Slavic mythology is super fucking weird

It’s best described as “if Greek and Hindu mythology had a one night stand and let their kid (Slavic mythology) be raised by Norse mythology.”

Say you die. No big deal, you just find your way to the world tree. If you were super good, Triglav, the three-headed and the guardian of the tree sends you to chill with the “white” gods in Prav but if you were normal, down to Nav you go.

Ok, you were normal. So you end up in Nav, now what? You are confronted with the “stinking river”, Styx with another name. Smorodina. So you wanna cross it to get the afterlife. Cool.. cool.There’s no way to cross the river.

If you don’t manage to cross the river, reincarnation. If you drown in the river, reincarnation. You have be sneaky about. There is a bridge that only few can find, it’s guarded by a beast though so you’ll have to fight your way in. Maybe you can get some birds to fly you over? A god might like you and sneak you over?? Who knows?

Still there is no normal way over and death become a challenge. Like I said super fucking weird

Like the king of the gods (in Prav, aka the heavens) is named Perun and he is the god of thunder (and lightning) as well as the god of war. But that’s where the similarities with zeus end. (Perun’s father Svarog, god of protection, though, he slept with Everyone)

He’s super loyal (and in love) to his wife, Dodola/Dodol who is both the goddess of rain and the god of air (They could be divine twins but evidences points to Dodola just having a male form, don’t worry, all the cool slavic gods were both male and female.)

But (we don’t have a lot of myths on them because motherfucking christians are super annoying) Veles/Velas, the god of cattle and ruler of the underworld, was also in love with Dodola/Dodol so he (he’s mostly in his male form) kidnapped their kid, Yarilo and raised him in the underworld.

Can you imagine your son is kidnapped and when you finally get him back, he’s the beautiful god of peace, spring and fertility and (in some versions) with a pretty underworld wife aka Vesna aka The goddess of spring and they, together with Stribog, god of wind, go to battle every year to bring about the spring. (That’s why spring is so weird because there is a war going on between Yarilo, Vesna and Stribog against Marzanna, the goddess of winter and (her gf (my headcanon)) Veliona, goddess of death and warden of souls)

Dope shit.