Lord Doctor Olle W
Spirituality & Religious StudiesPerun
In Slavic mythology, Perun is the highest god of the pantheon & the god of the sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, law, war, fertility, & oak trees. His other attributes were fire, mountains, wind, iris (the flower), eagle, firmament, horses & carts, & weapons (hammer, axe (Axe of Perun), & arrow).
The supreme god in the Kievan Rus’ during the 9th-10th centuries, Perun was first associated with weapons made of stone & later with those of metal. The Kievan Ris’ (a.k.a. Kyivan Rus’) was the 1st East Slavic state & later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century. It encompasses a variety of peoples, including East Slavic, Norse, & Finnic.
The Primary Chronicle relates that in the year 6415 (907 AD) Prince Oleg (Old Norse: Helgi) made a peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire & by taking his men to the shrines & swearing by their weapons & by their God Perun, & by Volos, the God of cattle, they confirmed the treaty.
In 980, when Prince Vladimir the Great came to the throne of Kiev, he erected statues of 5 pagan gods in front of his palace which he soon thereafter discarded after his Christianization in 988.
Perun was chief among them, represented with a silver head & a gold moustache. Vladimir’s uncle, Dobrynya, also had a shrine of Perun established in his city of Novgorod. After the Christianization of Kievan Rus’ this place became a monastery, which continued to bear the name of Perun.
Perun was worshipped by the Varangian (Scandinavian) warriors hired by Oleg & Igor during the campaigns against Byzantium. In the treaty of 971, the Varangians reenforce with the Slavic deity, Veles.
When the arrival of Christianity, the old gods fared poorly amongst the Slavs. Grand prince Vladimir the Great, who had once been a very vocal & lavish patron of Perun, converted to Christianity.
In 988, the prince & his family & people of the Kievan Rus’ were collectively baptized. He ordered that the statues of Perun which he himself had erected formerly, be dethroned, torn down with great dishonor & dragged through the streets as they were beaten with sticks. The idols were then cast into rivers & not permitted to land on the shore. 3 of Vladimir’s sons are also recognized as saints.
In neopaganism interpretation, the struggle of St. George with the serpent is understood as the struggle of Perun with Veles, who stole cows from him.
According to the book Dezionization by Valery Yemelyanov, 1 of the founders of the Russian neopaganism, in the ideas of the “Veneti” (“Aryans”), there was a “trinity of three triune trinites”: Prav-Yav-Nav, Svarog-Perun-Svetovid, Soul-Flesh-Power.
In some currents, Perun may be the supreme patron god. Since 1992, the 1st neopagan Kupchinsky Temple of Perun has been in St. Petersburg.
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Daniel Dvorkin
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