Myths of the ancient Slavs. Old Russian Slavic mythology

3. Slavic mythology, its features.

1. The essence of Slavic mythology

Slavic mythology is a set of mythological ideas of the ancient Slavs (Proto-Slavs) of the time of their unity (until the end of the first millennium AD). Slavic mythology and religion were formed over a long period in the process of separating the ancient Slavs from the Indo-European community of peoples in the II-I millennium BC and in interaction with the mythology and religion of neighboring peoples. Actually Slavic mythological texts have not been preserved: the religious and mythological integrity of "paganism" was destroyed during the Christianization of the Slavs. It is only possible to reconstruct the main elements of Slavic mythology on the basis of secondary written, folklore and material sources.

Actually Slavic mythological texts have not been preserved: the religious and mythological integrity of "paganism" was destroyed during the Christianization of the Slavs. It is only possible to reconstruct the main elements of Slavic mythology on the basis of secondary written, folklore and material sources. Before the adoption of Christianity, almost all East Slavic mythology was within the framework of a phenomenon called "Old Russian paganism, so we can draw information about it from ancient Russian written sources." However, it should be noted that, firstly, the religion of the ruling elite and the common people always differ significantly, and, secondly, the sources, as a rule, consider characters of the upper level, pagan deities, and the characters of lower mythology usually remain on the sidelines. .

Scientists reconstruct Slavic mythology according to various sources. First, there are written sources. Texts by Byzantine authors of the 6th-10th centuries: Procopius of Caesarea, Theophylact Simokatta, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Leo the Deacon and others. Western European authors of the 9th-13th centuries: Bavarian Geographer, Titmar of Merseburg, Helmold. A special place is occupied by the Tale of Igor's Campaign, which reflects a significant layer of pagan myths mentioned by the heir and bearer of pagan culture - an anonymous songwriter. All these texts do not contain any coherent expositions of mythology or individual myths.

Secondly, written sources of the XV-XVII centuries and folklore sources of the XVIII-XX centuries, which are less close to paganism, but contain a number of information from earlier sources that have not come down to us, as well as detailed records of legends, fairy tales, epics, conspiracies, bylichki and anecdotes, proverbs and sayings, according to which it is possible to reconstruct ancient myths. Among folklore stories, epics about Svyatogor, Potyk, Volga (Volkh), Mikul are usually attributed to paganism; fairy tales about Kashchei the Immortal, the Serpent Gorynych, Baba Yaga, Alyonushka and Ivanushka.

Archaeological sources are more reliable, but less informative: data from excavations of places of worship, finds of idols, ritual objects, jewelry, pagan symbols, inscriptions mentioning pagan gods or pagans, remains of sacrifices and ritual actions. No less important are the data of linguistics, comparative religion and the study of mythological subjects from other peoples.

Slavic mythology and religion were formed over a long period in the process of separating the ancient Slavs from the Indo-European community of peoples in the II-I millennium BC and in interaction with the mythology and religion of neighboring peoples. Therefore, naturally, in Slavic mythology there is a significant Indo-European layer. For example, these are the images of the god of thunder and the fighting squad (Perun), the god of the other world (Veles), elements of the images of the twin deity (Yarilo and Yarilikha) and the deity of Heaven-Father (Stribog). Also Indo-European in essence are such images as Mother-Cheese-Earth (Mokosh), the solar deity (Dazhbog), and some others. In the first millennium BC. e. and in the first half of the 1st millennium, the religion of the Slavs was significantly influenced by the Celts and the steppe Iranian-speaking population (Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans). Some researchers suggest Celtic-Slavic parallels between the deities Dagda and Dazhbog, as well as Macha and Makosh. The Eastern Slavs had deities of presumably Iranian origin in their pantheon - Khors, Semargl, etc.

The beliefs of the Slavs and the Balts were very close. This applies to the names of such deities as Perun (Perkunas) and, possibly, Veles (Velnyas). There is a similarity between the mythologies of the Slavs and the Thracians. There is also a lot in common with German-Scandinavian mythology: the motif of the world tree, the cult of dragons, and so on. In the same period, with the division of the Proto-Slavic community, the tribal beliefs of the Slavs began to form, which had significant regional differences. In particular, the mythology of the Western Slavs was significantly different from all others.

2. The universe of the ancient Slavs

A lot of data about the universe of the ancient Slavs can be given by the so-called "Zbruch idol", which because of this is sometimes even called the "encyclopedia of Slavic paganism." This tetrahedral stone statue is oriented to the cardinal points. Each side is divided into three levels - apparently, heavenly, earthly and underground. At the heavenly level, "deities are depicted, on the earthly level - people (two men and two women, like deities), and in the underground - some kind of chthonic creature holding the earth on itself" .

In a universal way, synthesizing all the relationships described above, the Slavs (and many other peoples) have the world tree. This function in Slavic folklore texts is usually played by Vyriy, the tree of paradise, birch, sycamore, oak, pine, mountain ash, apple tree. Various animals are confined to the three main parts of the world tree: birds (falcon, nightingale, birds of a mythological nature, Divas, etc.), as well as the sun and moon, are associated with the branches and the top; to the trunk - bees, to the roots - chthonic animals (snakes, beavers, etc.). With the help of the world tree, the triple vertical structure of the world is modeled - three kingdoms: heaven, earth and underworld, a quaternary horizontal structure (north, west, south, east, cf. the corresponding four winds), life and death (green, flowering tree and dry tree, tree in calendar rituals), etc.

Fragmentary information about the attitude of the ancient Slavs can be obtained from ancient Russian literature. In particular, the Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh speaks of Irey, a distant southern country where birds fly away for the winter. With the help of ethnographic materials, we can find out that Irey was later identified with paradise in the people's memory. It also says: “On the Sea-Ocean, on the island of Buyan, there is an oak Karkolist, on that oak sits a falcon, under that oak a snake ...” Thus, the Slavs imagined the Universe: in the center of the World Ocean there is an island (Buyan), on which, in the Center of the World, there is a stone (Alatyr) or the World Tree grows (usually oak). On this tree, as can be seen from the plot, a bird sits, and under the tree there is a snake. Such a picture is very similar to the German-Scandinavian one and to that presented in The Tale of Igor's Campaign.

The earliest information about the deities of ancient Russian paganism can be given to us by the materials of the treaties between Russia and the Byzantines concluded after the campaigns in 945 and 971. The conclusion of these treaties is described in the ancient Russian chronicles, and there we are primarily interested in the oaths that the Russians took. The joint mention of Perun and Volos in this oath gave rise to numerous speculations - some compare Perun with weapons and war, and Volos with gold and trade, someone associates Perun with the ruling elite (or Varangians-Rus), and Volos with simple people (Slavs and even Finns), others generally oppose Volos to Perun. Otherwise, the data of this oath do not give anything new, with the exception of the passage about gold, which has already been discussed above, in the section “The Universe of the Ancient Slavs”.

3. Cults of deities

3.1. Hierarchy of characters in Slavic mythology

According to the functions of mythological characters, according to the nature of their ties with the collective, according to the degree of individualized incarnation, according to the peculiarities of their temporal characteristics and according to the degree of their relevance to a person within Slavic mythology, several levels can be distinguished.

The highest level is characterized by "the most generalized type of functions of the gods (ritual-legal, military, economic-natural), their connection with the official cult (up to the early state pantheons)" . The highest level of Slavic mythology included two Proto-Slavic deities, whose names are reliably reconstructed as *Rerun (Perun) and *Veles (Veles), as well as a female character associated with them, whose Proto-Slavic name remains unclear. These deities embody military and economic-natural functions. They are interconnected as participants in a thunderstorm myth: the god of thunderstorm Perun, who lives in the sky, on top of a mountain, pursues his serpentine enemy, who lives below, on earth. The reason for their strife is the abduction by Veles of cattle, people, and in some cases, the wife of the Thunderer. The persecuted Veles hides successively under a tree, a stone, turns into a man, a horse, a cow.

Knowledge of the full composition of the Proto-Slavic gods of the highest level is very limited, although there is reason to believe that they already constituted a pantheon. In addition to the named gods, it could include those deities whose names are known in at least two different Slavic traditions. Such are the ancient Russian Svarog (in relation to fire - Svarozhich, that is, the son of Svarog). Another example is the ancient Russian Dazhbog.

A lower level could include deities associated with economic cycles and seasonal rites, as well as gods who embodied the integrity of closed small groups: Rod, Chur among the Eastern Slavs, etc. It is possible that most of the female deities who reveal close ties with the collective (Mokosh and others), sometimes less anthropomorphic than the gods of the highest level.

The elements of the next level are characterized by the greatest abstraction of functions, which sometimes allows us to consider them as a personification of the members of the main oppositions; for example, Share, Likho, Truth, Falsehood, Death, or the corresponding specialized functions, such as Judgment. With the designation of share, good luck, happiness, the common Slavic god was probably also associated. The word "god" was included in the names of various deities - Dazhbog, Chernobog, etc. Many of these characters appear in fairy tales in accordance with the time of the fairy tale and even with specific life situations (for example, Woe-Misfortune).

The heroes of the mythological epic are associated with the beginning of the mythologized historical tradition. They are known only from individual Slavic traditions: such are the genealogical heroes Kyi, Shchek, Khoriv among the Eastern Slavs. More ancient origins are guessed in the characters acting as opponents of these heroes, for example, in monsters of a serpentine nature, the later versions of which can be considered the Nightingale the Robber, Rarog-Rarashek. Fairy-tale characters are apparently “participants in the ritual in their mythologized guise and leaders of those classes of creatures that themselves belong to the lowest level: such are the baba-yaga, koshchei, miracle-yudo, the forest king, the water king, the sea king” .

The lower mythology includes different classes of non-individualized (often non-anthropomorphic) evil spirits, spirits, animals associated with the entire mythological space from the house to the forest, swamp, etc. , kikimors, small vessels among the Western Slavs; from animals - a bear, a wolf.

The dualistic principle of opposing favorable and unfavorable for the collective was sometimes realized in mythological characters endowed with positive or negative functions, or in personified members of oppositions. These are: happiness (share) - misfortune (non-share). There is a significant difference between male and female mythological characters in terms of functions, significance and quantity: female characters in the pantheon, relations such as Divas - divas, Genus - women in childbirth, Judgment - judges. The role of the feminine in magic and witchcraft is especially significant.

In contrasting the land - the sea, the sea is of particular importance - the location of numerous negative, mostly female, characters; the home of death, disease, where they are sent in conspiracies. Its incarnations are the sea, ocean-sea, the sea king and his twelve daughters, twelve fevers, etc. The positive aspect is embodied in the motifs of the coming of spring and the sun from beyond the sea. Another one is superimposed on the indicated opposition: dry - wet (later - Ilya Dry and Wet, Nikola Dry and Wet, a combination of these signs in Perun, the god of lightning - fire and rain). The opposition fire - moisture is embodied in the motives of the confrontation of these elements and in such characters as the Fire Serpent (in Russian epics about Volkh Vseslavevich, in fairy tales and conspiracies, in the Serbian epic about the Fire Wolf Serpent), Fire Bird (fabulous firebird). The mythological incarnations of the opposition day - night are night-lights, midnight-nights and noons, Dawns - morning, noon, evening, midnight. Sventovit's horse is white during the day, splashed with mud at night. A special role in Slavic mythology was played by the images of an old witch such as a Baba Yaga and a bald old man, grandfather, etc. The opposition of the old - the young is associated with the opposition of ancestors - descendants and rituals of commemoration of ancestors, "grandfathers", as well as the opposition of the elder - the younger.

