Kupala
Slavic deity
Kupala or Kupalo is an alleged Slavic deity who was first mentioned in the 17th century and compared to the Greek goddess Ceres. However, modern scholars of Slavic mythology deny the existence of such a deity.
01Historicity and interpretations
Modern researchers usually deny the existence of a Slavic deity named Kupala. According to Vladimir Toporov, mythological figures known from later sources, such as Yarilo, Kupala, Pogvizd, Lada, Polel and others, cannot be considered gods. Folklorist and ethnographer Andrey Toporkov stated that Kupalo was only a folk holiday, and that recognizing him as a deity is questionable. According to Stanislaw Urbańczyk, Kupala is "literary fiction, persistently upheld by mythologists as truth." There is no information about the deity in earlier sources mentioning the Kupala Night celebrations.
Some researchers, such as Martin Pitro and Petr Vokáč, and Linda Ivantis, believe that Kupalo was not a deity, but a ritual figure or effigy used during Kupala Night. Source material confirms the existence of effigies with such a name, e.g. Ukrainian dial. kupalo "ritual effigy, used in Saint John's Eve celebrations," or Belarusian dial. kupala "person leading the way in Saint John's Eve games."
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Kupala”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Gerson-Kupala.jpg by Wojciech Gerson, Public domain
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