic pagans, just like most other Indo-European pagans, also worshipped sacred lakes, trees, springs, meadows, and rivers. Often, these areas were seen as inhabited by supernatural beings, which could have been both vengeful and helpful depending on whether they were correctly venerated. Examples of such creatures include Vily, a type of supernatural creature that is mentioned in medieval Eastern European sources but sadly without any description of their role. Vily do, however, also exist in modern Slavic folktales where they represent a fairy type of creature that exists in ponds and forests where they form fairy circles, sing and dance, and can be both helpful and vengeful depending on the story.
Speaking of ponds, all Slavic pagans believed in some kind of supernatural water person/goblin living in lakes and rivers. This can be seen by the fact that all modern Slavic languages have some kind of an attested version of the name waterman (South Slavic vodenjak, the West Slavic wodnik, or the East Slavic vodianoy) and the fact that multiple medieval sources mention how the Slavs make sacrifices to the quote ‘demons’ of swamps, wells, and lakes. Many modern Slavic folk stories also continue this tradition of a waterman who lives in rivers and lakes and can be both vengeful and helpful, depending on the story.
Considering that early Slavs were also an agrarian society, it should not be surprising that a lot of their rituals and festivals were centred around the harvest cycle. One of the major pagan Slavic festivals is attested in the sources as happening in the spring around the beginning of the agricultural cycle at some point during the Christian Easter and Pentecost. The name of this festival in the sources is Rusalia or Rusalie, which was clearly a name borrowed by the Slavs from the pagan Romans who celebrated Rosalia around the same time. This borrowing most likely originated in the Balkans, where, in the early Middle Ages, there was still a sizable Latin-speaking population. The Rusalia festival involved drinking, playing games, singing, conducting plays, giving gifts, and travelling to neighbouring villages. It was also associated with the dead, and it was believed that the spirits of the dead could come visit or haunt the living world during this time.
The medieval Chronicle of Czechs says that at some point around Pentecost, the pagans ‘after offering libations to the springs, preform sacrifices to the demons of the dead and also to the graves made in the forests and the fields, and they conduct rituals which, following the pagan custom, they hold at crossroads to placate the spirits of the dead, and they play profane games which, exciting their empty manes in a Bacchic frenzy, they perform, dressed as ghosts, in honour of their dead’. A different 16th century Eastern Slavic source talks about how ‘on the morning of Easter Thursday they [the Slavs] burn straw and summon the dead’. These dead spirits were called Rusalky as they were associated with the Rusalia festival, and it’s from here where the prominent modern Slavic supernatural being of Rusalka comes from. This association with the dead is most likely why, in modern folklore, Rusalka is connected more with negative death connotations, unlike other supernatural beings like Vily and Watermen, which are more ambiguous. This springtime Rusalia festival that venerated the dead was celebrated in some parts of the Balkans as late as the 19th century, but now it has completely died out as Easter and Pentecost have fully overtaken the festival.
There was also some kind of a Slavic pagan festival during the harvest time in the fall and during the winter and summer solstices, which is very common for all agrarian pagan European religions. Common themes mentioned in the sources about pagan Slavic festivals and rituals were the use of drinking horns, usually for the drinking of mead, singing, dancing, some kind of a communal feast, wearing of masks and costumes, and some form of sacrifice, usually animal sacrifice but not always.
Many sources from all around the Slavic world mention pagan Slavs practising some form of human sacrifice. Patriarch Nicholas I in the early 10th century talks about how unconverted pagans in Bulgaria still conduct ‘human sacrifices’, while another Byzantine source talks about Sviatoslav I and his army ‘slitting … the throats of the majority of the [enemy] prisoners, men and women, according to the custom of their homeland. As offerings to the dead, they drowned unweaned babies and roosters in the Danube’. The Western Chronicle of the Slavs talks about how the Polabian Slavs ‘sacrifice as victims to their gods, cows and sheep and also Christian men’ with the same sources also adding that Slavs sacrificed ‘foreigners’. From the sources it seems like rather than sacrificing other Slavs human sacrifices conducted by Slavic pagans were mostly of foreigners, largely slaves, Christian preachers, and prisoners of war, well, with one big exception, but to talk about that exception, we need to first talk about pagan Slavic funerals.