One should be very careful when comparing epic characters with mythological images. However, the two main characters of the "epics" - Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich were repeatedly compared with the pagan gods - Perun and Dazhdbog, respectively. The very name of Muromets is symptomatic - Ilya. The prophet Elijah, as already mentioned, replaced Perun in the popular consciousness. Dobrynya is usually considered a late incarnation of Dazhdbog. This is confirmed by some similarity of names, and serpent feat.

3.2. The process of studying the characters of Slavic mythology

Russian Slavs only under the influence of the Varangians came to the idea of ​​depicting their gods in idols. The first idols were placed by Vladimir, Prince of Kyiv, on the hill to Perun, Khors, Dazhdbog, and in Novgorod, Dobrynya - to Perun over the Volkhov. Under Vladimir, for the first time, temples appear in Russia, probably built by him.

One of the most important sources on Slavic, more precisely, Old Russian pagan mythology, is a chronicle story about the so-called “pagan reform” of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich, when he installed idols of six most important deities in Kyiv: “And Vladimir began to reign in Kyiv alone, and put the idols on hill, outside the terem courtyard: a wooden Perun with a silver head and a golden mustache, Khors (and) Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokosh. Perun, as you can see, is in the first place in the list, he begins the list of gods, so it is quite logical to consider him the main and most important of the deities (at least for the prince and squad). The names Khors and Dazhbog are next to each other in the list, and in some versions of the annals they are not separated, like other deities, by the union "and". Therefore, it is quite logical to assume some similarity, connection (or even identity) between these deities, since both of them are solar, associated with the sun. Stribog and Simargl, apparently, were not as significant as Perun and Khors with Dazhbog, since they are mentioned after them. Mokosh, apparently, is a female deity, and therefore closes the list. Of the six deities on the list, two have undoubted Iranian roots - Khors and Simargl. This is explained by the fact that the pantheon was installed in Kyiv, and the Sarmatian and Alanian tribes that dissolved in them had a great influence on the Eastern Slavs of South Russia.

"The Tale of Igor's Campaign" is the most unique monument of the ancient Russian epic tradition. It contains a lot of mythological data, although it was created already in the XII-XIII centuries. This is explained by the so-called "Revival of paganism" - a phenomenon of a pan-European scale, which also took place in Russia. The reasons for it were that paganism had already almost disappeared and no longer posed a threat to Christianity, so they stopped being “afraid” of it. On the contrary, it began to play a completely different role in culture - aesthetic, archaizing, national-ideological. The "Word" refers, as a rule, to the "grandchildren" of various deities - artistic phrases-metaphors for a synonymous replacement or epithet.

The narrator Boyan in the "Word" is called the grandson of the god Veles. Based on this passage, Veles is considered the ancient Russian pagan patron of poetry and singer-storytellers. The winds in the "Word" are called the grandchildren of Stribog. Based on this passage, Stribog is considered the god-lord of the winds.

The Russian people, from the prince to the farmer, are called the grandchildren of Dazhbog in the Lay. Based on these two passages, we can say that Dazhbog was generally a rather significant deity in Ancient Russia, which personified the well-being, peace and unity of the Russian land. In the excerpts, the word “sun” is replaced by the name Khors, on the basis of which we can say that Khors was the personified sun in ancient Russian paganism.

In addition, in the "Word" there is an epic image of Prince Vseslav, endowed with various supernatural abilities. This is a rather "archaic mythological image of a shaman-warrior, characteristic of the transitional period from the primitive communal system to military democracy." The image of Prince Vseslav is related to the image of the epic Volkh Vseslavevich or Volga.

A fragment of the Ipatiev Chronicle, which is an insert from the Slavic translation of the "Chronicle" by the Byzantine historian John Malala, is remarkable primarily for its mythological plots, or rather, the plot about Svarog and Dazhbog. The Slavic translator thus translated the names of Hephaestus and Helios, respectively, so we can judge some connection with fire and, possibly, the blacksmithing of Svarog, and the solar character of Dazhbog. The plot of the mythological insertion from the Chronicle into the chronicle itself, unfortunately, cannot tell us anything about Slavic mythology.

3.3. Serving the cult of the ancient Slavs

The sacred places of the pagans could be various natural objects. The pagans came to special stones with “footprints”, went to sacred groves, made sacrifices from the labors of their hands to rivers and lakes, threw gifts at the bottom of wells, stuck objects into tree trunks, climbed to the tops of hills and mountains, barrows and barrow complexes were tribal temples, on which idols sometimes stood.

The simplest form of a specially organized cult place among the Slavs is cult sites with idols and sacrificial pits. Such places were supposedly called "trebishcha", on which they "made trebs", that is, they performed what was necessary to glorify the gods. Sacrificial pits were located on the outskirts of the villages and did not have fences. Sometimes several idols-drops were arranged in a geometric order on the cult sites: the main idol stood in the center or behind, and the secondary idols stood around or in front. The attributes of idols were their name, sacred number (indicated by other objects or signs), color and various things: a hat, helmet, sword, club, ax, shield, spear, horn, ball, stick, ring, cross - the oldest symbol of fire, "horom arrow", bowls. Sometimes the attribute is "individual objects that are associated with a specific idol: oak, hill, fire, horse, ants, dogs, bear". In the temples, there is a division of the altar, on which the treb is brought, and which could be paved with stone, and the sacrificial fire, which was located aside, behind the fence, and where various kinds of gifts were also burned.

In the last period of pre-Christian paganism, temple buildings and large complexes arose. Significant settlements with ditches, ramparts and tyn are being erected around the temple. Inside the settlement, there remains an unbuilt sepulchre, where mass ceremonies are held, gifts are left, and a fire burns. In addition, long houses are erected for holidays and family gatherings.

Upon the adoption of Christianity, the popular consciousness of the Slavs mixed the new faith with the old, partly merged their gods with Christian saints, partly reduced them to the position of "demons", partly remained faithful to their tribal gods.

Slavic mythology is characterized by the fact that it is comprehensive and does not represent a separate area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe people's idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe world and the universe (like fantasy or religion), but is embodied even in everyday life - whether it be rituals, rituals, cults or an agricultural calendar, preserved demonology (from brownies, witches and goblin to banniks and mermaids) or a forgotten identification (for example, the pagan Perun with the Christian saint Ilya). Therefore, almost destroyed at the level of texts until the 11th century, it continues to live in images, symbolism, rituals and in the language itself.

Word and myth. mythological creatures

(mermaids, goblin, brownies, etc.) Conspiracies.

Ideas about the world order, time and space

The study of ancient literature involuntarily accustoms to the idea that pagan mythology is certainly something like ancient Greek myths with their complex branching plots, gods, "heroes" like Hercules or Achilles, etc. Focusing on this type of myth, you also look for other peoples in their mythology human characters and their entertaining adventures, such as the journey of the Greek Argonauts, the history of Perseus and Andromeda, etc.

Meanwhile, mythological consciousness as such manifests itself incomparably more diverse than in the above cases. The holistic plot of Slavic myths, understood in the above narrow sense, was practically not preserved: the pagan Slavs did not yet have a written language, and then, from the moment of the adoption of Christianity, the church began to fight against pagan ideas, which was a powerful means of ousting ancient myths from the folk cultural and historical memory.

Chronicles, various sermons and "teachings" of Christian clergy directed against paganism, etc. documents have preserved fragments of myths, cited mainly in the order of illustrations.

However, philologically observing the language, its words and phrases, one can also penetrate the ancient culture, mythology. Moreover, it is here that the original level of mythological representations lies, as it were.

A.A. Potebnya in his writings repeatedly recalled the linguist and mythologist M. Müller, according to whom, “Mythology is only a phase, moreover, inevitable, in the development of language, if language is taken not as a purely external symbol, but as the only possible embodiment of thoughts ... In a word , mythology is a shadow that falls from language on thought ... Mythology in the highest sense is the power of language over thought ... ".

A myth can already contain a word or a short expression. As A.N. Afanasiev, "The grain from which a mythical legend grows lies in the primordial word." According to A.A. Potebni, who cited these words of the predecessor, “it is probable in advance that the simplest forms of myth may coincide with the word, and myth as a whole legend may presuppose myth as a word.”

Russians, for example, are used to the fact that it is raining. This is a linguistic metaphor, but the figurative nature of the turnover in everyday life has long been no longer recognized. Meanwhile, among the Poles, the rain is falling (deszcz pada). How modern Russian children are still able to “recognize” in streams of rain stretching from clouds crawling across the sky long legs, as if walking on the earth, so the ancient people, people from the time of the "childhood of mankind", confidently did it. With the idea that came from the era of East Slavic paganism that it is raining, capable of walking like a living being, in the first centuries of Christianity, the clergy in Russia even tried to fight, but they could not do anything with the language element.

In French, the expression il pleut is still used to express the same meaning. It is translated into Russian as “it is raining”, but literally means “he is crying”. Who is he? Naturally, a deity living in heaven (and from a Christian point of view, a pagan demon).

Further, Losev comments on his example in the following way: “Here, one can say, all the cards of mythological thinking are revealed, which in new languages ​​are hidden under the pronouns of the 3rd person. So it really is. The true subject of the impersonal sentence for ancient thinking is the demon, which is still thought blindly sensually, instinctively, animalistically, undifferentiated, which still remains at the level of a sensually perceived object, is not yet fully reflected in thinking, but is only implied by it unconsciously and therefore does not named and cannot even be named. Yes, and in Russian it will not be a mistake to say that in the sentence it is dawning, it is the subject.

The imagination of the ancients surrounded the pagan deity living in the sky with other celestial beings. For example, clouds could be mistaken for grazing heavenly cows, and black clouds that instill fear in people are already for someone else, hostile and evil, or for heavenly mountains, or again for cows (black). Naturally, the rain then is heavenly milk.

The name of the cow Burenka, which is widespread in Russia, is most likely etymologically related to the word "storm" (and not the adjective of the color brown, brown). What is especially interesting, according to Vasmer, the word "storm", in turn, is related in some Indo-European languages ​​​​to the verb, meaning "mooing", "mooing" in them - that is, then Burenka, apparently, "mooing" or "roaring". Moreover, such conservation in the modern word of ancient mythological ideas is by no means a rare occurrence. Academician Nikita Ilyich Tolstoy (1923-1996) listed such nicknames of cows that he met (in Ukraine) similar to Burenka: Cloud, Khmara, Thunderstorm, Raiduga, etc. Let's add here the frequently encountered cow nickname Zorka (that is, "dawn").

