god and asked not to strike their house with thunderbolt - where there is an
exact similarity between the sun god Kresnik and former Perun.
In the east of our country (Slovenia), even today when there's thunder going
on – people say the Perun brought »bad hour«. »Netresk« (houseleek) that
used to be planted onto the roofs is still called »the leaves of Perun or Perun's
feathers and it has been in use for centuries for protection against the
lightning.
In the past, those ancient times and still in those that some great
grandmothers can still remember and that is how we know many almost lost
information – the ritual consisted of four »kresnice« (slov. plural of the word
»kresnica) who sang ritual songs in order to bring fertility and to praise the
sun.
Four young girls sang around the fire. In many places
there was a
smaller maypole in the middle of the bonfire which symbolises the sacred
marriage of the goddess and the sun god, because the maypole is a symbol of
the goddess.
The ritual that took place many hundreds of years ago
cannot be
reconstructed to the very small detail. It would also be absurd if we would do
that because times change, people and their views on the world change.
The faith and the rituals are the reflection of a certain time with
certain moral values and stands of that time.
Our gods have never asked for bloody
sacrifices nor anything else. It is people who
design them accordingly to their own views
of the gods, people feed only their own
perception of the gods, not the gods
themselves.
‘SVETOVID: Traditionally on summer solstice women sing
and make flower wreaths while men prepare the bonfire.’
The offerings to the gods are not written down because Slavic native faith is
not the religion of the book - it is the natural faith of respecting the nature
itself and remembering our forefathers.
If we honour the sun the earth, the life – then rituals should be just that
– joyful and full of life, pure and without any bad karma.
Simple and from the heart.
And since the Slavic native faith is the faith of the nature – large variety of the
rituals and names of the gods exist that differ from village to village, from
61