Fortune and Fertility Rites among the Pre-Christian Western Slavs

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the fertility rites attested in the Medieval sources about the Western Slavic Pre-Christian Religion in order to make an assessment of such texts. It allows us to elaborate a hierarchy: the more reliable text belongs to Saxo Grammaticus and narrates the festival made every autumn in the temple of Arkona; in second term we place the fragment of Thietmar of Merseburg relating to the obtaining of auguries about the harvest by the sacred lake of Glomuzi; finally we can read a text of Ebbo about a yearly feast at the beginning of summer in the city of Wollin, inspired by the biblical story of the Golden Calf.