Veles As A Slavic Mythological Trickster

New researches
on the religion and mythology

of the Pagan Slavs
2
Collection
« Histoire -mythes - folklore »
2014
Mikhaïl Dragomanov et Lydia Dragomanova
Travaux sur le folklore slave, suivi de Légendes chrétiennes de l’Ukraine
Viktoriya et Patrice Lajoye
Sadko et autres chants mythologiques des Slaves de l’Est
2015
Patrice Lajoye
Perun, dieu slave de l’orage
2017
Patrice Lajoye
Fils de l’orage
Patrice Lajoye
Charmes et incantations. Biélorussie, Russie, Ukraine
Georges Dumézil
Contes et légendes des peuples du Caucase, 1
2019
Vassili Verechtchaguine
Guerres et voyages
Patrice Lajoye (ed.)
New researches on the religion and mythology of the Pagan Slavs
2020
Mitrofan Dikarev
Contes grivois et chansons paillardes de l’Ukraine
New Researches
on the religion
and mythology
of the Pagan Slavs
2
edited by
Patrice Lajoye and Stamatis Zochios
LINGVA
© 2023, Lingva, Patrice Lajoye, Stamatis Zochios and the authors

Éditions Lingva
22 A rue de la Gare
14100 Lisieux (France)
[email protected]
www.lingva.fr
Veles as a Slavic mythological trickster
Giuseppe Maiello
Nikola Danišová
Prague
[email protected]
[email protected]
Abstract. In this paper, based on an in-depth analysis and interpretation, we
will try to compare the Slavic god Veles with non-European and European
characters, which today we traditionally consider the so-called trickster. Our
aim is to find out whether we can safely classify this contradictory figure of
the Slavic deity among the tricksterian figures of world mythologies and to
what extent his religious-mythological iconization corresponds to the basic
(essential) attributes of the archetype of the trickster.
Keywords. Trickster, Veles, Slavic mythology.
T
he ancient and distinctive character of the trickster appears in the reli-
gious-mythological notions of all civilizational-cultural circles in a wide
range of possible concretizing representations: from the stinging, sexu-
ally greedy coyote and the divine raven shawl of North American Indians, the
iconic Neapolitan Pulcinella or the crazy Ivan of Russian folk tales.1
An inseparable part of Trickster´s general mythological-fairy-tale design are el-
ements of grotesqueness and carnival comicism (principle of the game, turning
the world upside down, etc.), so in our opinion this character belongs to the area
1. This research was funded by «VEGA 1/0050/22 Archtextual analyzes of fundamental

themes» and «UGA 1/II/2022 Archetypal images of death and rebirth».
New researches on the religion and mythology ot the Pagan Slavs 2 – p. 47-76 – 47
Giuseppe Maiello and Nikola Danišová
of so-called culture of popular laughter (Bakhtin), or the so called picaresque

mythology (Kerényi). Despite the fact that the trickster is a distinctive and un-
mistakable figure, it is generally a hard to interpret and (seemingly) adversar-
ial figure, which is characterized by an ambiguous and changeable character.
Trickster generally acts as a bandit, thief, rebel, outcast, speculator, light-heart-
ed provocateur, notorious liar, brave hero, fool or simpleton who, through his
actions, causes harm to other performing characters, or to himself. Where it
appears, ensues chaos, rules and boundaries lose their meaning, and the whole
narrative world turns upside down. His extreme ambivalence leads him to ap-
pear both as a divine being, endowed with generative capacity, and, at the same
time, as a clown, a jester “not to be taken seriously”.2
Trickster, with his unpredictable and sovereign behavior, is able to disrupt the
orderly structures of the relevant fictional world, for which he may (but does not
have to) be punished at the end of the story.
American historians of religions William Doty and William Hynes point out that
the term trickster (from the English word trick, that is to say deception, mischief)
appeared in the English dictionary relatively late, until the 19th century. It origi-
nally referred to a man with crooked morals, a mischievous man who deceives or
cheats, i.e. does tricks on others and often acts on the peripheries of society.3
During the 20th century, when cultural anthropology was definitively consti-
tuted as a scientific discipline, the term trickster began to be used preferentially
as an anthropological category and it was referring vaguely to a religious-myth-
ological figure of non-European archaic communities (especially from Africa,
e.g. Esha, Legba, the Anansi spider, and Native America, e.g. Wakdjunkaga, the
Inktonmi spider, the coyote or the raven), which features were marked by dubi-
ous morals with a tendency to playfully-fraudulent, mischievous conduct.4
2. Makarius 1979, 18.

3. Hynes-Doty 2019, 14. Thieves who use their art, dexterity and deceptions, but also
untrustworthy, socially pushed circus performers, nomadic artists and comedians (they
were mainly gymnasts, acrobats on a rope, dancers, jugglers, fire/swords eaters and fa-
kirs, magicians, illusionists, fortune tellers, comedians, clowns, animal trainers, mutilat-
ed or otherwise physically and mentally abnormal people, such as dwarfs, giants, hump-
backs, fools and sick-minded people), who still at the end of the 19th century belonged
generally among the poorest classes of society and lived on the periphery. This kind of
people, could have been a model of the mythological-fairy-tale trickster in the current
(real) world.
4. Ibid.
48 – New researches on the religion and mythology ot the Pagan Slavs 2 – p. 47-76
However, the term trickster gradually transferred from the professional frame-
work of cultural anthropology to the field of literary theory, where it began to be
used simultaneously with the spanish term picaro, to identify a character-relat-
ed joke-deceitful figure (e.g. Fox Reynard, Till Eulenspiegel) found in European
literary material. Like the non-European mythological tricksters, the Picaro was
considered a type of ambiguous - insane or simple - comic-satirical, grotesque
character who belongs nowhere, roams the (fictional) world and disturbingly
disrupts it. He is a bearer of a grotesque body, a brave fool which ridicules oth-
er characters, but is often dishonored himself. In the narrower sense, the word
picaro appears in Spanish Renaissance literature, specifically in the so-called pi-
caresque novel, but in a broader sense we find a prototype of this literary figure
in ancient satirical literature from the 1st and 2nd century CE, for example in
Apuleius’s initiation novel The Golden Ass or Petronius’ Satyricon.
Outside the literary field, we also find characters who have a strong comic-dethro-
nizing dimension and, with their appearance or actions, present a natural grotesque
corporeality typical of culture of popular laughter. In antiquity, such fictional char-
acters were part of Attic comedies, which schematically portrayed the mischievous
but also silly characters of lovers, masters, slaves or servants in a stable repertoire of
comic situations. In the Middle Ages, tricksterian figures were preserved on carni-
val-type holidays, in the figures of clowns, crooks, mischievous people and devils.5
From the point of view of depth psychology, Jung identifies the mythological
representation of the tricksterian character in its most obvious manifestations
with undifferentiated human consciousness (psyche), which is still dominated
by libido desires, i. e. has not yet completely left the instinctual (animal) level of
consciousness. This is probably related to the trickster’s human-animal chimeric
ambiguity and the animalization of its properties. In the context of the story, the
5. According to Joseph Campbell, the common denominator of these characters was the
chaotic principle, the denigration of taboos, and the satirization of socio-religious norms
(Campbell 2008, 252). Carl Gustav Jung notes that “these medieval customs perfectly
demonstrate the role of the trickster to perfection, and, when they vanished from the
precincts of the Church, they appeared again on the profane level of Italian theatricals,
as those comic types who (often decorated with enormous ithyphallic emblems, enter-
tained the far from prudish public with ribalderies [...] it is obviously a «psychologem»:
an archetypal psychic structure of extreme antiquity” (Jung 1954, 464-465). Jung means
schematic comic characters from the renaissance commedia dell’arte, preferably servants
(as Pulcinella), who acted either in the roles of a deceitful intrigue or a naive commoner,
making use of older comic characters-schemes from attic comedy.
trickster’s hunger can be portrayed as greed, (perverted) desire as an instinct,

anger as rage, frivolity as (animal) stupidity, i. e. the absence of higher human
consciousness, the ability to realize oneself in relation to oneself and the world.
Following the unbound poetics of ridiculous culture in all its forms, Jung sees in
the figure of a trickster manifestations of an archetype of (collective) shadow, a
kind of immature alterego that resembles mischievous and childish poltergeists.6
However, more convincing for us, and more useful for understanding why we can
also speak of trickster in an ancient Slavic context, is the indication given by Claude
Lévi-Strauss when he speaks of trickster as a „mediator” who, since his mediating
function occupies a position “halfway between two polar terms he must retain
something of that duality, namely an ambiguous and equivocal character”.7
Each cultural-civilization circle has in its religious-mythological repertoire a
character who, to a greater or lesser extent, has the basic (universal) character-
istics of the trickster:8
1. Lack of internal development
The trickster problematic does not contain the founding thematic algorithm
of the hero’s initiation path, i.e. the tricksterian character does not typically
undergo heroic trials.
6. Op. cit., 469.

