As a Czech, I was quite surprised to not hear you mention Morana - the goddess of winter/death and Vesna - the goddes of spring. Growing up, they were pretty much the most talked about Slav gods around me. Probably for their link to "chasing out winter" and "the tradition of burning or drowning an effigy of Morana to celebrate the end of winter" - in my opinion basically Beltaine - happens only day apart and is celebrated the same way.
Thats what I thought too! We also burn/drown Morana/Marzanna. Also Vesna in poland is called Dziewanna (i like that it's similar to her sister Marzanna). Another goddes/god that I think is often talked about is Kupała as in the Kupala's night. And of corse Mokosz for harvest festivals.
Hi Iliene, I'm definitely wanting to make some more videos that dive deeper into Slavic Paganism. I'd love to make a video on Morana & Vesna and the traditions surrounding them. :)
@@oliwiadykiel3362 I' did not know Vesna is related to Dziewanna. Vesna means viesen, or spring whereas Dzievanna's origins are more complex. May I ask where you learned about this?
@@dadaddy4296 As were many cultures :) But all stemmed from pagan roots before Christianity/abrahamic religions were introduced. Many Christians continued to practise their traditions alongside Christianity. You can believe in any religion and practice witchcraft :)
As a pagan Pole I have to say that it sure is a very basic material, but it is really nice to see that people from other countries are interested in our folklore and traditions. Greetings from Poland ❤ Slava!
Im swedish, and thank to the belarus border crisis I have become interested in slavic people and paganism just in the last couple days hehe :) Bless Poland!
@@audhumbla6927 Yeah. I'm actually pretty terrified with the situation on the border. Polish goverment sucks. They plan to make a fence on the border that will also go through the Białowieża Forest (which is the primeval one). It's obvious that if they do it, that ecosystem will be ruined. Also they basically made abortion illegal and one woman died because of that. When her life was in danger and the baby had low (but not zero) chance to survive the doctors didn't do anything to help her.
Im an ethnically polish American, looking to connect to my roots through spirituality. Doing some personal research, but your comment compelled me to ask you if you have any specific resource recommendations? Much appreciated if you feel inclined to respond ❤
@@diabel_hejdasz this is so helpful, thank you so so much, I look forward to going through the links you gave me! Luckily I have family members who speak polish, and even know a little myself, so getting things translated won't be too difficult! Thanks again
Why did Muslims spread their religion into Egypt? Why did the greeks spread their beliefs to Italy? Why did the Chinese spread theirs to Korea and Japan? Religions spread, either willingly or forcefully. This applies to any and every belief, so long as it lives long enough to get big enough.
@@michaelplays8134 when it happen in an natural and peaceful way it's ok, but when by force and violence (just like it was with the christians and muslims), it's not simply ok or acceptable. Please just don't defend it.
Yo Poland here, just wanted to say that the slavic myths believes and even Gods are very different depending on the region. For example I live in a region where we don't belive in Czernobóg or Białobóg. That's it, just throwing it out there. Love the video tho ❤️
Hej! ja tesz jestem z polskie, urodzona w angli i szukam sie zapoznac z polska religia -czy maszjakies ksaczki kture polecasz? (napewno napisalam dluzo bleduw- ale mam nadzeje ze rozczytasz
Same in Russia - we don't have Chernobog. Rod, Svarog, Jarilo, Mara (Morena) and Mokosh, Hors, Dazhbog, Veles and Perun exists there, but nothing about cherno- or belobog. Is this pantheon similar to polish?
I'm from Czech Republic. It's very hard to find literally anything about Slavic mythology even here, as you mentioned original religion was heavily supressed by Christians, though it somewhat survived as old customs and also in fairytales. But it's hard to find some more detailed informations about gods and all. Where did you get your information for this video?
What about the Morana or Smrtka? Or is this only a tradition in the rural regions? The sholar Zdenek Vana is an authority about Slavic mythology and paganism (he is Czech btw).
@@Spinnradler I'm not quite sure what do you mean - are you asking if tradition involving Morana/Smrtka is common or something? I think that "vynášení Morany/Smrtky" (carrying Smrtka out (no idea if this is expression used when talking about it in english)) is not commonly performed nowadays, like in every town/village or so, but it's definitely well-known and there are still occasions when this is done (like during programs in our Wallachian Open-Air museum), but maybe there are some places (rather small towns or villages I guess) when it's still done as a public event (if I could say so). I think Zdenek Vana is one of the authors I heard about on internet and tried to search for some book by him but didn't find any.
@@TheIlwin Yes, I was speaking about the "vynášení Morany/Smrtky". In German, we call it „Den Winter austreiben”, but no idea how it is said correctly in English (as you can figure out by now, I'm not very good in English). About Zdenek Vana's work about Slavic paganism, the municipal library of Prague has it: search.mlp.cz/cz/titul/svet-slovanskych-bohu-a-demonu/29072/#/getPodobneTituly=deskriptory-eq:9646-amp:key-eq:29072
@@Spinnradler Well, I'm far from Prague so it's kinda useless for me if it was there, but there's written (under the link you gave) that the book is not available in the library. (no idea why they have it listed there then), so... *shrugs*
Here in Serbia allot of things from old religion persist to this day. One of examples are first and last names and language. Vesna (goddess of spring and news) and (Sve)Vid (all seeing god, and god of heroism and possibly songs(art) and medicine) are common names, I've encountered people with last names Perunović (with ić on end meaning descendant of Perun) and Mokoš (goddess of womanhood and fertility), there are also words and sayings derived from names of gods. From Morana (goddess of winter and hunt): morati-to have to/must, zamor/umor-tiredness/fatigue, pomor-death, noćna mora-nightmare, or only mora-bothering/worry, smor-boredom/bothering(this might not be from derived Morana, I'm not sure); From Svevid: vid-sight, vidati-healing wounds(there is saying here in Serbia: healing wounds with song); Vesna(messenger goddess, associated with spring): vest-news/message(rarely used today), povest-history, vesnik-messenger; Jarovit(god of fury and aggression, might god Jarilo, god of spring and youth, but cannot be confirmed): jara-strong heat from fire, jarost-fury. Many curses/blessing start with ''da bog da''-''may god allow/give'' which comes from Daždbog, ''do zla/crnoga boga''-''to evil/black god'' for sending people to hell or literally sending them to Chernobog. And those would be few examples that I could think of right now.
Always look forward to these videos. Yes Slavic folklore and mythology is literally a whole new world to explore. Its so rich in old world beliefs. Great video
Love this! I'm of Slavic heritage and bring much of the Slavic traditions to my practice...my path tends to center around Mokosh ("Moist Mother Earth"), supreme Goddess of the Slavic pantheon. Thank you so much for this episode, and I'm happy to see the Slavic mythos getting more and more recognition after all this time (oh, and it looks like I REALLY need to check out The Witcher, ha)! 😊 Take care, Scarlet...Sława! 🤘🇵🇱 💗 #LoveLightBlessedBe ⛤
Don't worry it will be back in trend. It's being hyped in pop culture and all wanna bes and pretentious people will jump in. In their quest be unique and special they all end up looking like idiots. And wait for all hindu pagans who desperately wanna associated white white Europeans , be it through beliefs 🤣
I understand how you feel, i’m learning more about where i’m from and what they practiced (so slavic paganism) but i’m having a hard time finding things
I'm Half Polish and half German American...of course I know all about Germanic/Norse paganism....never thought of Slavic paganism...this was awesome. I know I'm not actually German or Polish...I'm American, but its still always nice to hear about my grandparents' ancestral history.....still got their blood, yuh know lol
@@xxo5294 The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture is a major new reference work that provides full, inclusive coverage of the major Indo-European language stocks, numerous entries on archaeological cultures having some relationship to the origin and dispersal of Indo-European groups -- as well as entries on some of the major issues in Indo-European cultural studies.
@@TheSeaPriestessAnnika i did not know that, i was speaking based on my university experience studying indo-european languages. my apologies. i just never heard about it referring to culture and always as a family of languages. you learn something new every day.
This is so great, I'm from Serbia, and I can confirm that our pagan coultur is so ritch, and thank you for taking time to talk about it, fun fact in our language word witch means 'vestica' , it is describe as dead half-demon women who can transfor to any animal, mostly as night mouth, and she can take the human hart out when they are asleep. Ps. I don't wanna be disrespectful or something, it's just a one of many intrasting things about our colture, and sorry for my bad grammar. 😬
I ja sam iz Srbije. Mi smo jedini hrišćanski Sloveni koji su zadržali skoro sve paganske običaje, samo smo ih "hrišćanizovali". Tu spadaju slava, badnjak, jedenje na grobljima(jako morbidna stvar), četrdesetodnevni pomen. Jedino je farbanje jaja došlo iz Nemačke. 😁
This is very timely, as I literally just began learning about Slavic mythology myself since my grandma is from Ukraine. I absolutely love the story of Vasilisa The Wise, and the interpretation of the tale found in Women Who Run With The Wolves. I even created a piece of artwork inspired by it! 💜
@@Ballin4Vengeance Funny enough, this movie is more famously known as "Jack Frost" to US viewers thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. What's weird is that the movie has very little to do with Grandfather Frost himself, as he's only in about the last half hour or so. With all that said, it's a delightful movie.
