Introduction

Throughout my posts I am trying to paint an alternate picture – that of an ancient European urheimat located in Macedonia. I have shown how languages, even the most ancient ones can be traced back to the Balkans, to their Pelasgian core, from whence they were disseminated throughout.

 Now if the languages disseminated from the Balkans it would stand to reason that religious thought would as well. Within the names of the gods of the European tribes we find a glimpse of this truth. If the languages spread from Macedonia then it is natural that they should bear Macedonian names, and furthermore, the gods of the Ancient Macedonians should have names that correspond to words of Macedonian today. If we can prove this, then the claim that the gods of those tribes that predate the alleged arrival of the “Slavs” have Macedonian names will also be proved.

It’s not my intention to appropriate the beliefs of different cultures, and make them Macedonian in nature. I am not saying they are Macedonian and not Celtic, German etc … My thinking is not that naïve. I am well aware that each and every culture developed in its own way throughout time, independently, with outside influences of course, which are unavoidable. What I’m trying to show here that these gods, and these believes irrelevant of how they evolved with time, carry the Pelasgo-macedonian linguistic code borne by their believers who in pre-history came from these parts.

 At first glance it may be difficult to find any connection, as was with the place names. Again, certain names have been Hellenised, but as always their true Macedonian nature can be found in their syllabised forms; while for some it lurks in the epithets of the gods. What does this mean? It means that gods often times appeared under more than one name and this is a universal practice, not exclusive to one culture. So let’s have a look at it then.

Macedonian historian Nade Proeva in her works about the Ancient Macedonians gives a compelling analysis of the names of Macedonian gods, however, she like others coming from the official branch doesn’t dare to cross the threshold of admitting that the names and epithets are in fact “Slavic” Macedonian.

The Solar Cult

Sun, Day and Bright Sky

She says about Zeus that he appears as Dion or Dios with the Macedonians and claims that this could be his original name, contrary to what official historiography teaches us that Zeus is the genitive form of Dio or Dion. According to her, such a deity is not attested with the Hellenes – and this is true. In a previous post I showed the true origins of the name. Proeva points out to the universally accepted norm that the name Dion  stems from the root for day, as is a fact easily proven when we consider that  “dias” still means “day” in modern Spanish.

Dion, in this case could easily be an ancient form of the Macedonian “denon”, “the day”, and  thus with his connection to light, him being “born” from Se. We will look at this in more depth further.

Another interesting find is within the genealogy of Macedon. According to some versions, he is rendered as a son of Dion and Aytriya. Aytriya is another deity not attested with the Hellenes. Proeva postulates that it stems from the Macedonian gloss “adraya” which means “clear, bright sky.”

Well, well, if we break down “adraya” , „адраја“ in Macedonian, what do we have? “ад + раја“.  Ray, Рај, is the Macedonian word for  “heaven” , the Biblical one. Thus we can freely read the word in modern Macedonian as “од = ад,  рајот = раја.”

Furthermore, Proeva points out that according to some scholars, Adraya is not a goddess but an appellation for Athena instead, connecting the name Aytryia to Phospohros (light bearing). As evidence they point out to the description of Athena holding a lightning bolt on some coins.

If Aytriya and Athena are one and the same person, that would mean that Aytrya is a daughter of Se.  Zeus as another iteration of the sun (possibly the oldest), gives birth to Athena Aytriya (that is to say the sun rays [рај = ray]) which makes the sky bright.  

 Following this logic, we can say that Zeus (Se) is also the father of Dion, the day.

The formula would look something like this: Se (the Star [the sun is a star]) => Adraya (the sun rays) + Dion (Day).

In the myth of Athena’s birth , she is born out of Zeus’ head. If we were to imagine Zeus as a sun, then Athena as the sunrays coming out of him would make perfect sense.