7. Lévi-Strauss 1955, 441, see also 1958, 251.
8. According to Radin (1954), among the trickster figures of the North American In-
dians we can include the coyote, the raven, the Manabhos, the Great Rabbit, the Old Men,
who are the creators of plants, game, or Kokopeli - the deity of fertility, magic and music.
In the Paleoasian region, in the so-called the Far Russian East, a raven deity called the
Great Raven or Kutkinaka, who created the world, people, animals, etc. brought people
the first dwellings and fishing rods. The African tribes consider the spider Anansi to be
a trickster, but also Eshua and Legba, perceived as psychopomp gods of destiny, magic,
and divination. In the Pacific, the most famous tricksterian figure is the demigod Maui,
who has brought people various craft achievements, including fire, similar to the lizard
in the mythology of some Australian tribes. In China and Indonesia, the wicked and
deceitful monkey king Sun Wukong is considered a trickster. In Japan, the unpredictable
and wild god of wind and sea Susanoo is characterized by tricksterian features, who,
as an outcast, moves between the worlds and his mischief annoys other gods, as does
Loki in Nordic-Germanic mythology. In India tricksterian features belongs surely to
the shepherd god and cultural hero Krishna, who in many ways resembles the ancient
messenger of the gods Hermes, a shepherd deity who, among other things, manage ma-
gic, divination, some crafts and accompanies the dead to the underworld.
2. Ambivalence
The unpredictable oscillation of a tricksterian character between the posi-
tions of a heroic hero - a greedy fool or the splitting of a tricksterian arche-
type into a character-flat figural pair of artful characters (hero) - a stupid
character (anti-hero).
3. Liminality
Borderline existence, hermaphroditism, transgression of constituted rules
and disruption of the structures of the (fictional) universe, in the structure
of the myth it fulfills the mediation function of a “mediator” between two
diverse semiopoles, the motive of wandering across the fictional world.
4. Sleight
Harmful jokes, fraudulent tricks and illusions, unpredictability.
5. Metamorphic motif
Transformation as deception (costumes, masks, magical transformation of
form, illusory transformation of the environment), creationist and destruc-
tive abilities (power of cosmological transformation).
6. Comicality of tricksterian stories
Tricksteriads and the character of the trickster belong to various manifesta-
tions of culture of popular laughter (Bachtin), resp. picaresque mythology
(Kerényi). The poetics of tricksteriads and the iconicization of the trickster
character uses aesthetic expressive categories typical of comedy genres (com-
ic, satire, farce, grotesqueness, absurdity, lasciviousness, obscenity, scatology,
hyperbolization, playfulness).9
Why research Veles in the optics of the Trickster archetype:
material issues and research methodology
In the Slavic cultural-linguistic circle, the god Veles could bear the features of the
trickster’s figure. In older written records he is considered a shepherd god who
protects cattle and ensures their fertility, in other, usually younger sources he is
associated with the underworld and magic.
Until now, only a limited parts of scholars have studied in the deep the Slavic god
Veles.10 The subject of their comparative interest was in particular the etymolo-
9. More in Danišová 2021, 13-41.

10. Apart from the overall collections on Slavic mythology in general (see for example
Léger 1901, Růžička 1907, Machal 1907, Mansikka 1922, Ivanov-Toporov 1974, Łow-
gy of the divine name and the religious-magical functions. In particular Russian

philologists Vladimir Toporov and Vjačeslav Ivanov (1973) pointed out on some
of Veles’ features that could match the profile of the Trickster, based on fragments
from the atmospheric myth, which is said to be one of the most widespread rudi-
ments of Veles myths in Eastern Europe. According to them, this is a myth where
Veles turns into a snake (dragon) and causes a cosmological catastrophe (period of
drought and crop failure). His actions are characterized by cunning, insidiousness
and mischief, which are characteristics typical of mythological-fairy-tale charac-
ters of the trickster. However, Toporov and Ivanov do not develop this hypothesis
in their study and do not compare the figure of Veles with other Tricksterian fig-
ures of world literature. Furthermore, the majority of the scholars who have dealt
with Veles have concentrated above all on the parallels between this Slavic myth-
ological figure and the Vedic deity Varuna.11 Naturally, this raises the question of
whether Veles can really be considered a trickster.
Each ethnic group has a tricksterian figure in the structure of its mythology, and
also the so called Indo-European cultural ensembles, if it really existed, it cannot
be an exception. It is therefore more than certain that the Slavs also knew some
form of tricksterian figure. In our opinion, of all the Slavic deities known so far,
it is Veles who most fulfills the above-mentioned universal characteristics of the
trickster. He therefore has the greatest potential to be the so-called Trickster god.
In the proposed research, based on an in-depth analysis and interpretation,
we will try to compare the Slavic god Veles with non-European and European
characters, which we now traditionally consider as tricksters. Our aim is to find
out whether we can safely classify this contradictory figure of the Slavic deity
among the tricksterian figures of world mythologies and to what extent his reli-
gious-mythological iconization corresponds to the basic (essential) attributes of
the archetype of the trickster.
miański 1979, Gieysztor 1982, Rybakov 1989, 2002, Váňa 1990, Pitro-Vokač 2002, Pro-
fantová-Profant 2004), Veles has been discussed in many philological and historical stu-
dies. Among the various published studies is worth mentioning at least the studies of
Roman Jakobson (1969), Vjačeslav Ivanov & Vladimir Toporov (1974b), Boris Uspenskij
(1982), Vladimir Toporov (1983), Roman Anton Rabinovič (2000), Michał Łuczyński,.
(2012), Anton Vvedenskij (2014), and Milorad Ivanković (2019).
11. Toporov, together with Ivanov, originally connected Veles rather with the serpent
Vritra or with his brother, the demon Vala, of the Vedic tradition. Later, however, he too
returns to the more common line in Indo-European studies of the juxtaposition between
Veles and Varuna (Toporov 1987, 217-218).
However, the research of such a topic is significantly hampered by the lack of

