The SKY

In the old days the sky represented the big unknown to people. It is the mythical place of the sun deity and the moon. Depending on whether it was the day sky or the night sky, it was identified with different creatures, objects or phenomena from the real or imaginary world. As such they are recorded in the Croatian folk tales. In the ancient Slav mythology and folk literature it is the ancestral father of the space and sky that has no bodily form. He is called different names: Prabog ("the ancestral god"), Staribog ("the old god"), God, Svantevid, Svetovit ("the one that sees the space"), Svarog ("the sun place"), Svarun (from the Vedantic Varun and Roman Uranus), Sun, Visnji bog ("god up in heaven"), Vid (There are some Croatian names derived from this form like Vid/Vida, Vitomir/Vitomira and in some geographical names like Sutvid on the mountain of Biokovo, St. Vid on the island of Brac, the village Vid near the river Neretva and the word "vidovit" which means "clairvoyant".) He is also known as Vlaho (Blaise), the emperor, the king, the lord, the mayor, father of light, Sun, Moon, stars, clouds, wind, fire and rain. It is a heavenly deity, who, depending on the time of the year, but also human behaviour, locks and unlocks the seven gates (because there are seven heavens) thus letting or forbidding the rain to fall. He reprimands or punishes the sinnful with storm or death. The Polish word "zboze" means "grain", the Czech word "zbozi" means "goods or trade", the Serbian word "zbozo" means "happiness", the Croatian words "bogat" and "ubog" mean "rich" and "poor" respectively. These similarities have led the linguists to come to the conclusion that the Indo-European word "bhag", which means "to divide", was the stem from which the word "god" for the one that gives grain and happiness was taken as god's name in Christianity.