Now this here I would say, might actually prove that Aytrya and Athena are two separate goddesses, because the sky becomes bright after the appearances of the sunrays and not before. In the Macedonian legend about Macedon, the name is also not connected to Athena, but rather it appears as a standalone.  

Whatever the case may be, the existence of a version of Athena with the epithet Aytrya still proves that that goddess is in fact a daughter of Zeus.  

 

 

Makedon the Earth Sun

Now this might confuse some regarding Macedon’s name. It was said that the name means “child of Ma”, how then if he were born from Adraya? But that can be explained quite well and once it is, it’s stops being confusing. Macedon is not the true child of Ma, in a sense that he is not the mother that birthed him, from a mythological point of view. However, he is a child of Ma in a sense that he is of the Earth, he belongs to the earth.  Macedon is the earthly sun, the product of the day (Dion) and the bright sky (Adraya) made manifest on the face of the earth. In other words, he is not created in up in the heaven but down on the earth, he is a mortal god, and this is reflected in his capacity as a great hero and king in legend. Hence, we get the noun “arslan”, which in Turkish today means “lion”, but it is not a Turkish word but a Macedonian coinage rather. 

It comes from Ar (ground) + Slan (sun, cf. Slonce in Polish) = “ground sun/earthly sun”.  We can even add another twist to it, if take “slan” to come from the word for “sent”, which is “slan/poslan” (in use in Serbo-Croatian today). Thus we get “sent to the earth” (that “ar” means earth/ground can be attested from the Welsh word for ploughed land “ar”).

Thus, the lion is the earthly symbol of the sun, and thus the modern Turkish word comes to mean “lion.”       

A divine tried also follows this same logic in Welsh tradition, but we will look at it when we talk about the Celtic connection in the following post.

A small digression here to point out to Zeus’ nature. The negators would be quick to dismiss this as nonsense, saying that Zeus is a god of the sky thunder and lightning, not the sun. While this is true, these are functions that were simply added on to him by the Hellenes who appropriated his cult. It is not unheard of, of a foreign deity being absorbed by other people and thus gaining a new character. All other evidence point to the fact that Zeus id est Se was initially a solar deity, as worship of the sun is core in Macedonian identity. On the Rosetta Stone, as deciphered by Tentov and Boshevski, Se is a god of summer, again tying him to the sun and warmth.

Apollo

The so-called god of the sun, Apollo is also not “Greek”, but a Hittite deity, imported in the so-called “Greek” pantheon (what a shocker). I call him so-called, because he was not exactly god of the sun per se, but of the spiritual sunlight.  His name is another Macedonian coinage, A – pol – on, “Аполон”,  “the one without gender”, or literally, “without gender he.”  Though generally taken to be a male deity, his depictions make him more of an androgynous character. Someone who is androgynous, in the real sense, is not a nonbinary person but someone who transcends physical gender and exists solely on a spiritual level. Apollo with his name embodies this idea.

His Macedonian character hides behind two epithets, Oteudanos and Eteudanos found on an inscription at modern day Treskavec, in the municipality of Prilep. Oteudanos is a bit tricky to interpret but Eteudanos is perfectly clear. Without the “-os” it leaves us with “Eteudan” which broken down in syllables gives us: ete – u – dan = “here – in – the day”, or alternatively “there in the day.” If we were to read the “u” as “v” instead, we get “in the day” (v is a shortened form of “vo”).  No matter how we look at it, the meaning is clear – this appellation refers to Apollon as the sun which shines during the day.

It is worthy to note that on the place where the stele of Apollon Eteudanos was discovered, in later tames a monastery dedicated to the Holy Mother was erected. Either knowingly or unknowingly, the people preserved the sanctimony of the place by this act.

