jarilo, the slavic god of spring and morana, the slavic goddess of death and winter.
jarilo, the slavic god of spring and morana, the slavic goddess of death and winter.
Jarilo and Morana are the gods of spring and winter in Slavic Mythology, respectively. Every year, by the end of February, Jarilo was kidnapped by his father’s enemy, Veles, and taken to the Underworld. With the advent of spring, Jarilo returned from the underworld, that is, bringing spring and fertility to the land. The first of the gods to notice Jarilo’s return to the living world was Morana. The two of them would fall in love and court each other through a series of traditional, established rituals, imitated in various Slavic courting or wedding customs. This sacred union of Jarilo and Morana, deities of vegetation and of nature, assured abundance, fertility and blessing to the earth, and also brought temporary peace between two major Slavic gods, Perun and Veles, signifying heaven and underworld. Thus, all mythical prerequisites were met for a bountiful and blessed harvest that would come in late summer. However, since Jarilo’s life was ultimately tied to the vegetative cycle of the cereals, after the harvest (which was ritually seen as a murder of crops), Jarilo also met his death. The myth explained this by the fact that he was unfaithful to his wife, and so she kills him in retribution. Without her husband, however, Morana turns into a frustrated old hag, a terrible and dangerous goddess of death, frost and upcoming winter, and eventually dies by the end of the year. At the beginning of the next year, both she and Jarilo are born again, and the entire myth starts anew.