A.A. Potebnya emphasizes: “When a person creates a myth that a cloud is a mountain, the sun is a wheel, thunder is the sound of a chariot or the roar of a bull, the howling of the wind is the howl of a dog, etc., then there is no other explanation for these phenomena for him.”

Animal beliefs in general, everything in nature (stones, trees, water, fire, etc.) was considered alive. Hence, for example, the worship of trees. Saint Stephen of Perm destroyed at the beginning of the 15th century. a kind of “purple birch”, which was worshiped by the local tribe of pagan Zyryans. For the Slavs, the pine was a sacred tree - they still try to place cemeteries under pine trees (as, indeed, under trees in general). Among the sacred trees, of course, belonged to the oak.

The bottom line is that everything in the myth, no matter how fantastic it may be, was perceived by the ancient Slavs as the complete truth, as an objective picture of the surrounding world. With the mythological perception of the surroundings, everything around comes to life, filled with miracles. In this world of miracles, one must be constantly on the alert. Forest, water, air are inhabited supernatural beings, animals can talk, etc., etc.

Accordingly, this is the world of mighty knights, who have an incredible common man by force. The first collectors of Russian epics still found in their folk performers people with atavistic features of mythological consciousness.

Folklorist A.F. Hilferding said: “When a person doubts that a hero could wear a club of 40 pounds or one put a whole army on the spot, - epic poetry killed in it. And many signs convinced me that the North Russian peasant singing epics, and the vast majority of those who listen to him, certainly believe in the truth of the miracles that are imagined in the epics ... Sometimes the singer of the epics himself, when you make her sing with the arrangement necessary for recording , inserts his comments between the verses, and these comments testify that he fully lives in thought in the world that he sings.

For the ancient Slavs, contact with the sphere of the supernatural was an undoubted, clear and simple matter.

A person believed that in the forest he should be wary not only of predatory animals, but also of goblin, water, coastlines, mermaids, etc. Procopius of Caesarea wrote about the Slavs in the 6th century. n. e .: “They revere rivers, and nymphs (that is, mermaids. - Yu.M.), and all sorts of other deities, make sacrifices to all of them and with the help of these victims they also make fortune-telling.”

Mermaid (from st.-glory, rousali - “pagan holiday of spring”; after the adoption of Christianity, it turned out to be a week earlier than the trinity, from where the Bulgarian rusaliya - “the week before the trinity”). Usually a mermaid is the spirit of a drowned woman, living in the water, but able to go ashore and even climb trees.

A number of mythological creatures among the pagan Slavs were associated with the calendar cycle.

The language has preserved ancient mythology in a very multifaceted way. So, A.A. Potebnya in his work “On the share and creatures related to it” shows on extensive material that, according to the ideas of the pagan Slavs, the “share” and its antipode were not the “share” (that is, in modern terms, “happiness” and “misfortune” ). Moreover, Potebnya believed, "God can mean the giver of a share." It is hardly correct to identify the Share with the concept of fate: as Procopius wrote about the Slavs, “they do not know fate and do not at all recognize that it has any power in relation to people.”

Likewise, famously, grief (or grief-unfortunateness), need (need), trouble, etc., were also not abstract concepts, as they are now, namely “humanoid, less often zoomorphic creatures”. These creatures could walk the world. It is even known that famously was one-eyed. Grief drew people into drinking, drinking with them and then also suffering from a hangover. In one tale, a man managed to lure grief into a pit and filled it with a stone, in another he stuffed the need into a vessel and drowned it in a swamp. People in fairy tales often carry trouble on their shoulders. Truth and falsehood, part (fate), chance, fate, etc., seemed to be about the same to the imagination of people.

Sinisters were small evil spiritual beings, according to popular belief, hiding behind the stove and letting misfortune both on the house and on the people living in it. The Ukrainian wish for misfortune reads: “Boday you have been beaten!”

The figure of the brownie (or “owner”) also living in the house, according to pagan ideas, is not so unambiguous. The pagan Slavs believed that, depending on the specific circumstances, he could show both a hostile and a benevolent attitude towards people living in the house.

The evil kikimora could be either a brownie, or a forest one, or a swamp. Her appearance was conceived as humanoid (usually an ugly little old woman).

Ghouls (ghouls) were, according to the ideas of the pagan Slavs, the dead coming to life at night, sucking blood from living people (in the West, this kind of fantastic creatures are called "vampires").

The death of a person entailed a complex system of rituals among the pagan Slavs. So, the burial often took place in a sleigh (even in summer). The burial was followed by a mass ritual celebration (feast), accompanied, if a warrior died, by magical military games, and a feast (strava) equally ritualized in its composition.

Mauritius Strategist noted that after the death of a husband, his wife usually also passed away: “most of them consider the death of their husband their death and voluntarily strangle themselves, not counting being a widow for life.”

The place of the afterlife dwelling of the spirits of ancestors was called Navi. The Eastern Slavs built the so-called “domovins” on the graves - “wooden log houses (1.5 x 2 m) with a gable roof and a small window, the thickness of one log”. Various gifts were placed in these houses to the deceased ancestor at his remembrance.

As L. Niederle notes, “in the ancient Russian church teachings”, where Slavic baths are mentioned, “one can read an interesting thing: the people prepared a bath for their ancestors, which, however, the Russian people still do in some places”.

The spirits of ancestors in general were mystical beings of a special order for people. From the spirits of the grandfather and the woman they waited for help and instructions on how to act in one or another life situation. One of the most ancient spiritual beings was the genus. Women in labor helped at the birth of children, influenced the fate of newborns. Orthodox priests of the first centuries fought with them, their cult - this cult was so deeply rooted.

Pagan Slavs believed in their own resurrection after death. Sometimes they seem to have associated it with the idea of ​​reincarnation. A researcher of the pagan funeral rite cites, for example, a curious Russian proverb, borrowed from the dictionary of V.I. Dahl: "Do not beat the dog, and she was a man" .

According to many data, one can feel that in the minds of the Slavs of the first centuries of our era, the qualitative side prevailed over the quantitative, the concrete over the abstract. However, this is a fairly common feature of the psychology of the ancients. It was very clearly manifested in the methods of counting.

It is difficult to say "to what extent" the Slavs were able to count in the pre-literate era. But it is clear that they did it in many ways different than we do. Ancient Slav easily oriented and would say, for example, that there are three pines, five firs and two birches in front of him. However, he would hardly have understood what they wanted from him if someone undertook to insist that all this makes up ten trees. Such generalizations by abstraction are quite automatically made. modern people, but the consciousness of the ancients "worked" differently. For an ancient man, pine, spruce, birch, oak, etc. were qualitatively different plants, and it was psychologically difficult for him to place them in a single row.

Ancient people were very sensible about the word. They took it for granted that a word is a potential deed. In their representations, the word was given magical power. A.A. Potebnya wrote about it:

“The word is the deed ... Therefore, it is decent to sing a man's song only for a man, a stonefly - only for a girl, a wedding song - only at a wedding, a lament - only at a funeral; who knows the conspiracy agrees to communicate it only to the initiate, not for profanity, but for serious use.

About the meaning of the word for ancient people, Academician Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev says:

“If, however, in all the more or less important functions of his spiritual and even physical life, a person saw a mysterious manifestation of some unknown, supernatural power hiding in him, then, of course, the word, as the highest, completely human and predominantly rational phenomenon of his nature was most charming and sacred to him. It not only nourished in him all the cherished family sympathies for antiquity and tradition, for the family and tribe, but also aroused reverent horror and religious awe”; “This integrity of spiritual life, reflected in the word, is most clearly defined and explained by the language itself; because in it the same words express the concepts: to speak and think, to speak and do; do, sing and sorcery; speak and judge, dress up; speak and sing; speak and conjure; argue, fight and swear; speak, sing, sorcery and heal; speak, see and know...

Our ancestors felt in the word "guess" a combination of two concepts: to think and speak ... "fortune telling is a secret verb", that is, a secret word, not only a thought in general, but also a mysterious saying, as well as divination, because guessing means telling fortunes, and speak together incomprehensible words- guess ".

Poetically romanticizing the scientific problem, the famous figure of Russian symbolism Vyach. Ivanov wrote:

“Symbolism in the new poetry seems to be the first and vague recollection of the sacred language of the priests and sorcerers, who once acquired the words of the popular language with a special, mysterious meaning, discovered by them alone, by virtue of the correspondences they alone knew between the innermost world and the limits of public experience.”

According to Ivanov, the ancient “priests and sorcerers” “knew other names of gods and demons, people and things than those that the people called them, and in the knowledge of true names they laid the foundation of their power over nature. They ... alone understood that the "mixing bowl" (crater) means the soul, and "lyre" - the world, and "cave" - ​​birth ... that "to die" means "to be born", and "to be born" means " die”, and that “to be” means “to be truly”, i.e. “to be like the gods”, and “you are” - “there is a deity in you”, and the non-absolute “to be” of popular word usage and worldview refers to the illusion of the real being or being potential...” .

Of course, in reality, much of what Vyach. Ivanov, the situation was more complicated and generally different, but in itself the fact that many verbal formulas of the ancient pagan magicians turned into poetic images after millennia is an indisputable fact. What is now a conditional artistic metaphor could once be part of a witchcraft conspiracy.

The rites of the calendar-agrarian cycle basically contained pagan conspiracies and prayers of various forms for a good harvest. In Slavic folklore, the so-called "calendar poetry" in general was originally entirely associated with pagan magic. Carols, stoneflies, Kupala, Rusal, stubble, etc. chants objectively carried a great aesthetic beginning, but nevertheless they were sung by ancient people by no means for their artistic delight.

One or another specific magical function appears in many words and verbal expressions coming from antiquity with invariable constancy. As an example, we can point to the following fact, which is not without interest. Exploring such a phenomenon of pagan Slavic magic as "fencing space with a voice from harmful and evil spirits", N.I. Tolstoy says: “The Russian chur, which was shouted out to protect against evil spirits, created, according to the ideas of the ancient Eastern Slavs, the same enclosed space that was discussed above. The word chur was abusive, obscene. The first and most ancient function of swearing was protection from evil spirits, about which there is already a considerable number of testimonies.

The conspiracies and spells of the pagans contain huge differences from Christian prayers. Pagan "priests and sorcerers", various sorcerers, etc. turned not to God, whom they did not know, but to dark forces, the soul-harming essence of which, unfortunately, was not clear to them.

Without making any comparisons, here I would only like to point out that the basis of a Christian’s prayer is also a person’s belief that deeds can be born from his word. More than a hundred years ago, the holy righteous John of Kronstadt wrote in his diary “My Life in Christ”:

"Word creature! Remember that you have a beginning from the word of the All-Creator and in conjunction (through faith) with the building word, through faith, you yourself can be a material and spiritual builder”; “Remember that in the word itself lies the possibility of doing; only one must have firm faith in the power of the word, in its creative ability.

Orthodoxy, as you know, does not deny the certain effectiveness of pagan witchcraft verbal texts, however, it clearly indicates that the "help" to the practicing sorcerer comes from evil satanic forces. Such “help” is fraught with great danger:

“Who practices what word,” wrote St. Peter of Damascus, - he receives the property of that word, although the inexperienced do not see this, as they see those who have spirituality.

