Czorneboh (deity)
Tschernebog , Czarnobóg or Czorneboh ( Russian Чернобог , German 'Black God' ), Czernoglowy (' Black Head ') is a West Slavic god who is only known from a note by the chronicler Helmold von Bosau from the 12th century. In his Chronica Slavorum , Helmold writes that after the sacrificial rituals , the Slavs would come together for a feast, let a bowl go around and say drinking and blessings in the process. They believed that all happiness was directed by a good God and all unhappiness by an evil God, and
“Unde etiam malum deum lingua sua Diabol sive Zcerneboch, id est nigrum deum, appellant.”
"That is why they call the evil god Diabol or Zcerneboch in their language , that is, the black god."
Helmold does not pass on the name of the other god; that the good (white) deity was called Bieleboh is only inferred from the occurrence of this name in place names. In the vicinity of Bautzen there are two mountains called Czorneboh and Bieleboh , which were associated with Helmold's note. The name comes from more recent times. In the 19th century a number of sanctuaries and temples of Czorneboh were "discovered" in Bohemia , but none of these discoveries stood up to scientific scrutiny. The Herthaburg on the Jasmund peninsula is also considered to be a cult site for Czernoglowy.
A demon named "Chernobog" appears in a sequence from the Disney film Fantasia . Also in the twelfth episode of the fourth season of the US fantasy series Once Upon a Time - Once Upon a Time ... there is a character of the same name. Czernobog also appears in Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernhard Schmeidler: Helmholds Slavenchronik, Hanover 1937. Vol. I, chap. 52, p. 103.
literature
- Naďa Profantová, Martin Profant: Encyklopedie slovanských bohů a mýtů . Nakladatelství Libri, Praha 2000, ISBN 80-7277-011-X .
- Zdeněk Váňa: Mythology and gods of the Slavic peoples , Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-87838-937-X .