Jarilo- Slavic GodDeity"God of Spring"

The Return

Each spring, Jarilo rides from the underworld on a white horse, crowned with flowers. The frozen earth thaws behind him. Crops sprout. The long dark ends.

Villages enacted his arrival. In Serbia, Belarus, and Russia, a young man was chosen to play the god: dressed in white, crowned with wildflowers, paraded on horseback through the streets. In some regions, a straw effigy stood in for him. The procession blessed the fields. At the festival's end, the figure was buried or drowned, returning Jarilo to the earth he came from.

The Sacred Marriage

At midsummer, Jarilo weds his sister Marzanna. The world is at its fullest. But Jarilo proves unfaithful, and Marzanna kills him at summer's end. She descends into grief. Winter follows.

The seasons repeat this story each year: his return in spring, their union at midsummer, his death in autumn, her cold mourning through winter.

The Golden Shield

Among the Polabian Slavs, the deity Jarovit was venerated at Wolgast and Havelberg as a god of war. The 12th-century chronicler Herbord of Michelsberg recorded his cult and described a golden shield used in his rituals. Jarovit shares the Proto-Slavic root *jar-, meaning "spring" or "fierce."