Helios

There was another god of the sun, or rather Titan, Helios, with whom Apollo became equated only later (fifth to sixth century BC), but who in his core essence was the divinity of the physical light of the sun and there is a lot to unpack here with his name alone. The non-Hellenic form of the name is “Eli/Ели/Елиј” or “ Ел/Ил = El/IL”. IL is the god of the Illyrians – hence their name, but also it is one of the names of the God of the Bible. If we were to read the Holy Book from an astrological point of view, we would see that it is an allegory of the celestial bodies and their movements centred around the primary luminary – the sun (God the Father as the Old Sun, Jesus as the New Sun [Sun => Son; Сонце = > Син ], the twelve apostles as the twelve signs of the zodiac etc …). Hence the angels in Hebrew are also known under the collective name of Elohim, “Sons of God” id est El. This explains the Rodian myth of the Heliades – id est Елијади/Илјади = Eliyadi/Ilyadi => Илијада,the Illiyad (the real name of Troy is Ilion) – which I talked about in my previous post (there are seven Heliades, as there are seven Archangels in Eastern Orthodoxy).

God, as he later came to be understood as the ultimate intelligence, the “all-knowing” (amongst other things), and thus became the font of all knowledge.  Hence giving us the term “Illumination” from Latin “Illuminatio” itself from the verb “Illuminare”, “to illuminate.” Though passed down to us from Latin, its roots lay in its sister-language Macedonian where we have “Ил”, and “ум”, “mind” – a mind that has been enlightened (to keep the metaphor going) by the wisdom of El (God). Thence, Illuminatus – someone who has been illuminated (the name of the Illuminati stems from this logic).  In modern day Macedonian it’s preserved as a suffix in words like “осветил/osvetil”, “засветил/zasvetil” , “to sanctify/make bright”, “to bright up.”     

God (El), the later product of the syncretised sun god (Apollon/Helios = the spiritual/physical light at once) ennobles the Man with his properties, thus making him enlightened.            

There is another interesting thing to unpack here. For one who is enlightened, it can be said that he is aware, and to be aware is to be inside the waking moment for one who is aware is also “awakened” to reality (of the knowledge, situation etc …). This waking stage, reality, in Macedonian is called “јаве/yave”, and Jave, id est Yahweh is another name for God. This means that the one who is close to the knowledge of God, in other words one who has known God is in the jave, the waking world. This principle is reflected in the ancient “Slavic” triad of Jav, Nav and Prav.    

In medieval times, Helios was syncretised with the St. Elijah, св. Илија/ St. Iliya , (even to-day Iliya is a popular Macedonian first name) who according to Macedonian folklore rides his chariot across the sky thus causing thunderbolts. This reveals to us that in the collective memory of the Macedonian, the image of the chariot-riding sun god still remained and was simply melted into the medieval, Christian hotpot.

Heracles and the Goat

Now I will speak about Heracles. I admit that here the connection is more of a speculation however it does hold water still. Heracles is one of the most respected figures in Ancient Macedonia. The Macedonians considered him as their mythological progenitor (some use this fact to paint a picture of their “Greek” origins) which is not true. It is more likely that it was done out of political reasons to get closer to the Hellens rather then them being ones – but, there is also the likelihood that this was deeply rooted in Macedonian tradition.

Hesychius has written down that Heracles was called Arotos in Macedonia. Some claim that the position of the gloss in his lexicon does not fit so it should be Aretos instead. However it is, Proeva tells us that the etymology is unclear and uncertain, with some scholars connecting it to Ares. Now, there might be some truth to this and not in favour of these Hellenophiles.

The name might stem from the Macedonian word for baby goat, “јаре/yare” – if we get rid of the Hellenic suffix -tos, we are left with “are”, or if we want, “areto” (yareto/јарето, “the baby goat”) without the “S.”  This would make Ares, also “yare”, or if we read the sigma as “ц/ts” then јарец/yarets, a male goat. Male goats are aggressive and prone to lashing out which would make it a perfect name for a god of war – fiery and aggressive.  Heracles too was a warrior par excellence.

The goat has been considered a sacred animal in Macedonia. The mythological king Karan/Karanus, founded the royal city of Aigai (goat in Hellenic) at a place where goats grazed.

