Space has always attracted the ancient Slavs with its powerful beauty. The man of the past not only admired the bottomless space with its stars, constellations, the sun, the moon, but also deified both the sky itself and various phenomena that took place over his head. In order to create a holistic picture of the universe, the Slavs simply needed to refer to space as a part or to the main element of the universe.
Space, in this sense, was the abode of the gods, as, indeed, in other cultures of the world. It has been found quite accurately that among people who lived in ancient times, astronomy (paleoastronomy) was highly developed.
It should be noted right away that it is rather difficult to say which god of the pagan pantheon the cosmos belonged to. But, nevertheless, it is svarog that takes the leading role here. Svarog is not only a blacksmith god, but also a sky god. It was Svarog, the sky god, who gave birth to the sun - dazhdbog, which is considered his son, and many of the phenomena, such as comets, meteors burning in the atmosphere, were called nothing other than svarozichi, that is, children of the great sky or space. God the genus is also the god of the bottomless space, in which he, as it is written in the most ancient legends, as in a black river (sea, ocean) appeared from an egg. Some modern pagans call this black river, that is, the cosmos, the goddess Mara. In their opinion, the goddess of darkness and gloom, madder, is the cosmos or primordial nothing, in which everything is born. Whether or not to follow this theorya purely personal matter. It certainly makes sense.
One of the linguistic studies may give us an interesting version of the origin of the word "Cosmos". According to this theory, the word cosmos has a kinship with the name of one of the main goddesses of the Slavs - the pagans Mokosh. The cosmos is originally of Greek origin - Kosmos, but in the Greek way Mokosh looks like Mokos. Indeed - Kosmos and Mokos look quite similar and it may well be that space was identified with Mokos. In the traditional sense, makosh has always been associated with the moon. This brightest and largest body in the night sky seemed to the ancient Slavs the personification of makosh. Her assistants, who are often depicted side by side on embroidery and amulets - Lada and Lelya - are side by side in the night sky. The constellations of Lada and Lelya were previously called the constellations of moose:the great moose cow - frets and the little moose cow - Lelya (daughters of the frets. Today we know these constellations under the name of the big and little bear.
In the writings of some foreign authors who were in Russia even in pagan times, it is said that the Slavs had building objects that were intended for observing the sun and heavenly bodies. This suggests that astronomy and, probably, some form of astrology existed among the ancient Slavs not just as curiosity and purely mythological interest, but also as a serious science. Unfortunately, the generations that stopped following the pagan tradition destroyed everything without a trace and now we have to collect this information piece by piece. Another anonymous author wrote that “the Slavs Profess the Religion of Fire Worshipers and Worship the Sun”, “they profess the religion of the Sabians and they worship the stars. And they have seven holidays a year, which are named after the names of the stars (presumably the sun with the moon and five planets),and the most important of them is the holiday of the sun (most likely - bathing). The Arab historian Masudi wrote the following about the Slavs in one of his books: “In the Slavic lands there were buildings revered by them. Among the others, they had one building on the mountain, about which the philosophers wrote that it was one of the tallest in the world. There is a story about this building about the quality of its construction; about the location of its dissimilar stones and their different colors; about the holes made in the upper part of it; what is built in these holes to watch the sunrise; about precious stones put there and signs marked in it, which indicate future events and warn against incidents before their implementation; about the sounds in the upper part of it and about what comprehends them when listening to these sounds. A very interesting statement! Unfortunately,Until now, it has not been possible to find out what kind of temple it is - the observatory of the Slavs, about which Masudi wrote in the 10th century and where it was located.
In general, as historians find out, in the pre-Christian era, astronomical knowledge was very strongly developed among the Slavs and other pagan peoples. For example, among the Celts, who built a grandiose stonehenge complex for this purpose. Christian missionaries, completely not interested in and not understanding the sciences, cleanly erased all the accumulated knowledge from the face of the earth and thereby stopped the research and scientific knowledge of the world for many centuries.
One of the amulets of the Slavs, which is called lunnitsa, speaks volumes. Lunnitsa is a crescent. Often stars are depicted on it, as well as rain, solar signs, etc. the moon itself, which can be seen in the night sky in clear weather, was precisely the female patron, and the sun was male. The sun and moon were presented as husband and wife, and the frequent stars were their children. Of course, such phenomena that struck people in all epochs of their existence had to be related to mythology, beliefs, magical actions. Do not believe those who say that astronomy existed in China, Greece, etc., in general, everywhere except Russia. This is clearly not true. The Slavs had their own ideas about space and, accordingly, their own names for the stars. So, for example, the constellation, which is now known as the constellation of the Pleiades,in the pre-Christian era it was referred to as the constellation hairs or simply hairs, that is, the constellation Veles. One of the old conspiracies mentions such Old Russian names of stars and constellations: sazhara, kucheroya, covering and opening the gates.
Examining folklore and conspiracies, it became obvious that the Slavs knew about the existence of the planet Venus and even knew the cycles of its movements in the sky. They called it: morning star, evening star, nocturnal, day-night, zornitsa, zirnytsa, zarayanka. In one of the conspiracies, Venus is referred to as the dawn of a dawn or the dawn of a dawn. Venus is the third brightest after the sun and the moon and, under certain conditions, can be seen with the naked eye even during the day.
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A neolithic camp of people was discovered on the shore of Lake Bologovskoe Two interesting stones were found here, on one of which the constellation Ursa Major was carved, and on the other constellation of the Pleiades. This proves that even in that ancient era, people perfectly knew the various constellations, and they mattered in their beliefs. An interesting artifact was discovered in Siberia, in the valley of the Angara River. Here is the so-called monument of the Upper Paleolithic culture of Malta. In one of the burials, a plate was found, which turned out to be a real calendar (Maltese calendar - astronomical table), which took into account the movement of the sun, moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury across the sky. The age of this plate - the calendar - is 24,000 years! But why did people of that era need this knowledge? There are many assumptions about this,the main of which are: beliefs, which involved tracking the heavenly gods - the luminaries, a fortune-telling and predictive element, as well as a navigational one - to determine the route of movement. However, be that as it may, this in no way diminishes the fact that the knowledge of the ancient people about the heavenly bodies was simply amazingly accurate. After the destruction of this knowledge accumulated over thousands of years, people had to restore everything from scratch.people had to rebuild everything from scratch.people had to rebuild everything from scratch.
The stars in the view of the Slavs were not just distant luminaries and not only gods visible in the sky, but also the souls of people who, having left this world, glow in the night sky and scatter the darkness while still alive. Falling stars were presented as souls who come to the living world to be born in a new body. According to another version, it is the other way around: shooting stars are the souls of the dead who migrate to the world of the dead. According to this version, when a child is born, his star lights up in the sky, and when he dies, the star falls from the sky or goes out. The descent of souls from heaven appears in various fairy tales, conspiracies, and sayings. In some, this action is represented as a child's falling from heaven, in others it is said that God descends the soul on a thread: “God on Nitozza Spustiu” or “your daddy vis oves, and you upau z nebes”. It becomes obviousthat the Slavs believed in the stellar origin of the soul, but not as an alien origin, but as the original inhabitant of the heavenly swarga, the heavenly kingdom.