Slavic mythology has neither a Theogony nor an Edda. What we have is the list in the Primary Chronicle of the idols Vladimir raised at Kiev in 980, the oaths in the Rus-Byzantine treaties, a few lines of the Tale of Igor's Campaign, the Latin historians who describe the West Slavic gods, and the church sermons written against paganism. Alongside all this stands a very large body of spirits and rites collected from the villages in the nineteenth century.
This chart keeps the two layers apart. Whether a name really occurs in a source, which source that is, and which links are a scholar's reconstruction are written into every figure's note. Rod as supreme creator, the family of Lada and Lel, and the Belobog and Chernobog pair are marked contested for exactly that reason, since most of the charts circulating online come from those reconstructions. Where no parentage is recorded, no link has been invented, so the tree is sparse, and that is the correct result.
116 figures6 idols of 9804 turning points of the year13 lineages and groups
Key facts
Slavic mythology has no collected book of its own, and the firmest source is the chronicle entry listing the six idols Vladimir raised at Kiev in 980.
Perun is attested by the treaty oaths, Veles by the second name sworn beside him, and Dazhbog and Svarog by a single marginal gloss.
Because the sources record no genealogy for the gods, only three or four links are drawn in this chart, each with the sentence it rests on.
Rod as supreme creator, the family of Lada and Lel, and the Belobog and Chernobog pair are reconstructions and are marked as such in the notes.
The Slavic year turns on the solstices, and Koliada, the burning of Morana at Maslenitsa, Kupala night and the thunder day of high summer passed intact into the church calendar.
Main line: from the sources to folk tradition
The chart runs left to right: the powers of the creation legends, the generation of Svarog, Vladimir's list of 980, the other gods named in the sources, the household of the sky, the West Slavic gods and the contested names, then the powers of fate and the seasons, the house and forest spirits, the water beings, the monsters, and finally the saints who took over the work of the old gods. Large clans appear as dashed group boxes; tap a box to open its list below. Drag to pan, Ctrl/⌘ + wheel or the buttons to zoom.
CreationSvarog's generationThe 980 listGodWaterMonsterHouse and natureFate and seasonSaintGroup (opens list)
Almost none of the Slavic gods has a recorded genealogy. Of the few links drawn here, Dazhbog's descent from Svarog rests on a single marginal gloss and the winds' descent from Stribog on one sentence of the Tale of Igor's Campaign. A missing link means that the sources record no relation, not that none ever existed.
Lineage explorer: who is whose child?
Type a name or tap a box in the chart. The card that opens gives the source the figure appears in, the other spellings of the name, and what any family link rests on. "Not recorded" means no link is drawn for that figure in this chart, not that none exists in the sources.
Close kin: grandparents · parents and partners · figure and siblings · children
Lineages and groups
All 116 figures in the chart are listed here by source layer and group. The chips above filter by type; tap a name and the explorer opens that figure.
There is no single tidy book of Slavic myth. The firmest source is the entry for the year 980 in the Primary Chronicle, where the idols Vladimir set up on the hill at Kiev are listed as Perun, Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokosh. To that we add the oaths by Perun and Volos in the treaties of 907, 945 and 971, a few lines of the Tale of Igor's Campaign, a marginal gloss on the Slavonic Malalas, and for the West Slavs Thietmar, Adam of Bremen, Helmold and Saxo Grammaticus, along with the sermons written against paganism. Everything else is collection and interpretation from the fifteenth century onward.
How much of this family tree is reconstruction?
The honest answer is that nearly all the family links are. Slavic sources do not say whose child a god is. Of the few links drawn here, Dazhbog's descent from Svarog rests on a single gloss on the Slavonic Malalas, the winds' descent from Stribog on one sentence of the Tale of Igor's Campaign, and the link from Rod to the rozhanitsy on the fact that the sermons always name the two together. We drew nothing beyond that, because every extra arrow would in truth have been a guess. A sparse chart is more accurate than a full but invented one.
Are Rod, Lada and Chernobog real Slavic gods?
All three are contested, though in different degrees. Rod genuinely appears in the sermons, but there he is a power offered food rather than a supreme creator, and the reconstruction that makes him father of all the gods belongs to Boris Rybakov. The names Lada, Lel and Polel come from the refrains of folk songs, and Aleksander Brückner showed that they are not names of gods. Chernobog's only witness is Helmold, who never mentions a Belobog set against him, and that partner was invented later. These names were not deleted from the page, because everyone hears them, but beside each one the page says what is source and what is guess.
Is the storm myth of Perun and Veles found in the sources?
No Slavic text tells a myth by that name. Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov built it out of folk riddles, fragments of song and Baltic and Indo-European parallels: the storm god chases the serpent god on the earth, takes back the cattle or the wife, and the rain falls. The clues the reconstruction rests on are real, for instance that Perun's idol stood on the hill and Volos's down in the lower quarter, and that the oaths set the two names against each other. It remains a reconstruction all the same, and it should be taught as one.
On which days does the Slavic year turn?
The Slavic folk calendar is built on the solstices and on two thresholds between them. At the winter solstice come the Koliada songs and the house visits, at the end of winter comes Maslenitsa week, when the Morana effigy is burned and thrown into the water to see winter off, at the summer solstice comes Kupala night with its fires and garlands, and in high summer comes the day of thunder. The church did not move these four dates but laid its own feasts over them, so the solstices became Christmas and the birth of John the Baptist, and the day of thunder went to the prophet Elijah. The calendar tools let you set these dates against your own birth chart.
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The Slavic year turns on the solstices
Koliada, Maslenitsa, Kupala night and the thunder day of high summer all hang on the four thresholds of the sky. The calendar tools show those thresholds year by year.