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| Mokosh мокошь | |
|---|---|
| Member of Vladimir's pantheon | |
.jpg) Twenty-fifth page of Laurentian Codex with mention of the pantheon of Kyiv, 1377. The name of Mokosh is marked in red | |
| Texts | Primary Chronicle and other, dependent texts |
| Gender | female |
Mokosh[a] (/ˈmɒkɒʃ/ ) is a Slavic goddess. No narratives survive to the present day about this deity and so scholars must rely on academic disciplines like philology to discern details about her.
According to etymological reconstruction, Mokosh was the goddess of earth, waters and fertility, and later, according to most researchers, she was reflected in bylinas and zagovory as Mat Zemlya. Another reconstruction was made on the basis of ethnography: at the end of the 19th century, such names of kikimora as Mokusha or Mokosha were recorded in the Russian North. The coincidence is explained by the fact that kikimora is a demonized version of the goddess, and by approximating between the two, researchers have portrayed Mokosh as the goddess of love and birth, with a connection to the night, the moon, spinning, sheep farming and women's economy. Spinning was the occupation of various European goddesses of fate, which led to the characterization of Mokosh as a deity controlling fate. This reconstruction does not agree with the data on her etymology, which shows that the function of spinning could not have been the main one.
A wooden statue of Mokosh, along with other deities, was established by prince Vladimir the Great in 980 on one of Kyiv's hills. This event has been described by some historians as a manifestation of Vladimir's pagan reformation, but other scholars deny that such a reformation was carried out, and the question of its existence is debatable in modern scholarship. After the beginning of the christianization of Rus in 988, the statues of deities were destroyed. Mokosh is mentioned in various Words and Teachings against Paganism along with the vilas, but is not described in them in any way.
In scholarship, the opinion spread that the cult of Mokosh passed to the folk-Christian Paraskeva Friday, associated with water and spinning. Because of this identification, Friday began to be considered a day dedicated to the goddess, and a conclusion was drawn about the popularity of Mokosh among women in Christian times. In later studies, the idea of an approximation with Paraskeva is criticized because Paraskeva's association with spinning, water and Friday has Christian rather than pagan roots.
The Slavic version of the basic myth theory, based on various ethnographic and linguistic data, depicts Mokosh as Perun's wife. She cheats on him with Veles, causing Perun to kill Mokosh's children. The theory itself has not been recognized in scholarship. The supposition that Mokosh is depicted on the Zbruch Idol and on North Russian embroideries from the 19th century has also been rejected. Archaeologist Boris Rybakov's theory that the goddess' original name was Makosh has not been supported by other researchers.
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