Pagan deities and their signs

Zalktis (sign below), the European grass snake.1

Latvian signs imbue the world around us with personality and purpose, protecting us, harmonizing energies, and promoting prosperity, fertility, and good fortune, synchronizing to the rhythms of the seasons. While all signs have a primary meaning, many overlap in aspects of their significance. As you explore Latvian signs, you will find considerable variations in their presentation. Our ABC of Latvian Ornaments also illustrates how Latvians transform basic signs into ornate representations.

Signs, more accurately their deities, also play roles in the ancient Latvian year, which was divided into eight festivals, four coinciding with the changing of the seasons. Missionaries co-opted both pagan deities—including Dievs for God—and festivals in service of Christianity:2

  • Ziemassvētki — winter solstice, co-opted as Christmas, while Latvians now use Ziemsvētki to refer to the solstice
  • Lieldienas — spring equinox, Lielās Dienas, co-opted as Easter
  • Jāņi — summer solstice, co-opted as Saint John the Baptist Day
  • Miķeli — autumn equinox, renamed and co-opted as St. Michael’s feast (Miķels is "Michael" in Latvian)

These were interspersed with holidays marking the start of each season.

  • Meteņi — Spring — ends on Ash Wednesday
  • Ūsiņi — Summer
  • Māras — Autumn — Māra was coopted as the Virgin Mary, the date as the Assumption of Mary
  • Mārtiņi — Winter
  • Aka (water well)

    Also called a double cross. Symbol of the sun and earth. Experience and knowledge. Unity and world order. Start of the agricultural year. Speaks to new possibilities, new ideas, plans, and beginnings, new information. Urges one to adopt resolutions regarding the course forward of their life, to cast aside doubt and insecurity, summon one’s courage. Carpe diem.

    Auseklis (morning star)

    While Auseklis is a male god, his Lithuanian counterpart, Aušrinė, is female. Auseklis is subordinate to Mēness (moon) while also his rival for Saule’s (the sun’s) daughter. Victory of light over dark. Protector of men. (This was Peters’s favorite sign, growing up.)

    Austra’s tree

    World order, linking past, present, and future. Guardian of the beautiful and valuable. Luck, blessings, success.

    Dievs (God)

    Christian missionaries co-opted the Latvian word for their primary pagan divinity, Dievs, to denote the Judeo-Christian "God." The spiritual, non-material, world. Light and goodness. Masculinity. Sanctuary. Divinity. Creativity. See also Dievs’s partner, Māra, below.

    Jumis

    Fertility. Well-being, abundance, symbolized by two fruits grown together. In agricultural folklore, each crop has its own Jumis, thus a Jumis of barley, rye, flax, nuts, and others. The sign represents two crossed spikes of wheat, and is commonly ued atop the roofs of barns, granaries, and houses — bringing blessings to a home’s inhabitants. There are many and ornate variations of the basic sign, some so complex that the sign itself is not readily apparent. Inside the home, it hung in a room in a place of honor. It was also placed at the bottom of a new daughter’s future dowry.

    Krupītis (toad)

    The subconscious, intuition. Strength. Knowledge and wisdom. Linked to Aizsaule ("beyond the sun"), mythical habitation of ghosts.

    Krusts

    Straight cross
    The cross of Dievs. World order. Unity. Joie de vivre, luck, energy. Permanence, rooted energy. Against sickness and envy.

    Oblique cross
    The cross of Dievs. Dynamism, productivity, movement, development. The ideal balance between the old and new, the past and present.

    Laima

    Laima, and Laima’s mother are the Fates in Latvian and Lithuanian (Laimė) mythology. Each individual has their own Laima, while thereafter multiple gods can influence one’s fate. By the 16th century, missionaries had subsumed cults of Laima and Māra into Christianity’s reverence of the Virgin Mary, changing her representation in Livonia to more closely resemble Laima. The needle, or herringbone, pattern of Laima’s sign mimics the needle pattern of pine tree branches. Fate, life. The rhythm of life and the seasons. Divine fortune. (Laime, less frequently laima, is the Latvian word for good fortune while nelaime — not laime — is misfortune.)

    Laima’s broom

    Laima’s slotiņa protects and sweeps out the undesired. The needle and broomstick pattern, with its evergreen and symbolic properties, transfers happiness and good fortune to the objects on which it is depicted.