I'm from Bulgaria and we still do some of the rituals, even though most people are Christian. We indeed keep our roots in our culture. BTW Chernobog literally translates to 'black deity'
im bulgarian but despite doing lots of research, i still dont know which gods are worshipped in bulgaria. different regions have different beliefs right, so can you pls tell me? 😭
I've been growing interested in paganism, and I have always had a connection with Slavic history and culture, as my grandfather immigrated from Slovakia, so thank you for this
I worship a rare slovenian deity (seeing as i'm from slovenia) called Kurent. Nowadays kurents are just traditional costumes for pust, a spring welcoming tradition. But back in the day, Kurent was a god of wine and all things joyful. Think of him as a slavic Dionysus. There's many myths of him that were kept alive through folktales and I am very very overjoyed to be following his lead❤
Fun fact: The second most known Finnish word (after sauna) Perkele is derived from Perkwunos that is possibly the the origin of Perun too. Perkele is also a god of thunder although Ukko is more known name for Finnish god of thunder.
The origin of tue name Perun komes from the word Piorun (in polish but I belive it's similar in different slavic languages) that means thunder/lightning. He's atribute is a lightning so it fits
Thank you for talking about Slavic Paganism! I am of Slavic heritage and learning more about the traditions and practice has been important to me lately, besides folklore and mythology.
Thank you so much for this great video!! I’m Slavic myself and I come from Poland. Witcher is actually based on the book series of a Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski that is why there’s a lot of reference to Slavic mythology. I find that there’s actually quite a lot of information regarding Slavic mythology but it’s just written by Slavic authors so that information might not be that easy to find by others. I still have an entire list of books I want to read about my roots and ancestors 💕 Baba Jaga is an obvious one, my mom used to scare me when I was little if I wouldn’t eat 😂 there is also Rusałka, water nymphs that would torture people with dances and tickles. There’s Bobo which I remember my parents also scaring me when I was smaller. There are even lullabies and songs made about him. There is an entire book about Slavic mythology and traditions written in Polish though. Lots of information is kept in regional legends and myths as well as poems which I’m guessing is hard to find because of the language that they’re written in whether that being polish, russian or any other slavic language. But thank you for providing this information to others, this way others can acknowledge different cultures 💕
Я выросла в городе, но меня постили в живой русской традиции, правда в еë городском виде. Но это определило мой дальнейший интерес к родной культуре. Я прошла долгий путь. И сейчас вижу, что во-первых, славянская мифология не очень едина в силу разобщëнности еë носителей и что ей не хватает кодификации. В городе совсем иные условия и стиль жизни, и мы забыли что значат даже наши символы. В одно мы не утратили - веру в духов и магию, правда в городе духов не так много, как в деревне. Только это не означает, что город бездушен, вовсе нет.
I know there is a polish adaptation of the witcher Serie. I havent watched it myself, but a polish friend told me its close to the books unlike Netflixs. ❤
The Pagan History of the Slaves , are all embedded in todays' Slavic culture. In all the dance steps, patterns in weaving , pottery patterns , songs , farm behavior , in herbalism and much more.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do more on Slavic Paganism! I'm American and am looking for something to identify with. My family history is Russian and Lithuanian and there is no one near who practices paganism or knows about it.
Slavic mythology sounds very similar to Norse mythology. The forging hammer, the tree connecting the worlds, etc. It could be just northerner thought process.
Thats because both norse and slavic mythology were part of the same family; that is indo-european. Which means greek, roman, celtic, germanic, baltic, slavic and indo-aryan were one system of belifs at one point of that time. Slavic and nordic are just two branches of the same tree. Btw, slavic folklore is more similar to baltic rather than germanic.
Thank you for this video - as long time believer of slavic neopaganism I can say that this can be a really helpful video for all confused souls who just started to learn about our indigenous religion. There's a lot of information going around, which are dependent on (for example) the Slavic country that you are interested in and going deeper - from the region (because we have local deities too). Every country has a slightly different name of Gods or Goddesses and versions of creation myth. A lot of knowledge around can be untrue (even some books are a real bullcrap) and I think that the most reliable source of knowledge can be an actual smalltalk with someone who is actively preaching or is interested in ethnology or with an actual believer. Anyway, thanks for that wonderful and simple to understand form of video!
What bothers me during my reasearch is the current tendency of the Slavic countries to view the old religion (staroverye or rodnoverye) through excessive nationalistic attitude. Much as the Christian orthodoxy, Slavic paganism is also being oversimplified, turned into fantasy and fairytales, and used as a form of nationalist self glorification. In the Balkans area, scientific, historical and ethnological material in the native tongue is hard to find, and I was completely astonished to discover that there is an attempt by a group of local historians to dispute the very existence of female deities in Slavic paganism, and to claim that old Slavic societies were always strictly patriarchal, with female deities always playing a minor, rather irrelevant and insignificant role. It truly sounds like a few machos trying to corrupt and rewrite history! For someone who researches and collects books about the matter, the lack of authentic material, or projections and distortions of the original Slavic faith to fit the current political and societal currents is truly horrifying. I would be very glad for any input or comment, a link to good source of information etc. Thanks in advance and blessed be.
Aranyani Fox here in Poland this situation seems as bad as you said and a few things going around make this even worse. First we have around 70% active Catholics in which 80% of them claims to be orthodox or conservative (because we have mainly old society). The politicians base their ruling on religion so the most of media platforms are religious too. Second - there is a few groups of Slavic believers here that incorporate fascism, nacionalism and other bad things in their practics which is not good. Third - the media loves extreme stories so Christian/politocian media shows us as a group of satanists paganuses who are fascists too and dance around portrait of Hitle, non-Christian media thinks that we are nacionalists who are walking in parades of freedom and independance with Slavic swasticas on banners and flags. So the situation is not so good. But we are trying our best to show society that we are normal and mainly historical based faith, that we are not reconstructing old faith but practice and develop it (because religion is alive thing). And actually culture things (like traditional songs or Slavic mythology in games, movies or museums which are really popular among young people) are really helping with showing that „Devil is not as scary as they portrait him”.
Sadly most of the materials and sources is hard to find in my language too. Most of them is in Ukrainian or Russian. But there’s one book which spreaded worldwide and it’s called „Slavic mythology” by Aleksander Gieysztor
@@aldrazek You are describing what I see exactly! Slavs of Balkans have their own bloody history, of course, and the Orthodox church, which is not nearly as powerfull as the Catholic one, nevertheless has a very firm grip on both the politics and the masses. Rodnoverye is mostly practiced secretly, as paganism is still firmly associated with Devil worship and evil, and it's very name, pronounced as "pogan", is a synonym for dirty, foul and unclean. (Old people still use it to describe any kind of dirt). Nazis here mostly follow the medieval Christian customs and traditions, they call themselves knights, and their vision of the ideal world is a highly intolerant, very aggressive, very macho, very toxic society, in which women are property with no rights at all, physical abuse of wives, chilren, gay people and others is considered a must, conflicts and aggression are seen as true manhood etc, etc. It is not easy to talk about this to anyone... Thank you for replying, blessed be.
As a slavic pagan myself, you did great job of introducing our tradition to wider world (tho there is just so much that can fit one video). One of the fascinating things for me is how each slavic group kept one part of original traditions, and by looking at them you can restore all the rituals and practices. And by far my favorite slavic dieties are Jarilo, Kupalo, Lada and Mokosh
I'm curious to ask, is this practice closed to people only of Slavic nationalities, ethnicity, or those descended from those with Slavic nationalities or ethnicities?
@@daca8395 I have been very interested to learn about the old traditions and of Slavic paganism and you seem very knowledgeable. Is there any good videos or books in English you can recommend?
Glad I found your channel. I grew up near the polish and slovacish border. Some Slavic traditions were still in my home region and I had to learn russian in school. I love all the slavic countries and traditions and mythology and also the fairy tales (my mum used to watch them during Christmas season when Is as a kid). I love the symbolism and I will definitely look more into Slavic paganism. Thank you for the inspiration. Is the Witcher show that good ? I think I will have to watch it then 🤗. The pictures in your video are so beautiful. Thank you for giving this knowledge. I know two russian women which were taught by their grandmothers the old traditions and they work with the old gods and make soul horoscopes with the ancient symbols. I had it done and it was so amazing. Lots of greetings and blessings to you 💙💜 PS: Someone once told me that Baba Yaga was once a beautiful woman and was depicted as an ugly old one by Christianity. I am not sure if it is true. But as a kiddo watching the movies I think her house was creepy but also so cool - moving in 🐔 legs.
