Studying the Indigenous religious traditions of a variety of regions has infused me with interest in learning more about the indigenous religion of my ancestors, the West Slavic tribes of Europe who settled in Poland.  My mother and her immediate family left Poland in 1951 as part of a program to resettle survivors of the Holocaust in the United States, leaving us feeling disconnected from our Polish culture and traditions.  While my family practices Roman Catholicism, there is also an addition of folk beliefs and remedies.  We will explore the beliefs and cosmology of the Slavic tribes and, where the information is available, will focus on the West Slavic tribes.    

History

     Pre-Christian Slavic indigenous religion was first documented by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea in “The Gothic Wars of Procopius”.  Procopius discusses the tribes of the Slavs including some high-level information about their beliefs, democratic system of government, and beliefs in the spirit world including deities.  Christianisation of the Western Slavic tribes occurred between 828 and 863, with the Polish ruler Mieszko I officially accepting Christianity in 966.   The general population was not in favor of this new forced religion which was also paired with the expanding power of the king, resulting in a rebellion in the 1030s called the “Pagan Reaction in Poland” or Reakcja pogańska w Polsce in Polish.  During this rebellion, churches and monasteries were destroyed and priests were killed by the citizens of the kingdom.  While Christianity eventually won out and spread across Europe, pagan folk beliefs were intertwined with Christian beliefs, into a syncretic system resulting in what has been called the “double faith” similar to what has been seen in other colonized countries, where pre-Christian deities and holidays are formally replaced by saints and Christian holidays, but are still celebrated in many of the traditional ways.  

Beliefs

     There is no scripture or holy book of Slavic belief because it was a system of oral traditions.  However, we do have access to documentation of practices and beliefs by Christian historians.  According to Procopius, the Slavic tribes thrived as a democracy, where the community prioritized the health and happiness of all members.  When faced with illness, trauma, or war, people would make promises to the appropriate gods or spirits and make sacrifices to them accordingly.  The Slavs worshiped spirits that embodied aspects of the natural world such as rivers and nymphs.  An example from “The Tale of Bygone Years” states that in 980, Vladimir Svyatoslavich, the ruler in Kyiv, had the idols of pagan gods created and placed on a hill outside the palace.  These idols were used to stand in for the gods and were offered sacrifices.  Given that this account came from a Christian monk, we will take with a grain of salt his further statements that the people “took their sons and daughters to them and sacrificed them to the devils.”  Divination was also used and while the Slavs did not believe in fate, they did provide sacrifices to the gods in exchange for their divinatory messages.

Cosmology

     Slavic cosmology visualizes a three-tiered structure of worlds, similar to the world tree found in other religions.  It is difficult to find sources that describe the pre-Christian cosmology, so I have assumed some Christian influence in this section or at least documentation that came through a Christian lens.  The Slavic worlds are stacked vertically with a heavenly plane at the top, a middle plane with the human-populated earthly world, and an underworld or netherworld at the bottom.  Each plane was associated with a god or goddess as we see in Greek and Roman mythology as well.    

     The lack of written sources describing Slavic cosmology and beliefs means that scholars must rely on folk stories to attempt to pull more pre-Christian information about the Slavic tribes.  The creation myth of the Slavic tribes comes in about fifty or more variations.  Leszek Gardela, a Polish archeologist and Slavic scholar, has synthesized those tales into the following story.  In the beginning, there was only endless water, an endless ocean.  Suddenly a little boat appears and inside this boat is God.  One day he looks over the side of the boat into the water and sees his reflection, the water foams, and out of his reflection another creature  jumps into the boat and says “I am the Devil.”  God and the Devil float around in this boat and one day God decides to create land.  To do so, he needs a handful of sand/soil from the bottom of the watery realm which he is unable to enter, so he must ask the Devil for help because the Devil comes from this watery realm.  He tells the Devil to bring a handful of sand to the surface and that he must say “I bring this sand in God’s name”.  The Devil agrees and jumps in the water.  He grabs the handful of sand, but instead of saying he brings it in God’s name, he says “I bring this sand in my own name”, and the sand disappears.  He tries again, this time when he gets to the surface of the water, but again the sand disappears.  On the third try, the Devil surfaces with his handful of sand and says “I bring this sand in God’s name and my own name” and when he opens his hand, there is one grain of sand.  The Devil jumps in the boat, hands God the grain of sand, and God casts it onto the surface of the ocean, where it grows into an island.  When the island is big enough for the two of them, God and the Devil step onto the island and God decides to take a nap.  The Devil wants the island for himself, so he tries to push God off the edge of the island, to the North and the South and the East and the West, but God doesn’t fall off because he doesn’t belong in the watery realm, the island just expands in each direction.  God wakes up and starts striking the Devil with lightning and the Devil jumps and hides under a stone and behind a tree but God keeps finding him.  In another variation of the story, God keeps changing into different animal forms, similar to the Celtic tale of Cerridwen chasing Gwion Bach in different animal forms.  Eventually, they turn into two serpents or dragons, embodying this idea of the upper realm of light fighting the lower watery realm of darkness until the Devil jumps back in the water.  God says “Yes, this is your realm, and that is where you will remain, while I shall be the ruler of this island and this world”.

