Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/411

 CHAPTER X SUN, MOON, AND STARS ARLY writers mention Slavic sun-worship. Arabian travellers  $18$ speak of the Slavs as adoring the sun and assert that many renounced the Christian faith, preferring to worship the sun and other heavenly bodies. These passages might be multiplied considerably, but here it must suffice to note that an old Bohemian homilist records  $19$ that the pagan Czechs not only worshipped sun, moon, and stars, but also adored water, fire, mountains, and trees.

We have no detailed accounts to tell us whether the ancient Slavs possessed real solar gods which were represented by idols; and it is only among the pagan Russians that the existence of a god of the sun may be regarded as proved. $20$

This adoration of the sun implies that the moon likewise received worship from the Slavs. There was a wide-spread conviction that the luminary of night was the abode of the souls of the departed; and later she came to be regarded as the dwelling-place of sinful souls which had been transported thither by way of punishment. Popular belief still ascribes to the moon great influence upon the growth and development of both the vegetable and the animal worlds.

All Slavs maintain that there is a close relationship between stars and men. There are as many men on earth as there are stars in the sky. At his birth each man receives a star of his own; and when his end is drawing near, that star falls to earth, the man dies, and his soul floats upward to the clouds.