Hi, Ukraianian Pagan here who is always trying to learn more about my history. Thanks for covering slavic paganism! To answer your question, i love the goddesses: Mara and Makosh.
I was really annoyed when you said Europeans should not practice their indigenous faith but it appears you have changed your mind over the years. Glad you did! I just subscribed!
It's difficult to represent Slavic myth correctly due to how little of it was carried over to the new world, also because Slavs developed independently of each other ever since they migrated and because they were split into many tribes they all developed different myths for example some Slavs believe Perun to be the all father of Slavic myth while others believe it to be Svarog
My family lives in the USA but were originally from Yugoslavia (Montenegro in particular) I've been practicing my craft for over 10 years but only recently really started to hard-hit myself down on my own heritage. Thank you for this video!
Great video with lots of info that I need to look at more closely there's always more to learn. I have experienced some of the Slavic traditions when living in Poland and I am especially glad to hear that these is interest in rekindling the ancient traditions. It's very important to honor our past.
Polish gal here. Though my main path is Maoshan Daoist witchcraft and the most connection I feel towards Chinese and Japanese deities and energies, the name "Veles" appearing every now and again in my head recently made me consider following a bit of my own land's ancestor's spiritual beliefs... And researching on Veles and how he is as a Deity, I must admitt, I am more and more eager to make a contact. Thank You, miss 😍🖤
growing up in canada though i have heavy slavic roots i’ve always felt i’ve missed out. Whether it be knowing the languages, mythology and more. im happy to finally be getting to explore this part of me :)
Same. My dad never spoke to us in the 2 native Slavic languages he grew up with and it really robbed us kids of our heritage. I'm finding the faith now and it's so exciting.
It is so pleasant to see the video about Slawic mythology from American witch❤️I learn different monographs and scientific works about slawic mythology in Russian language. It is grumpy, but we have poorly information about it. Now a lot of misconceptions is distributed around slawic countries and, likely, in America also. For example, it is Book of Veles, slav-arias vedas. It is lie:( but it is distributed widely
Thanks for this video, it’s always nice to see that people are interested in slavic folklore. I am from Poland and it’s quite sad that I never felt connection with all of that slavic things :(
I just binge-watched that series! I had never before read any of the books or played any of the games. The series was a little confusing, since it has so many characters and goes back and forth in time. The thing I liked best? Slavic Paganism!
Lovely video I definitely enjoyed it and indeed I didn't really knew much about it apart from Baba Yaga and Slavic Hero, so thank you very much for bringing some light on the topic.
Fascinating subject and content Scarlet, two of my favorites books on Slavic myth are Black Earth by Andrew Paciorek and Forests of the vampire Slavic Myth, a Barnes & Noble book. Both really good sources for Slavic Myth and folklore.
The thing with slavic believes is that they can vary literally from village to village. At least in Poland (and some other countries) people lived in tribes. No one bothered to colonize us until christianity arrived and because of that believes from tribe to tribe could have major differences. I don't think there is a single or generalised way to describe the believes and mythology of slavic people as they can differ so drastically. I live in Poland and there can exist different versions of the same myth in a region.
I myself grew up in Russia (now live in the U.S.), and I would love to learn more about my roots. Like you said, there is unfortunately very little information available. I'd love to know what sources you used, so I can investigate further. I know very little about old deities, aside from Baba Yaga (which is in quite a few children's stories). I do however have a celebration I love that comes from the old pagan traditions and quite a few Russians still celebrate it. It is called "Maslenitsa" (I translate it as "Butter-Day"). I'm not sure when the original dates of the celebrations were, but after Christianity came to old Rus, the celebration was adapted to suit the needs of the Orthodox church. It now falls 8 weeks before the Orthodox Easter. It has become the Russian "fat Tuesday" when you're supposed to consume all the food you're not supposed to have during the Great Fasting period before Easter - so any animal products. From what I know, originally it was a celebration of the end of winter - there was still a lot of food, shared among friends and neighbors, lots of walking around and singing, jumping over a bonfire and burning an effigy of winter so spring may come in its stead. Quite a bit of this survives today - I remember burning a winter effigy as part of a Maslenitsa activities back in kindergarten; I remember seeing people dressed up in traditional clothing and singing songs on their balconies for everyone to hear; and of course there's always lots of delicious crape-like pancakes with different fillings of meat or sour cream, or caviar, or honey, etc. This is perhaps my favorite holiday of the year! I would love for you to do a bit more in depth video on whatever you find on Slavic paganism - any other traditions!
@@ScarletRavenswood I loved it. This creation story seems to be the story of a meteor hitting the earth and creating life. The tree that separates the earth and sea from the heavens is the atmosphere. The underworld energy that reacted with the debris from the egg would be lava. Super cool stuff.
I'm a part Polish American starting a TH-cam channel about growing up as a Slavic Pagan in Rural America. I wanted to thank you so much for making this video.
I was born in Russia and absolutely loved this video. My favorite is either Baba Yaga or Weles also Stribog is pretty boss. There is an on going debate about Chernbog actually regarding whether He should even be under the Dieties because of Christian influence o o I would love to see more in depth pieces thos is so cool
The situation is almost saved by so called two-faithness when orthodox church could not win the Slavic paganism completely but adopted Slavic holidays as their own. For example, Kupala's day, Kolyada's day, Maslennitsa, etc. There a lot of saints' lives when the most honored deal of an orthodox saint was to reveal false Christian celebrations and to protest against wild dances and diabolic music and songs (and that was much earlier the rock music invention which is called diabolic by modern priests). The Perun's day was celebrated as the Prophet Elijah's day, Veles was called as st. Vlasius or st. Nickolas, etc.
I recently started working with Slavic Deities. And I want to add something: Baba Yaga is actually goddess too, she chooses this form for some reasons. She’s goddess of regeneration and witchcraft and a lot of other things. But yeah she takes form of an old woman
Best video so far that I’ve found about this subject. I desperately want to know all about customs my ancestors may have had! I am half Ukrainian and was never told anything about how Ukrainians lived in the past.
I am second generation American on my mom's side I got into paganism after I found out that my great grandmother (from Czechoslovakia) was a pagan. My mom also told me that her mother spoke Czech but refused to teach her so I am learning it again.
This is a very well put together and researched video, but this is more eastern/southern slavic form of paganism. Western forms of paganism like those in Poland or Czechia, would follow Svetovid, as the "most powerful" god, with Czernobog and Belobog being its offspring, and again Perun, Veles and other gods and godesses being offspring of them. Characters like Rod and Svarog are only really present in Eastern and Southern Slavic areas.
Oh, I just KNEW that the Witcher would do a lot to spread interest in Slavic culture! ^__^ These are the books of my early youth, I read them at the beginning of high school (in year 2000). I'm a Slavic pagan and the deities closest to me are Dziedzilia (Polish goddess of love and family) and Jasz (AKA Perun, the thunder god). I also connect a lot with Nyja/Weles (lord of the underworld) and Marzanna (goddess of crops, dreams, death and winter). I actually made two long videos on Slavic pantheon, you can check it out if you're interested :) I'm Polish, so I use mostly Polish resources. Here's part 1 of the vid: th-cam.com/video/bMrztdhCpes/w-d-xo.html Cheers!
Just saying, that kikimora was totally reemagined, in slavic culture it is a house spirit, that look like rather ugly woman and live in cellar or behind the stove. Their functions in folklore isnt 100% defined, but in russian folkore specifically they been causing a sleep paralysis. Universe of Wicher is indeed based on slav miths, yet both Sapkowski (the author) and even more the Netflix crew, did not got everything according to the folklore and took quite a lot of creative liberty. We just need to remember, that even if Wicher universe is incredibly interesting, its not the best resource to gain knowledge about slavic mithology and folklore.(Plus Sapkowski is polish, so many folklore that is in place for polish slavs may not be the part of russian or ukrainian folklore)
I am Polish and I know pagan gods and beliefs, but this is the first time I have heard about the gods you mention, especially the one known in America. I don't know what sources you used, maybe they are the same gods, but with different names in a given country. In Poland, they are Perun, Veles, Swarożyc, Świętowid, Jutrzenka, Zorza, Dziwanna, Marzanna, Swaróg. Many traditions, Christianity adopted from the pagan tradition such such as the Christmas tree, All Souls' Day, the drowning of Marzanna, and old churches were built in places of power and holy places of pagans, characterized by high energy according to Bovis scale. And in Poland we have stone circles and installations 100 meters long that are older than the Egyptian pyramids, but the world knows little about them. There is a theory that the stone circles were also kind of TV sets where you could communicate and see what was happening on other continents in their circles. There are many places of power in Poland; the strongest chakra in Europe is in Krakow at the Wawel Castle, often visited by tourists from all over the world who do not realize where they are - they felt it most at the Gereon Chapel, but the Catholic Church prudently does not make this place accessible. And the second one is the sacred mountain of the Slavs - Ślęża, called the Slavic Olympus. There are sculptures there also related to the Celts; a bear, a maiden with a fish, a monk, and there was a solar cult.