     There are a few cosmological details we can interpret from this story.  We have the creation of two divine beings, God and the Devil who in pre-Christian times were more likely described as Perun, a Slavic equivalent to Thor, the Norse god of Thunder, and Weles/Veles, the three or four-headed god of the underworld.  This cosmic conflict of light and dark represents the cycles in nature of daytime and nighttime, of spring/summer and autumn/winter.               

Gods/Goddesses

     One of the gods, Rod, the creator of lightning, is considered to be the highest god or lord over all of the other gods, similar to Zeus in Greek mythology.  Rod’s name comes from a Proto-Slavic word that means family, birth, origin, or clan and derives from the Proto-Indo-European word for “root”.  Because the Slavic tribes account for a large community of peoples, there are a variety of gods and beliefs dependent on the regions that they live and travel in.  

     In some places, it is believed that from Rod, allegedly came a cosmic duality Belobog (“White God”) and Chernobog (“Black God”).  These two gods are the root of the heavenly masculine gods and the earthly feminine deities.  Sources for the belief in these two gods are questioned as they did not appear in writing until the 12th and 16th centuries and were documented by Christian authors, who also made the first connections of Chernobog with the Christian Devil.   

     In roughly the ninth or tenth century, Rod’s cult or following lost its importance and he was replaced by the god Perun, the god of thunder, Svarog the god of fire and blacksmithing, and Veles/Svantevit, the god of abundance and war.  The names and spellings used for the gods change in different countries based on the language used as well as through the influence of neighboring belief systems.    

     Veles is the god of cattle and is considered the god of wealth as cattle were highly important in Slavic society.  He is also the god of the underworld, as the connection between the cult of the dead and the cult of the fertility of the earth was closely connected.  Rituals were held to both protect the natural order of things and ensure a good harvest as well as the health of cattle and domestic animals to ensure the survival of the whole community.

  The Slavic tribes are also documented as worshiping the moon and the sun, treating the moon as male and the sun as female.  In the nineteenth century, people of the Ukrainian Carpathians still openly professed to believe that the moon is their god.  

Iconography

     Representation of Slavic deities comes in the form of carved stone and wood statues roughly two meters in height.  One of these statues was found in a river and is called the “Svantevit” from Zbrucz, the Zbrucz being the river it was found in 1848.  “Svantevit” is either the name of a god or can be broken down to the translation “holy god” or “holy lord” which could be a generic title for the god.  Christian historian Saxo Grammaticus wrote a historical account of the Arkona, a West Slavic citadel-temple that includes a description of a statue that was at the temple of Svantevit that may be the same statue.  The statue is four-sided with three levels or divisions of images down the sides that are thought to represent the three planes or worlds.  

     The four figures represented on the top tier of the statues differ based on the shape of their faces and the objects they hold or ride on, including a ring, a drinking horn, a horse and saber, and one with empty hands held in a prayer position with one hand over the heart.  It is unknown whether the top section of the statue represents four gods within the Slavic religion or whether it is reflective of the people who would come from the directions that each side of the standing statue would have represented, but there are some arguments for each.  

     The middle tier of the statue is thought to represent the earthly plane or middle world.  The figures carved on the side appear to represent women at different stages of life who are holding hands, so it appears that they are dancing in a circle.  