authentic textual sources. Documents that reflect the life and religion of pagan
Slavs - from the genre point of view are mainly chronicles and historiographical
writings, have been preserved only modestly and most of them are either strong-
ly influenced by Christological ideology, or they are indirect or questionable in
terms of their originality. We find a direct mention of Veles (Volos, Wloss) in few
manuscripts and early printed books. The mentions, translated from Church
Slavonic, and Latin, in English language, are the following:
1.- According to the religion of the Rus’, the latter swore by their weapons
and by their god Perun, as well as by Volos (Veles), the god of cattle, and thus
confirmed the treaty (Tale of Bygone Years);
2.- But if we fail in the observance of any of the aforesaid stipulations, either
I or my companions, or my subjects, may we be accursed of the god in whom
we believe, namely, of Perun and Volos, the god of flocks, and we become
yellow as gold, and be slain with our own weapons (Tale of Bygone Years);
3.- they pray... to Volos, god of the cattle (Word of a certain Christ-lover and
zealot for the right faith);
4.- The idol of Veles in ancient times stood in the middle of the city near the
lake, almost near the place where the Kremlin was, later it was moved to the
“Chud part” of the city (Rostov Chronicle);
5.- At that time, there was a severe fire in Rostov (...); on the same day of the
fire (...) a terrible thunder cloud broke out over the temple of the god Veles,
where his idol, made of stone, stood; when the temple caught fire, the idol
came out of it like a living person, went east to the end of the city and stopped
at the Chud part of the city. When he walked along the shore of the lake
among the burning buildings, the lake boiled in front of him as in a cauldron,
spouting out a lot of fish. The high priest of Veles Raduga begged him not to
leave his former place, but Veles scorched his hair for this, and after that a
dog’s head grew on Raduga (Rostov Chronicle);
6.- Volos, god of the cattle, who was theirs in great honor (Hustyn Chronicle);
7.- Behold! my people! To what end do sins induce man, and if beast, which
becomes the devil? Och! Let’s leave now that sins by Veles! (Sermon of a
Litoměřice priest);
8.- What devil or what Veles or what dragon turned you against me
(Tkadleček);
9.- So then you will only regret it and, with such a relentless purchase, blame
yourself, and he would blame himself and his wife for the evil that he would
have a wild goose and fly somewhere to Veles overseas and never return
home forever (Book of Sirach - Czech translation);
10.- ...where these vanities are gathered by those people, or what Veles will
whisper them (Tadeaš Hajek);
11.- … Prince Volodimer (...) as if he had come to Kiev, commanded the idols
to be demolished, (...) and Volos idol, who is called the God of cattle, com-
manded to break into the river Pochaina (Life of Vladimir);
12.- ...give me the strength and grace of Your Holy Spirit, to destroy this ma-
ny-witted and passionate idol of Veles, and instruct this deceived people to
do Your holy will (Life of Abraham of Rostov);
13.-… The Monk Abraham, perplexed about this and sitting, grieving zeal-
ously and thinking in himself how he could overcome the evil of this accursed
idol of Veles by the power of Christ my God (Life of Abraham of Rostov);
15.-...I am, father, the king of the city, and I am a stranger in your land. Tell
me, father, you, for the sake of it, grieving, sitting next to this terrible idol of
Veles… (Life of Abraham of Rostov);
16.-...help us, destroy this terrible and unclean idol of Veles (Life of Abraham
of Rostov);
17.-...take a blessing from the bishop and reward the small church in that
place, where the idol of Veles was crushed with the power of the cross (Life of
Abraham of Rostov);
18.-… they called it all the gods: the sun and the moon, the earth and the
water, the animals and the serpents, and finally the former human names -
Trojan, Chors, Veles, Perun - turned into gods and believing the evil rages
are overwhelmed by evil darkness yet (Journey of the Mother of God to the
pains of Hell);
19.-...An idol, to which one bowed before him, this was Volos, that is, a god of
cattle. And this Volos, living in it without living, as if creating many fears, stands
in the middle of a den, called Volosova (Legend of the founding of Jaroslav);
20.-...This sorcerer (...) according to the outcome of the incense of the sac-
rificial mind, and all the secret and the verb of the words that happened to
that person, like the words of this Volos (Legend of the founding of Jaroslav);
21.-...And these people promised Veles with an oath... (...) people who swore
an oath before your Volos (...). Why is he a god, as if they themselves violated
the oath under him and trampled? (Legend of the founding of Jaroslav);
22.-...do not believe these people, pray tearfully for your Volos, let it rain
down on the earth (Legend of the founding of Jaroslav);
23.-...And he ordered to overthrow, break and fundamentally refute the idols
of Charss, Stribo, Makoss and Wloss, who was considered the god of cattle
and forests (as Mr. Faunus was in the Arcades, etc.), ordered to overthrow the
city sewers and drown in impurities (Maciej Stryjkowski);
24.-… oh wizard Boyán, scion of Véles (The Tale of the Armament of Igor).
However, the problem with the textual material base arises mainly in the genre
field of myth, which by its very nature directly iconizes divine figures and the
religious-ideological view of the world of the respective ethnic group. The Slavs
did not leave any hitherto known and demonstrably authentic written sources in
which they would record their religious-mythological ideas, in contrast to other
cultures, e.g. Nordic-Germanic (older and younger Edda), Celtic (Ulster and Fen-
nial heroic cycle), Greek (Homer’s epics), Indian (Vedas) or Japanese (Kodzhiki).
The subjects, which are published under the name “Slavic myths”, are thus not
based on living culture or canonized, resp. authentic models fixed on writing. The
authors of various collections of “Slavic myths” reconstruct fragments from hith-
erto known myths-originals, folk tales, songs, customs, folklore, ethnographic and
religious research, but also from archaeological finds into a coherent mosaic of
subjects, which we can surely not consider a myth, in the true sense of the word.
For this reason, this type of literature is secondary in our considerations. On the
other side, we consider as primary sources in the research of the god Veles not only
the few authentic records from chronicles and historiographical writings, but also
from verified collector’s records of magical folk tales, which we can consider as a
desacralized relict of the original mythical ideas.
However, a completely opposite situation occurs when researching the trickster
figure.12 The thoroughly researched topic of the Trickster archetype therefore
serves us as a safe starting point, from where we can examine the hypothesis
whether Veles can really be considered the Trickster god of the ancient Slavs.
At the same time, we are aware of the fact that, based on the above-mentioned
pitfalls, such research is difficult and, in the end, the conclusions may be seen as
fragile.
12. According to the American sociologist Michael Carroll (1984), about the trickster
has been written much more than on all the other known religious-mythological figures.
The transition from trickster’s ambiguity to antiheroism

The trickster, through his humorous and ironic-absurd actions, unpredictably
oscillates between the extreme point good (hero) - evil (damager) of an imagi-
nary axis, which strictly constitutes the internal textual and non-textual struc-
ture of ancient stories. Due to its unpredictable nature, it disrupts petrified (sub)
consciously used norms of portrayal of performing characters in ancient stories,
so we cannot clearly define it as nor a positive or a negative figure.13 From this
point of view, we can call the trickster’s acts - in definitio essentialis - as ambiva-
lent: he is „at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he
who dupes others and who is always duped himeself; [...] he knows neither good
nor evil yet he is responsible for both”.14 Even according to Czech antropologist
Barbora Půtová, “the trickster constitutes a new world, reaffirms social order,
moves on the ‘threshold’ (liminal), embodies the process of change, creative
mind and spontaneity, connects the world of nature, gods and people and sets
a distinctive fourth dimension of space and time”.15 Ambivalence thus becomes
an important part of the trickster’s semantic idea and confirms its grotesque
comicism, ambiguity and interpretative incomprehensibility. Paul Radin, who
has long been considered an authority in this field of research, has concluded
that Trickster is an elusive ambiguous character with more or less divine traits,
who is always wandering, is constantly controlled by some kind of lust (hunger,
sexual instinct) and he is not guided by any socio-moral concept of good and
evil. He is constantly “playing tricks on people”, but he often finds himself in the
role of a deceived fool.16 However, the trickster does not only do mischievous
and humorous deeds. In many stories, he acts as a light carrier (kidnapper and
fire giver), creator of humans or wildlife, chthonic monster winner (dragons,
snakes, giants, etc.) or as a cultural hero who acquires rare agricultural, hunting
and craft items or thanks to his clairvoyance, he transmits to others the will of
the gods.
13. It is the so called aesthetics of identity dealt by Jurij Lotman in his The Structure of
the Artistic text (1977). Also The Encyclopedia of Folktales & Fairy Tales describes the
trickster both as a creator (category good/+), and as a destroyer (category evil/-), who
with his fraudulent and unpredictable actions upsets the cosmological structure of the
universe (Haase 2008, 992).
14. Radin 1956, ix.
15. Půtova 2011, 90.
16. Radin 1956, 155.
The ambivalence of the trickster could be represented in the following way:

unified figure ≈ hero = destroyer
(+) (-)
Veles also appears as an ambivalent figure. Its duality is already present on the
level of religious-magical functions, when on the one hand it embodies death,
danger and mystery (ruler of underworld, psychopomp, patron of wizards and
diviners), but on the other hand life and wealth (protector of shepherds and
herds, phallic deity ensuring the fertility of animals and cereals, patron saint
of merchants and guardian of property). In this respect, Veles is in many ways
similar to the ingenious and unpredictable Indian trickster Krishna - one of the
avatars of the god Vishnu - who is the god of shepherds and cattle (once protect-
ing them, sometimes harming them) and in Bhagavad-gita he acts as a spiritual
advisor to the hero Arjuna, or accompanies him on the road to reincarnation.
However, Veles is remarkably similar to Hermes, the classic god considered the
trickster of the Greek Pantheon.17 Like Veles, Hermes was originally only a god
of wandering shepherds, who ensured the fertility of herds and their protection
from disease and wildlife. Later, his competencies - and thus the cult - expand-
ed. The shepherds imagined Hermes as an old man with a big chin (similar to
the one Veles thinks), standing on a pile of stones.18 According to these notions,
Hermes has an erect phallus through which he increases fertility in its territory,
that is road borders, crossroads and cemeteries.
Later, ceremonial ithyphallic statues of the god Hermes were created from this
religious-mythological idea, and placed on road borders, crossroads and ceme-
teries.19 Hermes thus gradually becomes a god of travelers, including those who
travel to the other world. In addition to sandals with wings, his attributes are
a wide pilgrim’s hat and verge.20 Hermes’ mischievous character is most often
related to the Homeric Hymn To Hermes, where the trickster steals a few pieces
from his sacred flock to the god Apollo. While committing the theft, Hermes
is seen by an old man and so he decides to negotiate with him offering him
17. Grau 2014.

