Chernobog- Slavic GodDeity"Black God"

The Cursing Bowl

Helmold of Bosau, a German priest living among the Slavic peoples of the Baltic coast, finished his Chronica Slavorum around 1172. In it he described a ritual he had witnessed or been told of at Slavic feasts:

"There is among the Slavs a strange superstition. At their feasts and drinking parties they pass around a bowl, over which they speak words, I should not say of consecration but rather of cursing, in the name of their gods, both the good god and the bad one, believing that all good fortune is arranged by the good god and all misfortune by the bad god. Hence they call the bad god Zcerneboch in their language, that is, the Black God."

Helmold names only the bad god. The good god goes unnamed. Later writers supplied the name Belobog, the White God, as the logical counterpart, but Helmold himself never wrote it. What he did write is a scene: a bowl passed from hand to hand at a feast, words spoken over it, two powers acknowledged. The drinkers did not pray to Chernobog. They named him. They gave misfortune its due and moved on to the next cup.

The Paired Hills

In Upper Lusatia, near Bautzen, two hills stand within sight of each other. One is called Czorneboh. The other is Bieleboh. Black God and White God, facing each other across the landscape. Similar paired names appear in other formerly Slavic territories in Pomerania and beyond, always in twos, always one dark and one light.

The hills carry no inscriptions and no temple ruins. They are bare names on the land, older than any written record of who named them or why. But whoever named them saw the world the way Helmold's Slavs did: two forces, two names, one bowl passed between them.