Hello, That was fun, thank you! There are also the Wends of Germany which are often forgotten because Slaws/Wends were living in the area before the Germans (a new country) moved in and that is why some river and town names are Slav origin. Agricultural calendar also includes Venus also known as the morning star and evening star goddesses which relate to a cycle even the Mayans used for agriculture. The Kikuri, one of the names used for fellows dressed with horns is also used to scare away death, disease, all things bad. The custom related to the goddess Marzanna (in Polish), Marena (in Russian), Mara (in Ukrainian), Morana Morena (in Slovak and Macedonian) or Mora (in Bulgarian), you might recognize her as nightmare, did the same as the fellows with the horns, and in addition arises as Ziva or life in spring. There seems to be a layer of Gods depending on the age, the most ancient being also the word for earth or Zemia, Mother Earth whoes practices my grandparents followed. While my Wasp nieghbourhood swore on the bible we each eyed each other with disbelief and mirth because according to me, one cannot lie when holding the Earth. It is important not to mix up fantasy stories with mythologies. Nice touch going into Proto Indo European origin tales as some claim. Thanks again!
@@kishordas2300 Sanskrit is an Indo European language so you noticed one of the similarities!. There are a lot of videos on Indo European words in common, I've watched a few linguistic vids on Sanskrit Baltic and Sanskrit Slavic.
I am slavic from Poland. I must admit that very important is understanding that World was created by Weles and Perun (Świętowid/ depends from the region) toghether. And Weles is not clearly evil that perception was created by time by christianity.
Happy new year 🥳 so yeah Slavic paganism It’s More Folklore written on scrolls and Music < Beautiful music too and the old art tell that story it’s very fascinating
@@valeriesnyder2670 I obviously had a reason, bitch, I added it cos the show is crappy. If you consider someones opinion about a show being "slapped" then I don't envy you going through life being overly sensitive and offended by everything. Now fuck off 😂
It's not inspired it's adopted. Wiezdmin is translated to English as the Witcher and it's first and foremost a book series by Andrzej Sapkowski. The book series was adopted into 3 videogames with the same name the Witcher and into a Netflix series also called the Witcher. The books are of course the original but the games and series are quite amazing as well.
Не знаю что еще за Чернобог. Знаю что в основном поклонялись Перуну и Велесу. Их святилища были и в Киеве и в Новгороде до принятия христианства. Перун очень похож на Бога Молний у Викингов и балтийских племен.
The slawische newyear in Austria (more on the countryside like Burgenland or Tirol) Sounds like the Perchten (Perchtenlauf 'running' in Villages and scearing ppl..making Sound. Its Kind of throwing the winter Spirits (?)out (but without welcoming the spring Spirits...like Pagans would do) Its more a folk festival nowadays without any religios pagan background
Paganism was not a single mythology anywhere in Europe. Poets like Homer or Snorri compiled and made into one dozens of local myths ,Gods and beliefs. It was same with Slavs. Almost every tribe had its own Gods.
I think the only group in Europe that doesn't speak an Indo-European language are the Finno-Ugrik speakers, originally from the Urals, like the Finns - the Saami and Suomi. I have no Slavic in me but I'm recently interested in ancient Slavs as I have been in ancient Celts and Norse. The ancient, indeed prehistoric world produced a diverse and beautiful bouquet of cultures with so much to teach and inspire us. I hope something can be saved of them from the ever encroaching global mono-culture. We all need to protect our unique cultures.
I have fairly recent Slavic heritage so this is so cool to me! I have always been jealous of West Europeans whose ancient cultures have more known about them. I have no real connection to Western Europe (unless you count Germany) and I have no connection to American history as well since my family hasn't been here that long. My grandparents were the first generation born in the U.S. My family comes form Poland, Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia ( at the time).
I am Slavic, would it be disrespectful of me to hypothetically name myself after a Slavic god? I've seen a lot of discourse on this with Greek and roman pagans. I'm curious to see what you think
Let's be honest all people wanna know with slavic paganism because of its hype in pop culture. They so desperately wanna be unique that they end up looking like similar idiots
Baba Roga was and is a different character from Baba Jaga ( I think there's even a third Baba here with the Western Slavs). She is less developed that Jaga,who is known more for specific characteristics (such as chicken legs,ridding off , skulls for a fence, possiblity being 3 Jagas ect.) which Roga lacks.
You just unlocked a memory!I remember reading about Baba Yaga in a Russian fairytale( I think it was "Vasilisa the Wise",but not sure),where she mentions her two sisters,not by name.So one could be Baba Roga,which I'm familiar with,being a Serb,but what could the third one be called??
@@jovanapopovic1272 The Romanian woman who poisoned all those men?Yeah,she fits in pretty well,haha.I was hoping the tird sister would come from the West Slav folclore,to complete the family :)
As a Czech, I was quite surprised to not hear you mention Morana - the goddess of winter/death and Vesna - the goddes of spring. Growing up, they were pretty much the most talked about Slav gods around me. Probably for their link to "chasing out winter" and "the tradition of burning or drowning an effigy of Morana to celebrate the end of winter" - in my opinion basically Beltaine - happens only day apart and is celebrated the same way.
Thats what I thought too! We also burn/drown Morana/Marzanna. Also Vesna in poland is called Dziewanna (i like that it's similar to her sister Marzanna). Another goddes/god that I think is often talked about is Kupała as in the Kupala's night. And of corse Mokosz for harvest festivals.
Hi Iliene, I'm definitely wanting to make some more videos that dive deeper into Slavic Paganism. I'd love to make a video on Morana & Vesna and the traditions surrounding them. :)
@@ScarletRavenswood I will be looking forward to it :3
@@oliwiadykiel3362 I' did not know Vesna is related to Dziewanna. Vesna means viesen, or spring whereas Dzievanna's origins are more complex. May I ask where you learned about this?
@@ScarletRavenswood pls make another video about slavic paganism bcs i think thats my path - im serbian btw.
I’m a baby witch living in Canada. My parents are from Serbia and Croatia. So I really want to incorporate Slavic traditions in my practice.
Serbs were orthdox for 800yrs bruh
same !
@@dadaddy4296 As were many cultures :) But all stemmed from pagan roots before Christianity/abrahamic religions were introduced. Many Christians continued to practise their traditions alongside Christianity. You can believe in any religion and practice witchcraft :)
I'm a witch living in England but my mother's ancestry comes from Russia and my father's from Latvia and Poland :)
@@dadaddy4296 Slavic people have been around a lot longer than 800 years...
As a pagan Pole I have to say that it sure is a very basic material, but it is really nice to see that people from other countries are interested in our folklore and traditions.
Greetings from Poland ❤
Slava!
Im swedish, and thank to the belarus border crisis I have become interested in slavic people and paganism just in the last couple days hehe :) Bless Poland!
@@audhumbla6927
Yeah. I'm actually pretty terrified with the situation on the border.
Polish goverment sucks.
They plan to make a fence on the border that will also go through the Białowieża Forest (which is the primeval one). It's obvious that if they do it, that ecosystem will be ruined.
Also they basically made abortion illegal and one woman died because of that. When her life was in danger and the baby had low (but not zero) chance to survive the doctors didn't do anything to help her.
Im an ethnically polish American, looking to connect to my roots through spirituality. Doing some personal research, but your comment compelled me to ask you if you have any specific resource recommendations? Much appreciated if you feel inclined to respond ❤
@@diabel_hejdasz this is so helpful, thank you so so much, I look forward to going through the links you gave me! Luckily I have family members who speak polish, and even know a little myself, so getting things translated won't be too difficult! Thanks again
@@ibbitysnoosni
My pleasure :>
I am Slavic and whenever I start to explore about old religion,I become soo angry at those who christianized the land. I MEAN, WHYYYY???
Why did Muslims spread their religion into Egypt? Why did the greeks spread their beliefs to Italy? Why did the Chinese spread theirs to Korea and Japan? Religions spread, either willingly or forcefully. This applies to any and every belief, so long as it lives long enough to get big enough.
@@michaelplays8134 when it happen in an natural and peaceful way it's ok, but when by force and violence (just like it was with the christians and muslims), it's not simply ok or acceptable. Please just don't defend it.
Probably there are problems among the christianizations which occured with annihilating indigenous customs, but coexistence and developing together.
Our people wanted it they asked to be christianized out of political reasons
@@mladenkorsticthey were also being mass slaughtered in crusades
Yo Poland here, just wanted to say that the slavic myths believes and even Gods are very different depending on the region. For example I live in a region where we don't belive in Czernobóg or Białobóg. That's it, just throwing it out there.
Love the video tho ❤️
Hej! ja tesz jestem z polskie, urodzona w angli i szukam sie zapoznac z polska religia -czy maszjakies ksaczki kture polecasz? (napewno napisalam dluzo bleduw- ale mam nadzeje ze rozczytasz
You believe in Perun?
Same in Russia - we don't have Chernobog.