18. Hošek 2004.
19. Mircea Eliade believes as well that the etymology of Hermes’ name also refers to the
ancient custom of throw a stone on the piles by the roadside, insamuch hermaion means
«heap of stones»(Eliade 1976: 288). Even for Eliade Hemes “in his dealings with humans,
he behaves like a god, a trickster and a master craftsman at the same time” (ibid.).
20. Hošek 2004, 61.
various cows for his silence. However, the old man betrays Hermes and reveals
to Apollo where he took the stolen cattle. Even for this incident, Hermes sub-
sequently becomes the patron of thieves and merchants, who in the exercise of
their profession (negotiating for the best profit) often use fraud, lies and decep-
tion. The connection between the god Veles and the world of trade is indirectly
documented in in some written sources, including those of non-Slavic origin.
As is well known, in the year 988 the prince of Kiev Vladimir decided to accept
baptism. He immediately had the statues of the Slavic gods destroyed which he
himself had erected eight years earlier (PVL, a.a. 980). In the historical docu-
ment most used to describe this event, the Tale of Bygone Years, only the names
of six Slavic deities appear: Perun, Khors, Dažbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokoš.
Veles’ name is missing here. The Tale of Bygone Years is a chronicle, and It is
particularly strange that he does not mention such an important figure in Slavic
mythology as Veles. Instead, he appears in a hagiographic writing which also
speaks of the “execution of idols”, or the Life of St. Vladimir. According to this
source, the “idol of Veles”, was not thrown into the Dnieper, like the other divine
symbols reported in the previous testimony, but into the Pochaina river.21
The archaeologist Naďa Profantová also supports the thesis of the great impor-
tance that Veles had in traditional Slavic culture, when she takes into consider-
ation the fact that the ritual overthrow of Veles’ idol corresponds to the ritual
overthrow of Perun’s, the strongest of the gods of the Vladimir pantheon. Ac-
cording to Profantová, these were the only two idols that were not broken up
or burned, but thrown into the river. Veles’s idol probably stood in Kiev’s mer-
chant/trading district, where there was even “Volos street”, later called “Episco-
pal Street”.22 Veles therefore, like Hermes, was a god of trade and wealth. This is
evidenced in particular by the agreement between Kievan Rus’ and Byzantium
of 971 recorded in the Tale of Bygone years, in which the parties confirmed their
mutual agreement by swearing on their gods Perun and Veles „the god of cattle”
(PVL a.a. 971), that is a deity associated with fertility and wealth as well.
Furthermore, if we consider The Tale of the Armament of Igor to be truthful, the
mention of Veles, as mentor of the “wizard Boyán”, places him among the divin-
ities linked to divination and magic, therefore also in this case a divinity similar
21. Mansikka 1921. The fact that more”idol executions” were carried out, and not just
one, is also indirectly confirmed in one of the Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, where it is stated
that Prince Vladimir ordered some idols to be torn to pieces, and others to be burned
(see Profantova 2004, 120).
22. Profantová 2004, 120.
to Hermes.23 According to Henry Gates, it is no coincidence that divination is

associated with tricksterian, deceptive divine figures, like for example Hermes,
Eshu (western Africa and Brazil), Legba (Benin and Haiti), and others. Divina-
tion is in rational thinking an unreliable and ambiguous type of communication.
The prerequisite for a successful oracle is not only the ability to (distinguish)
the language of the gods, the dead and the people into which the prophecies
are interpreted, resp. from which they are decoded, but a certain ability of im-
provisation and the most subtle interpretation is also necessary, and with it the
dexterity, acumen, ability, ingenuity or cunning, t. i. a certain form of mental
freedom.24 Eshu and Legba also have the ability of numinous spiritual commu-
nication across the worlds, t. j. with people, dead and gods.25 Eshu is the god of
destiny, which is closely related to his status as a divine seer and the function of
a psychopomp. Controls the mysterious ifá geomancy system,26 which operates
on a similar principle as the Chinese divination system i-ching and is often re-
lated to the mystical-alchemical structure of the so-called Kabbalistic tree of life
(sfira).27 The wizard and rioter Legba also received the gift of clairvoyant knowl-
edge, so he masters the languages of all spheres.28
The original scheme indicating the ambivalence of the Trickster character can be
adapted to Veles’ religious-mythological profile as follows:
23. The wizard and diviner is often under the patronage of a mystical chtonic deity,
because he can establish a fragile connection with the gods and the untouchable realm
of the dead, i. j. just as a psychopompos moves between worlds . „Everywhere in the
primitive and modern world we find individuals who claim to have contact with ‘ghosts’,
to be ‘obsessed’ or to control them [...] such a spirit can be the soul of the deceased as
well as the ‘spirit of Nature’, a mythical animal etc. “(Eliade 1968, 23). The characters of
diviners and wizards, who often do not fit completely into their society, but also among
the supernatural figures, as well as the figures of the Trickster gods, especially those who
are directly connected with the otherworld and magic, most explicitly show one of the
founding features of the tricksterian character: the liminality.
24. Gates 1988, 38.
25. Lynch–Robert 2010, 42.
26. Pelton 1989, 136.
27. See Eliade – Coulianu 1990, 23.
28. Lynch – Roberts 2010, 72.
Demonization of the Trickster’s figure as a common religious phenomenon

In mythologies that gradually come into contact with Christianity and are sub-
ject to the process of Christianization, heroic, creationist or otherwise positive
acts cease to be emphasized in the originally ambiguous tricksterian characters.
On the contrary, only their dark, chaotic tendencies are pointed out, and under
the influence of the image of the Christian devil, they gradually become purely
evil figures. This strengthens the process of splitting the originally ambivalent
tricksterian archetype into two flat adversarial figures.29
According to the Slovak ethnotheatrologist Martin Slivka, the gradual and com-
plex process of Christianization penetrated the figure of the devil also into pagan
and oriental mythologies, where it absorbs ideas of various gods of war, evil,
death, fertility or corporeality, which are often the personification of negative
forces, i.e. chaos.30 In this process, the devil is very often synthesized with specif-
ic Trickster god characters, precisely because of his mischievous, unpredictable
29. It is also true that in some cases the trickster becomes a completely maleficent figure
even outside the process of Christianization, as in the case of Seth, the brother of Osiris,
excluded from the Egyptian pantheon as early as the 1st millennium BC. On Seth as an
expression of the trickster in ancient Egyptian culture, On Seth as an expression of the
trickster in ancient Egyptian culture, and in relation to the deities “extraneous” to the
Hellenic mentality, see Ugo Bianchi (1971, 123-124).
30. Slivka 2002, 506.
nature and often because of his chimerical human-animal appearance, that is the
ability to change arbitrarily from human to animal and vice versa. For example,
when men and women of the African tribes were forcibly brought into Amer-
ica as slaves, new spiritual needs began to emerge, in addition to the religion
of their oppressors, in connection with their degrading status and exploitation.
Thus developed also the Trickster god Eshu, who underwent many changes. In
the original religious-mythological notions, Eshu appears as an ambivalent and
unpredictable deity of destiny. However, his acumen and deceit make him a per-
fect aspirant for the deity of oppressed slaves, who began to perceive him as an
astute savior and at the same time a cruel avenger - a devil. In Brazil, Eshu (Exu
in Portuguese) becomes a demonic being who harms with various magic tricks
and also takes over patronage over black magic and (animal) sexual intercourse.
In the Caribbean islands we meet the deity Legba, respectively Papa Legba, who
was also brought in by slaves from West Africa. In the new religious-mytholog-
ical context, on the one hand, he retains his original patronage. He is the trick-
ster god of deceit, chaos, the dead, divination, magic and crossroads, but on the
other hand, under the influence of voodoo cult and Christianity, he becomes the
father of the dead. It also controls black magic, including necromancy, and de-
termines human destiny. Related to this is a change in his physical appearance.31
While in his home (African) environment, Legba appears as a young and stout
man, in Caribbean folklore he is syncretized with the devil, but also with the
beggar Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead. Like Lazarus, Papa Legba
is portrayed as a shabby old man with a stick, who is a strange and haunting
embodiment of the thin line between life and death. The devil is also identified
with the ambiguous and capricious trickster Wakdjunkaga from the folklore of
the Winnebago. After the forced Christianization and desacralization of their
original religion, the cult of peyote enters North America from Mexico. Synthe-
sizing this cult and Christianity, a new peyote religion is emerging among the
indigenous people of North America, which harshly condemns and demonizes
the mischievous figure of Wakdjunkaga. At the same time, followers of the pey-
ote religion use the triscksterian cycle of Wakdjunkaga to point out morality,
emphasizing the trickster’s demonic corruption and immorality the most.32
A similar synthesis of the trickster god and the devil can be observed in the Nor-
dic-Germanic mythology. According to Jitka Vlčková, author of an Encyclopedy
31. Gates 1988, 38.

32. Radin 1956, 157-161.
of mythology of the Germanic and Nordic peoples in the Czech language the fig-
ure of the devil is a greatly influenced image of Loki in younger Scandinavian
myths.33 His demonic attitude, desire for chaos and the destruction of the gods
of Asgard, which ultimately lead to his imprisonment and Ragnarök, is most
pronounced in the myth of the Baldrs draumar,34 in which Loki causes the death
of Baldr, Odin’s son, through a mischievous and insidious deception.
The same process of demonization took place also among the Slavs and the Balts.
In the mythology of the Baltic peoples, the god of the underworld and the dead,
Velnias - similar to the Slavic god of herding and the dead, Veles - acts as an
antagonist of the creator god. After Christianization, only the negative aspects
of the deities began to be highlighted – that is mainly the connection with the
world of the dead and magic - until these characters completely merged with the
character of the devil and became a model of the comic imps.35 Especially in the
Lithuanian language, the imp is referred to as velnias, which is derived from the
name of the pagan god Velnias, the Veles of the Balts. The semantic similarity
between the figures of Veles and the devil is proven by some Czech sayings such
as „What a devil or what Veles or what Snake woke you up against me and led
you!“ or the statement of an unhappy newlywed who wishes to be his disobedi-
ent wife „a wild goose which flew somewhere to Veles across the sea“.36
In some mythologies, the demonization of the trickster is exacerbated by the fact
that his opponent is a divine hero who, according to Dumézil’s three-function
scheme,37 represents war/warrior status and natural paternalism, linked to such
characteristics as courage, fighting spirit, steadfastness, prudence and masculin-
ity. In Stith Thompson´s Motif-Index of folk-literature this motif is identified as
“A162.3. Combat between thunder god and devil” and we find it in the verbal
heritage across different civilizational-cultural circles. The trickster in this figur-
al configuration always remains in the position of the maleficent, resp. antihero,
often a daringly stupid, lustful, and insidious provocateur and the hero’s main
opponent, which only further emphasizes the natural tendency to thematize
rather negative and unpredictable aspects of the tricksterian figure. For exam-
ple, in Nordic-Germanic mythology, there are myths in which the otherwise
33. Vlčková 1999, 142.

