Gods, demons and customs of the ancient Slavs

Siwa( Żywia ) - your lady of life, birth and healing

One of the goddesses of the Slavic pantheon of deities was Siwa (Żywia), which the 12th-century German historian Helmond from Bozów in Wargia considered to be the oldest and the first among the gods of the Slavs from the Elbe region (Obrzyczan). She was also called there as a lady of life, birth and healing. Jan Długosz ( 1415 - 1480 ) also mentions her other Lechite name ( Żywia, Żywie ), as a deity of life, worshipped on Polish lands. According to the legends, she was also supposed to be the goddess of fertility and birth.Legendary Wanda - Princess Vistula - in some stories is associated with the cult of Żywia. It was on her mound (the Wanda Mound) that bonfires were burned on Pentecost in the 19th century, partly cultivating the pagan tradition of the Festival of the Borderlands (Kupala), which is very strongly associated with the ritual of fertility and fertility.

Today we can compare the Night of Shopping to Valentine's Day, but the Slavs celebrated this special night in a slightly different way. The most important thing is that Kupał Nocka (in later times the name of the holiday was changed to Sobótka) was celebrated on the night from 21 to 22 June. Ash and birch wood was used for ritual fire gnashing, and some sources speak of oak. Around the bonfire dances were performed and jumped over the fire. In the campfire, straw puppets called Mary, floral pony heads or a straw wheel resembling the Sun and herbs were burned to ensure fertility and fertility. Girls threw wreaths with candles lit into the rivers. Young women gossiped wreaths of flowers and magical herbs, clipped into them burning arches and in a collective ceremony with singing and dancing entrusted the wreaths to the waves of rivers and streams.

If the garland was caught by a bachelor, it meant her getting married quickly. If it was swimming, the girl would get married, but not quickly. If it burned, drowned, or entangled in a sieve, it is likely that she will become an old maiden. In this way, selected young people could be associated in pairs without images of custom, without exposing themselves to malicious comments or ridicule. That night they were even allowed to move away from the community together and take a lonely walk in the forest, which could end "differently".

On the occasion of this walk, young girls and young boys searched for fern flowers in the wetlands, which foretold a good fortune. At dawn, they returned to the bonfires that were still on fire, to jump over the flames while grazing on the mugwort, holding hands. The jump ended with a ritual of passing through water and fire, and on that one day in a year of its time it was similarly a ritual of marrying.

In addition to jumping by fire and looking for the fern flower, during the night of Kupala, various fortune-telling, very often related to love, were also held to help us to know the future. They were forsaken in complete silence from field flowers and water in wells, forsaken from camomile and wild elderberry flowers, savory, chives, the seven-year-old bush of a feline, mugwort and other plants and signs. It was also widely believed that people taking part in Saturday's celebrations would live in happiness and abundance throughout the year.Legends about the fern flower, also known as the perunar flower, are known from various legends and have survived to this day in some places. They tell the story of many people who have wandered through forests and wetlands, trying to find a magical fern flower, which is visible only in a moment, endowed with wealth, strength and wisdom. Getting the plant was not easy - it was guarded by visible and invisible ghouls, making a terrible rumble as soon as someone tried to get closer to the perunar flower.

According to beliefs, watercourses, watercourses and utopias, and most of the other water demons liked to start taking a summer-hungry people who unreasonably take a bath before the night of Kupala. It was only after this holiday that bathing in the waters became relatively safe. Later, these beliefs were reflected in the consecration of water on St. John's Eve on 23-24 June, which as a consequence was to chase away evil powers and officially open the bathing season (hence probably another later connection between the figure of John the Baptist and the Kupala night.

The Catholic Church in Poland, unable to uproot from the pagan Saturday, derived from Slavic beliefs, attempted to assimilate the holiday with Christian rituals. The merchants of the patron saint of John the Baptist were given a Kupala, and they even started to call him Kupala, because he was baptized in the form of a ritual bath in the Eastern rite. As a result of Christianization, attempts were also made to move the celebration of the Kupala Night to the period of May Pentecost. Finally, the feast began to be celebrated at night on 23 and 24 June under the name of St. John's Eve, then closer to their original date, on the specially established for this purpose 23 June Christmas Eve of St. John, known as St. John's Night.

Food was to be worshipped, among others, in the south of today's Poland. It is believed that the Hill of the Cross in the Sudetes was one of the places of worship of this goddess. Until the eighteenth century rituals were held here, during which sexually motivated ritual practices were carried out, while fertility and vitality are the domain of Nutrition. In order to counteract pagan worship, at the foot of the mountain in the years 1734-1735 a chapel was erected under the characteristic intercession of St. Onufry - the patron saint of marriage. The procedure of covering the symptoms of faith with Christian narration was widely used by the Church.