Rod, Svarog, Jarilo, Mara (Morena) and Mokosh, Hors, Dazhbog, Veles and Perun exists there, but nothing about cherno- or belobog.
Is this pantheon similar to polish?
You made it sound like we still believe in those gods xDD
@@szczypior2714 I heard European paganism is in revival
I'm from Czech Republic. It's very hard to find literally anything about Slavic mythology even here, as you mentioned original religion was heavily supressed by Christians, though it somewhat survived as old customs and also in fairytales. But it's hard to find some more detailed informations about gods and all. Where did you get your information for this video?
What about the Morana or Smrtka? Or is this only a tradition in the rural regions? The sholar Zdenek Vana is an authority about Slavic mythology and paganism (he is Czech btw).
@@Spinnradler I'm not quite sure what do you mean - are you asking if tradition involving Morana/Smrtka is common or something? I think that "vynášení Morany/Smrtky" (carrying Smrtka out (no idea if this is expression used when talking about it in english)) is not commonly performed nowadays, like in every town/village or so, but it's definitely well-known and there are still occasions when this is done (like during programs in our Wallachian Open-Air museum), but maybe there are some places (rather small towns or villages I guess) when it's still done as a public event (if I could say so).
I think Zdenek Vana is one of the authors I heard about on internet and tried to search for some book by him but didn't find any.
@@TheIlwin Yes, I was speaking about the "vynášení Morany/Smrtky". In German, we call it „Den Winter austreiben”, but no idea how it is said correctly in English (as you can figure out by now, I'm not very good in English).
About Zdenek Vana's work about Slavic paganism, the municipal library of Prague has it: search.mlp.cz/cz/titul/svet-slovanskych-bohu-a-demonu/29072/#/getPodobneTituly=deskriptory-eq:9646-amp:key-eq:29072
BTW, Czech is such a beautiful language. Well actually, all Slavic languages!
@@Spinnradler Well, I'm far from Prague so it's kinda useless for me if it was there, but there's written (under the link you gave) that the book is not available in the library. (no idea why they have it listed there then), so... *shrugs*
Here in Serbia allot of things from old religion persist to this day. One of examples are first and last names and language. Vesna (goddess of spring and news) and (Sve)Vid (all seeing god, and god of heroism and possibly songs(art) and medicine) are common names, I've encountered people with last names Perunović (with ić on end meaning descendant of Perun) and Mokoš (goddess of womanhood and fertility), there are also words and sayings derived from names of gods.
From Morana (goddess of winter and hunt): morati-to have to/must, zamor/umor-tiredness/fatigue, pomor-death, noćna mora-nightmare, or only mora-bothering/worry, smor-boredom/bothering(this might not be from derived Morana, I'm not sure);
From Svevid: vid-sight, vidati-healing wounds(there is saying here in Serbia: healing wounds with song);
Vesna(messenger goddess, associated with spring): vest-news/message(rarely used today), povest-history, vesnik-messenger;
Jarovit(god of fury and aggression, might god Jarilo, god of spring and youth, but cannot be confirmed): jara-strong heat from fire, jarost-fury.
Many curses/blessing start with ''da bog da''-''may god allow/give'' which comes from Daždbog, ''do zla/crnoga boga''-''to evil/black god'' for sending people to hell or literally sending them to Chernobog.
And those would be few examples that I could think of right now.
Always look forward to these videos. Yes Slavic folklore and mythology is literally a whole new world to explore. Its so rich in old world beliefs. Great video
Glad you like the video! I definitely plan on continuing to learn more about Slavic Paganism, it's super fascinating. :)
Love this! I'm of Slavic heritage and bring much of the Slavic traditions to my practice...my path tends to center around Mokosh ("Moist Mother Earth"), supreme Goddess of the Slavic pantheon. Thank you so much for this episode, and I'm happy to see the Slavic mythos getting more and more recognition after all this time (oh, and it looks like I REALLY need to check out The Witcher, ha)! 😊 Take care, Scarlet...Sława! 🤘🇵🇱
💗 #LoveLightBlessedBe ⛤
I'm so glad you liked the video! I'm also really happy to see that Slavic Paganism has been getting more recognition. :)
The places Mokozin (Czech Republic) and Muuks (Eastern Germany) are believed to be connected with Mother Mokosh.
Dude polish people have been Christian since 966, literally before the invention of the number 1000
Christianity killed off so many cultures and their beliefs. I wish these old religions were more popular. It's our history.
We make them more popular every day! There are lots of opagans all over europe! We will rise again! Bless the Slavs for showing the way!
It’s getting more popular.
I know! It's depressing. The church just stamped everything out wherever they went.
Don't worry it will be back in trend. It's being hyped in pop culture and all wanna bes and pretentious people will jump in. In their quest be unique and special they all end up looking like idiots. And wait for all hindu pagans who desperately wanna associated white white Europeans , be it through beliefs 🤣
I understand how you feel, i’m learning more about where i’m from and what they practiced (so slavic paganism) but i’m having a hard time finding things
I'm Half Polish and half German American...of course I know all about Germanic/Norse paganism....never thought of Slavic paganism...this was awesome. I know I'm not actually German or Polish...I'm American, but its still always nice to hear about my grandparents' ancestral history.....still got their blood, yuh know lol
I love comparing the indo-European cultures and seeing how they are all related and have so many similarities.
Yes, It's a super fascinating subject :)
It's also fascinating how many differences they have.
I’m being annoying but Indo-European is a language family, not a group of cultures ;)
@@xxo5294 The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture is a major new reference work that provides full, inclusive coverage of the major Indo-European language stocks, numerous entries on archaeological cultures having some relationship to the origin and dispersal of Indo-European groups -- as well as entries on some of the major issues in Indo-European cultural studies.
@@TheSeaPriestessAnnika i did not know that, i was speaking based on my university experience studying indo-european languages. my apologies. i just never heard about it referring to culture and always as a family of languages. you learn something new every day.
This is so great, I'm from Serbia, and I can confirm that our pagan coultur is so ritch, and thank you for taking time to talk about it, fun fact in our language word witch means 'vestica' , it is describe as dead half-demon women who can transfor to any animal, mostly as night mouth, and she can take the human hart out when they are asleep.
Ps. I don't wanna be disrespectful or something, it's just a one of many intrasting things about our colture, and sorry for my bad grammar. 😬
I ja sam iz Srbije. Mi smo jedini hrišćanski Sloveni koji su zadržali skoro sve paganske običaje, samo smo ih "hrišćanizovali". Tu spadaju slava, badnjak, jedenje na grobljima(jako morbidna stvar), četrdesetodnevni pomen. Jedino je farbanje jaja došlo iz Nemačke. 😁
@@lukadjedovic1317 ja sam skroz prešao na staru veru,i ne kajem se, poštujem sve ali ja se iskreno osećam punije ovako pozz
@@LumenInTenebris Neka je sa srećom!😁😎
@@lukadjedovic1317 hvala brate
@@lukadjedovic1317 da bi da se svi slaveni ujedine vece srece nebi bilo
This is very timely, as I literally just began learning about Slavic mythology myself since my grandma is from Ukraine. I absolutely love the story of Vasilisa The Wise, and the interpretation of the tale found in Women Who Run With The Wolves. I even created a piece of artwork inspired by it! 💜
I'm actually reading Women Who Run With Wolves for my book club right now! I also love the story about Vasilisa The Wise :)
Just to add; Baba Yaga is also described, more often than not, to fly in a mortar and pestle in which she grinds the bones of naughty children
Check out Морозко. A russian movie.
The witch flies in a mortar and paddles with a broom
@@Ballin4Vengeance Funny enough, this movie is more famously known as "Jack Frost" to US viewers thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. What's weird is that the movie has very little to do with Grandfather Frost himself, as he's only in about the last half hour or so. With all that said, it's a delightful movie.
@@Dovah21 Here it’s broadcasted every Christmas on national television multiple times
I'm from Bulgaria and we still do some of the rituals, even though most people are Christian. We indeed keep our roots in our culture. BTW Chernobog literally translates to 'black deity'
Same in poland (drowning of marzanna, harvest festivals etc) .
I thought of Czarnobóg translation more like black God, but black diety is similar.
In serbian, it would be crni bog(black god or deity) 😅
Greetings from Serbia to my Slavic cousins. 😘
And we don't have chernobog in russian tradition.
im bulgarian but despite doing lots of research, i still dont know which gods are worshipped in bulgaria. different regions have different beliefs right, so can you pls tell me? 😭
zdravei :))
i az sam ot bulgaria
I've been growing interested in paganism, and I have always had a connection with Slavic history and culture, as my grandfather immigrated from Slovakia, so thank you for this
I worship a rare slovenian deity (seeing as i'm from slovenia) called Kurent. Nowadays kurents are just traditional costumes for pust, a spring welcoming tradition. But back in the day, Kurent was a god of wine and all things joyful. Think of him as a slavic Dionysus. There's many myths of him that were kept alive through folktales and I am very very overjoyed to be following his lead❤
Hi, where do you find tales, myths and stories about slavic Gods, those that are existent?