34. Schnurbein 2000, 123.
35. Gimbutas 2018, 746.
36. Tobolka 1894, 531.
37. Dumézil 1986.
ambivalent Loki38 appears as a sovereignly negative character (the positive po-

larity of his character as an involuntary donor-hero is lost) and the god-warrior
Thor appears against him. Most explicitly, such a semantic-figural constellation
appears in the mythical song Lokasenna, when Loki out of boredom begins to
insult all the gods present at the feast. He calls the goddess Iðunn a slut, accuses
the goddess Freyja of incest, and even insults Thor himself, who, however, stops
Loki’s behavior and banishes him from the feast. He finally chases him so he can
punish him.
Based on fragmentary and incomplete sources, we can observe a similar pat-
tern of action in Veles, which also does not deviate from the process of split-
ting the originally ambiguous tricksterian figure. Veles represents the role of an
antihero/damager, and as his character adversarial counterpart, Perun, another
god-warrior, the Thunderlord, the cultural equivalent of the Nordic-Germanic
Thor, appears. In the fragmentary preserved Slavic mythological sources, which
are already clearly marked by Christian ideology and dualistic view of the world,
the originally ambiguous Veles takes on a supremely negative function and be-
comes synonymous with the devil. For example, in the story The Battle of Perun
with Veles, which is written on the basis of various fragments of Russian folk
songs, sayings and fairy tales, the conflict between good - Perun and evil - Veles
is themed. In this context, Veles is often explicitly referred to as the devil, t. i.
the essential personification of evil. He is described as an insidious and envious
character who has lived in a cave underground since the dawn of time, when she
lost the battle for supremacy over the world with her primordial primacy. The
story focuses on the deception that Veles-devil invented to subdue Perun, and
which is strikingly reminiscent of Herm’s mischief: the theft of the sacred cattle
of the god Apollo. In the beginning, Veles steals a few pieces from Perun’s cattle
and hides them in his cave. He hopes that Perun cannot find the lost animals, so
he will remain ridiculed by other gods and lose his authority due to his inade-
quacy. However, Perun eventually finds the cattle and frees them from the cave
by breaking one of the rock walls with one of his lightning bolt.
38. On the one hand, Loki provocatively provokes the other gods, mocks them and deco-
rates them, but on the other hand - for them - often involuntarily - he acquires rare and
sacred objects/attributes (eg the magical warship Ásov Skídbladn, Odin’s spear Gungni
and the golden ring Draupni, Thor’s Hammer Mjöllnir, etc). Loki thus oscillates between
the category of the hero, who in the end always brings a cultural and symbolic object,
and the category of the damager, who in the respective mythical universe creates tension
with his insidious and mischievous tricks.
Another version of this story, which is also author-reconstructed on the basis

of Russian folk resources and is mentioned in their research by Toporov and
Ivanov, deals with the abduction of Perun’s wife and son. Here, Veles insidiously
transforms into a dragon with a large parrot, in which hides Mokoš and also the
little Perunič. The swallowing of Mokoš (the cultural equivalent of the Greek
Demeter), which ensures the moisture and fertility of the soil, will cause great
drought and crop failure on the earth (cosmological disaster). Even under the
threat of death, Veles does not want to hand over his hostages to Perun, but in
the end, the thunder god hits his deadly lightning and throws him underground.
There, Veles transforms into a snake to take off his old, dead body and bring it
back to life. The motive in which the trickster’s death is caused by his stupid
and daring mischief, but he eventually comes back to life, belongs together with
the motif of transformation as a typical tricksterian motif. For example, in the
North American Indian tale The Coyote and the Rock, a silly coyote donates a
fur coat to a rock. However, the coyote soon starts to feel cold, so he returns
for the fur coat, but the rock refuses to give it to him. The coyote laughs at the
rock and brazenly takes the fur from her, for which the rock kills him. However,
a dead coyote can revive itself by inflating itself into its original form. In the
Pacific myth, trickster Maui wants to defeat death so that people don’t die. He
is therefore going to destroy the goddess of death Hine-nui-te-po, but she over-
take him and devour Maui. Soon, however, Maui is reborn. In the 20th episode
of the North American cycle of the Winnebago tribe, Wakdjunkaga again turns
into a woman with a grotesque costume so that he can marry the chief ’s son and
get food without effort. In the myth of the Building of the Asgard’s Wall, Loki is
deceitfully transformed into a mare to seduce the magical horse Svadilfari and
have sexual intercourse with him, etc.
The image of the snake and the dragon (in the Slavic cultural circle it is often
referred to as the šarkan) and the life in the underworld are an immediate part of
the religious-mythological profile of the Christian devil. The semantic connec-
tion between the two characters - Veles and the devil - is then clearly revealed
in a younger Russian version of a same nordic story, where the original pagan
mythological material is clearly obscured by the Christian faith. The role of Veles
is played by the devil, and in the role of Perun, St. Ilya (called Elijah in the Latin
Christian area), who during the process of Christianization took over the char-
acteristics of the Thunder God.39
39. Slušný 2010, 273.

In the following tale, Veles’ deposit, the mischievous Veles turns into a lizard
(which is another variant of the snake/dragon) to steal the sun from people and
gods. Similar cosmological catastrophes are typical of the Trickster character:
Maui is trying to trap the sun in the sky so that people have a longer day, but he
achieve the exact opposite, Susanoo insults the sun goddess Amateras and she
shuts herself into the cave (an eclipse occourred), a raven of North American
Indians hangs the sun in the sky, but people are frightened of themselves and
turn into animals, etc. The stories in which the Trickster influences the activity
of the sun belong, on the basis of their symbolism, to the stories of fire theft,
which belong to the typically tricksterian substances. (e.g. North American sto-
ry How a coyote helped people, South American story How people got fire from
a jaguar, the Polynesian tale How Maui brought fire to Tonga, the African story
How Mombuti stole fire from a chimpanzee, the Australian tale How fire appeared
in the world, and last but not least the ancient greek Prometheus myth).
The trickster’s power to transform faciem mundi and to change the established
order in the universe positively or negatively is often manifested, among other
things, by his tendency to deliberately harm people by creating unhelpful phe-
nomena. For example, in the North American story How a Coyote Helped People,
a coyote first creates things for people (fish, fishing tackle, canoes, dwellings,
edible berries, etc.) at the behest of the Creator, but then he gets angry - he
unsuccessfully asks the people for a girl - then he creates waterfalls, so that the
fish do not swim towards the village and their fishing is so fruitless. In another
North American tale, How the Raven Helped the Ancient People, the raven will
cause the fish to have bones, etc. As an involuntary cultural donor-hero who
presents people with edible plants, hunting animals or agricultural tools or other
gains, then Veles appears in the story How the Gods Began to Help People by Giv-
ing People Grain. According to American folklorist Stith Thompson, we classify
stories about tricksters who (often accidentally) cause beneficial or unhelpful
changes in the structure of the universe in the group A521 (Culture hero as dupe
or trickster).
The scheme that indicates the process of demonization of the god Veles can be
indicated as follows:
Veles’ incorporation into Christianized culture of popular laughter:

St. Blaise and the devil
We have already mentioned that Veles, the god of cattle, wealth, fertility, magic
and death, was one of the most important and revered gods of the Slavic people,
along with Perun. Despite the efforts of the Christian churches (catholic or ort-
odox), it was not possible to “erase” all pre-Christian cults and associated ideas
and practices from the collective consciousness of the people. The Christian re-
ligion was more benevolent to the archaic pagan ideas and traditions of the rural
populations and engaged in a synthesizing dialogue with them. For this reason,
also the ideas associated with the popular god Veles did not completely disap-
pear from the collective consciousness of the people. They were adjusted only to
the legitimate form, that is the Christian one, and the originally ambiguous fig-
ure of Veles was definitively split into two flat characters. Veles’s aspects, which
are generally perceived as “good” (fertility, protection of herds and shepherds
from wild beasts), penetrated the figure of a typical Christian hero-martyr: Saint
Blaise (Vlasij in russian). On the contrary, those aspects of his religious-myth-
ological profile, which are generally perceived as negative or dangerous (con-

nection with grave life, death, magic, underworld or necromancy), gradually
intensified and penetrated into the figure of the Christian devil, respectively - in
folk culture - to the figure of the little devil (west slavic čert, russian čërt).
The originally ambivalent Trickster archetype had split into two flat oppositional
(psychologically emptied) characters. On the one hand we find therefore skill and
bravery, and on the other hand we find malice and stupidity, that is to say, what in
terms of Propp’s character-typological function of characters corresponds to the
functional relation hero – damager. This is not an isolated phenomenon and we
record it even in cultures that have come into contact with Christianity and Chris-
tian missionaries only minimally, or noway. In our opinion, this is a natural de-
velopment and an effort of the traditional communities to clearly define the often
very controversial, ambiguous and incomprehensible character of the Trickster.
As for the East Slavic culture, sometime between the 11th and 13th centuries,
under the name Veles begins to merge with the name and supposed character-
istics of the Christian saint Blaise of Sebaste, considered as the herd protector
‘and a bull guard’,40 that is the saint is marked by adjectives typical of the god
Veles himself.41 Thanks to the writing of Matěj Poličanský, The Forfeiture and
Punishments of the Transgressors of God’s Commandments, we can note that at
the beginning of the 17th century sanctions were applied to those who spreading
the superstition that St. Blaise, like Veles, rules over wolves and wild beasts, and
therefore he is the protector of herds and the patron saint of shepherds.42 There
have been long debates concerning the mixture between Veles and Saint Blaise
so much so that some researchers believe that Veles was included by writers in
the Slavic pantheon only much after the fall of paganism,43 and precisely as a
consequence of the popularity of the cult of Saint Blaise.
Some facts contribute (seemingly) to this view. The most serious is considered
to be the absence of the god Veles in the so-called Vladimir pantheon. However,
in the pantheon, other deities are also missing, which were also very important
in the religious-mythological ideas of the Eastern Slavs. In addition, the absence
of Veles in the Vladimir pantheon is all the more striking because it was he
who acted with the Perun as the guarantor of the most important political deci-
40. Madlevskaja 2005, 676; Vvedenskiy 2014, 222.

41. Tobolka 1894.
42. Zíbrt 1889, 245.
43. Vvevedskij 2014.
sions and commitments of the Russian ruling and warring class and he is often
thought of as the second most important god besides Perun.44
A Czech librarian, Zdeněk Václav Tobolka, underlined the strong persistence of
Veles in popular rites, at least until the 19th century. Tobolka points to the cus-
toms documented in South Russian, where the remains of sacrificial rituals to
the god Veles have been preserved in the 19th century, focusing primarily on the
fertility of crops and cattle: the women, in the reaping time, used to make a short
bundle of of harvested wheat (usually the last one) and turned him towards the
ground. This ritual gesture of the end of the harvest was called „to wrap Veles’
chin“, or „leave Veles a handful of golden ears of corn for the chin“.45
In other areas, Veles was explicitly replaced by St. Blaise, but the nature of reli-
gious acts associated with the fertility of the land and livestock remains mark-
edly pagan: on the feast of the saint (February 3 or 11), people in Russia asked
him for the fertility of cattle and his protection from the pests, in other Russian
areas shepherds brought the icon of the saint to the first pasture to protect and
bless herds from danger.46 Similar religious acts and invocations, which obvious-
ly confirm the connection of St. Blaise with the pastoral pagan deity Veles, were
also found in Slovakia, Moravia, Bohemia. From there they penetrated also into
the border areas of today’s Hungary.47
In folk culture it replaces the official and terrifying figure of the devil, and, from
the essence of evil, we pass to the comic, passing through the typical deceptions
and jokes of the imps.48 M. Slivka suggests that while the devil is perceived as the
44. For Naďa Profantová Veles was one of the oldest and most widely worshiped deities,
probably represents the chtonic deity that is missing in terms of structure in the Vladi-
mir pantheon (Profantová 2004, 155.
45. Tobolka 1894, 532.
46. Ibid., 532.
47. Golema 2008, 148-154.
48. In all the Slavic languages is used for imps the word čert (č. čert, pol. czart, ukr. čort,
rus. čërt). The characteristics of the Slavic čerti are quite similar to those of the imps of
the Western folklore. In the study of the popular cultures of the Slavic-speaking coun-
tries it is but necessary to distinguish well, what is in the West a clear linguistic distinc-
tion between devil and imp. In Slavic languages, in fact, the word čert means also devil
(while for little devil are used the diminutives čertík in Czech or čertënok in Russian),
therefore in the collective imagination the čert is even more connected to the underwor-
ld than the imp. According to Slivka “the devil is demonized, frightened, immaterialized,
acting like a tempter. In contrast, the čert in folklore is humanized, comedic. Its function
embodiment of evil, i.e. the highest demonic entity, the čerti of the Slavic word
are perceived rather than its messengers, who are to do evil on earth, remind
people of their sins, and take their souls to the underworld.
The imps, like other mischievous supernatural characters, becomes a messenger
- in this case hell/devil - and moves between the world of the living and the dead.
Despite the fact that the imp acquires a comic dimension, it is not entirely pos-
sible to remove from its semantic image the connotations associated with fear
and hellish damnation. Therefore, in folklore, the imp appears in two positions:
as a deceitful, cruel, unpredictable and vicious miscreant, but also as a clumsy,
grotesque comic fool who is humiliated and ridiculed by other characters.49
The comic-satirical dimension of the character of the imp in fairy tales, but also
the mimetic-ceremonial carnival feasts, during which comic masks of devils
also appear, represent a denial of the fear of the demonic entity - originally ob-
sessive - and decorate it, thus giving to the community a sense of superiority
and foresight. Bakhtin claims that medieval grotesqueness draws on culture of
popular laughter and knows the fright only in the form of ridiculous ghosts: the
terror is humbled with laughter.50 In this context, the horrid is always turned in
something ridiculous and hilarious. The imp, who plays the role of the trickster
in European Christian folk culture, is often identified with other demonic/dan-
gerous figures - including the devil himself - to which he can transform, e.g. with
giants, trolls, wizards, elfs, dragons or even snakes.51 Slivka rightly remarked that
[...] was to represent the hellish powers intimidating with impending doom. The culture
of popular laughter already in the Middle Ages made it a carnevalized, merry ghost and
in this form it has survived to the present day“ (Slivka 2002, 506–507).
49. The čert as a masculine demon is often humiliated in Slavic folklore by a matriarchal
figure. Usually she is his grandmother/mother or old girl - the čert’s (potential) bride.
Women treat the čert directly, beat him or underestimate his scary abilities (e.g. in the
Slovak tales The devil is serving, The Old Girl and the devil, On the Proud Zuzka and
the devil or the Czech Božena Němcová’s tale The Devil and Kate). According to the
ATU catalog, we can find this funny stories under the number 1164. Hans Jörg-Uther
(2011, 56), believes that the subject comes from India and can already be found in the
Indian Panchantrara collection called Sukasaptati. Viera Gašparíková underlines that
the stories with a stupid čert, who is tormented and humiliated by a female character, are
popular mainly in Slavic cultural provenance, but we sometimes find it in other cultural
areas, especially in the most culturally related, that is among the Balts, and also among
the Finns (Gašparíková-Filová 2001, 954–955).
50. Bakhtin 1965, 47.
51. Harits - Al-Fadlilah 2020, 66.
especially in fairy tales the devil appears as a deceitful witch, forester or wander-
er,52 but he often appears in the role of a rich lord (e.g. the Slovak fairy tale The
beautiful Ibronka) or even a priest (e.g. Slovak fairy tale If there is the truth in the
world). His hallmarks are red, an upside-down costume, an overgrown face and
a hairy body, sometimes hooves, an ox tail and horns that he can’t disguise. The
devil’s ability to transform into an animal or a teriantropic human figure thus
further enhances his inhuman nature. We recall the above-mentioned statement
that Veles often takes on the form of a snake, dragon or bull (god of cattle) and
his hallmark is a long, thick chin, similar to that of another god of pastoralism,
Hermes, and ox horns.53
The human-animal oxymorphic connection, which semantizes its biological
(physical and mental) non-differentiation, is typical of the figure of the trickster.
The grotesque depiction of the trickster’s body and its corporeality is recorded
across different cultures until it became an integral part, as Bakhtin first noted,
an integral part of folk comedy. In mimetic-ceremonial and narrative laughter
manifestations, the human body is iconized as unfinished and open to the world
(bumpy, asymmetrical, hyperbolizing, imperfect, shaping/transforming, with
zoomorphic elements or otherwise deviating from certain socially acceptable
norms, i.e. grotesque).
The tricksterian nature of the imp is manifested especially in stories with the
motif of the magical treasure. The imp hides - often in hell or underground - a
treasure, a rare object, or a person who is lured by a passing hero, and the con-
dition for obtaining the treasure is to compete with a deceitful force or wit. The
hero can get the treasure and humiliate the imp (e.g. the Slovak fairy tale How
the Gypsy Deceived the Devil, or the Czech fairy tale Hladoš). This motif is rich
in European folklore and according to Aarne-Thompson-Uther’s international
catalog of fairy-tale types, we register it under the numbers 330 (The Smith and
the Devil), and 475 (The Man as Heater of Hell´s Kettle). However, the fight with
the imp does not always turn out positively for the hero, because the dishonest
52. Slivka 2004, 506.

