Ancient Slavs - are heathens, who idolized the forces of nature. Their basic gods were: God of companies - god of sky and earth; Peroun - god of thunder and lightning, and also of war and weapon; Hair or [Veles] - god of wealth and cattle breeding; [Dazh] god (or [Yarilo]) - the solar deity of light, heat and blooming nature. Are very important were important deities, connected with those forces of nature, which influence agriculture. So ancient Slavs greatly read a little the soul of ancestors, thinking that they are found somewhere in the average sky “[aere]” - “To [ire]” and it is obvious, they contribute to all celestial operations (rain, fog, snow) for the good to the remaining themselves descendants. When in the days [pominoveniya] of their ancestors they invited to the holiday meal, then “grandfathers” were by those flying by air.
However, finished products - porridge and bread from time immemorial of centuries were ritual food and required part of the offering to such deities of fertility as [rozhanitsy]. There were special forms of porridge, which had only ritual designation: “[kutya]”, “[kolivo]” (from the wheaten grains). Was cooked [kutya] in the pot and whereas in the pot or in the basin it was given to the holiday table or related on the cemetery into “[domovinu]” with [pominovenii] of dead persons. There were houses of corpses as the place of contact with the benevolent ancestors.
In the Slav fairy tales are encountered many magic characters - first terrible and terrible, first mysterious and incomprehensible, then good and ready to help. Contemporary people they seem by whimsical invention, but they piously believed into the old times in Russia that into more frequent the scaffolding stands the cottage of Yagi's ram, in the severe rock mountains dwells snakes, that steals beauties, they considered that the girl can marry bear, and horse knows how to speak in human voice.
This faith was called name paganism, i.e., “people faith”. Slav- heathens worshipped to elements, believed in the relationship of people with different animals, brought victims to deities, who populate everything all around. Each Slav tribe prayed to its gods.
United for the entire Slav world ideas about the gods never there existed: since the Slav tribes in the pre-Christian time did not have single state, they were not united in the beliefs. Therefore Slav gods are not connected with the related relations, although some of them are very similar to each other.
The heathen pantheon created during Vladimir [Svyatoslavoviche]'s lifetime - the meeting of basic heathen gods - also it is not possible to name pan-Slavic, in essence it consisted of [yuzhnorusskikh] deities, their selection not reflecting the real beliefs of Kievians as much it as served political purposes.
Economy of the ancient Slavs
The agricultural economy of ancient Slavs very little resembled the contemporary. In order not to die to hunger and to survive long and cold winter, for man it was necessary to spend enormous efforts. At first it was necessary to prepare the earth for the sowing. For this still in winter was selected the section in the forest and they cut down the forest growing on it. Stumps remained from the trees rooted out. The winter month, during which they chopped forest, so was named “[sechen]”, from the words “to cut”, “to chop”.
Then they dried and burnt forest. This is why following months were called “[sukhiy]” and “[berezol]”. In spring they loosened the earth, strewn by ashes, by wooden wooden plough or plow, and then sowed seeds.
Millet was basic grain plant in the ancient Slavs; wheat, barley and rye were disseminated much less. From the vegetables they most frequently reared turnip, and also pea. They at first harvested the matured bread by sickles, and then dried and threshed before the offensive of autumn. Therefore autumnal months so were called - “[serpen]”, “[vresen]” (from the word “of [vreshchi]” - to thresh).
This method of treating the earth was called clearing and it was disseminated in the northern regions, where there was much forest. In the south, where the scaffolding it was not, used another method - fallow. In this case the selected section of the earth they threw open and sowed, and for the following year they ploughed already at the new place.
Besides agriculture ancient Slavs also dealt with breeding domestic cattle - sheep, cows and pigs, they hunted the different beasts, they caught fish. The occupation of ancient Slavs very important in economic sense was [bortnichestvo] - collection of the honey of wild bees.
But agriculture always remained main occupation for the ancient Slavs. This is why in the Slav names of the months, which, until now were preserved in the Ukrainian, Belorussian and other languages, reached our time the calendar of basic agricultural works.
