Old Serbian Deities

Once the Serbs used to practice paganism full of many deities. Their religion was linked to the nature, the countryside and its phenomena. There are few reliable sources that say about worship of old Serbian and Slavic deities in general. Scholars cannot even agree on what deity was the supreme one in the old Slavic religion.  Ones say it was Perun, the creator of fire and thunder; others say it was Dabog, a god of the underworld, of the dead; and again, some say it was Triglav, a Serbian version of Trajan. Among other gods in Serbs there was Svarog, a god od sun, the creator of the Universe and all the gods, also called the supreme one. His wife was Vida, a goddess, a mother, protectress of a family.  A legend says that, upon Vida’s request, Svarog made the first man from an oak tree, naming him Dubravko and his wife Ljubljenica. Svetovid – of four heads, represented as an idol, a statue, consisting of four deities:  Perun, Svarog, Lada and Vida, facing the four sides of the world, embracing the whole world – the upper one (spiritual), the earthly one (of man), and the lower one (the netherworld). Lada is the goddess of summer and love, Veles, or Voloh, is the protector of herdsmen and farmers, Triglav is the warrior god, also known as Troglav, Jabučilo, Trojan and Trajan, while Radgost is the god of hospitality, having two heads, one watching over a guest, the other over the household.

HISTORY

The Byzantine records on Christianisation of Serbs in the Neretva river region from 873 say that their greatest temple was devoted to Svetovid.