As can be easily attested by the archaeological record and corroborated by the written sources, all early Slavs conducted cremation burials. This poses a great problem because, by its very definition, a cremation burial doesn’t leave behind much more than the ashes of the deceased, which were often placed in a funerary urn of the Prague culture type and buried. This is why lavishly furnished pagan Slavic burials don’t really exist. This means other than knowing that pagan Slavic funerals involved a funeral pyre, we don’t know much else about them, as most sources just mention Slavs practising cremation without any other information, well, barring one information. Sources repeatedly mention that the burial of Slavic men often involved the human sacrifice of their wives. As described by historians Alvarez-Pedrosa and Marinas, ‘All the medieval extant sources coincide in describing the burial ritual as the cremation of the corpse closely linked with the sacrifice of the widow in all the Slavic areas, that is, South, East and West Slavs, which would constitute evidence of its ancient and pan-Slavic character.’
A 6th-century Byzantine source talks about how the ‘majority them [Slavic women] consider the death of their husbands to be their own death, and they drown themselves because they believe that to be a widow is not to live.’ Another 9th-century Byzantine source mentions the same thing, while an 8th-century source about the western Slavs talks about how ‘[the Slavs] who are the most degenerated and depraved of all the human races, so zealously respect the bonds of matrimony, that the wife renounces life when her husband dies. And they believe that a woman is worthy of their praise if she takes her own life and is burned along with her husband on the funeral pyre.’ We don’t know what kind of gods, if any, were associated with these sacrifices of widows or how these funerary rituals looked because, again, the sources don’t mention that. We also don’t know how all-encompassing this kind of sacrifice was, meaning whether only certain parts of Slavic society were expected to partake in it, or how voluntary this sacrifice was and whether widows could refuse to be sacrificed.
Although medieval sources do not tell us the reasoning behind why pagan Slavs practised cremation, some modern historians believe that by analyzing early modern and modern Slavic folk traditions, we can deduce why pagan Slavs practiced cremation burial. In essence, in Slavic folklore, there is an idea of the quote ‘restless dead’. The ‘restless dead’ are people who died in a socially problematic way and who weren’t buried with the appropriate burial rights and, therefore, came back to haunt the living. The appropriate burial rights, in the case of the pagan Slavs, was a burial ritual that involved cremation rather than inhumation. Slavic pagans, therefore, cremated their dead because they believed this released the souls from their earthly vessels, which could then move on to the afterlife and so couldn’t come back to haunt the living. By cremating the body one prevented the ‘restless dead’ and helped the soul move on to the afterlife. This is believed to be the cultural reasoning behind why pagan Slavs practiced cremation burial rather than inhumation.
However, if a person’s dead body wasn’t properly disposed of, and if they died in what was seen as a quote ‘unnatural way’, they became the ‘restless dead’, they became what we know today as a vampire or a werewolf or sometimes even an undead witch. To explain, in medieval Eastern Europe, what we might classify today as separate supernatural undead beings were back then simply known as the ‘restless dead’. There wasn’t a defined cannon with strict classifications, and the Latin word for an undead witch, striga, was interchangeable with Slavic words, which today mean vampire, vampyr or upyr, and werewolf, volkodlak, but back then just meant a harmful undead being. Basically, any kind of undead being could be described by these three words regardless of whether they were a nightly shapeshifter, a bloodsucker, had undead magical powers, or all three. It was only in the modern period that these words started to represent stylistically distinct undead creatures rather than just any quote ‘restless dead’ creature. As pointed out by Lisa Bundasen, ‘The original Slavic vampire bears no resemblance to the genteel vampire of fiction. The Slavic vampire also was referred to as a “revenant,” a supernatural being who returns from the dead. In folklore, the revenants are people who died before their time and have returned to bring death to their friends and neighbors.’
Two interesting stories about the Slavic ‘restless dead’ come from a 14th century Bohemian Chronicle. ‘In the year of the Lord 1336 … in Bohemia, close to Kadaň … a pastor named Myslata died. And he, rising from his tomb each night, would wander all around the nearby towns, terrorising and slitting the throats of the people he would speak to. When pierced with a stake, he said: “Much damage you have done me, since you have given me a stick to defend myself from the dogs;” and when he was exhumed to burn him, he swelled like an ox and gave a hair-raising roar. When they put him in the fire, someone took a stake and drove it through him, and he bled without stopping, as if he were a tankard. In addition, when they disinterred him and put him in a cart, his legs shrunk as if he were alive, and when he was burned, all of his evil was dispelled.’
‘In the year of the Lord 1344. In Levín a woman died and she was buried. But then she would come out of her tomb and murder many, and then she would attack anyone. And when she was pierced [with a stake], the blood flowed as if she were a live animal, and she had devoured more than half of her own shroud, which, when taken out of her, was covered in blood. When they went to burn her, they could not get any type of wood to light except for the wood from the roof of the church, according to the testimony of some old women. Although they had pierced her [with a stake], she continued to rise up; but, when they were able to burn her, all of the evil she had was dispelled.’
In both of these instances of a Slavic medieval ‘restless dead’ you can see the proto vampire-like themes, for example, walking around at night and attacking people around their neck, having and needing a lot of blood, having to be impaled by a stake, and eventually defeated by burning the body not necessarily with sunlight but in the latter case with holy objects like the roof of a church. Alvarez-Pedrosa and Marinas believe that the vampires, werewolves and overall the ‘restless dead’ were the creation of high to late medieval Slavic folklore. This is because as Slavs became Christianized, they abandoned cremation burials in favour of inhumation burials, which was in opposition to the proper disposal of the dead in pagan Slavic culture. This cultural clash between former pagan practices and new Christian practices then led to the evolution and increase of sightings of the ‘restless dead’ as dead bodies could now come back to life since they weren’t cremated anymore. This is also why the stories of the restless dead, like the ones shared prior, often ended with having to burn the body because that was what the pagan Slavic tradition dictated had to be done to let the soul move on to the afterlife. Therefore, according to this theory, the Slavic vampire and werewolf were a product of Slavic Christian society trying to come to terms with the cultural changes that Christianization brought about.
As is often the case in history, and as I will always stress in my videos, none of this happened in a vacuum. Slavic paganism didn’t evolve, change, and die out in a vacuum; rather, it existed in a complicated web of cultural interconnectedness between Christian, Germanic, Baltic, Iranian, Roman, Celtic, and various nomadic cultures and beliefs. For example, originating in the Balkans, the Latin name for a Roman pagan spring festival, Rosalia, became the name for a Slavic spring festival and a Slavic supernatural being. The Axe of Perun pendant, which is found all across the Eastern Slavic world, was most likely a borrowing from the Norse tradition of wearing pendants of miniature weapons like Thor’s hammer. Perun and Thor also most likely melded into one god in Eastern Europe as the Varangians, Norse settlers of Eastern Europe, assimilated into the local population. In fact, Christian writers would sometimes associate Slavic pagan gods with the Germanic gods they were more familiar with, like in the case of the 11th century Ecclesiastical History which talks of the ‘[Polabian Slavs being] still lost in the errors of paganism, ignorant of the true God and, caught in the rattrap of ignorance, worshipping Odin, Thor, Freyr and other false gods, or rather demons.’ In the manuscript, the writer clearly specifies that he is talking about the Polabian Slavs but identifies their gods with the Germanic ones. Plus, mead, drinking horns, lunulae, cremation burials, wolf veneration and more, which are attested in Slavic paganism, were also just as prominent in Celtic, Germanic, or pagan Roman cultures. How many of these commonalities, along with the many others not mentioned, existed because of an early medieval cultural exchange or because of a common Indo-European heritage is hard to say.
But one thing is for certain. Slavic paganism was a multifaceted heterogeneous religion that, just like its practitioners, was influenced by all the cultures and religions that existed contemporaneously with it and around it.
Special thanks to the people at the Museum of the Origins of the Polish State in Gniezno for providing me with information, footage, and images of their collection. If you find this topic interesting, go check out their website, YouTube channel or visit in person. I would also like to stress that this video was only an introduction to the topic of Slavic paganism, and even though I did talk about some of the current debates about Slavic paganism in academic circles, there are still more I didn’t have time to mention. For example, it is debated whether Slavs used the axe of Perun or whether it was only used by Norse settlers in Eastern Europe. The existence of some gods is also being debated, and the whole idea of a unified Slavic pantheon is also being debated, with some historians arguing that Slavic paganism was a very localised religion without any greater shared pantheon of gods. So if you’re interested in learning more about all these academic arguments, go check out my bibliography, link in the description.
ALSO! Please check out my merch. It really is quite good, and I couldn’t be happier about the embroidery, which looks very nice. The embroidered M. Laser crest really makes the merch look and feel like merch of some kind of a historical institution, and that is the vibe I was going for. So, if you like that vibe and want to support the channel, please consider buying one. I will also add more merch as time goes on, but I want to make sure it’s up to my standard first, so I have to order production samples and test them. That is why it may take a while before new merch shows up. However, if you have any suggestions for other kinds of merch you would like to see, please let me know.
As always, thanks to my Patreons without which these videos would be impossible and special thanks to my deity tier Patreon Kim and Rohan. Other than that, my name is M. Laser, and stick around for history.