Devana- Slavic GodDeity"Goddess of the Hunt"
Also known as: Dziewanna and Девана
Description
Jan Długosz listed her among the old Polish gods in his fifteenth-century chronicle: Dziewanna, a goddess of the wild hunt and the deep forest. Her name survives in the Polish word for mullein. No independent myth or ritual has surfaced to confirm her ancient cult.
Mythology & Lore
Długosz's List
In the late fifteenth century, the Polish chronicler Jan Długosz set down a list of the gods worshipped by the ancient Poles in his Annales seu Cronicae Incliti Regni Poloniae. He worked by comparison: each native deity received a Roman counterpart. Among them he recorded Dzevannam, the Polish Diana, a goddess who presided over the forests and their creatures.
This single entry is the primary evidence that a Slavic hunting goddess by this name existed. Brückner argued that Długosz fabricated several deity names to fill out a Classical-style pantheon. Gieysztor countered that some entries likely preserved genuine folk memory, even filtered through a Roman framework. The name itself is linguistically sound: dziewanna connects to Proto-Slavic roots meaning "wild" or "of the forest."
The Mullein
The word dziewanna survives in modern Polish as the name for mullein, the tall-flowering plant whose dried stalks were dipped in tallow and burned at midsummer bonfires. Whether the plant carries the goddess's name or the goddess carries the plant's name, no one can say for certain.