53. According to Ivanov and Toporov (1973, 15-30), the original radix of the term Veles
is derived from *vel, which could have several meanings and refer to the 1st to meadow
as pastures of cattle, but also dead souls, to the 2nd to the term «dead», «to die», to 3.
to the term «own», in the sense of having property. There could be a fourth meaning,
which is related to the transcription of the full-form form of Veles’s name into Volos,
which means «hair», and - figuratively speaking – «fur», which represents yet another
association with the animal world.
figure uses various illusions and tricks. Especially in the Lithuanian language,
where the imp is called velnias, and is a cunning treasure keeper, the aim of
his actions is to ridicule other characters. For example, he turns horse feces or
parts of a horse’s body into gold and pushes it to passers-by. The person is over-
whelmed by the indescribable joy of finding, but when he grabs a piece of pre-
cious metal in his hand, the gift is transformed into its original form. However,
there is often an inverse variant of this motif, when a person receives something
unnecessary from a velnias.54 He gives up on this out of anger, and then the gift
turns into real gold (e.g. in the Lithuanian tales The Tormented Wind or the Fish-
ermen and the Devil). However, variants of this motif can be found throughout
European-Christian folklore, and according to the Aarne-Thompson-Uther’s
Classification of folktale types, we might classify it under the number 1645B
(Dream of Marking the Treasure).
Velnias’s mythological-fairy-tale semantics does not deviate in any way from the
competence framework of the Slavic-Christian devil or the pagan god Veles,
nor in other points. Also Velnias has a grotesque body, which is characterized
by features of animality, hyperbolization and the aesthetic-expressive category
of ugliness. He is called “the crooked”, he has a thick beard, a typical bovine
tail, horns, and can turn into pets.55 Even when he transforms himself into a
human person, he always retains some elements of recognition that he cannot
hide: horse’s legs, hooves and tail.
Conclusions
As we mentioned in the introduction, due to the lack of direct authentic sources,

it is not possible to say with certainty whether Veles appears as a full-fledged
Trickster character in Slavic pagan mythology. Based on secondary sources (his-
toriographical writings, wonder tales), religious and archaeological knowledge,
but especially on the basis of the semantic comparison of the god Veles with oth-
er tricksterian figures, we believe that among the hitherto known Slavic pagan
gods, this one has the greatest potential to be a trickster.
Veles, like most other Trickster figures from other cultures, is in some way con-
nected to the cults of fertility and body. It is also typical for tricksterian figures to
become the target of the new religion, which demonizes them precisely because
of their semantically transparent connection with the world of the dead and be-
54. Vélius 1987, 85.

55. Ibid., 39.
cause their mischievous, cunning, insidious nature. However, the trickster often
loses its ambiguity even without the intervention of external religious influence,
when naturally outdated cults and to them associated ideas are set aside on the
periphery of the religious structure of the community and then enter in the cat-
egory of the black humor (lasciviousness, obscenity, scatology). On the level of
folk culture, Veles merged with the Christianity and becomes on the one hand,
thanks to its connection with the world of the dead, a typically infernal creature,
the čert. On the other hand, his fertility cult was so ingrained in culture that
these ideas survived in the cult of St. Blaise. It thus shows the typical ambiguity
of the tricksterian characters, which splits in the dynamic process of living cul-
ture. Like other tricksterian figures, he can transform into an animal, resp. he is a
human-animal chimeric appearance. He is often imitated with a grotesque body
and therefore is also a bearer of elements of Bakhtin’s “grotesque naturalism”.
Literature
Bakhtin, Michail Michajlovič: Tvorčestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul’tura sredneve-

kov’ja i Renessansa. Moskva: Xudožestvennaja literatura, 1965.
Bianchi, Ugo: Seth, Osiris et l’ethnographie, Revue de l’histoire des religions 179(2), 1971,
pp. 113-135.
Borenović, Mirjana. René Girard’s Scapegoating and Stereotypes of Persecution in the
Divine Battle between Veles and Perun, Bogoslovni vestnik 79(4), 2019, pp. 1039–
1052
Campbell, Joseph: Primitive Mythology. The Masks of God. San Francisco: New word
Library, 2020.
Carrol, Michael: The Trickster as Selfish-Buffoon and Culture Hero, Ethos. Journal of the
Society for Psychological Anthropology 12(2), 1984, pp. 105-131.
Danišová, Nikola: Marginálie k figúre šibala v arcinaratívoch. Tematologicko-kultúrne
súvislosti. Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre, 2021.
Dumézil, Georges: Mythes et dieux des Indo-Européens. Paris: Flammarion, 1986.
Eliade, Mircea: Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses I. De l’Âge de la pierre aux
mystères d’Eleusis. Paris: Payot, 1976.
Eliade, Mircea: Le chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l’extase. Paris: Payot, 1968.
Eliade, Mircea – Coulianu, Ioan P.: Dictionnaire des Religions. Paris: Plon, 1990.
Gašparíková, Viera – Filová, Božena: Slovenské ľudové rozprávky 2. Bratislava: Veda,
2001.
Gates, Henry Louis: The Signifying Monkey. A Theory of African-American Literary Crit-
icism. Oxford: University Press, 1988.
Gimbutas, Marija: Ancient Slavic Religion: A Synopsis. In: Wijk, van Nicolai (ed.): To
Honor Roman Jakobson. Essays on the Occasion of his 70. birthday, 11. October 1966.
Vol. 1, pp. 738-759. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2018.
Golema, Martin: Svätý Blažej ako “vlčí pastier” v textovej tradícii z českého, slov-
enského maďarského prostredia. Studia mythologica slavica 11, 2008, pp. 147-172.
Grau, Marion: Refiguring Theological Hermeneutics: Hermes, Trickster, Fool. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Haase, Donald: The Greenwood Encyklopedia of Folktales & Fairy Tales. Vol. 3. Q – Z.
Portsmouth: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008.
Harits, Wakhid Imron – Al-Fadlilah, Muna: Devil’s Character and Christian tradition in
european children’s stories, Pedagogium 20(4), 2020, pp. 64–71.
Hošek, Radislav: Náboženství antického Řecka. Praha: Vyšehrad, 2004.
Hynes, William – Doty, William: Mythical Trickster Figures. Contours, Contexts, and
Criticisms. Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1997.
Ivanković, Milorad: New Insights on Slavic God Volosъ/Velesъ from a Vedic Perspec-
tive, Studia Mythologica Slavica 22, pp. 55-81.
Ivanov, Vjačeslav - Toporov, Vladimir Nikolajevič: A Comparative Study of The Group
of Baltic Mythological terms from the root *vel-, Baltistica 9(1), p. 1, 1973.
Ivanov, Vjačeslav - Toporov, Vladimir Nikolajevič: Vostočnoslavjanskoje Veles(‘)/Vo-
los(‘) i problema rekonstrukcii imeni i atributov protivnika Boga Grozy. In: Issledo-
vanija v oblasti slavjanskich drevnostěj: Leksičeskije i frazeologičeskije voprosy rekon-
strukcii těkstov, Moskva, Nauka, 1974, pp. 31-74.
Jakobson, Roman, The Slavic God Veles” and his Indo-European cognates. In: Studi lin-
guistici in onore di Vittore Pisani, Brescia, Paiediea, pp. 579-599.
Jung, Carl Gustav: Zur Psychologie der Schelmenfigur. In: Radin, Paul, Der göttliche
Schelm, IEin indianischer Mythen-Zyklus. Zürich: Rhein-Verlag, 1954, pp. 456-488.
Kerényi, Karol: Mythologische Epilehomena. In: Radin, Paul, Der göttliche Schelm, Ein
indianischer Mythen-Zyklus. Zürich: Rhein-Verlag, 1954, pp. 445-455.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude: The Structural Study of Myth, The Journal of American Folklore
68(270), 1955, pp. 428-444.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude: Anthropologie structurale, Paris: Plon, 1958.
Lotman, Jurij: The Structure of the Artistic text. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contribu-
tions, 1977.
Lynch, Patricia Ann – Robert, Jeremy: African mythology A to Z. New York: Chelsea
House Publications, 2010.
Madlevskaja, Elena, Russkaja mifologia: enciklopedia. Moskva: Eksmo, 2006.
Makarius, Laura, Le mythe du « Trickster », Revue de l’histoire des religions 175(1), 1969,
pp. 17-46.
Mansikka, Viljo, Die Religion der Ostslaven. I. Quellen, Helsinki Suomalainen Tiedeak-
atemia, 1922.
Pelton, Robert: The Trickster in West Africa. A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight.
California: University of California Press, 1989.
Profantová, Naďa – Profant, Martin: Encyklopedie slovanských bohů a mýtů. Praha: Libri,
2004.
Půtová, Barbora: Kojot jako kulturní fenomén, Anthropologia Integra 1(2), 2011, pp. 89
– 95.
Rabinovič, Roman Anton: Iskušenije «vološskim orechom», ili Balkanskije volochi i
russkije volchvy, Stratum-plus 5, 2000, pp. 262—390.
Radin, Paul: The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. London Routledge
and Kegan, 1956.
Schnurbein, Stefanie von: The Function of Loki in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda. History of
Religions 40(20), 2000, pp. 109 – 124.
Slivka, Martin: Slovenské ľudové divadlo. Bratislava: Divadelný ústav SAV, 2004.
Slušný, Jaromír: Najstaršie slovenské mýty a báje. Praha: XYZ, 2010.
Thompson, Stith: Motif-index of folk-literature: a classification of narrative elements in
folktales, ballads, myths, fables, medieval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and
local legends, vol. 5., A – C. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1955.
Toporov, Vladimir Nikolajevič: Ješčjo raz o Velese-Volose v kontěkstě «osnovnogo»
mifa. In: Balto-slavjanskije jazykovye otnošenija v istoričeskom i areal’nom planě,
Moskva, Nauka, 1983, pp. 50-56.
Toporov, Vladimir Nikolajevič: Mify narodov mira, I. Moskva: Sovetskaja enciklopedija,
1987.
Tobolka, Zdeněk: O Velesovi, Český lid 3(6), 1894, pp. 529-533.
Uspenskij, Boris Andreevič: Nikola i Volos (Veles). In: Filologičeskije razyskanija v oblas-
ti slavjanskich drevnostěj (Relikty jazyčestva v vostočnoslavjanskom kul’tě Nikolaja
Mirlikijskogo), Moskva, Izdatěl’stvo Moskovskogo universitěta 1982, pp. 31-117.
Uther, Hans Jőrg: The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography.
Part II. Tales of the stupid Ogre, Anecdotes and Jokes, and Formula Tales. Helsinki:
Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2011.
Vėlius, Norbertas: Chtoniškasis lietuvių mitologijos pasaulis, Vilnius: Vaga, 1987.
Vvedenskij, Anton: Počemu v pantěoně Vladimira ně bylo boga Volosa? In: Mačinskij
Dmitrij Aleksejevič (ed.) Ladoga v kontěkstě istorii i archeologii Severnoj Jevrazii.
Sbornik statěj pamjati Dmitrija Aleksejeviča Mačinskogo. Sankt-Petěrburg, Něstor-Is-
torija, 2014. pp. 220-225.
Zíbrt, Čeněk, Staročeské výroční obyčeje, pověry, slavnosti a zábavy prostonárodní, Praha,
Vilímek, 1889.
Sources
Book of Sirach: Translated in Czech by Tomáš Rešl. Praha: Melantrych, 1574.
Hustyn Chronicle: Translated in Ukrainian by V. Krekoten. Kyiv: Dnipro, 2006.
Journey of the Mother of God to the pains of Hell: Translated in Russian by М. В. Roždest-
venskaja. Moskva: Chudožestvennaja Literatura, 1980.
Legend of the founding of Jaroslav: Translated in Ukrainian by Iurii Heorhiiovych Pysa-
renko. Kyiv: Nacionalna akademija nauk Ukraini, 1997.
Life of Vladimir: Edited by Vilio Mansikka. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1921.
Loki’s Altercation: Translation in English by Benjamin Thorpe. London: Trübner, 1866.
Maciej Stryjkowski, Chronicle of Poland, Lithuania, Samogitia and all of Ruthenia:
Königsberg: Osterberger, 1582.
Sermon of a Litoměřice priest: Edited by Ignác Jan Hanuš. Praha: Kolber, 1863.
Tadeaš Hajek: Edited by František Vladimír Vykoukal. Praha: Alois Hynek, 1900.
Tale of Bygone Years. Translated in English by Samuel Hazzard Cross & Olgerd P. Scher-
bowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953.
The Tale of the Armament of Igor: Translated in English by Leonard A. Magnus. London:
Oxford University Press, 1915.
Tkadeček: Edited by František Simek. Praha: Odeon, 1974.
Word of a certain Christ-lover and zealot for the right faith. Edited by Nikolai Michai-
lovich Galkovskii. Moskva: Zapiski imperatorskogo Moskovskogo archeologichesk-
ogo instituta, 1913..
World myths, fairy tales and legends

