The Mythology of All Races/Volume 3/Slavic/Part 2/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
OTHER DEITIES
IN addition to the deities mentioned above, the names of other divinities of the Elbe Slavs have come down to us, although we possess no details concerning them.
Pripégala is mentioned in a pastoral letter of Archbishop Adelgot of Magdeburg in 1108,[1] where he is compared with Priapus and Baal-peor (the Beelphegor of the Septuagint and Vulgate).[2] This comparison, however, seems to have no foundation except the similar sound of the syllables pri and p(h)eg.
The idol Podaga is mentioned by Helmold,[3] while the names of Turupid, Pisamar (Bešomar?), and Tiernoglav (Triglav?) occur in the Knytlingasaga.[4]
The Elbe Slavs worshipped goddesses as well as gods, and Thietmar not only states[5] that the walls of the temples in Riedegast (Radgost) were adorned with various figures of deities both male and female, but elsewhere[6] he tells how the Lutices angrily resented an affront done to a goddess. The only female divinity actually mentioned by name, however, is Siva (=Živa, "the Living"), the Žywie of Polish mythology, whom Helmold[7] calls goddess of the Polabians.
- ↑ Cited by A. Brückner, in ASP vi. 220–22 (1882).
- ↑ Priapus was a Graeco-Roman deity of fertility who was represented in obscene form and worshipped licentiously; for Baal-peor cf. Numbers xxv. 1–5, Hosea ix, 10, as well as Numbers xxxi. 16, Revelation ii. 14.
- ↑ i. 83.
- ↑ cxxii. Leger, Mythologie, p. 22, regards Tiemoglav as an error for *Carnoglovy ("Black-Headed").
- ↑ vi. 17.
- ↑ ib. vii. 47.
- ↑ i. 52.