Mythologies are elusive, intangible, complex, malleable and ever-changing. Slavic mythology is no exception. Therefore, please note that there are many perspectives and many versions of the native faith stories.

The mythology of the ancient Slavs is made further opaque by the fact that there are almost no original written records of their beliefs and practices. Most of the traditions and stories that we know today were passed orally down across the centuries. The rest comes from archaeological finds, old chronicles written by those who came into contact with the Slavs.

Among them are reports by Byzantium missionaries who came to convert the Slavs to Christianity, Arab merchants who traveled through the region in search of trade, and recollections of philosophers who traveled here in the pursuit of wisdom. One of the oldest records that we do have is the account of the Greek historian scholar Procopius. In his description of on-going tribes in Europe, he mentions tribes of people living on the continent’s Central and Eastern plains who worship a thunder god and believe rivers to be home to elemental nymphs.

Some material can also be extracted from an anonymous Slav epic ‘The Tale of Igor’s Campaign’. The only surviving manuscript is dated to the 15^th century.

Due to the lack of systematic codification of past ways and more than a millennium between us and the pre-Christian Slavic world, it is difficult to confirm facts. This also means that there are many versions of deities circulating today. The many takes on Slavic goddesses alone are a case in point.

There is a beauty to the lack of tangible evidence. The void allows the myths and stories to be alive and evolving, rather than to be statically pinned down on paper. A good proportion of the records that exist were produced by the Church and therefore tainted by a mostly dogmatic Christian propaganda.

We would like stipulate that the stories, legends and myth presented here do not aspire to be the only original truth. The account we provide is based on the known information as found through our research. Where gaps or discrepancies were encountered, we reached into the universal story-line that threads through European native-faith (pagan) traditions, such as Norse and Celtic, as well as Greek and Roman, in search for commonalities in mythology to address the silences. Where we could not find any, we reached into the vaults of the works of great scholars like Joseph Campbell to decode the lore.

Just as there are many species of rose, there are many offshoots of stories and the names of gods and goddesses vary greatly as per region, language and country – although their core archetype remains the same.

Please bear this in mind as you read through the provided material. We encourage you to tap into your own intuition and do as our ancestors did - take what resonates and add, tweak and polish it to make it your own while retaining its essence. This is how our ancestors intended their knowledge to be transferred – it was to be lived (embodied) and not just read.

By doing so you are continuing their legacy.