Mokosh
Mokosh is a Slavic goddess. No narratives about this deity have survived and scholars must rely on academic disciplines like philology to discern details about her.
In 980, prince Vladimir the Great established a wooden statue of Mokosh, along with other deities, on a hill in Kyiv, Ukraine. Some historians have described this event as a manifestation of Vladimir's pagan reformation but other scholars deny such a reformation was carried out, and the question of its existence is debatable in modern scholarship. In 998, during the Christianization of Kievan Rus', statues of deities were destroyed. Mokosh was mentioned in various sermons against Paganism along with the vilas, but is not described by them.
In academia, the opinion has spread that the cult of Mokosh has passed to the folk-Christian Paraskeva Friday, the personification of Friday associated with water and spinning. Because of this identification, Friday began to be considered a day dedicated to the goddess, and a conclusion about the popularity of Mokosh among women in Christian times was drawn. In later studies, the idea of an identification with Paraskeva was criticized because Paraskeva's association with spinning, water, and Friday has Christian rather than pagan roots.
According to etymological reconstruction, Mokosh was the goddess of waters and fertility. Later, according to most researchers, she was reflected in bylinas and zagovory as Mat Zemlya, the personification of Earth in East Slavic folklore. Another reconstruction was made on the basis of ethnography; at the end of the 19th century, the names kikimora as Mokusha or Mokosha were recorded in the Russian North. The coincidence is explained by kikimora being 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 night, the moon, spinning, sheep farming and women's economy. Spinning was the occupation of several European goddesses of fate, which led to the characterization of Mokosh as a deity who controls fate. This reconstruction disagrees with data on her etymology, which shows spinning could not have been the deity's main role.
The Slavic version of the basic myth theory, based on ethnographic and linguistic data, depicts Mokosh as Perun's wife. It is believed Mokosh cheated on Perun with Veles, causing Perun to kill Mokosh's children. The theory has not been recognized in academia. The supposition Mokosh is depicted on the Zbruch Idol and on North Russian 19th-century embroideries has also been rejected. Archaeologist Boris Rybakov's theory the goddess' original name was Makosh is not supported by other researchers.
Name and characteristics
In Old East Slavic texts, the name Mokosh is rendered as Mokošĭ, Mokŭšĭ – in ancient texts uppercase was not used. According to Oleg Trubachyov, the form Mokŭšĭ was formed through the secondary adideation of *Mokošь and *kъšь "fate". Grammatically, the theonym Mokosh belongs to the feminine gender, from which it is inferred that the deity was specifically a goddess. In older studies and later chronicles, she may have appeared to be a male deity, but this variant is secondary to the original. According to the most-reasonable and widespread etymology the theonym was formed by the suffixal method from the Proto-Slavic stem *mok- meaning "wet" with the suffix *-ošь. Vladimir Toporov and Vyacheslav Ivanov comment this etymology is "indisputable", understanding her name as "She who is wet". The first to put forward such an etymology was Vatroslav Jagić, who believed the theonym is a translation or an amplification of the Greek word malakiya, and therefore Mokosh was a literary fiction. Toporov, Ivanov and Max Vasmer consider Jagić's position to be incorrect.According to Michał Łuczyński, the theonym may have appeared after the 3rd century AD due to the occurrence of the sound, which arose in Slavic languages as part of the first palatalization. He derives the name of the goddess from the unattested noun *mokošь "someone/something wet" because the suffix *-ošь forms the names of the bearers of features, and he drives this noun from the v-tematic *moky "wet place, mud" and compares the name Mokosh to other names ending in -osh that are derived from v-thematic words with topographical meaning, Old Polish Bagosz, Narosz. In connection with this etymology, he considers Mokosh to be a "pluvial goddess with uranic characteristics". Similarly, understands the theonym to derive from a word meaning "moist, swampy place". Toporov, Ivanov, and Łuczyński believe the theonym Mokosh is a later epithet that replaced the original, unknown name of the deity. Ivanov and Toporov compare the etymology with Lithuanian makusyti "to splash", "to walk on mud"; makasyne "slush", "mud", "mixture", "mess".
Vasmer and many modern academics consider Mokosh to be the goddess of fertility, waters and earth, which brings her closer to the later Mat Zemlya, who is often mentioned in bylinas and zagovory. Aleksander Gieysztor commented that the association with Mat Zemlya is shared by most researchers. Mokiyenko and Henryk Łowmiański also suggested a connection with rain.
Linguist Andrey Zaliznyak and religious academic Andrzej Szyjewski have likened Mokosh to the Iranian Anahita because the latter is also called "Wet" or "Broad,Spread out". In a similar way, philologist Nikolay Zubov links her to the Scythian goddess of earth and water Api. On the basis of their approximation with Anahita, Toporov and Ivanov attribute the function of procreation to Mokosh and consider the goddess Zhiva to be her "higher hypostasis", opposite to the "low hypostasis" that is Mokosh.
