List of Slavic pseudo-deities

• Goderac (Latin: Gutdraccus) – Arnold of Lübeck, in Chronica Slavorum (his sequel to Helmold's Chronicle; V, 24), wrote that Bernon (died 1190 or 1191), bishop of Schwerin, destroyed the pagan cult, and in place of the deity Goderac ordered St. Godehard, bishop of Hildesheim, to be worshipped, taking advantage of the similarity of names. The deification was the result of a mistake – the name Goderac appears as early as 1171 in Henry the Lion, who granted the bishopric of Schwerin "the village of St. Godehard, which was once called Goderac," and the name itself is probably derived from a personal name, perhaps that of the village owner.[15]
• Julius Caesar – According to Life of Saint Otto, Julius' spear was venerated in Wolin, which was also called Julin (Iulin) after Julius Caesar. According to the authors, it was supposed to be in a wooden column and slightly rusty. The Julius theme was later developed by Wincenty Kadlubek in his account of the battle of the Lechites led by Leszko III against Julius.[16]
• Suentebueck – The 15th-century Passion of the Martyrs of Ebstorf speaks of Slavs who abandoned Christianity after the death of Charlemagne, who were said to have erected statues of Suentebueck, Vitelubbe, and Radegast that had been toppled earlier. Strzelczyk interprets the name as svęty byk "sacred bull", or less likely Svęty Vit "Saint Vitus" (Svetovit?).[17]
• Vittelube – A deity also mentioned in the Passion. Probably recognized by the author as the name of a deity because of the occurrence of the local name Vietlübbe next to the local name Radegast, both in the district of Gadebusch.[17]
• Svitibor, Zuttibor - a deity mentioned by Abraham Frentzel. Christian Knauthe translated the name as "Holy Forest".[17]
• Puscetus - a deity mentioned by Abraham Frentzel. According to Christian Knauthe, the name sounded like the Slavic word bosowske "elderberry", "Deus Sambuceus like", and meant "one who lives under the Sambuceus tree".[18]
• Ciza - goddess of maternal feeding according to Christian Knauthe. Her name was supposed to be derived from the Slavic word zyz (Polish cyc) "breast".[19]

Püsterich

• Püsterich – In the middle of the 16th century, a bronze figure (57 cm.) of a pot-bellied man with one arm raised to his forehead, the rest of the limbs missing, was found at Castle in the Kyffhäuser mountains (Thuringia). There are two holes in the head, the head and torso is hollow inside. There were different interpretations of this figurine: Abraham Frentzel (1791) recognized Püsterich as a deity of Slavs from Thuringia linking him with the Polish word bystry "smart, bright, shrewd", others regarded him as a god of fire, or a god of both Slavs and Germans. The figurine was used as a toy, it acted as a kind of steam boiler, heated water poured out through holes in the head.[18]

Many of the deities were created by Andreas Gottlieb Masch (1771),[20] a German theologian who studied the so-called Prillwitz idols, taking them to be authentic Slavic statues, but which are now recognized as 17th century forgeries.[1][2][3] The drawings for his book were made by Daniel Woge, a German painter and illustrator.[20] Masch's information was further repeated by Martin Friedrich Arendt (1820),[21] a German botanist and antiquarian, and Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1824),[22] a Danish writer.

Percunust - one of the Prillwitz idols

Andreas Gottlieb Masch:[20]

Martin Friedrich Arendt:[21]

Václav Hájek, a Czech chronicler who is accused of making up many events in his work, lists the deities in his Chronicle: Klimba, Krasatina, Krosina.

Hájek gained imitators after his death: Pavel Stránský, Jan Jiří Středovský, Juraj Papánek, who added the following deities by themselves: Chasoň, Ladoň, Zeloň, Živěna, Nočena, Krasopaní, Hladolet.[23]

Priest Antonín Liška, one of the translators of Homer into Czech, also made up deities. He replaced Greek theonyms with similar Czech ones or just transferred them into Czech. He gave up to three versions of the same invented Czech name, writing them in brackets or footnotes:[24]

Another forgery is the glosses added to Mater Verborum, a Czech-Latin dictionary, added by Václav Hanka, containing deities invented by him:[25]

Hanka also mentions gods from other sources, e.g. Belebog, Perun, Živa, Svetovit, Triglav, Veles, Lada, Devana, and Morana. In addition, he mentions many demons, including vesna.

The Book of Veles is a 20th century forgery that has gained particular popularity among Ukrainians. It lists, in addition to authentic gods, the following pseudo-gods:[26]

• Uslad (Услад) – a deity mistakenly created by Siegmund von Herberstein, then repeated by Stryjkowski, who took a fragment of Primary Chronicle, us zlat ("golden moustache" – about the statue of Perun), as theonym, and compared it to Cupid.[14]
• Zimtserla (Зимцерла) – goddess who first appears in the Russian translation (1722) of Kingdom of the Slavs, by the Croatian writer Mauro Orbini. The translator incorrectly transferred the theonym Semargl, written by Orbini as Simaergla, by writing the letter a as s and removing the letter g, probably due to euphony, and thus Simserla was created. The goddess is then mentioned by Mikhail Popov in his mythological dictionary; according to him, the corrupted name may have been derived from the words зима, zima ("winter"), and the verb стерть, stiertʹ ("to wipe off"), and would be a goddess of flowers, similar to Aurora. Zimtserla later appears in many Russian texts.[27] She was erroneously believed to be the Aurora of the "Slavonians"[28][29] and a "Queen of Flowers" or goddess of spring, akin to Roman Flora.[29]