Deeply rooted is the respect to mother earth. Earth wasn’t just an inanimate body, but a living being that nurtures all creatures like a mother. Grass is her hair, water streams are her veins, rocks are her bones. Humans prayed to her like to their sacred provider, they gave her offerings, they saw in her a help in sickness that provided medicinal herbs and they didn’t allow no one to move something, hammer something into the earth or pluck something for no reason.

The same respect was shown to the sky. As earth was the mother, sky was the father – generally respected polarities in many mythologies. Slavic word nebe is similar to nefos (Greek), nubis (Latin) and Nebel (German) and originally means the sky with clouds.

Celestial bodies were perceived as divine beings. Slavs saw in the sun an all-seeing eye or golden chariot with white horses, often they understood it as a winged being of light (male or female) with gold hair or rays of fiery arrows. The being is in the east, where they bath in the sea in the morning. On their daily journey they fight with demons of clouds, the being is threatened by a dragon or werewolves during an eclipse.

Moon was worshiped as the younger brother of the sun. He played an important role in magick, divination, agriculture, folk healing and lore. We can see his polarity to the sun in the Polish idea that he was created by the devil, who stole piece of the sun from god. The moon is, like the sun, in the east, where he fights with clouds and demons of the eclipse. Souls of the dead travel to the moon.

Among the stars the biggest respect was shown to Venus (both as a morning star or evening star). She was the sister of the sun and moon. In Russian folklore she is symbolized by a beautiful girl with a gold bowl, with a head covering of red silk (red sky) and sitting on a gold throne. She rises from the sea like her siblings. She was important in the matters of love, healing and abundance. Morning dew was seen as her tears.

Stars belonged to the celestial family as children of the sun and moon. The look at the starry sky raised feelings of kinship. Everyone had their own star in the sky that was born and died with them. That’s why the amount of stars corresponds to the amount of people on earth. Stars are guardians of humans and the fate of the person depends on the stars. Stars of good people shine brightly, stars of evil people shine only dully. The star falls in the moment of the person’s death.

VÁŇA, Zdeněk. Svět slovanských bohů a démonů. Praha: Panorama, 1990. Stopy, fakta, svědectví (Panorama). ISBN 80-7038-187-6.