    Māra

    Straight cross
    Oblique cross
    Māra is the highest divinity of motherhood. Christian missionaries co-opted her for the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. Resolution, completeness. The active, dynamic world. Protector against misfortune, bringer of godliness.

    Māra’s earth sign

    Peace. Boundary, threshold. Stability. The material life. The inverted triangular version of the sign is the mirror of the Dievs sign if placed above it. Combining the signs of Dievs and Māra achives balance and harmony. The material world. The land. The dark and unknown. Femininity and security.

    Māra’s water sign

    The changeable, unsettled. Fleeting time. Ascendancy. Protector of life.

    Mārtiņš

    An embellishment of Jumis. Symbol of productivity, fertility, and prosperity. Used extensively in clothes embroidery. Called the Mārtiņgailis in arts and crafts.

    Mēness (moon)

    Cycle of life, creation or destruction, living or dying. Mēness is depicted as wearing coat and suit of stars, and a blanket of stars across his back. He is depicted in folk riddles as a shepherd whose herd is the stars. Mēness possess two foals — the morning star (Auseklis) and evening star. Mēness's wife is the Sun. However, Mēness can also be encountered as a female: Mēnestiņa, Mēnesīte, Mēnesnīca.

    Saule (sun)

    Harmony, health, corpulence. Unity, safety, light. The eternal. Returning, repeating. All-knowing, protecting. Saule is depicted wearing a woven crown of flowers, clothed in white with a gilded or silvered shawl. She travels in a carriage or sleigh drawn by two or three foals, while she crosses lakes or the sea in a boat or wading through the water. In some variants of folk song, Saule overnights or sets in the sea beyond the Daugava river. Her husband is Mēness, the moon, who during the night has a habit of deceiving Saule and her daughters, who are depicted as appearing much like Saule herself, and whose tasks mirror those of peasant women.

    Ugunskrusts (fire-cross)

    "with" the sun
    Fire-cross (swastika) variations include the cross of Pērkons (Thunder) and Dievs (God). Holiness, health, well-being. Eternal flame. The accumulation and expending of energy. Meditation. Protector against evil.
    Facing pa saulei, counter-clockwise "with the sun"—material realization of divine thought. Facing pret saulei, clockwise "toward the sun"—spiritual life, strengthens awareness and the soul.

    "toward" the sun
    The Ugunskrusts (or Pērkonkrusts, thunder-cross), swastika, is one of the most ancient and widely disseminated Latvian sign elements, in continual use up to today, despite its 20th century association with fascism, Hitler, and the Holocaust. Pērkons is one of the most ancient pagan deities, and depictions of the swastika have been unearthed in Latvia dating to the 4th–5th centuries. Along with Jumis, it is found engraved in holy stones, on early Iron Age bronze jewelry, as well as Finno-Ugric enameled brooches. The swastika would be carved above the door to the home to protect it from lightning.

    More on the swastika and what is being said about it in the context of current events in Latvia on our Signs and Rhetoric page.

    Ūsiņš

    Also known as Dzīvība (life). Ūsiņš is a deity of flowering and prosperity in Latvian mythology, symbol of light and spring, guardian and patron of horses and bees. Ūsīņš brings greenery at the start of Summer (May 9th on the Gregorian calendar), when the horses are taken out to start plowing the fields, and migrant workers and servants transplant north for work at the start of the new farm season. In arts and crafts, the sign of Ūsiņš is most commonly appied to gloves — that they would bestow success to the wearer in their travels. Since Ūsiņš is a god of light, his horses are the carriers of the Sun.

    Zalktis

    Zalktis (snake)
    Also Māra’s sign. Wisdom and knowledge. The changeable. Energy of life and renewal. The waxing and waning of the moon. Latvians believed that catching and eating the zalktis would allow them to commune with their ancestors, to understand the speech of ancient tongues.

    Zvaigzne (star)

    Eternity, the world in motion. The harmony of life and death. Bulwark against the dark and underworld, protector against evil.

    Read on for the epitome of Latvian signs in weaving, the js/index.html.


    1At www.hominf.org/natrix/natrmm.htm
    2Grīns, Margers, and Grīna, Māra. Latviešu Gads, Gadskārta Un Godi. RIga: Everest, 1992.
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