Fun fact: The second most known Finnish word (after sauna) Perkele is derived from Perkwunos that is possibly the the origin of Perun too. Perkele is also a god of thunder although Ukko is more known name for Finnish god of thunder.
The origin of tue name Perun komes from the word Piorun (in polish but I belive it's similar in different slavic languages) that means thunder/lightning. He's atribute is a lightning so it fits
No its origin of estonian god Perkunos
also Lithuanian Perkunos
In Polish Perun, both mean thunder.
Thank you for talking about Slavic Paganism! I am of Slavic heritage and learning more about the traditions and practice has been important to me lately, besides folklore and mythology.
Thank you so much for this great video!! I’m Slavic myself and I come from Poland. Witcher is actually based on the book series of a Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski that is why there’s a lot of reference to Slavic mythology. I find that there’s actually quite a lot of information regarding Slavic mythology but it’s just written by Slavic authors so that information might not be that easy to find by others. I still have an entire list of books I want to read about my roots and ancestors 💕 Baba Jaga is an obvious one, my mom used to scare me when I was little if I wouldn’t eat 😂 there is also Rusałka, water nymphs that would torture people with dances and tickles. There’s Bobo which I remember my parents also scaring me when I was smaller. There are even lullabies and songs made about him. There is an entire book about Slavic mythology and traditions written in Polish though. Lots of information is kept in regional legends and myths as well as poems which I’m guessing is hard to find because of the language that they’re written in whether that being polish, russian or any other slavic language. But thank you for providing this information to others, this way others can acknowledge different cultures 💕
Я выросла в городе, но меня постили в живой русской традиции, правда в еë городском виде. Но это определило мой дальнейший интерес к родной культуре. Я прошла долгий путь. И сейчас вижу, что во-первых, славянская мифология не очень едина в силу разобщëнности еë носителей и что ей не хватает кодификации. В городе совсем иные условия и стиль жизни, и мы забыли что значат даже наши символы. В одно мы не утратили - веру в духов и магию, правда в городе духов не так много, как в деревне. Только это не означает, что город бездушен, вовсе нет.
I know there is a polish adaptation of the witcher Serie. I havent watched it myself, but a polish friend told me its close to the books unlike Netflixs. ❤
The Pagan History of the Slaves , are all embedded in todays' Slavic culture. In all the dance steps, patterns in weaving , pottery patterns , songs , farm behavior , in herbalism and much more.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do more on Slavic Paganism! I'm American and am looking for something to identify with. My family history is Russian and Lithuanian and there is no one near who practices paganism or knows about it.
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I have been very eagerly anticipating this video since you asked us about it! Blessed be! 🖤🌞
15 years old serbian pagan Here,glad that i learned about Our religion and belifs as young,im proud of myself,May Perun give you strenght all
We need to thank to Sapowski for creating WITCHER Geralt. Witcher is example/proof how Slavic folklore can presented in pop culture/media.
Slavic mythology sounds very similar to Norse mythology. The forging hammer, the tree connecting the worlds, etc. It could be just northerner thought process.
Thats because both norse and slavic mythology were part of the same family; that is indo-european. Which means greek, roman, celtic, germanic, baltic, slavic and indo-aryan were one system of belifs at one point of that time. Slavic and nordic are just two branches of the same tree. Btw, slavic folklore is more similar to baltic rather than germanic.
@@Imperiusism there was also a migration period in the 6th century into Slavic territory by Varangians, who brought Norse culture with them
Thank you for this video - as long time believer of slavic neopaganism I can say that this can be a really helpful video for all confused souls who just started to learn about our indigenous religion. There's a lot of information going around, which are dependent on (for example) the Slavic country that you are interested in and going deeper - from the region (because we have local deities too). Every country has a slightly different name of Gods or Goddesses and versions of creation myth. A lot of knowledge around can be untrue (even some books are a real bullcrap) and I think that the most reliable source of knowledge can be an actual smalltalk with someone who is actively preaching or is interested in ethnology or with an actual believer. Anyway, thanks for that wonderful and simple to understand form of video!
What bothers me during my reasearch is the current tendency of the Slavic countries to view the old religion (staroverye or rodnoverye) through excessive nationalistic attitude. Much as the Christian orthodoxy, Slavic paganism is also being oversimplified, turned into fantasy and fairytales, and used as a form of nationalist self glorification. In the Balkans area, scientific, historical and ethnological material in the native tongue is hard to find, and I was completely astonished to discover that there is an attempt by a group of local historians to dispute the very existence of female deities in Slavic paganism, and to claim that old Slavic societies were always strictly patriarchal, with female deities always playing a minor, rather irrelevant and insignificant role. It truly sounds like a few machos trying to corrupt and rewrite history! For someone who researches and collects books about the matter, the lack of authentic material, or projections and distortions of the original Slavic faith to fit the current political and societal currents is truly horrifying. I would be very glad for any input or comment, a link to good source of information etc. Thanks in advance and blessed be.
Aranyani Fox here in Poland this situation seems as bad as you said and a few things going around make this even worse. First we have around 70% active Catholics in which 80% of them claims to be orthodox or conservative (because we have mainly old society). The politicians base their ruling on religion so the most of media platforms are religious too. Second - there is a few groups of Slavic believers here that incorporate fascism, nacionalism and other bad things in their practics which is not good.
Third - the media loves extreme stories so Christian/politocian media shows us as a group of satanists paganuses who are fascists too and dance around portrait of Hitle, non-Christian media thinks that we are nacionalists who are walking in parades of freedom and independance with Slavic swasticas on banners and flags. So the situation is not so good. But we are trying our best to show society that we are normal and mainly historical based faith, that we are not reconstructing old faith but practice and develop it (because religion is alive thing). And actually culture things (like traditional songs or Slavic mythology in games, movies or museums which are really popular among young people) are really helping with showing that „Devil is not as scary as they portrait him”.
Sadly most of the materials and sources is hard to find in my language too. Most of them is in Ukrainian or Russian. But there’s one book which spreaded worldwide and it’s called „Slavic mythology” by Aleksander Gieysztor
@@aldrazek You are describing what I see exactly! Slavs of Balkans have their own bloody history, of course, and the Orthodox church, which is not nearly as powerfull as the Catholic one, nevertheless has a very firm grip on both the politics and the masses. Rodnoverye is mostly practiced secretly, as paganism is still firmly associated with Devil worship and evil, and it's very name, pronounced as "pogan", is a synonym for dirty, foul and unclean. (Old people still use it to describe any kind of dirt). Nazis here mostly follow the medieval Christian customs and traditions, they call themselves knights, and their vision of the ideal world is a highly intolerant, very aggressive, very macho, very toxic society, in which women are property with no rights at all, physical abuse of wives, chilren, gay people and others is considered a must, conflicts and aggression are seen as true manhood etc, etc. It is not easy to talk about this to anyone... Thank you for replying, blessed be.
Baba yaga is pronounced with an emphasis on the last "a" in "yaga." So instead of "baba yAga," you'd say "baba yagA."
(I'm a native russian speaker :)
Not necessarily. I'm from Slovenia and we say it as yAga :)
Not in every Slavic language, in Serbian it's baba yAga.
пиздишь)
@@иваниваныч-ю2р , у нас вроде баба Яга
And because of that it sounds more like Yiga.
Polish male witch 🧙♂️ here and am proud of my Pagan roots.
Hey there, I’m a Russian Wiccan, and my surname is literally Perun.
As a slavic pagan myself, you did great job of introducing our tradition to wider world (tho there is just so much that can fit one video).
One of the fascinating things for me is how each slavic group kept one part of original traditions, and by looking at them you can restore all the rituals and practices.
And by far my favorite slavic dieties are Jarilo, Kupalo, Lada and Mokosh
Jarilo all the way!!! (I'm Croatian)
I'm curious to ask, is this practice closed to people only of Slavic nationalities, ethnicity, or those descended from those with Slavic nationalities or ethnicities?
@@l.k.5996 it is open to everyone, as long as one is respectfull of cultures it came from
@@daca8395 I have been very interested to learn about the old traditions and of Slavic paganism and you seem very knowledgeable. Is there any good videos or books in English you can recommend?
Are you a Slavic pagan I wish I could be a Slavic pagan To be part of my heritage 🇭🇷
As a proud Polish American Pagan, I was super excited to see The Witcher, absolutley LOVED it
I love Slavic culture. The Witcher books and video games definitely got me interested in Slavic culture.
Unlike the show that is tryng to erase every letter in the word Slavic in that show.
Glad I found your channel. I grew up near the polish and slovacish border. Some Slavic traditions were still in my home region and I had to learn russian in school. I love all the slavic countries and traditions and mythology and also the fairy tales (my mum used to watch them during Christmas season when Is as a kid). I love the symbolism and I will definitely look more into Slavic paganism. Thank you for the inspiration. Is the Witcher show that good ? I think I will have to watch it then 🤗. The pictures in your video are so beautiful. Thank you for giving this knowledge.
