Pagan Slavic gods - by Masianis Andrzej
I have been reading about the pagan slavic religions from before christianity. Under way I found these. Polish artist Masianis Andrzej (see his Deviant-art profile here) has made some fine interpretations of the pagan Slavic gods and mythological creatures. The drawings are inspired by the beautiful xylographies by Doré
Weles
Leszy
Planetnik (Demon Storm)
Wodnik (Aquarius)
Rusałka
Marzanna
Perkun
Rusa
łka :)Ah, thanks. I updated it.
That is some powerful work, he needs to come on steemit and steal all the votes . I'd like to see little descriptions of the gods with the pictures
Yes, powerfull drawings...
The thing is that there aren't much knowledge of the original Slavic gods. Unlike our Asa-gods and your Kalevala, nothing is written down. The part of Saxo Grammaticus's Danish History were he tells about the attack on Arkona on Rügen are one of the best sources and only to the God Svantevit.
Some of these, Rusałka for example, is more like our Nisse, Joulupukki, Nøkke etc. A kind of mermaid.
Ah of course, that is unfortunate. Näkki is something that i just barely remember from stories, yet it still manages to haunt my imagination sometimes.
Then you should probably not watch this:
Made by Swedish student from the animation school in Viborg, Denmark.
haha that's awesome! they don't look as bad as i imagined
Actually there's quite a lot of information about Slavic deities - but I find it rather interesting that I've not heard some of the ones mentioned above - must be western Slavic mythology.
Rusalka means mermaid in Bulgarian, btw. Perun is one of the main deities (not Perkun, as illustrated above). Tangra is another major god on Slavic mythology.
There's also a mix of Slavic and Nordic mythology - for example, Odin's axe, Mjolnir, sounds like molnyia (Russian) or malniya (Bulgarian) - words, which literally mean lightning.
Hmm, seems I can't reply to your latest answer, but I can to this???
I can't read it at all - but thanks anyway :) I like the sound of most slavic languages, but can say not much more than yes, no and vodka. I guess that I might have to leave my chair and bicycle to the library sometimes soon to quench my thirst for knowledge. Maybe I write a post about my findings... that is if I find anything.
Tsk, vodka... Rakia is what you really want to learn to say! :D
Oh, Perun, yes, a spelling mistake - i will fix it.
As for the slavic deities there are some information of course. What I meant was that there are almost nothing in writing, and mostly from Christian scholars like Saxo. We know the name Perun, but not many stories of what Perun did, in that way he is like older Scandinavian gods like Tyr. But there are archaeological sources and surviving pagan folklore, just like in Scandinavia, and I have had a hard time finding that kind of information, probably because a lot of it is in cyrillic and languages that i do not master. So if you have or find some sources to all this I would be very interested :)
And, yes it is true that there is a strong connection between Slavic and Northern people. Northerners was part of the earliest Slavic monarchies, and there was a lot of trade on the eastern rivers.
There is a somewhat comprehensive list of Slavic deities in Bulgarian - I've actually stumbled on long articles on the topic, but I'm not certain how useful they'd be without a proper translation. If you are really invested in this topic, I can find more information and hook you up with a professional translator. Otherwise, the Wikipedia link should prove useful enough :)
Hmm. Seems the edit button has disappeared? So it has to be Perkun for the time being...