The pagans (and pagan Slavs, of course, were no exception to this) were defenseless against the power of the darkest forces of the spiritual plane. However, the East Slavic world eventually got out of their "control" as a result of the adoption of Christianity along the Greek model.

The already cited researcher indicates that the posthumous existence of a person was often thought by the Slavs somewhere in outer space:

“The moon, month and stars are common cosmic signs on medieval Yugoslav tombstones. A comparative analysis of them reveals an eloquent picture of the aspiration of the spirit of the dead into space, its path to the sky, along the Milky Way, to the Moon and stars in the “eternal world” ” .

The world of dead ancestors could also be imagined as located somewhere in the bowels of the earth. At the same time, “Regardless of the underground or cosmic location, as well as beyond the horizon, beyond the sea, its nature seems to be some kind of earthly one.”

The idea of ​​the resurrection of people after the death of the pagan Slavs was suggested by the invariably repeating change of natural cycles. Time seemed to go in a circle. People have watched all their lives how nature dies in winter (leaves fall from trees, grass turns yellow and dries, etc.), but then it is reborn (trees turn green again and grass is born again). This naturally aroused the hope that something similar was happening to people.

It is interesting how many seasons the ancient Slavs saw, following natural changes. L. Niederle wrote: “The Slavs distinguished four seasons: winter, yar - spring, summer, spring - autumn ...”. N.I. Tolstoy was of a more cautious opinion, pointing out that “we have a lot of ethnographic data at our disposal that the Slavs in antiquity, and in rural, rural areas almost to the present day, divided the year not into four, but only into two large annual segments - summer and winter. <...>Thus, the archaic folk system of division of the "round" year does not coincide with the generally accepted and known system.

The day was divided by the ancient Slavs in half - into day and night (day, apparently, mystically corresponded to summer in their pagan rites, and night to winter). The day could also be divided into two halves based on the observation of the sun rising from sunrise to the zenith point and then descending from the zenith to the horizon line (clocks began to be distinguished only in later times). The activation of evil spirits was supposed not only at midnight, but also at noon, “at a very dangerous time of the day,” according to N.I. Tolstoy. About midday evil spirits N.I. Tolstoy wrote: “The evil that appears at this moment even has its own special name. For Russians, this is the female gender. at bottom - terrible, ugly or, conversely, very beautiful woman, appearing in the fields at exactly noon during the flowering and ripening of bread, and the male sex at a stall that is dangerous for small children. In Polissya at dzennik - the ghost of a man who died an unnatural death, a terrible, black man who appears at noon. In the Gomel region (village of Velikoye Pole, Petrikovsk district), children are not allowed to go to the river at noon, “so that the noonday is not dragged away,” that is, the water one that appears at noon ... (Further N.I. Tolstoy on examples demonstrates the “general Slavic character of this character.” - Yu.M.)<...>Noon lasts a very short time, in fact one moment, and at this moment noon or noon can, according to popular ideas, strike a person, then the threat disappears, while midnight with all its dangers is only the beginning of a dead period of the night, which lasts until the first roosters"

Ibn Fadlan also witnessed the funeral of a noble "Rus", with whom one of his concubines agreed to die. After a series of ritual preparations, they strangled her, at the same time hitting her with a dagger, put her together with the deceased in a boat, and then burned the boat.

It also bears little resemblance to the customs of the Slavs. As L. Niederle accurately writes, “By the Slavs, burials in boats are very rare, and if they are found, then only in the east ... under the influence of the Scandinavian fair-haired (that is, the Varangians. My italics. - Yu.M.)” (Niderle L. Slavic Antiquities, Moscow, 2000, p. 230).

Rybakov B.A. Paganism of Ancient Russia. M., 1988. S. 91.

Niederle L. Slavic Antiquities. S. 213.

A detailed analysis of the problems associated with the cult of the family and women in childbirth is given in the works of the historian academician B.A. Rybakov. See: Rybakov B.A. The paganism of the ancient Slavs. M., 1981.

Veletskaya N.N. Pagan symbolism of Slavic archaic rituals. M., 1978. S. 16.

In the Old Slavonic language, simple cardinal numbers were from one to ten; then came sto, as well as the words darkness (“ten thousand”; according to A. Fasmer, tracing paper of the Turkic tuman “ten thousand, haze”) and nesvѣda (“unknown number”).

This fact was encountered in the 20th century. researchers who studied the archaic cultures that have survived on the planet - for example, the natives of Australia, the Greenlandic Eskimos, and in the USSR representatives of the taiga Far Eastern peoples.

The primacy of quality over quantity remains in the minds of children to this day. preschool age, which generally retains many prehistoric skills in its infancy. Then the school begins to actively suppress the corresponding ideas, developing in children the necessary modern society abstract thinking skills.

For example, children in elementary grades are systematically presented with tasks like "Divide four apples among three boys." It is assumed that the “correct answer” is that each boy should be given one whole and one third of an apple. Meanwhile, in reality, apples are not the same size, and children would divide them differently depending on the specific situation (perhaps, for example, one very large one: then in real life it will have to be cut in half and given to two, and the third to give out all the remaining small , etc.). So from the ancient Slavs real life required a completely different “mathematics” than the one we are used to, focused on abstractions.

There. S. 26.

Niederle L. Slavic Antiquities. S. 454.

Tolstoy N.I. Essays on Slavic paganism. S. 27, 30.

Tolstoy N.I. Essays on Slavic paganism. pp. 34-35.

Myth(from the Greek. mythos - "tradition") - this is a form of consciousness of an ancient person, his an attempt to explain the structure of the world reflected in legends and rituals.
Myth is the basis pagan religion, i.e. faith in many gods, each of which personified a natural phenomenon or was the patron of human life. The term "paganism" itself goes back to the Old Slavonic word "language" (people).
The mythology of the ancient Slavs is little studied, because. in the pre-Christian period in Russia (that is, before the 10th century), it was not literary processed, and after the baptism of Russia in 988, paganism began to be forced out, and this violated the integrity of Slavic mythology. However, many pagan traditions have not completely disappeared and have survived to this day in rituals, divination, and signs.

The ideas of the ancient Slavs about the world consisted of the following symbolic images:

1) SPACE EGG. The Slavs believed that the starry sky surrounds the Earth in the same way that the shell surrounds the contents of an egg. Just as many people are now interested in whether there is a God and how the world arose, so the ancient Slavs were interested in the origin of the cosmic egg. The egg does not arise on its own, but is carried by the laying hen. Consequently, the cosmic egg must also have its own creator. The most common plot is the creation of the world by a duck that swims across the boundless world ocean. Sometimes a swan, a goose or a chicken (for example, Hen Ryaba) acted as a duck. The cosmic egg was not simple, but golden, and the whole world was contained in it (Ukrainian fairy tale "Katigoroshka"). One of the mythological tales tells in detail how the world came out of the egg:
From the egg, from the lower part, mother earth came out raw;
From the egg, from the upper part, a high vault of heaven arose.
From the yolk, from the upper part, the bright sun appeared,
From the squirrel, from the upper part, a clear moon appeared;
From the egg, from the motley part, the stars became in the sky.
The egg was considered a symbol of life, therefore, in the fairy tale "Vasilisa the Wise", death, or rather, the life of Koshchei, is in the egg.
There are many rituals associated with this symbol. From ancient times, there is a custom to bestow eggs dyed in different colors(pysanky) and praise them in sacred chants. On the Semitsko-Trinity holidays they fried fried eggs, always fried eggs, so that there was a “sun” in the center, i.e. yolk. Eggs were laid in temples, buried in those places where construction was supposed to be.
Break the cosmic egg ordinary person beyond the power, which is why in the fairy tale "Ryaba Hen" this role is played by a mouse (it is one of the animals of the eastern calendar): "The mouse ran, waved its tail - the testicle fell and broke."

2) SPACE WHEEL. The word "wheel" comes from the Old Slavonic "kolo", i.e. a circle. Etymologically, such words as wheel, ring, outskirts, well, bun, chain mail go back to the word "kolo". The wheel symbolizes the eternal cycle in nature (the solstice - spring, summer, autumn, winter, the change of day and night). The wheel is a model of the Sun: in the center is a circle, and the spokes are rays. Many holidays and rituals are associated with the worship of the Sun. For example, eating pancakes at Shrovetide. Pancake is a symbol of the Sun, which is mentioned in Christmas songs: it is also round, yellow and hot. Kolyada holiday: caroling was done when the length of the day began to increase, it was the holiday of the “Christmas of the Sun”. The round dance symbolized the movement of the Sun.
The circle in mythology is associated with the manufacture of bread - bagels, bagels, rolls. Eating these foods was a rite of worship for the Sun. At Christmas time, during fortune-telling, the girls performed "circular songs". Weaving wreaths for the feast of Ivan Kupala was symbolic. The manufacture of all kinds of amulets, amulets, talismans is also associated with the worship of the Sun. Solar signs were depicted on the patterns of towels and spinning wheels.
The pagans built temples to the glory of the gods (temple) also in the form of a circle. This tradition has been preserved to this day, and the word "church" (as well as the word "circus") comes from the German Zirkel - "circle".

3) A WOOD is a symbol of development. In the popular mind, the birch was a symbol of youth and femininity (the song "There was a birch in the field"). The apple tree acted as a symbol of health, strength and fertility, and this motif was preserved in the fairy tales "Rejuvenating Apples" and "Geese Swans". Oak is an eternal and invincible tree (it is on the oak that the casket hangs, where the death of Kashchei is located).
The tree sprouted through three main worlds (kingdoms): heavenly, earthly and underground. Each of the three worlds through which the Tree sprouted had its own gods.

The word "god" comes from the Sanskrit Bhaga, which means "happiness, well-being." The ancient Slavs, like all pagans, worshiped many gods. However the supreme god and the ancestor of the Slavic gods counts Genus, or Once. He is also called the progenitor of the world, who created all living and non-living things. It is no coincidence that the root “genus” underlies many words: people, homeland, nature, harvest, spring, etc. Since ancient times, it was believed that Rod is the keeper of the Book of Fate (there is a saying “What is written in the family cannot be avoided”).

HEAVENLY WORLD personifies Svarog(translated from Sanskrit svar - "sky"), who was considered the ruler of the heavenly elements, and above all the wind. Subsequently, Svarog began to be identified with Stribog, and there is no consensus in science about whether these are different gods or these are two names of one god. In the Tale of Igor's Campaign, written at the end of the 12th century, the author calls the winds "the grandchildren of Stribog." In the heavenly world, the gods-world builders also live: Khors, Dazhbog, Perun, which were three aspects of the sun(that is why Yaroslavna, the heroine of The Tale of Igor's Campaign, calls the Sun "bright", and in Christianity there is a postulate of a triune God). Khors personified the solar ball, so the ritual of worshiping the Sun was a round dance. Dazhbog is the personification of the sun's rays and the fertility bestowed by the Sun. In ancient Greek mythology, Helios corresponded to him. Perun is the Russian Zeus, the god of thunder, thunder, lightning and the fire element, driving around the sky in a fiery chariot. Fire was considered a particle of the Sun, God's gift hence it was called sacred. For a long time, among some tribes, Perun played the role of the god of war, because he was considered the patron of the prince and his squad. Faith in Perun was so strong that even after the baptism of Russia, many continued to worship him. The priests of Perun were the Magi mentioned in the "Song of the Prophetic Oleg".

The god of fertility, thanks to which the grains and fruits gained strength and ripened, was considered Yarilo. This is a dying and resurrecting Slavic god associated with natural cycles and the change of seasons. With the "resurrection" Yarila associated the onset of spring.

In addition to the gods, in the heavenly world lived wonderful birds. Stratim- a mysterious and powerful bird of Russian mythology, the progenitor of the entire bird world, living in the sea-ocean. As soon as she wakes up, a storm begins. She is also able to tame the storm. At night, Stratim hides the sun under his wing in order to give it to the world again in the morning. It can hide under the wing and the Earth, saving it from universal troubles.
Firebird personifies the fiery-light element and the cosmic principle of the Universe encoded in it. The Firebird flies in from behind the blue sea from a wonderful country where life flows according to different laws from earth. The location of that country is also encoded in stable fairy-tale images and concepts. It happens that in fairy tales she is the thief of wonderful apples, but she flies from the "thirtieth kingdom."
Phoenix- a bird that lives for many hundreds of years, burning itself in the nest before dying. And here, from the ashes, a new Phoenix is ​​reborn. Ancient authors considered Egypt to be the birthplace of the Phoenix. In Russian folklore, the plot of the fairy tale “The Feather of Finist Yasna Sokol” is known, the hero of which, a good fellow werewolf, combines two initial principles: 1) a clear (solar) falcon and 2) the Phoenix bird, to which the name Finist goes back.
Gamayun- a prophetic bird with a human (female) face. The name of this bird comes from the words "gam" and "bustle", so it was perceived as a prophet, herald, messenger of the ancient pagan gods. She was considered the keeper of the secrets of the past, present and future of the universe.
Alkonost and Sirin- two birds of paradise female faces. They are always inseparable, so they were often depicted sitting on a tree opposite each other. Alkonost is a bird of joy, a person who hears it with delight forgets everything in the world. Sirin is a bird of sadness, which enchants and kills people with its singing. The bird Alkonost (according to legend) lays eggs on the seashore, and until the chicks hatch, the weather is calm. "Sirin" is a Russian word meaning an owl, an owl. The owl was revered as the bird of wisdom.

THE EARTH WORLD was located in the crown of the tree. Here, according to the ideas of the ancient Slavs, lived gods associated with earthly human life, as well as half-spirit creatures. The father and mother of the earthly gods were considered fret and Lada. Their names are associated with such words as “lad” (i.e. peace, harmony), “okay”. Lel- the god of love, the Slavic analogue of the ancient Roman Cupid. According to some assumptions, Lel was the son of Lada. god warrior Semargl depicted with seven swords in his belt. Mokosh(or Makosh) is the mother goddess, the patroness of the human race, the keeper of the family hearth. The cult of Mokosh dates back to the era of matriarchy, when a woman was the head of the family due to the fact that it was she who was assigned the role of the successor of the clan. Veles(or Hair- from the word "ox") - the patron saint of pastures and livestock. The veneration of Veles did not stop even after the introduction of Christianity: he was "replaced" by Saint Blaise. The six most significant gods of the Slavic "pantheon" were dedicated to worship on certain days of the week. For example, Mokosh was given two days - Wednesday and Friday, Perun - Thursday.
In the earthly world also lived semi-spirits.
Brownie was considered the patron of the house, so it was customary to appease him in every possible way and affectionately address him. If the brownie left the dwelling, then the owners were inevitably threatened with misfortune. On certain days, it was supposed to feed the brownie with porridge, leaving it behind the stove. The brownie, like all half-spirits, was invisible. If a person happened to see him, then this foreshadowed death.
Kikimora - the wife of a brownie, an unkind spirit of a peasant hut. He usually lives behind the stove, where he creaks and knocks, frightening small children. He likes to play pranks with a spinning wheel, knitting, started yarn.
Bannik- a small, toothless old man with long hair and a disheveled beard, who lives in a bathhouse. This is an evil spirit: he can splash boiling water or steam to death. You can appease a bannik if you leave him a broom, water in a tub and a bar of soap. Bannik loves to wash, but he does it after all the people (during the fourth couple, when all devilry).
Mermaids- These are mythological creatures in the form of women with green hair and a fish tail, living in lakes, ponds. It was believed that girls who drowned themselves from unhappy love, or who died before the bride's wedding, become mermaids. But mermaids don't always live in water. In summer, when rye begins to bloom, they come to the ground, swing on birch branches and lure careless fishermen and lonely travelers. This time is called "mermaid week". At this time, no one dares to go into the forest: the mermaids will either tickle you to death, or drag you to the bottom. To somehow appease the mermaids, the girls weave wreaths for them and leave them in the forest.
Goblin- Spirit of the forest. This is an old man with a green beard in an animal skin (sometimes with horns and hooves), to whom all wild birds and animals obey. Leshy knows how to laugh, howl, whistle and cry like a man, knows how to imitate the voices of birds and animals. Leshy loves to joke and play pranks: to fill in the fog and lead astray or lead him into a dense thicket (“Leshy is circling”). In general, goblin are not evil creatures, but once a year (October 4) they become dangerous: people say that they go berserk. People used the name of the goblin as a curse (“Go to the goblin”, “Gob take you away”).
Water- an evil spirit of the waters in the form of an old man with a long gray or green beard, who lives in river whirlpools, in pools or swamps. He also likes to settle under the wheel of a water mill, so in the old days all millers were considered sorcerers. During the day, the merman hides under water, and at night it floats to the surface in the form of a log or a large fish. Knowing that the merman could drown a person or break fishing nets, millers and fishermen tried to appease him: they threw bread into the water, sacrificed some black animal (cat, dog, rooster), and the fishermen released the first caught fish back into the water .

THE UNDERGROUND WORLD - the world of the dead, the other world, the abode of dark forces - was located in the roots of the tree. The trunk connected the earthly and underground worlds: ancient people believed in a close relationship between life and death. In fairy tales, the connection between the worlds of the living and the dead was carried out baba yaga- a forest old sorceress who helped the hero pass through the realm of the dead. Baba Yaga has long been considered a doorkeeper between world of the dead and the living (it is no coincidence that she has one leg, like a skeleton), and her hut is the gate to the otherworldly kingdom. Ancient riddles also reflected the connection between life and death: “It warms in winter, smolders in spring, dies in summer, then comes to life” (snow), “From the living - dead, from the dead - alive” (chicken - egg - chicken). Death in Slavic mythology was embodied in the image moraines(or marany), whose name comes from the Sanskrit mara - "death" and echoes the name of the Buddhist Satan, the god of death, whose name was Mara. Morena embodied the ideas of the ancients not so much about the death of an individual, but about the mortal principle in nature: the death of the Sun, light - this is the onset of night, the death of the "life-giving" seasons - this is the onset of winter. Thus, Morena personified the universal dying in nature, but death was not irreversible, because a new day always comes to replace the night, and spring comes after winter. Therefore, Morena herself was considered mortal. The ancient ritual of burning an effigy of Morena (which later became known as Maslenitsa), jumping over the fire symbolized the fight against death and darkness. Werewolves, ghouls (vampires) and ghouls also lived in the underworld.

Our distant ancestors also believed that a person is related to an animal. This belief was called TOTEMISM. Each ancient tribe had its own patron among animals, it could be a wolf, a bear, a hare, one of the birds, etc. The sacred animal of most Slavic tribes was the bear, secret name which - Ber (hence the word "berloga" - Berloga's lair) could not be spoken aloud by the Slavs. The word "bear" was a euphemism, i.e. replacement for the forbidden name. The Germans call the bear Baer, ​​the British - bear. In folk tales, a bear is sometimes a stupid creature, but kind and harmless, unlike, for example, a wolf or a fox.
After the baptism of Russia, pagan holidays and rituals received a Christian interpretation. The holiday of the birth of the Sun, celebrated at the end of December, when the length of the day began to increase, became the holiday of the Nativity of Christ. The primordially pagan holiday of Maslenitsa has survived almost unchanged to this day as a holiday of meeting spring. The day of the summer solstice, the "crown of summer" - the feast of Ivan Kupala - became the day of John the Baptist. Pagan ideas about the world were also fixed in a number of everyday traditions, in the plots of fairy tales, legends and songs.

Brief essay on Russian mythology

The pagan beliefs of the Slavic people in general can be divided into three tribal regions of mythical traditions: southern, western and eastern (Russian) Slavs. Although these areas are closely related both by the philological affinity of the language, and by the customs and rituals common between them, nevertheless, both in the external form of the cult and in its internal meaning, they are completely different from each other. Each of them makes up its own special and completely closed world of its tribal beliefs. These three tribal areas of Slavic mythology also correspond to the three main stages of their pagan religion. The first of these steps is the direct worship of nature and the elements; the second is the worship of the deities who personify these phenomena, and the third is the worship of idols that already command over them. The Western Slavs of the Baltic coast and the banks of the Laba (Elbe) belong, for the most part, to the last, i.e., worship of idols, while, on the contrary, the Serbs and Croats include direct direct worship of nature, enlivened by folk fantasy by crowds of collective spirits, as numerous as the manifestations in nature of the same laws are manifold. Our Russian traditions were destined to serve as a link between these two extreme stages in the development of the Slavic myth and to connect the idol worship of Western tribes with the worship of the elements and natural phenomena of the southern Slavs. At this first stage in the development of the anthropomorphic direction, a person, not yet understanding common law unity of diverse, but related phenomena and wishing to personify each individual phenomenon, each individual object in a 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 various manifestations of one and the same force of nature . The individual personality of the deity still merges into a common generic concept, but its collective has certain characteristics, such as, for example, the Water Grandfather, Leshy, Brownie, etc. Little by little, these countless collectives merge into one main individuality, which either absorbs them in itself, or submits to his authority. So, for example, until now, all the names of demons and demons in all languages, with their collective meaning, still have another - the proper name of their main leader, the demon of demons, the devil.

Meanwhile, a person, living and studying nature, acquires new concepts every day, flowing one from the other and crushing to infinity in his mind. In this uninterrupted transition from generic concepts to more particular ones, in this fragmentation of human thought, lies the logical process of the development of any polytheism, clothing 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; thus, for example, the god of thunder, the god of rain, are nothing but the very manifestations of thunder, rain, etc. Therefore, both the external forms and the symbols of these deities are still very colorless, and even their very names testify to an undeveloped personality. The reason for this is that these names are either borrowed from the phenomenon itself, as the weather is frost, or are made up of adjectives that determine the general property of not so much a person as a phenomenon and require the necessary addition of a noun. god, pan, king and so on, in order 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 vacillate in some mysterious uncertainty until, at last, architecture establishes various shades concept of some deity and will not petrify him, so to speak, once and for all into definite forms.

Here comes the third period of mythical development. Idols, having ceased to be a means of depiction that arouses popular reverence, become themselves the subject of deification and worship, and, having lost the specific unity of their images with the concepts they express, they take on a completely individual meaning of 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 offer 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 get a well-defined objective individuality.

The people, becoming more and more akin to their deities through their human forms, soon involuntarily conveys to them in their imagination all their passions and enlivens their soulless idols with the physical activity of man. The gods begin to live earthly life, being subjected, apart from death, to all its accidents, and from figurative objectivity they pass 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 grown up to this subjectivity of its gods, although many believe that this last degree of development is only lost in the memory of the people, 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, deities of nature and gods-idols.

This division is partly confirmed by the words of St. Gregory (Paisievsky collection), clearly indicating three different periods of pagan worship: “They began to lay the rites for the family and women in childbirth before Perun their god, and before that they laid the rites for the upirs and coasts.”

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 adopt the Christian faith, predominantly collective spirits predominate, while they do not have idols at all. In Moravia, Bohemia, Poland and Russia, with the existence of some even idols, most of the gods are the deities of nature, belonging to the second era, when, on the contrary, among the Polabs and Pomeranians, the collectives completely disappear and the whole religion is concentrated on some main objective personalities of the Arkon and Retrai idols. Sometimes, with the predominance of objective idols, some signs of the transition of the gods to subjective life are even noticed. So, for example, there was a belief about Svetovit's horse that God himself rode it at night, and Perun spoke in a human voice in Novgorod and threw his club into the Volkhov.

Paying attention to the worship of Slavic paganism itself, we will also find in it a complete confirmation of our opinion. In fact, although the information that has come down to us about the liturgical rites of the Slavs is scarce and insufficient, but with all that they clearly bear the stamp of some kind of diversity, which, in our opinion, can only be explained various times religious development. If, however, we extend our general division of the 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.

Indeed, in the first epoch of our myth, man, not even knowing personal gods, naturally had neither definite places of worship nor definite persons for performing it, and 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. Already Procopius testifies that the Slavs made sacrifices to rivers and nymphs; and the customs and rituals of throwing wreaths, food and money into rivers, wells and lakes have survived to this day. “Do not call yourself a god either in stone, or in students, or in rivers,” the “Word of Cyril” says, and Nestor also directly mentions that “I offer sacrifice to the well and lakes.” The custom of hanging on the branches of trees and placing on stones or at the root of an old oak tree gifts offered by man to invisible spirits fully confirms our idea that sacrifices were once offered to the very phenomena of nature. These sacrifices were brought by everyone, without the intermediary of special priests appointed for that; however, this position, on major national holidays, was sent, perhaps, by the elders, who in the national and civic life of the Slavs always enjoyed great rights.

With more exact definition the meanings of the deities of nature began to be determined and the places of sacrifices and prayers. Indeed, before the existence of idols and, therefore, before the construction of temples, the Slavs had known places where they used to pray to some deity. This is supported by many testimonies. So, Konstantin Porfirorodny says that the Russians made sacrifices on the Dnieper island of St. George; Sefrid speaks of an oak where some god lives, to whom sacrifices were made; Helmold, Dietmar, Saxon and Andrew, the biographer of St. Otto of Bamberg, knew many sacred groves among the Slavic Slavs, where they worshiped some sacred tree, which in later times was sometimes replaced by the idol of some god.

The sacred mountains, hills and all the numerous settlements must also be included in the category of places dedicated to worship, and finally, as a transition to the last era of Slavic myth, and some temples, like the temple of Yuterbok, whose structure 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 opening, which was turned to the east side so that it was lit up with light only at sunrise; The Arab writer Massudi also mentions a Slavic temple, in the dome of which a hole was made to observe the rising of the sun.

In certain localities, certain persons must also have existed to perform liturgical rites, but, probably, they did not yet constitute a closed caste of priests. Were they not sorcerers, prophetic and sorcerers (miracles), persons who were not consecrated to this title, but caused by momentary inspiration? The answer to this question can be the appointment of the Magi, who, like the priests of other peoples, guessed and predicted the future.

With the advent of idols, special rituals for worship are determined, rich temples appear, and a whole caste of servants and priests is formed, who, taking advantage of the superstitious fear of the people for the idol, not only enrich themselves with his gifts, but often seize the political power of his kings. So it was in Rügen and among the Redarians.

Holidays, sacrifices, ceremonies and divination - everything is concentrated around the idol and his attendants and is surrounded for the people by some kind of inaccessible mystery, under which it is easy to find the cunning deceptions of greedy 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: its holidays, songs, divination, superstition - everything bears the stamp of these times of paganism and serves us as materials for its study; while everything has disappeared from the time of pure idolatry: 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 the people's memory everything that belongs to the last period of 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 between Eastern Slavs Christianity not only met almost no resistance anywhere, but that the pagans themselves called for the preachers of the new faith. It is impossible not to notice here that these two completely separate eras of the deification of natural phenomena and the later worship of idols echoed in the information that has come down to us (actually Russian mythology) in dividing this information according to their sources into popular beliefs and historical data. Some have come down to us through oral tradition in superstitious rites, fairy tales, songs and various sayings of the common people, while others have been preserved in the annals and written monuments of our historical antiquity.

The deities of oral tradition still live in popular superstition, and their names are known to almost every Russian commoner; about the idols of written tradition, we do not find the slightest recollection among the people, and if they had not been preserved for us in the annals and spiritual writings of our medieval literature, the names of these idols would have remained forever unknown to us.

Of the few proper names of the 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. We only know about Perun that he was made of wood with a silver head and a golden mustache, and that he had a club that the Novgorod idol threw into the Volkhov. These gods do not have special symbols and attributes, and our imagination cannot be guided by anything to recreate these idols when we meet their names in our annals.

In this absence of any definite appearance, it seems impossible to admit the existence of the subjective personality of these idols, and we rather believe that they have not grown 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 say so) of our deities could have disappeared from popular memory to such an extent that even the outward appearance of these gods has not been preserved in our traditions.

The only basis that our gods once lived human life, entered into marriage bonds and made children for themselves, serves, 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 the matter here is about Egypt; but just like in the Greek and Latin texts of Malala, the names of Hephaestus - Vulcan and Helios - are inserted to explain Sol, in the same way, the names of Svarog and Dazhbog are inserted in the Slavic text: “And after the flood and after the division of the language, the first Mestro reigned, from the clan of Khamov, after him Hermias, after him Theost, who also called Savarog the Egyptians, and by this the king’s son his name is the Sun, they will call him Dazhbog. And further: "The sun is the king, the son of Svarogov, the hedgehog is Dazhbog."

The form of Svarozhich is found in the "Word of Superstition": "The fires pray, they call him Svarozhich." Finally, the Baltic Slavs had an idol called Ditmar Zuarosici, which St. Bruno also mentions in his letter to Emperor Heinrich P. For a long time they mistakenly read this name Lvarazik and explained it in many ways, until, finally, Safarik decided the matter, identifying him with Svarozhich "Words about superstition." From these data, some scientists a little arbitrarily made 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 Svarozhichs.

But to base this genealogy of our gods on the words of Malala would be to take Helios for the son of Hephaestus in Greek myth, and it should hardly be divided into two different persons Svarog and Svarozhich or Zuarazik of the Western Slavs and certainly see in the final form of these latter patronymics, other examples of which our mythology does not.

The fragments of Russian paganism, preserved for us in folk rites, beliefs, signs, fairy tales, riddles, incantations and epic techniques and expressions of the most 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 the religious concept that is associated in the imagination of our ancestors with their physical knowledge of various forces and natural phenomena. The superstitious rites of our pre-Christian antiquity point directly to worship and sacrifice to the elements, such as jumping over fire and burning in fire, bathing and throwing into water, etc. Main characteristic of such traditions of the Russian people is 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 fairy tale or a well-aimed epithet, and sometimes it is 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 an abstract thought, the memory of which is inextricably linked with this object. So, for example, black, reminiscent of the darkness of the night, constantly serves as an image of everything gloomy, evil and deadly, while, on the contrary, white, red and yellow colors, as 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 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 indefiniteness of empty names that do not tell our imagination anything, so that in none of our idols we we will not find the fabulous legends that are accustomed to meet in the classical myths of Greece and Rome.

How many beliefs, signs, riddles and sentences we have that determine not only natural, but also superstitious-mythical qualities and properties of heavenly bodies, natural elements and even many animals and plants, and meanwhile, as we have just noted above, about the most important idols of the Kyiv Hill, whose names are constantly repeated by all the chroniclers, we, apart from this empty name, know absolutely nothing.

Of all the places where Nestor speaks of the pagan deities of our ancestors, the most important is where he mentions the idols set by Vladimir in Kyiv. This place leaves its indelible mark 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 a description of his idol; it is followed by Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Semargla and Mokosh (Mokosha). This order of counting idols is kept in the same place in our history and with the most minor changes in the Arkhangelsk, Nikon and Gustin chronicles, in the Book of Powers and in the German writer Herberstein, from where it passes to Polish historians, and later, with their changes, comes back to us, as we shall see later. In texts testifying to the beliefs of the Slavs in general, a description of the idol of Perun is published, but nevertheless he holds the first place in them. Of the other deities, apparently, those whom the writers considered less important are sometimes released: Yakov names only Perun and Khors; St. Gregory - Perun, Khorsa and Mokosh; in the Prologue published by Professor Bodyansky - Perun, Khors, Semargla (Sima and Rgla) and Mokosh; in the "Makariev Menaia" - Perun, Khors, Dazhbog and Mokosh, and so on. and so on.

From the time of the influence of the Polish chronicles on our writers, a completely new order of deities appears in the Gustin Chronicle (on the idols of the Rus), in St. Demetrius of Rostov and in Gisel's Kiev Synopsis. In it, Perun occupies the first place, but the description of his idol is supplemented by the remark that he was deified on high mountains and that bonfires were lit in his honor, the extinguishment of which was punishable by death; the second deity is Volos, the third is Pozvizd, the fourth is Lado, the fifth is Kupalo, the sixth is Kolyada. That this series of gods was directly borrowed from foreign sources is clearly shown in the Gustinskaya Chronicle by the very name of Perun, who is called Perkonos in this place in the chronicle, when a few pages before that we immediately meet 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, there are also “and ini idols byakhu, with names: Uslyad or Oslyad, Korsha or Khors, Dashuba or Dazhb”, and other names Nestor's idols. Uslyad came from an erroneous translation of words mustache gold German traveler Herberstein. Further, the names of Korsh and Dashub are also completely alien to our native writers, although the latter is partly explained by the spelling of the Power Book: Dazhaba, but this, perhaps, is a typo, especially since Dazhba is printed elsewhere in the same book, probably derived from non-observance of the title over the abbreviated god (ba).

Volos is not mentioned by Nestor among the idols built by Vladimir; but from the contract of Svyatoslav it is clear that he occupied a very important place among the Slavic deities, almost equal to Perun, with whom he is put as if in parallel, which is why he takes the first place after Perun among Polish writers and their Russian followers. A similar rapprochement between Perun and Volos is also found in the words of mnih Yakov. From this evidence, repeated in The Triumphant and in Makaryev's Cheti-Minei, one 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 Powers", where, when creating Kyiv idols, the chronicler, writing directly from Nestor, does not mention Volos; but, on the contrary, when destroying them, he lists everyone by name, and after Mokosh he also names Blasius, the cattle god. In the "Word of St. Gregory" is found mysterious name vila in singular and masculine: “and Horsa, and Mokosh, and Vila,” which we take here for Volos on the grounds that in the unpublished part of this “Word ...” the Phoenician Baal is called Wil: “There was an idol called Wil, but Daniel will destroy him Prophet in Babylon.

In addition to the six main idols mentioned by the Laurentian Chronicle, there are several other nicknames for the pagan polytheism of ancient Russia in our ancient written monuments, such as Svarog, Svarozhich, Rod and Rozhanitsa, Ghouls, Beregini, Navia, Plow, etc.

With the insertion in the Bustinskaya Chronicle (on the idols of the Russians) and Gizel's Synopsis, the literary processing of Slavic mythology begins, the false direction of which flourished with us for a long time, both in fake chronicles of the 18th century (like Joachim's) and in the works of native mythologists. the end of the last century: Popov, Chulkov, Glinka and Kaisarova. These writings, under the influence of the Polish-German learning of the seventeenth century and its extremely false direction, flooded our native fables with lists of gods, demigods, heroes and geniuses of every kind and with many traditions and details, based mostly on arbitrary fictions 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 of the ancient Prussians, deified in the famous temples of Arkona, Retra and Romova. Kievan idols are constantly mentioned in non-Russian forms of Dashuba, Korsha, etc., clearly borrowed from foreign sources. From our popular superstitions and fairy tales, only a few of the most famous names got into these lists: mermaids, goblin, brownies, Polkan, Koshchei and Baba Yaga. Titles folk holidays Kupala and Kolyada were granted to the special deities of fruits and festive feasts, whose idols seemed to stand in Kyiv; in the same way, the rivers Don and Bug were erected in some 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 River really have some right to attention Russian mythology. But hardly Mrs. Popov and Glinka knew about our ancient heroic epic when they did not even bother to check the German-Polish information about Kyiv idols by comparing this information with the Russian sources available to them. The rest of the names on these lists are mostly pure inventions. The forgery of many of them is already obvious to us, such as, for example, the above-mentioned Delight, Zimtserla (the goddess of spring, she erased winter), Detinets, Volkhovets, Slovyan, Rodomysl and many others. But it is not always possible for us to accurately point to 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 did the information about the Golden Woman, idolized by obdortsy, come from? Where did the walls, lituns and kudas come from, which Glinka got into the same category with brownies, goblin 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?

Entire systems of Slavic mythology are still based on such shaky foundations, not only by German scientists, like the mythology of Eckermann (1848), but also by many researchers from the Slavs, especially between the Czechs, such as Hanush, Jungman and Tkani, in whose mythological dictionary ( 1824) Ilya Muromets is mentioned by the Russian Hercules, and Saint Zosim of Solovetsky - Zosim Schuzgott der Bienen hex den Russen.

In general, Slavic mythology in its German processing has remained to this day in the field of obsolete classicism, which has sought to bring it under the level of Greek theogony and, by all means, find among us deities corresponding to the famous gods of the ancient world.

The second essential mistake of such a direction is the generalization of any purely local legend: not at all taking into account that often the same deity appears in different localities under different names, the scientific methodologist from each such synonym tries to recreate new identity, to which he immediately ascribes, 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 by new, if not fictional, then in Russia, at least, positively never existing names. That is why it seems to us that the first modern task of science is to cleanse our Russian traditions of alien deposits and, finally, to determine the correct distinction between Russian and non-Russian sources.

In general, in Russian myth, proper names play for the most part the very last and insignificant role, as we will try to prove this later. Much more important are the rites and festivals 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. So, for example, the rites of plowing or cow death, the calling of spring, the obtaining of a living king-fire, beliefs about the flight of fiery kites or the flowering of ferns on Ivanovo night, and, finally, the oldest legends about the creation of the world, Buyan Island and the mysterious Pigeon Book.

In its childhood, humanity fearfully and reverently worships those objects and phenomena of nature that more than others strike its physical senses, and therefore it is natural that celestial phenomena, like the sun and stars, thunder and lightning, become the first objects of superstitious adoration. But when, with a settled life, a person becomes acquainted with arable farming and cultivation of fruits, a sense of personal benefit makes him turn his attention to the earth and the fruitful power of plant nature, then in his religion the sky gods gradually give way to the representatives of the earth. That is why the Western Slavs, who had lived a sedentary life before ours, more clearly formulated the worship of earthly nature in the deification of the goddesses Zhiva and Mora, who divided the entire annual cycle of earthly vegetation among themselves.

Zhiva's share was half a year of the fruitful summer life of nature, while Mora's share was the time of her fruitless winter rest. The concept of everything young, bright, powerful, warm and fruitful has merged with the idea of ​​Zhiva; with the representation of Mora - everything gloomy, cold, frail and barren.

If we in Russia have not preserved the memory of two goddesses who share the annual life of earthly nature among themselves, as among 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 malevolent attitude towards earthly nature, is similarly divided into two faces of the winter and summer sun, the bright god of ardent fruitful rays (Belbog) and the god of the barren period of darkness and cold that does not warm (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. Massudi, in his travels through the Slavic lands, saw somewhere by the sea an idol, whose members were made of precious stones of four kinds: green chrysolite, red ruby, yellow carnelian and white crystal; his head was of pure gold. These colors clearly allude to 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 the idol end in one common golden head; and not without some probability it can be assumed that the first half of these names kept in itself a particular meaning - spring, summer or winter, when the word Wit meant the general concept of a god or person. For example, Gerowit - Ierowit involuntarily pushes us to the word yar, which has retained to this day the meaning of spring: spring bread, yary (spring gullies), the Russian deity Yarylo, and so on, when, on the contrary, Korevit or Khorevit resembles the Russian Khors (Korsh) and Karachun.

Of the Kyiv idols mentioned in our chronicles, the sun gods are named Dazhbog and Khors, which, as Professor Bodyansky noted, in almost all texts are inseparably next to each other, as synonyms for one and the same concept; and both of them, according to their word production, one from doug- day (German Tag), another from sur or korshid- the sun, in their meaning are identical.

Of these two main personifications of the sun, its formidable significance as the winter Saturn, Sitivrat or Krt (Krchun) of the Slavic-Germanic beliefs of Central Europe belongs to us in Russia, apparently, to Khors. This formidable significance of the winter sun is inextricably linked in the world of fairy tales and superstitions with the concepts of death, darkness, cold and impotence; the same concepts are combined with the representation of the deity of a destructive storm, snowstorm and cold west wind generally as an antithesis of the warm wind of the summer half of the year. That is why the deities of the winter and summer sun could easily merge into one representation with their respective deities of the wind, or at least exchange names and meanings with them. So, in the Alekseevsky Church Slavonic Dictionary, the word choir explained by the westerly wind, and in Sredovsky's Sacra Moraviae historia Chrwors(our Khors, 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 in our country indicates the ancient period of nomadic life, when cattle breeding brought the only wealth to a person who was not yet familiar with arable farming. That is why all the patron gods of cattle in their original meaning of the deity of the sun. Epizootic is still expressed in our word fad, directly indicating the ancient view of man on the air element as the cause of any disease. Thus, Stribog (whose meaning as the god of the wind, according to the Tale of Igor's Campaign, we undoubtedly) passes from Sredovsky into Trzibek- the god of the plague; Carpathian Slovaks attach the same meaning to Karachun. Our Saturn - Horse is in the meaning of the western wind - choir, when the Serbian Hora is the wife of the god of the winds Posvist, whom Sredovsky, in turn, calls Nehoda and translates into words Intertemperae. Thus, the gods not only of the cold winter wind, but also of the winter sun, are also the gods of the deadly craze regarding the animal kingdom. Remarkable in this regard is the Czech nickname of Krta (Saturn) by Kostomlad, i.e., the thresher of bones, which partly corresponds to our Russian Koschei the immortal, who constantly wears the cosmogonic meaning of the evil beginning of the winter sun in fairy tales. In the same way, on the other hand, the cattle god Volos (Veles, Vlasiy), like Yegoriy 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 phenomenon of nature appears to man from two different sides of his beneficial and harmful influence. If, however, in the eternally renewed 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 bears in itself the germ of new good. The falling fruit, by its rotting, releases to life the grain stored in it, and sleep and rest, by their lifelessness, renew the forces of both man and nature.

With a similar conviction, the Russian man also looked at his own death, not as final destruction, but saw in it, on the contrary, the continuation of the same earthly life, only under another, simple eye invisible form.

Nowhere in our pagan traditions do we find the slightest hint of the representation of special heavenly or underground dwellings of the dead. In the grave, they continue to live their earthly life, patronize their living descendants, and directly share with them all the joys and cares of their earthly existence. That is why the patron spirits of the family and the home: Rod, Chur (Shchur) and Grandfather Brownie - are related by family ties to 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 late progenitor - Grandfather, or Shchur - the ancestor.

The grave is revered as the permanent dwelling of the dead, which is why the expressions: go home in the sense of dying house, house- a coffin, sometimes a cemetery; so that the very nickname Domovoy rather carries the meaning of the afterlife than the patron of the house, especially since in the rural common life it is the last word, in the sense of housing, uncommon, replaced by the expressions: hut, hut, smoke, nest or yard:“You are the sun, the sun is clear! you rise, rise from midnight, you light up all the graves with joyful light; so that our dead do not sit in the dark, do not grieve with misfortune, do not grieve with longing. Already you are a month, a clear month! you ascend, ascend from the evening, you illuminate all the graves with joyful light, so that our dead do not crush 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 the steppe villages they put the first pancake on the dormer window, and they say: “Our honest parents! here for your darling." In Belarus, on the grave, poured with honey and vodka, they cover food and greet the deceased: “Holy rodzitsels! hojitse to us bread and salt to eat. On Easter, they go to Christ with their dead parents at their grave, and red eggs are immediately buried in the hole; orphaned brides go to their parents' graves to ask for the blessings of the dead for marriage.

Finally, in Russia we have many special days and weeks dedicated to folk customs to visit the graves, these are: large and small parental, Radunitsa, Krasnaya Gorka, Navi day; such was the ancient meaning of Maslenitsa. On such days, it is not uncommon for a whole family, gathered at a native grave, to make their meal on it in the superstitious belief that the dead person shares it and is present in an invisible way between them. On the name day of the brownie (January 28), porridge and all sorts of treats are put 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 this view of afterlife and folk beliefs about werewolves and ghosts, ghouls (vampires) sucking blood at night, alien (dashing) brownies playing their evil jokes on sleeping household members, wolflacs prowling a fierce beast at night, and galloping navia spreading pestilence with their mere appearance . The very word navi(navy day, go to the nava) carries the concept of death and the afterlife, as well as the brownie, as noted above, is a synonym for the afterlife; exactly the same way genus sometimes used in regional dialects in the sense of spirit, image, ghost; finally, ancient name the goddess of death Mora or Morena retained almost the same meaning in the 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 the blood of sleepy people, why, in order to prevent such a disaster, a dead person suspected of sorcery 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 again in the grave. There are many stories about drowned and drowned 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!

Mother gave birth to me

Buried unbaptized -

the latter sing, running all night through the fields and groves. There is, finally, a story about a mermaid (drowned woman), who, visiting her living parents, told them various details about her underwater life.

G. Solovyov rightly considers mermaids to be the dead, and this meaning explains their nickname in one song as dugouts, that is, underground inhabitants of the graves. This nickname, apparently, identifies the mermaids with the coastlines, which St. Gregory mentions together with the ghouls: “And before that they laid the demand for the upirs and the coastlines.” In this rapprochement between the Ghoul and Rod and Beregini with Rozhanitsa, both Rod and Ghoul are dead. Why, and it is very likely to admit that the coasts, like mountain, earthly spirits, had partly the same meaning. In ancient times, mounds were poured over the graves, and in particular they chose coastal places for this place, near large rivers; the very word shore - shore sometimes has the meaning of a mountain (compare the German berg), and in regional expressions the word mountain, on the contrary, it means the bank of a river or even land (not by water).

In general, there are many fantastic creatures in Slavic paganism who, in spite of 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 nationalities where even in times the fabulous ones managed to stand out from the crowd of historical figures of sages or conquering kings, their names are often elevated by popular memory to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bmythical deities; with us, in the absence of any personality, the same thing apparently happened with certain purely human posts and duties, which, adorned by popular imagination with a 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 mediators could easily be imagined as dead men of purely human origin. Thus, the fabulous personality of the Family or Grandfather Domovoy corresponds to the duties of the householder and head of the family; similarly, the position of the liturgical priest corresponds to the concept of the Vedun - the Magician. And just as, under the name of Rod and Grandfather, a person imagines the real personality of his long-dead great-grandfather, in the same way he could assume about the sorcerers that they are also dead priests and elders, who became famous for their wisdom during the life of their things. Witchcraft is a simple human craft, probably originating from the pagan priesthood; witchcraft is already medicine, which has passed through death into the realm of fantastic supernaturalism.

The influence of Christianity in the first centuries of its appearance in Russia did not destroy the pagan superstitions among the people, but deprived them of only their good properties, combining all these beliefs into general idea delusions of impure, diabolical power. But if we remove from these mythical personalities the coloring imparted to them by Christianity, we will clearly see, both by their names and by the actions attributed to them, that the Veduns are nothing but the priests of ancient worship, elevated to the realm of fabulous demonology.

How medicine man derived from know, similar witchcraft and sorcerer have their origin in to know whence and other derivatives, as prophetic, prophetic, broadcast, foretelling, veche(people's court) and witch as the female form of the sorcerer.

Sorcery is entanglement, enchantment, i.e., supernatural bonds or features. The outline of a circle on earth takes magical power chains and bonds, just as charm is the binding of a person by invisible bonds (as, for example, by the eyes of a beauty). In its primitive meaning, charm is nothing more than the descent of divine help on a person through conspiracy prayers and sacrifices.

Witchcraft and witch have their origin in the root cold, cloud, meaning purification, rebirth (by means of fire) and sacrifice; in Czech cludity- clean, in Serbian kudipi- to speak. This also applies in its root and our judge- judgment, also purification in its moral sense. The name Magus is produced by philologists from the Sanskrit shaft- shine, shine, just like priest derived from to eat, to burn; the sacrifice is consumed by fire, which is why our eat, and the altar for that matter is mouth(throat) of consuming fire. When faith in pagan rites disappeared, folk humor gave priestly sacrifices the vulgar present meaning of the verb eat; the verb has undergone the same fate lie, i.e., to speak the disease with a divine prayer, whence the words doctor, medicine, in the same way as from miracle workers, conductors of divine miracles, concepts were formed magician and kudes, in the meaning of evil witchcraft, and even more often simple tricks and antics.

In pagan times, 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, chanting, the prophetic power of sorcery and knowledge of the future; it overshadowed the justice of the court, the healing of the disease and the happiness of the home shelter, and all this was embodied in one general idea of ​​​​the things of the wisdom of the Magus - the Enchanter. But as the Enchanter is only an intermediary between a person and a higher deity, then the miracles performed by sorcerers and witches do not come directly from them, but are sent to a person through their mediation from higher deities, with the help of conspiracies, sacrifices and ordinary rites.

The only supernatural quality that relates directly to the characteristics of the sorcerers and witches themselves is the ability to fly through the air and werewolf; but here, too, it is believed that the witches keep miraculous water, boiled with the ashes of 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 supposed. The werewolf also required knowledge of known conspiracies and mysterious rites:

Vtapory learned Volkh to wisdom:

And I learned the first wisdom

Wrap yourself in a clear falcon,

To another wisdom he studied Volkh

Wrap yourself in a gray wolf

By the third, Volkh studied wisdom

Wrap around bay tour - golden horns.

His own deity did not need divination to know the future, just as he would not need to learn wisdom for a werewolf. Indeed, Serbian pitchforks and Khorutan royanits predict the future without any guesswork, which indicates the immediacy of their divinity. Domovoi, mermaids and sorcerers do not make prayers and do not bring expiatory sacrifices; and if gifts and offerings are sometimes brought to them, like hanging yarn for mermaids on trees, leaving dinner for a brownie, or they cover cheeses, breads and honey in honor of the Family, then all these customs are pure character treats or commemoration of the dead, not the victim.

The foundations and therefore, along with many peculiar features, also have many similarities with the primitive religion of the Germans, Greeks, Lithuanians and Persians. The people are relatively young, early and quickly adopted Christianity, the Slavs did not have time to develop a completely finished mythological system. On the other hand, their mythological views were not fixed in such integral works as the poems of Homer and Hesiod or the "Edda" of the Scandinavians, but were preserved only in songs, fairy tales, riddles and other works of folk art that do not stand in a complementary relationship in terms of content, on which in addition, there often lies the obscuring and distorting stamp of later beliefs. The legends of the Slavs about the creation of the world and man, views on the meaning of their deities and the names of the latter means that they differ among different tribes. Coordinating and complementing these options, one can generally establish the following scheme of Slavic cosmogony and mythology.

Gamayun, a prophetic bird. Painting by V. Vasnetsov on the theme of Slavic myths. 1897

Gods of Slavic mythology

They are based on dualism, that is, the recognition by the Slavs of a good beginning in the person of Belbog and a subordinate to him, but still a harmful element - in the person of Chernobog. By the combined creative forces of both gods, the world arose from the boundless airspace or celestial ocean, in the midst of which there was a bright iry(paradise) or Buyan Island, blessed home of the gods. Then a man was created by Belbog from clay, and Chernobog did not fail to make his unclean contribution to the nature of the new creation. Envying the power of Belbog, Chernobog tried to fight him, but was defeated and transferred his hatred to the first person (androgyne), who had titanic powers and lived in harmony with Belbog. In the absence of Belbog, he intoxicated a man “at the table of God” with the wine he invented and this brought Belbog’s wrath on him, which had the result of the physical and moral grinding of the human race.

Shunning the evil inevitable in the world, Belbog (otherwise called Prabog or simply god, Belun, Svarog, Rod, Triglav, Diy) did not rule the world himself. With his wife Diva, the goddess of the earth, he reigned beyond the clouds, leaving the rule of the world and the possible struggle against evil to the four lower world rulers. Between them, the first place in Slavic mythology was occupied by Perun, the heavenly ruler, a powerful and angry black-haired god with a fiery mustache and beard, protecting and guarding people and waging a continuous struggle with Chernobog with the help of a thunder hammer, a bow - a rainbow and arrows - lightning. The wife of Perun, Simargla, Zhiva or Siva, was the goddess of lightning, summer thunderstorms and fertility. He ruled over the water and air elements, according to the myths of the Slavs, Stribog, the father of the winds and the god of the sea, along with whom, among the people, the elemental sea deity stood in memory - the Waterman, an ugly and angry giant, with his frantic dance raising a disastrous storm on the sea.

Baba Yaga. Character of Slavic mythology. Painting by V. Vasnetsov, 1917

Next came the king of fire: Zhizhal of the Belarusians Svarozhich or Radagast Pomeranian, the god of hospitality and the keeper of the hearth, and the ruler of the underworld, Niy of the Poles, Sitivrat or Karachun of other Slavs, a gloomy winter deity, the husband of the goddess of death and the deadly winter cold, Morana. Below the named worldlords stood in Slavic myths the offspring of Perun: his son, the god of the sun Khors, Dazhdbog or Lado, the most revered deity of the Slavs, the husband of the sea princess Lada or Kupala, the goddess of spring, rain and fertility, and his brother Veles or Volos, the god of the month, the inspirer of singers, the "Veles grandchildren", and the patron of herds and wild animals. The host of the highest gods was closed by the sons of Horsa, Lel and Polel, the gods of lawful love and marriage; Chur, guardian of borders, patron of trade and all profits, and Yarilo, a priapic deity of sensual love and fertility.

Spirits and mythical creatures among the Slavs

In addition to these deities of a higher order, Slavic mythology knew many earthly, elemental spirits. All nature was represented in it as inhabited by supernatural beings. The forest was dominated by angry and quick-tempered, but honest and did not do unreasonable evil. goblin. In the waters lived water grandfathers and beautiful, but crafty seductresses - mermaids. Spirits lived in the mountains pitchfork, sometimes insidious and vicious, but who loved heroic prowess and patronized brave warriors. Women in labor, goddesses of fate, who predicted their fate to newborns, were hiding in a mountain cave, etc.

Mermaids emerge from the water before Trinity. Painting by K. Makovsky, 1879

Temples and priests among the Slavs

The Slavs shared the beliefs of other Aryan tribes in the immortality of the soul, the afterlife retribution for good and evil deeds, and the end of the world, but the legends about this merged so early and closely with Christian ideas that it is very difficult to isolate purely pagan elements from this amalgam. Slavic mythology reached its greatest development among the Pomeranian Slavs, who, according to medieval German annalists, had luxurious temples, precious idols and a more powerful priestly class. Regarding the cult, other Slavs did not retain specific indications, but the widespread existence of temples and priests cannot be doubted and is directly attested for the main cities of Russia in the times preceding the adoption of Christianity.

Zbruch idol. Monument of Slavic paganism, dating from about the 10th century

Literature about Slavic mythology

F. Buslaev, "Essays on Folk Poetry and Art"

Afanasiev,"Poetic views of the Slavs on nature"

Averikiev, "Mythical antiquity" ("Dawn", 1870.)

Batyr, monograph about Perun

"Belarusian songs" Bessonova

Kvashnin-Samarin, "Essays on Slavic Mythology"