     The bottom tier or plane of the statue represents the watery realm, the underworld.  This tier is most easily connected to the three-headed god of the underworld, as only three sides have faces and all appear to be holding up the plane above it.     

Afterlife

     Archeological excavation of graves has become a standard practice when it comes to learning more about the afterlife beliefs in preliterate cultures.  One excavation of a grave turned up the body of a warrior who was buried with their sword, spear, and horse riding gear including spurs and stirrups.  The deceased was buried dressed and wearing the spurs as if they were going on an underworld journey.  The spurs included imagery of a horse and cattle, as well as a swastika which was a symbol of the sun.  The spur buckle and fittings are made with the image of two snakes coming together, potentially to symbolize the cosmic struggle between Perun and Veles in their snake forms.  The horse in many religious traditions is considered a psychopomp or carrier of souls between two worlds and stands on solid ground while the cattle stand on a section of wavy lines, potentially representing the world of the dead with the horned cattle representing human souls.  A figure on a buckle that has to be passed through the wavy water lines may represent the holy diver who dives down to pick up a grain of sand.  A final piece of imagery is a bell that hangs below the watery lines that may represent the cosmic egg or the grain of sand from which the island was grown.

Spiritual Practices

     One method of divination that was described in the text about the Svantevit temple by Saxo Grammaticus was the use of a white horse being guided into an area with spears thrust into the ground.  The idea was that the god was riding the horse and sharing information about whether a journey should be undertaken.  The divinatory aspect was whether the horse started with its left foot or right foot through the obstacle.

Slavic Native Faith (Rodzimowierstwo or Rodzima Wiara)

     In Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, neopagan groups are attempting to bring back or recreate Slavic paganism.  In 1818, a Polish folklorist Adam Czarnocki stated that Poland “must return to native faith” and this is considered a precursor to the Rodzimowierstwo movement.  As of 2020, there are an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 Rodnovers (adherents) in Poland.  The majority of the population of Poland is Roman Catholic.  The Native Polish Church is an official organization in Poland that states beliefs in henotheism, the worship of a single supreme being that does not deny the existence of other deities and spiritual beings.   

Conclusion     

     Researching the beliefs and traditions of my ancestors has helped me to better understand some of the practices that my family continues to enjoy.  The decoration of eggs at Easter in the Pyansky style, popularized in Ukraine and consisting of symbols of gods, the sun, and fertility brings the beliefs and symbolism of pre-Christian Slavic tribes into the modern day.  Annual Christian celebrations including pilgrimages to see the icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Czestochowa, also known as one of the Black Madonnas, are found in many areas of Europe including Poland, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy harken back to the days of the pre-Christian journeys to a sacred temple to make sacrifices of honey, flowers, and animals to gods and goddesses of fertility and protection.  May we all be connected to our ancestors so that our descendants can learn their stories.

References

Álvarez-Pedrosa, Juan A., and Enrique Santos Marinas. 2023. Rituals in Slavic Pre-Christian Religion: Festivals, Banqueting, and Divination. N.p.: Arc Humanities Press.

Derksen, Rick. 2008. Etymological dictionary of the Slavic inherited lexicon. N.p.: Brill.

Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture. 2005. N.p.: Bloomsbury Academic.

The Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2023. “Arkona | Viking, Slavic & Pagan.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arkona.

Gardela, Leszek. 2023. “Ep 159 – Slavic Mythology With Leszek Gardela” …. – YouTube. https://youtu.be/_jI3VpQvc-g?si=q_u_30D52y_jA-N0.

Gasparini, Evel. 2023. “Slavic religion | Pagan Beliefs & Rituals.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slavic-religion.

Nestor. 1100s. The Russian Primary Chronicle: The Tale of Bygone Years.

Procopius of Caesarea. 1928. The Gothic Wars of Procopius. N.p.: Loeb Classical Library.

Simpson, Scott. 2000. Native Faith: Polish Neo-Paganism at the Brink of the 21st Century. N.p.: Zakład Wydawniczy “Nomos”.

Tomicki, Ryszard. n.d. Etnografia Polska. N.p.: Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii PAN.

Image: Biegeleisen, Henryk (1855-1934)., CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons