Slavic deities from Poland (part 1): Goddess Marzanna
Marzanna or Marza is a primary deity of the old-Slavic Polish beliefs (also of Czech and Slovak beliefs where she’s called Morana / Morena), very close to the primal concept of the Mother Earth. She is a personification of the repetitive cycles regulating the life on Earth, the changing seasons, a master of both the life and death, patron of fertility, mother of the earth and of a primeval sea (morze).
Her attributes are wreaths, red coral beads, reaped grain stalks, many herbs like the dyer’s madder (in Poland commonly called marzana barwierska) or sweetscented bedstraw (marzanka wonna), apples, and a golden key that opens doors to the afterlife and to the different seasons. Apple trees are dedicated to her.
The most popular but rather misleading interpretations of Marzanna show her as a goddess of winter and death only. An effigy of her is still nowadays thrown to the rivers or burnt around the spring equinox each year in rites of evoking the spring [read about it here and here]. However, many historical sources and traces of her cult (particularly in the West Slavic beliefs) show clearly that the cold winter is only one of the faces of this goddess. After getting rid of the winter effigy, another similar one was being brought up in a procession around the villages and fields - it was a symbol of spring, the same goddess being reborn after the winter phase and waking up nature’s vital strenght for the upcoming growing season. Many of such informations survived in countless folk songs and rituals.
In Poland the cult of her has remained until today, not only directly (like in the rituals of drowning and burning the “winter goddess” before the spring) but also survived in countless indirect ways. The traces are very often intervoven with unique elements observed in the worship of the different aspects of the Christian Holy Mother, and some places where medieval churches bearing the name of the Holy Mother are located were also known for being Marzanna’s cult centres in the distant past.
The cult of her is confirmed in numerous Polish resources. The oldest surviving chronicles mentioning her name and the customs of drowning come from 15th century.
More about Marzanna in Polish.
Image © BogowiePolscy.net
Check also my general tag Slavic mythology.
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