I know two russian women which were taught by their grandmothers the old traditions and they work with the old gods and make soul horoscopes with the ancient symbols. I had it done and it was so amazing.
Lots of greetings and blessings to you 💙💜
PS: Someone once told me that Baba Yaga was once a beautiful woman and was depicted as an ugly old one by Christianity. I am not sure if it is true. But as a kiddo watching the movies I think her house was creepy but also so cool - moving in 🐔 legs.
th-cam.com/video/uKbuFYd468w/w-d-xo.html
yesss so glad i found this, i was raised polish with my polish adopted mother and have been fascinated with this
Hi, Ukraianian Pagan here who is always trying to learn more about my history. Thanks for covering slavic paganism! To answer your question, i love the goddesses: Mara and Makosh.
I'm from england a Englishman a pagan guy love to the pagan community across Europe and worldwide
Very nice background theme music, well put together, thank you for sharing the information you found.
I was really annoyed when you said Europeans should not practice their indigenous faith but it appears you have changed your mind over the years. Glad you did! I just subscribed!
that bottle candle holder is NICE!!!
Thanks :)
It's difficult to represent Slavic myth correctly due to how little of it was carried over to the new world, also because Slavs developed independently of each other ever since they migrated and because they were split into many tribes they all developed different myths for example some Slavs believe Perun to be the all father of Slavic myth while others believe it to be Svarog
My family lives in the USA but were originally from Yugoslavia (Montenegro in particular) I've been practicing my craft for over 10 years but only recently really started to hard-hit myself down on my own heritage. Thank you for this video!
I am studying slavic philology and i am so impressed by the level of research you have done, beautifully made, thank you very much!
Thanks for sharing. My grandmother was Polish and it's great to learn more about my ancestors beliefs x
I was born on kupala night and named after the holiday which was what initially got me curious in Slavic paganism and mysticism.
Great video with lots of info that I need to look at more closely there's always more to learn. I have experienced some of the Slavic traditions when living in Poland and I am especially glad to hear that these is interest in rekindling the ancient traditions. It's very important to honor our past.
Polish gal here. Though my main path is Maoshan Daoist witchcraft and the most connection I feel towards Chinese and Japanese deities and energies, the name "Veles" appearing every now and again in my head recently made me consider following a bit of my own land's ancestor's spiritual beliefs... And researching on Veles and how he is as a Deity, I must admitt, I am more and more eager to make a contact. Thank You, miss 😍🖤
Thanks for sharing. I enjoy your videos as you have such a positive energy. Also, I love the candles.
growing up in canada though i have heavy slavic roots i’ve always felt i’ve missed out. Whether it be knowing the languages, mythology and more. im happy to finally be getting to explore this part of me :)
Same. My dad never spoke to us in the 2 native Slavic languages he grew up with and it really robbed us kids of our heritage. I'm finding the faith now and it's so exciting.
I appreciate the summary you gave. Slava! - From a Slavic Pagan
Thanks! :)
I came here after I searched for slavic folk music (I love that!) and just wanted to say that you give off the warmest and nicest vibes
Wow. I had no idea about any of this. So cool. That St Francis , Santa looking god with all the animals and the underworld looks awesome!
It is so pleasant to see the video about Slawic mythology from American witch❤️I learn different monographs and scientific works about slawic mythology in Russian language. It is grumpy, but we have poorly information about it. Now a lot of misconceptions is distributed around slawic countries and, likely, in America also. For example, it is Book of Veles, slav-arias vedas. It is lie:( but it is distributed widely
That was my disappointment as well. Unfortunately many racist texts are being distributed in the US based on it.
Thanks for this video, it’s always nice to see that people are interested in slavic folklore. I am from Poland and it’s quite sad that I never felt connection with all of that slavic things :(
I just binge-watched that series!
I had never before read any of the books or played any of the games. The series was a little confusing, since it has so many characters and goes back and forth in time.
The thing I liked best? Slavic Paganism!
Yes! I definitely hope they make a season 2. :)
Lovely video I definitely enjoyed it and indeed I didn't really knew much about it apart from Baba Yaga and Slavic Hero, so thank you very much for bringing some light on the topic.
Fascinating subject and content Scarlet, two of my favorites books on Slavic myth are Black Earth by Andrew Paciorek and Forests of the vampire Slavic Myth, a Barnes & Noble book. Both really good sources for Slavic Myth and folklore.
Yay I get to learn more about my culture and religion :)
I started watching The Witcher series today. It is pretty good. Solid swordplay choreography. Skaal from Maine.
The thing with slavic believes is that they can vary literally from village to village. At least in Poland (and some other countries) people lived in tribes. No one bothered to colonize us until christianity arrived and because of that believes from tribe to tribe could have major differences. I don't think there is a single or generalised way to describe the believes and mythology of slavic people as they can differ so drastically. I live in Poland and there can exist different versions of the same myth in a region.
I myself grew up in Russia (now live in the U.S.), and I would love to learn more about my roots. Like you said, there is unfortunately very little information available. I'd love to know what sources you used, so I can investigate further. I know very little about old deities, aside from Baba Yaga (which is in quite a few children's stories).
I do however have a celebration I love that comes from the old pagan traditions and quite a few Russians still celebrate it. It is called "Maslenitsa" (I translate it as "Butter-Day"). I'm not sure when the original dates of the celebrations were, but after Christianity came to old Rus, the celebration was adapted to suit the needs of the Orthodox church. It now falls 8 weeks before the Orthodox Easter. It has become the Russian "fat Tuesday" when you're supposed to consume all the food you're not supposed to have during the Great Fasting period before Easter - so any animal products. From what I know, originally it was a celebration of the end of winter - there was still a lot of food, shared among friends and neighbors, lots of walking around and singing, jumping over a bonfire and burning an effigy of winter so spring may come in its stead. Quite a bit of this survives today - I remember burning a winter effigy as part of a Maslenitsa activities back in kindergarten; I remember seeing people dressed up in traditional clothing and singing songs on their balconies for everyone to hear; and of course there's always lots of delicious crape-like pancakes with different fillings of meat or sour cream, or caviar, or honey, etc. This is perhaps my favorite holiday of the year!
I would love for you to do a bit more in depth video on whatever you find on Slavic paganism - any other traditions!
Some of my family were born in Prussia. Does Prussia even exist anymore
Баба яага это киану риивс,я думал
@@zm-lw1zf :))
@Lokalu Kaldorei gilakowski
@Lokalu Kaldorei i have several born in Poland and a few in Prussia. They only spoke polish.
Konstantine Gilakowski
Thank you for this.
I love the creation story!
Glad you liked the video :)
@@ScarletRavenswood I loved it.
This creation story seems to be the story of a meteor hitting the earth and creating life.
The tree that separates the earth and sea from the heavens is the atmosphere. The underworld energy that reacted with the debris from the egg would be lava.
Super cool stuff.
I'm a part Polish American starting a TH-cam channel about growing up as a Slavic Pagan in Rural America. I wanted to thank you so much for making this video.
What's the name of the channel?
Do you have any book recommendations for slovic folklore/mythology. I've been searching for a long while for my heritage and it's spiritual practices.
Awesome video! I love your calming energy ✨ so soothing
Thanks! :)
I was born in Russia and absolutely loved this video. My favorite is either Baba Yaga or Weles also Stribog is pretty boss. There is an on going debate about Chernbog actually regarding whether He should even be under the Dieties because of Christian influence o o I would love to see more in depth pieces thos is so cool
The situation is almost saved by so called two-faithness when orthodox church could not win the Slavic paganism completely but adopted Slavic holidays as their own. For example, Kupala's day, Kolyada's day, Maslennitsa, etc. There a lot of saints' lives when the most honored deal of an orthodox saint was to reveal false Christian celebrations and to protest against wild dances and diabolic music and songs (and that was much earlier the rock music invention which is called diabolic by modern priests). The Perun's day was celebrated as the Prophet Elijah's day, Veles was called as st. Vlasius or st. Nickolas, etc.
I recently started working with Slavic Deities. And I want to add something: Baba Yaga is actually goddess too, she chooses this form for some reasons. She’s goddess of regeneration and witchcraft and a lot of other things. But yeah she takes form of an old woman
Yes! Baba Yaga is super fascinating. I did a whole video about her: th-cam.com/video/twsqjlphfMc/w-d-xo.html
Best video so far that I’ve found about this subject. I desperately want to know all about customs my ancestors may have had! I am half Ukrainian and was never told anything about how Ukrainians lived in the past.
word Ukraine appeared recently, literally 200 years ago
i have czech roots and i feel very drawn to slavic paganism. i hope to learn about it.
