Svarog

Svarog (Church Slavonic: Сваро́гъ, Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian Cyrillic, Serbian Cyrillic and Ukrainian: Сварог, Polish: Swaróg) is a Slavic deity known primarily from the Hypatian Codex, which contains a Slavic translation of the Chronicle of John Malalas. Svarog is there identified with Hephaestus, the god of the blacksmith in ancient Greek religion, and as the father of Dažbog, a Slavic solar deity.[2] On the basis of this text, some researchers conclude that Svarog is the Slavic god of celestial fire and of blacksmithing.

For Serbian metal band, see Svarog (band).
Svarog
Celestial fire and blacksmithing
Personal information
ChildrenDažbog
Greek equivalentHephaestus
Roman equivalentVulcan
Hands of Svarog - symbol used by modern Rodnovers[1]

Name etymology

Aleksander Brückner derived the deity's name from the word “swar” ("anger", "quarrel", but also "brilliance", "sunlight", "heat, swelter from the sun"). There are also numerous Indo-European language similarities (Sanskrit svár - heaven / paradise, Persian χvar - sun) and reconstructed pre-Slavic * sъvariti - forging, casting, molding something hot.

The traces of pre-Christian cult of Svarog/ Swaróg are in numerous place names, such as Greater Poland Swarzędz, Pomeranian Swarożyn south of Gdańsk, or Polabian Swarzyn (now German Schwerin), Czech Svarov, Svařeň, as well as taboo forms of the name of the deity present in such place names as Twarożna Góra in Poland, Tvarožná in Czech Moravia, Tvarožná in Slovakia, or Tvarog - castle ruins in Dobrova, near Krško in Styria, Slovenia.

Swaróg's sons are Swarożyc, Dażbóg, Perun and Weles. There are also hypotheses recognizing Swarożyc and Dażbóg as his personifications.

Swarożyc, Svarožič are patronyms created by adding the suffix "-yc", "-ič" to the name Svarog, Swaróg, and changing the phoneme "g" to "ż", "ž", according to Slavic grammar rules - indicating descendants of Swaróg. Redigost, worshiped in Radgosc, Mecklemburg was also reported in medieval sources as Swarożyc, Svarožič.

Swaróg was compared by Roman Jakobson to a Raróg bird, a flame-eyed falcon, which would be one of his taboo names. According to other hypotheses, he was a divine blacksmith, father of other gods and creator of the Sun who is in heaven, and is an idle god (Deus otiosus).

Sources

The only mention of Svarog comes from the Hypatian Codex, a 15th-century compilation of several much older documents from the Ipatiev Monastery in Russia. It contains a Slavic translation of an original Greek manuscript of John Malalas from the 6th century. The complete passage, reconstructed from several manuscripts, translates as follows:

(Then) began his reign Feosta (Hephaestus), whom the Egyptians called Svarog… during his rule, from the heavens fell the smith’s prongs and weapons were forged for the first time; before that, (people) fought with clubs and stones. Feosta also commanded the women that they should have only a single husband… and that is why Egyptians called him Svarog… After him ruled his son, his name was the Sun, and they called him Dažbog… Sun tzar, son of Svarog, this is Dažbog.

In the Greek text, the names of gods are Hephaestus and Helios. Apparently, the unknown Russian translator tried to re-tell the entire story (set in Egypt) by replacing the names of classical deities with those that were better known to his readers.[3] It is uncertain to what extent the Greek gods were thought to resemble their Slavic counterparts.

Furthermore, this passage has raised quite a few theories about family relations between Slavic gods. If one assumes that Svarog was believed to be Dažbog's father, the question arises of his relation with Svarožič, another deity who is mentioned as a god of fire and war in several other medieval documents describing the beliefs of pagan Slavs. Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov proposed a reconstruction of this mythical genealogy, claiming that Svarog, a deity of fire and the forge similar to the Greek Hephaestus, had two sons: Dažbog, who represented the fire in sky (i.e., the Sun), and Svarožič, who symbolised the flame on earth, in the forge.[3] Henryk Łowmiański, however, theorised that Svarog was a Slavic sky god and personification of daylight sky itself, possibly a continuation of Proto-Indo-European *Dyēus Ph2ter, while Svarožič and solar Dažbog were one and the same deity, although he concluded that two other aspects of Svarožič also existed: fiery Svarožič, as in the Sun (mentioned in Russian medieval manuscripts), and lunar Svarožič, associated with the Moon.[4] Franjo Ledić, on the other hand, simply assumed that Svarog and Dažbog are one and the same god.[5]

Eastern Slavic sources also mention Svarožič as a deity, there associated with fire. According to Thietmar of Merseburg, Svarožič (transcribed by him in a Latin text as Zuarasici into Old High German phonology) was worshipped by a tribe of Ratars in the city of Ridegost (Rethra).[6]

The word Svarog is cognate with the Sanskrit words Swaraj and Svarga.

Notes
  1. Grzegorzewic, Ziemisław (2016). O Bogach i ludziach. Praktyka i teoria Rodzimowierstwa Słowiańskiego [About the Gods and people. Practice and theory of Slavic Heathenism] (in Polish). Olsztyn: Stowarzyszenie "Kołomir". p. 57. ISBN 978-83-940180-8-5.
  2. Jakobson 1985, p. 26.
  3. Vitomir Belaj, Hod kroz godinu, mitska pozadina hrvatskih narodnih vjerovanja i obicaja, Zagreb, 1998.
  4. Henrik Lovmjanjski, Religija Slovena. Beograd, 1996.
  5. Franjo Ledić, Mitologija Slavena, vol. I, Zagreb, 1970.
  6. Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon Thietmari, pp. 336–337
gollark: The dolphins are secretly controlled by the European Parliament, everyone knows that...
gollark: Though I personally dislike the sun more. It's annoyingly bright, and makes it hard to see my phone screen out doors.
gollark: Using nice filenames for my meme library was such a great decision, since I can find and upload a particular meme in just a few second now.
gollark: Fair, fair.
gollark: Yes, and that's often "regular people's" stuff being invested in bulk.

References
  • Belaj, Vitomir (1998). Hod kroz godinu, mitska pozadina hrvatskih narodnih vjerovanja i običaja. Zagreb.
  • Ledić, Franjo (1970). Mitologija Slavena. I. Zagreb.
  • Lovmjanjski, Henrik (1996). Religija Slovena. Beograd.
  • Thietmar of Merseburg. Kronika Słowian., pp. 336–337 (Latin and Polish)
  • Jakobson, Roman (1985). "Linguistic Evidence in Comparative Mythology". In Stephen Rudy (ed.). Roman Jakobson: Selected Writings. VII: Contributions to Comparative Mythology: Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110855463.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Further reading
  • Graves (intro.), Robert (1987) [1959]. New Larousse Encyclopedia Of Mythology (Hardcover ed.). Crescent Books.
  • Ryan, W. F. (September 1998). The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia. Magic in History Series (Paperback ed.). Pennsylvania State University Press.
  • Yoffe, Mark; Krafczik, Joseph (April 2003). Perun: The God of Thunder. Studies in the Humanities. 43 (Hardcover ed.). New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang Publishing.
  • Znayenko, Myroslava T. (1980). The gods of the ancient Slavs: Tatishchev and the beginnings of Slavic mythology (Paperback ed.). Slavica.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.