in Czech and Slovak translation used in this study
Bhagavadgíta: ed. Jan Kozák. Praha: Bibliotheca gnostica, 2018.

Indian myths: ed. Dušan Zbavitel. Praha: Vyšehrad, 1997.
Japanese myths: ed. Viktor Krupa. Bratislava: CAD, 2007.
Myths and legends of Cultural Heroes: ed. Jan Komorovský. Bratislava: Tatran 1986.
Myths and legends of the Pacific Ocean: ed. Alexander Wyclif Reed. Translated in Czech by
monika Kittovaj. Praha: Portal, 2002.
Myths and legends of the Siberian peoples: ed. Georgij Aleksejevič Menovščikov. Translated
in Czech by Ruda Havránková. Praha: Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury, hudby a
umění, 1961.
Myths and legends of the Siberian peoples: ed. Ondřej Pivoda. Praha: Dauphin, 2018.
Myths and legends of the Indigenous peoples of North America: ed. Richard Erdoes & Alfonso
Ortiz. Translated in Czech by Eva Bugakovová. Praha: Argo, 2012.
Myths and legends of the Indigenous peoples of North America: ed. Michal Pribus. Bratislava:
Mladé letá, 1967.
Slovak folk tales: ed. Pavol Dobšinský. Bratislava: Tatran, 2016-2017.
Table of contents
Oleg V. Kutarev, Introduction to the Slavic pagan pantheon.

The names of deities that the ancient Slavs actually revered ... p. 5
Giuseppe Maiello and Nikola Danišová, Veles as a Slavic
mythological trickster ........................................................................... p. 46
Aleksandr V. Ivanenko, Slavonic Theonymie. Daž’bog ...................... p. 77
Patrice Lajoye, Radigost ....................................................................... p. 107
Kamil Kajkowski, Masks from Opole in the Context of the mediaeval
Slavic Rites .............................................................................................. p. 115
Stamatis Zochios, Kupala and Koliada. Two (more) examples of
Slavic pseudomythology ...................................................................... p. 159
Tsimafei Avilin, Elena Boganeva and Tatiana Oliferchik, Images
of werewolves in Belarusian oral tradition ..................................... p. 199
Aleksandr Koptev, The Mythological Serpent Fighting Motif in the
Russian Primary Chronicle, Epic Poetry and Fairy Tales .............. p. 213
Marina M. Valentsova, Slavic demonology. A brief survey .......... p. 265
New researches on the religion and mythology ot the Pagan Slavs – 291

Veles As A Slavic Mythological Trickster

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Veles As A Slavic Mythological Trickster

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Veles As A Slavic Mythological Trickster

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

New researches

on the religion and mythology

© 2023, Lingva, Patrice Lajoye, Stamatis Zochios and the authors

Keywords. Trickster, Veles, Slavic mythology.

1. This research was funded by «VEGA 1/0050/22 Archtextual analyzes of fundamental

of so-called culture of popular laughter (Bakhtin), or the so called picaresque

2. Makarius 1979, 18.

trickster’s hunger can be portrayed as greed, (perverted) desire as an instinct,

6. Op. cit., 469.

9. More in Danišová 2021, 13-41.

gy of the divine name and the religious-magical functions. In particular Russian

However, the research of such a topic is significantly hampered by the lack of

The transition from trickster’s ambiguity to antiheroism

The ambivalence of the trickster could be represented in the following way:

17. Grau 2014.

to Hermes.23 According to Henry Gates, it is no coincidence that divination is

Demonization of the Trickster’s figure as a common religious phenomenon

31. Gates 1988, 38.

33. Vlčková 1999, 142.

ambivalent Loki38 appears as a sovereignly negative character (the positive po-

Another version of this story, which is also author-reconstructed on the basis

39. Slušný 2010, 273.

Veles’ incorporation into Christianized culture of popular laughter:

ological profile, which are generally perceived as negative or dangerous (con-

40. Madlevskaja 2005, 676; Vvedenskiy 2014, 222.

52. Slivka 2004, 506.

As we mentioned in the introduction, due to the lack of direct authentic sources,

54. Vélius 1987, 85.

Bakhtin, Michail Michajlovič: Tvorčestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul’tura sredneve-

World myths, fairy tales and legends

Bhagavadgíta: ed. Jan Kozák. Praha: Bibliotheca gnostica, 2018.

Oleg V. Kutarev, Introduction to the Slavic pagan pantheon.

You might also like