I am second generation American on my mom's side I got into paganism after I found out that my great grandmother (from Czechoslovakia) was a pagan. My mom also told me that her mother spoke Czech but refused to teach her so I am learning it again.
goood luck from czech republic!! 😊
I’m looking into other pagan paths before going to wicca
This is a very well put together and researched video, but this is more eastern/southern slavic form of paganism. Western forms of paganism like those in Poland or Czechia, would follow Svetovid, as the "most powerful" god, with Czernobog and Belobog being its offspring, and again Perun, Veles and other gods and godesses being offspring of them. Characters like Rod and Svarog are only really present in Eastern and Southern Slavic areas.
Rod is Rudr in Vedic religion
Thank you for explaining! I'm a voodooist and I'm very fascinated with Slavic paganism! Plus I think you're very cute
I'm a full blown Slavic Pagan. It's a beautiful religion.
Oh, I just KNEW that the Witcher would do a lot to spread interest in Slavic culture! ^__^ These are the books of my early youth, I read them at the beginning of high school (in year 2000).
I'm a Slavic pagan and the deities closest to me are Dziedzilia (Polish goddess of love and family) and Jasz (AKA Perun, the thunder god). I also connect a lot with Nyja/Weles (lord of the underworld) and Marzanna (goddess of crops, dreams, death and winter).
I actually made two long videos on Slavic pantheon, you can check it out if you're interested :) I'm Polish, so I use mostly Polish resources.
Here's part 1 of the vid: th-cam.com/video/bMrztdhCpes/w-d-xo.html
Cheers!
Just saying, that kikimora was totally reemagined, in slavic culture it is a house spirit, that look like rather ugly woman and live in cellar or behind the stove. Their functions in folklore isnt 100% defined, but in russian folkore specifically they been causing a sleep paralysis. Universe of Wicher is indeed based on slav miths, yet both Sapkowski (the author) and even more the Netflix crew, did not got everything according to the folklore and took quite a lot of creative liberty. We just need to remember, that even if Wicher universe is incredibly interesting, its not the best resource to gain knowledge about slavic mithology and folklore.(Plus Sapkowski is polish, so many folklore that is in place for polish slavs may not be the part of russian or ukrainian folklore)
I am Polish and I know pagan gods and beliefs, but this is the first time I have heard about the gods you mention, especially the one known in America. I don't know what sources you used, maybe they are the same gods, but with different names in a given country. In Poland, they are Perun, Veles, Swarożyc, Świętowid, Jutrzenka, Zorza, Dziwanna, Marzanna, Swaróg. Many traditions, Christianity adopted from the pagan tradition such such as the Christmas tree, All Souls' Day, the drowning of Marzanna, and old churches were built in places of power and holy places of pagans, characterized by high energy according to Bovis scale. And in Poland we have stone circles and installations 100 meters long that are older than the Egyptian pyramids, but the world knows little about them. There is a theory that the stone circles were also kind of TV sets where you could communicate and see what was happening on other continents in their circles. There are many places of power in Poland; the strongest chakra in Europe is in Krakow at the Wawel Castle, often visited by tourists from all over the world who do not realize where they are - they felt it most at the Gereon Chapel, but the Catholic Church prudently does not make this place accessible. And the second one is the sacred mountain of the Slavs - Ślęża, called the Slavic Olympus. There are sculptures there also related to the Celts; a bear, a maiden with a fish, a monk, and there was a solar cult.
Hello, That was fun, thank you! There are also the Wends of Germany which are often forgotten because Slaws/Wends were living in the area before the Germans (a new country) moved in and that is why some river and town names are Slav origin. Agricultural calendar also includes Venus also known as the morning star and evening star goddesses which relate to a cycle even the Mayans used for agriculture. The Kikuri, one of the names used for fellows dressed with horns is also used to scare away death, disease, all things bad. The custom related to the goddess Marzanna (in Polish), Marena (in Russian), Mara (in Ukrainian), Morana Morena (in Slovak and Macedonian) or Mora (in Bulgarian), you might recognize her as nightmare, did the same as the fellows with the horns, and in addition arises as Ziva or life in spring. There seems to be a layer of Gods depending on the age, the most ancient being also the word for earth or Zemia, Mother Earth whoes practices my grandparents followed. While my Wasp nieghbourhood swore on the bible we each eyed each other with disbelief and mirth because according to me, one cannot lie when holding the Earth. It is important not to mix up fantasy stories with mythologies. Nice touch going into Proto Indo European origin tales as some claim. Thanks again!
Jiva means life in Sanskrit
@@kishordas2300 Sanskrit is an Indo European language so you noticed one of the similarities!. There are a lot of videos on Indo European words in common, I've watched a few linguistic vids on Sanskrit Baltic and Sanskrit Slavic.
I am slavic from Poland. I must admit that very important is understanding that World was created by Weles and Perun (Świętowid/ depends from the region) toghether. And Weles is not clearly evil that perception was created by time by christianity.
Happy new year 🥳 so yeah Slavic paganism It’s More Folklore written on scrolls and Music < Beautiful music too and the old art tell that story it’s very fascinating
The Witcher is based on a very famous polish book (Wiedzmin). Much better than that crappy show.
@@valeriesnyder2670 I obviously had a reason, bitch, I added it cos the show is crappy. If you consider someones opinion about a show being "slapped" then I don't envy you going through life being overly sensitive and offended by everything. Now fuck off 😂
I’ve read all the books.... I highly doubt you have.
And the show isn’t crappy at all. It’s actually pretty decent.
It's not inspired it's adopted. Wiezdmin is translated to English as the Witcher and it's first and foremost a book series by Andrzej Sapkowski. The book series was adopted into 3 videogames with the same name the Witcher and into a Netflix series also called the Witcher. The books are of course the original but the games and series are quite amazing as well.
Perun is basically where they got Thor..as the Germanic tribes moves north I believe.
Slavic shamanism and witchraft is interesting too
Polish here!
Не знаю что еще за Чернобог. Знаю что в основном поклонялись Перуну и Велесу. Их святилища были и в Киеве и в Новгороде до принятия христианства. Перун очень похож на Бога Молний у Викингов и балтийских племен.
The slawische newyear in Austria (more on the countryside like Burgenland or Tirol) Sounds like the Perchten (Perchtenlauf 'running' in Villages and scearing ppl..making Sound. Its Kind of throwing the winter Spirits (?)out (but without welcoming the spring Spirits...like Pagans would do) Its more a folk festival nowadays without any religios pagan background
Paganism was not a single mythology anywhere in Europe. Poets like Homer or Snorri compiled and made into one dozens of local myths ,Gods and beliefs. It was same with Slavs. Almost every tribe had its own Gods.
I like Chernagag more now because of my snake 🐍 dragon tattoos 😎
I think the only group in Europe that doesn't speak an Indo-European language are the Finno-Ugrik speakers, originally from the Urals, like the Finns - the Saami and Suomi. I have no Slavic in me but I'm recently interested in ancient Slavs as I have been in ancient Celts and Norse. The ancient, indeed prehistoric world produced a diverse and beautiful bouquet of cultures with so much to teach and inspire us. I hope something can be saved of them from the ever encroaching global mono-culture. We all need to protect our unique cultures.
Well, the basque is a non-indo-european language and it is in europe too.
@@caomunistadoggo4129 I also forgot about Hungarian.
I have fairly recent Slavic heritage so this is so cool to me! I have always been jealous of West Europeans whose ancient cultures have more known about them. I have no real connection to Western Europe (unless you count Germany) and I have no connection to American history as well since my family hasn't been here that long. My grandparents were the first generation born in the U.S. My family comes form Poland, Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia ( at the time).
"..many of whom who have.." 😂😭
I am Slavic, would it be disrespectful of me to hypothetically name myself after a Slavic god? I've seen a lot of discourse on this with Greek and roman pagans. I'm curious to see what you think
Excellent video .
Thanks! :)
Those pictures at the end look exactly like the movie Midsommar lol
Girls in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus likes to spent wreaths at the river. It is a method to foretells
Thank you 😊
Let's be honest all people wanna know with slavic paganism because of its hype in pop culture. They so desperately wanna be unique that they end up looking like similar idiots
Everybody is talking about baba Yaga but what about baba Roga?
Аах Баба Рога се сеќавам на тоа од детството.
Поздрав 🇲🇰🌻
Baba Roga was and is a different character from Baba Jaga ( I think there's even a third Baba here with the Western Slavs).
She is less developed that Jaga,who is known more for specific characteristics (such as chicken legs,ridding off , skulls for a fence, possiblity being 3 Jagas ect.) which Roga lacks.
You just unlocked a memory!I remember reading about Baba Yaga in a Russian fairytale( I think it was "Vasilisa the Wise",but not sure),where she mentions her two sisters,not by name.So one could be Baba Roga,which I'm familiar with,being a Serb,but what could the third one be called??
@@tvojaprababa I couldn't find it on the internet, but I like to think it's Baba Anujka
@@jovanapopovic1272 The Romanian woman who poisoned all those men?Yeah,she fits in pretty well,haha.I was hoping the tird sister would come from the West Slav folclore,to complete the family :)