by Searles O'Dubhain

Lithuania is significant in the history of European Paganism for a simple reason: it held out. Christianity reached the Lithuanian nobility only in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the common people only in the fifteenth and sixteenth, making Lithuanian mythology one of the best-preserved windows into pre-Christian Northern European religion. In this March 2006 post to alt.religion.druid, Searles O'Dubhain presents the core of Lithuanian Pagan cosmology — the three great gods Dievas, Perkunas, and Velnias, the mother goddess Medeina, and the earth-diver creation myth in which land itself is born from the conflict between heaven and underworld. He draws the parallels to Celtic traditions while noting that both share a common Indo-European heritage.

Lithuania is very significant in reconstructing Northern European Pagan traditions since it was one of the last places in Europe to be influenced by Christianity (circa 15th and 16th centuries, though the elite embraced Christianity in the 13th and 14th centuries).

The Three Gods

The three most important gods are Dievas, Perkunas, and Velnias. There is also a mother goddess known as Medeina or Zvoruna — a goddess of the earth and animals said to mate with all the gods at one time or another.

Dievas is an older god, perhaps equivalent to Saturn in Roman mythology. He seems to also be confused with Perkunas at times — perhaps this is an older god and young son pattern?

Perkunas is a sky god associated with the oak. He is also considered a god of warriors, with his primary weapons being the axe, the knife, and arrows. He controls the weather, thunder, and lightning, and rides through the sky in a chariot pulled by goats or horses — thunder is the sound of its wheels rolling across the sky. He brings fertility to the earth through spring rains and is a central figure in weddings. His home is in the clouds between sky and earth.

"Folklore usually emphasizes that Perkunas is a patron of weather; he lives between the heaven and the earth in the clouds; he commands the thunder and lightning. Thus Perkunas occupies the center of the structure of the universe, becomes the master of the atmosphere..."

Velnias is a god of the waters and the earth, particularly under the earth. He is associated with animals, the underworld, the dead, and wealth from below. He is also connected with fir trees and birch trees and is the god of poets, musicians, and dancing. Additionally, he is the god of wizards, magic, and transformation.

"He was probably thought of as an intermediary between the world of the living and the world of the dead, between life and death, between the earth and the underworld. Therefore he received the patronage of the people who are connected to both parts of this world — priests, magicians, and the like."

"Velnias is associated with low wet locations, moors, lakes; he may make his appearance in the forest. His living place can be under the earth inside the mountain, behind the water."

The Creation Myth

In Lithuanian tradition, Velnias is considered the opposite of Perkunas and Dievas in almost every way — the two are adversaries, and it is their struggle with one another that creates the world as well as mankind.

In some tales Velnias is created by Dievas when Dievas strikes two stones together. In other tales, they are at the edge of unending waters when Dievas asks Velnias to dive to the bottom to retrieve soil or sand — sometimes in the form of a duck. Velnias brings back dirt in his hands, which he gives to Dievas, who spreads it on the waters to create land. Meanwhile, Velnias can no longer hold the earth in his mouth and spews it out as well. This creates a rough surface distinguished by mountains, stones, lakes, rivers, and valleys.

Later, when Dievas is sleeping, Velnias grabs his feet and attempts to drag him into the depths of the waters. Land appears proportionately to the distance that Velnias drags Dievas. All of existence after that is the eternal competition between these two. Animals, devils, and angels are said to be created in this way — though this clearly shows the Christian overlay on the older myth.

Humans are an accidental byproduct of the actions of these gods: either created when Dievas spits on the ground while walking by the waters, or formed from a drop of dirt mixed with water falling from his face after stirring the central fires.

Sacred Practice

All Lithuanian Pagan temples and sacred places were centered around fire and open to the sky. Grass snakes were kept in the basement of the temple of Dievas. Open-air or outdoor places were favored over buildings. Some of these locations did have towers associated with them, and there is a mention of a twelve-tiered fire altar to Perkunas. Usually sacred sites were near a sacred oak, in a forest, by a stone, or on a mountain.

All of this sounds a great deal like Celtic myth — and that should be no surprise, since the two traditions share a common Indo-European heritage.

Colophon

Written by Searles O'Dubhain and posted to alt.religion.druid in March 2006. The material is drawn from an ethnographic paper published by the Lithuanian Ethnic Culture Society. Dievas and the Lithuanian divine name are cognate with Vedic Dyaus, Greek Zeus, and Latin Deus — the sky-father of Indo-European religion. Perkunas is cognate with Slavic Perun and possibly Baltic-Slavic cognates of the oak-thunder deity widespread across Northern Europe. The earth-diver creation motif (diving animal retrieves primordial soil) is one of the most widespread creation myths in world religion.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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