Chasing Scholars

Question: So, I'm really happy about your Bogovi pantheon--I'm really interested in Slavic folklore, so I just wanted you guys to know that you rock! That being said, I noticed in your write up of Veles that he doesn't have Earth or Water as associated, and I was just sort of curious. I always thought that Veles was sort of a cthonic deity, as the opposite of Perun. What's the reasoning behind that? Thanks!

Ooh, Veles. Batten down the hatches, because I love talking about Veles.

Doing anything with Slavic mythology is sort of a journey through the corridors of reconstructionism; there's so little information left on them, due to conquering, lack of written record, heavy Christianization and the fact that they're spread over a huge geographical area and had a lot of local variations on the same themes, that you have to sift a great deal of third- and fourth-hand information and read a lot of theories, and then try to piece something coherent together from all the rubble. Since they're popular with modern pagan religious practitioners, you also have to dodge the many modern myths of those practices as they often have no basis in Slavic folklore at all. Some gods are easier to pin down than others, but Veles, being one of the most popular, is also one of the craziest to try to figure out.

He definitely is cthonic, in the sense that he is an underworld god and has little to do with most of the celestial Bogovi who swan about in their world tree. I've never been a fan, however, of giving all underworld gods Earth just because they're hanging out under it; true, some, like Hades, clearly need to have it as they are actually linked with the earth in some way, but for most the earth is the domain of a different figure, usually an earth or mother goddess (for the Slavs, Mokosh, beloved old Moist Mother Earth, or the less well-known Pripalega). Veles is definitely a down-there kind of a god, but he doesn't have much to do with the soil itself in any story or rite except to help make it fruitful, so he gets Fertility instead. Water's mostly the same story; the Slavic underworld is described frequently as "moist" or "damp", but this refers to the fact that it's fertile and lush and growing, rather than to any real connection with the waters.

Veles' supposed earth connotations come largely from the very popular theory of scholars Ivanov and Toporov, who are responsible for the idea that Veles and Perun are locked in an eternal rivalry or battle, as well as for the description of Veles as a dragon and much of the popularity of the idea of Perun as king of the Bogovi. With Perun as representative of the heavens and Sky, Ivanov and Toporov set Veles as representative of the underworld and Earth. You've probably noticed that not much of this is present in the Bogovi supplement (though it does definitely show up in White Wolf's half-treatment of the Slavs in Companion), and the reason for that is that, after reading it and the counterarguments of other scholars, I don't think it has enough evidence to support it.

The vast majority of the theory is based, not on Slavic myth or records of worship, but on other religions that are near the lands where Slavic religion was practiced; Ivanov and Toporov reason that since the Hindu myths have a sky god fighting a dragon (Indra vs. Vritra) and the Hittite myths have a sky god fighting a dragon (Teshub vs. Illuyanka) and the Norse myths have a sky god fighting a dragon (Thor vs. Jormungandr) and the Greek myths have a sky god fighting a dragon (Zeus vs. Typhon), the Slavs must also have a myth in which a sky god fights a dragon. Perun is obviously the sky god, and Veles, thanks to his underworld connotations, was nominated to become the dragon. The problem with this is that it is a reconstruction that almost completely ignores Slavic folklore itself; Veles is never anywhere described as a dragon. He does occasionally seem to be associated with snakes, but never in a zoomorphic way, and snakes are a pretty common symbol of the underworld. He doesn't seem to have any truly sinister connotations, being called upon to encourage fertility and witness oaths, but never particularly feared as far as we can tell. His rivalry with Perun has been corroborated by other reconstructionists (Belaj and Katicic in particular), but in those cases the reconstructed myths offer reasons for their spats - the two gods sharing Mokosh, the earth goddess who separates the heavens and the underworld, as her husband and lover respectively, and the reconstructed myth in which a jealous Veles steals Perun's newborn son Jarilo and raises him as his own. But these are the sorts of fights gods get into all the time, not the sort of cosmic good vs. evil battles that Ivanov and Toporov are pointing to in other cultures.

I should note that Ivanov and Toporov do, in fact, use material from Slavic folklore to back up their theory, mostly fragments of folk songs. I obviously don't feel that they make enough of a case to make the theory valid, but if you're interested, by all means look them up and decide for yourself.

So, instead of vague connotations borrowed from other cultures, I went with the things that Veles is actually known for: being propitiated to help crops grow, particularly the wheat that he is patron of, and being called upon as a patron god of cattle, and using magic and illusions to confound others, usually with the goal of teaching them a lesson, as in the myth of his pranking of his three sons. He actually reminds me quite a lot of the Irish Manannan mac Lir; not that the two of them are probably related closely in any way, but they'd probably really enjoy having a drink together.