Celtologist Viktor Kalygin approximated Mokosh to the Irish goddess Macha, in his opinion originally the goddess of fertility. He raised the theonym Macha to *mokosiā, which “exactly corresponds to the name of the Slavic goddess Mokosh.” This etymological coincidence is supported by linguist Václav Blažek. Religious scholar Patrice Lajoye points out that Mokosh and Macha have a number of features in common. The theonym Macha is related to the following appellatives: Old Irish macha "cow paddock, milking parade ground or field", machaire "large field or plain", which were formed after the spirantization of three possible Proto-Celtic forms with the meaning "plain": *MakViā, *MakVviā, *MakVsiā, where V is the Celtic or. Celtologist Garrett Olmsted derives the theonym Macha from another form of PC *magos "plain, field". The common semantic meaning for Macha and Mokosh may be "moist soil", leading to the meanings "field, meadow" on the one hand and "water nymph", "fairy" or "fertility goddess" on the other. Macha was understood by the Irish as a trifunctional goddess: as seer, warrior and guarantor of prosperity. Mokosh, unlike Macha, was not a warrior, but from the 16th century her name was used to refer to witches and healers, indicating a possible function as a prophetess. Irish mythology tells the story of a widowed villager, Cruinniuc, to whom Macha arrived one day in the form of a beautiful girl and wordlessly began to care for his home. She became pregnant with Cruinniuc, and from that moment on, their home was prosperous. Later, as a result of breaking the order, Macha tells Cruinniuc that he has broken the contract, so she leaves him and curses the local men to experience labor pains for five days and four nights for nine generations. This view of Macha as a house fairy correlates with ethnographic data about Mokosh as a house spirit.
Obsolete and questionable etymologies
Slavist put forward a hypothesis for the theonym's origin based on parallels with the Baltic languages. According to him, the theonym Mokosh has a counterpart in Lithuanian in the words makstýti ''mèksti, and mãkas ; related to the Russian , and thus the theonym comes from Proto-Slavic *mokos-. Toporov and Ivanov, who are proponents of the moisture etymology, "rehabilitate" Ilinsky's etymology, seeing a connection in the Lithuanian stems in the words mazgas ; megzti with mazgoti. ESSJa and Martin Pukanec called Ilinsky's etymology "hypothetical".Boris Rybakov considered Makosh to be a more accurate reading of the goddess' name, dividing the theonym into two parts: ma- and -kosh, where ma- was short for mother, approaching a certain Cretan-Mycenaean goddess named Ma in a culture very distant from the Slavs. He understood the second part -kosh as an Old East Slavic word meaning "fate". Rybakov thus translates this theonym as "Mother of good fate", identifying her with the goddess of fate, and also at the same time as "Mother of good harvests", since fruit could be placed in the basket, adding that Mokosh is also the goddess of fertility, as well as the "Mother of luck", since, in his opinion, the harvest is luck.
Leo Klejn, who sticks to the reconstruction of Mokosh as the goddess of women's labor, particularly spinning, criticizes Rybakov, noting that such functions are not supported by anything. The etymology is also criticized: mother can be shortened to ma mainly in the language of children. Klejn points out that in Russian, compound words are constructed differently: the main noun stands at the end and the defining word at the beginning, and gives such examples as Bogo-matier and Daz-bog, so the expected form of a name would be *Koshma. The word is indeed found in Russian, but is of Tatar origin. The notation Makosh itself is not standard in chronicles, unlike Mokosh. ESSJa, Toporov, and Ivanov reject Rybakov's etymology.
According to Nikolay Galkovsky, the name Mokosh was borrowed from an unknown source. Evgeny Anichkov believed that the name was derived from the ethnonym of Finno-Ugric group, the Mokshas, part of the Mordvins, which he believes explains why Vladimir the Great had to establish statues of Slavic gods: The gods of Vladimir's pantheon were of non-Slavic origin, where Perun was said to have been brought from Scandinavia as the personal god of the Rurikids, and other gods established by Vladimir, such as Mokosh, were gods of peoples neighboring the Slavs, whose statues were established by Vladimir to centralize his power. Anichkov compared Finnish toponyms such as Moksha, which is a right tributary of the Oka, Ropsha, Shapsha, Kapsha, Kiddeksha with the name of the goddess.
, on the other hand, believed that Mokosh was derived from the Finnish demon Moksha. This view has not met with widespread acceptance. Henryk Łowmiański, who had no doubts about the Slavic etymology, considers the demon Moksha to be most likely a loan from the Slavs, or that the sound similarity is coincidental; Gieysztor also considered the demon to be a loan. Later researchers and Zubov denied the Finno-Ugric origin of Mokosh. Toporov, Iwanov and ESSJa share a similar point of view. Mikhail Vasilyev believes that the connection with the Finnish ethnonym Moksha is coincidental, while the very "affiliation of Mokosh with Slavic paganism is indisputable". Michal Téra suggested that the Mokosh was borrowed from the Slavs and later demonized.
Etymologies connecting theonym with Sanskrit "rich", "noble", or, according to Natalya Guseva, moksha "liberation," and "death" are questionable; as well as the relationship with Ancient Greek "lustful", "violent", with Old Lithuanian kekše "prostitute", Avestan maekantis; and "tree sap." Thracian origin of Mokosh is also doubtful. Gieysztor called the etymology of Vittore Pisani, who considered the theonym to be a word composed of the roots mot- "to spool, to reel" and -kos'' "abundance", "unbelievable".