Crnobog

Crnobog, or Чернобог as his very name shows, is Slavic black god – god of darkness and winter deity. Slavs believed that cold, famine, poverty, illness originated from this god.

The holiday of Korochun was devoted to him at the winter solstice longest night of the year 21st to 22nd December. Cernobog was respected as all the other gods. He was considered equal to other gods of the pantheon.

In some South Slavic v...

Gamayun The Prophetic Bird

Gamayun is a symbol of wisdom and knowledge, a talking bird who foretells the future and tells fortunes. Its name is derived from the Russian word “gam” or “kam”, meaning “noise”, hence are the words “kamlat” (i.e. to perform shamanistic rituals) and “shaman”. In the Belorussian language the word “gamanits” means “to speak, to talk”.

Like the Sirin and the Alkonost, the Gamayun is normally ...

World Tree

The World Tree is a universal symbol of the different planes of existence. Common to many mythologies and religions is the concept of a World Tree whose roots reach down to the underworld and whose branches reach up to heaven.

The Norse have Yggdrasil, The Meso-Americans have the ceiba tree. Buddhist have the Bodhi tree, a tree under which Gautam Buddha meditated and gained enlightenment. Judeo-Christian beliefs...