 According to legends, King Perdica, the first historical, Macedonian king, herded goats at one point in his life. The goat hence features prominently on coins (Alexander himself is also depicted with goat horns).

Would it be such a surprise that the mythical ancestor of the Macedonians to carry a name derived from the animal that was considered sacred?

 

The Twice Carried

Dionysius is also a Macedonian deity. He was known in Thrace as Bachus (hence the Roman god), and Dialos with the Paeonias. It’s thought that Dionysius is a Hellenised version of Bachus, but even then the name is Macedonian. Bachus most certainly comes from “bog/бог“ , „god“, bag = > bach, (Bagdat, the capital of Iraq means “God given”, “bag + dat”). And Dionysius comes from Dionis , which means “two times carried”, “dva pati nishan” or rather, “swung” the way one cradles a baby.

Di = two/dva and nis = nish, nishan, “carried or lulled”. According to one legend Dionis was carried once by his mother, Semelle, and then by Zeus in whose bosom he was sown into. In this version of the legend, the father of Dionis is Pan.

Pan in the conventional sense is taken to be suffix with the meaning of “all”, for instance “panacea”, “all cure”,  but when applied to the deity it makes no sense. Instead, it starts making more sense when we consider that “pan” in the Western Slavic languages means “lord” (Pane Bozhe/ Lord God,  for instance) and is also the root of words like  стопан, жупан  etc …    (stopan = owner, zhupan = medieval lord).

Some consider the Macedonian form of Dionis to have been Sabadius. This is also a perfectly fine coinage when we render it as савади, „savadi” thus giving us “са + вади“ , „it is watered” (like plants), or if we want „савадио“, „повадил“, povadil, in Macedonian, “I watered” – after all, Dionis was a god of vegetation.

Pan was the god of the forest, and also revelry and other such associations. He is an old god,  pre-Hellenic (Herodotos confirms that the Hellens learned about Pan from the Pelasgians), and a manifestation of the horned god of the forest. If Pan was a Pelasgian deity then our postulation about the meaning of the name being “Slavic” holds true.

Semele is a Phrygian/Brygian rendering of the Earth Mother Goddess. According to one Phrygian legend recorded by Diodorus, Semela was once a young girl whose name was Tuone. She led a hard life, and so after she died, the gods took pity on her and posthumously deified her, thus earning her the name Semele. This legend is very telling since it reveals the twofold Macedonian origin of the goddess, and again the keys are the names.

Tuone comes from “тоне/tone”, which means “to sink”. This tells us that the girl was named Tuone because she sank in the ground, id est she was buried, and once she became one with it she was called Semela id est Zemlja/Zemja, “earth, ground”.    

Now we have an interesting relation here in all of this, one that goes like this:

Semele (the earth, cf Земља/Земја Zemlja/Zemya) and Pan (the forest) come together to give birth to Dionis (the god of vine [one of his epithets was Leivino = lei / pour + vino/vine), with Zeus (the sun) acting as a mediary for his growth.     

His name Savadiy points to the watering of the earth (Semele, who can be found in the forest too) and then the heat of the sun which nourishes the planted seed (Zeus/Se the sun, carrying Dionis in his bosom) which then grows into Dionis.

In other words, the myth of his birth reflects the cycle of the growth/regrowth of vegetation, in this case vine (Dionis was celebrated as a mortal god who died and came back to life again, not dissimilar to Jesus) encoded in the meaning of the names and the content of the story.  

What this also reflects is the Pelasgians’ that is the Ancient Macedonians’ relationship to nature. This wisdom is a direct reflection of the old animistic religion of the Neolithic people preserved through language and myth.

Honourable Mentions

The name of the god of healing of the Hellenes is Asclepios (who hasn’t heard of the rod of Asclepios – often times confounded with the rod of Hermes), but they would be surprised to learn that there is nothing “Greek” about the name. It comes from the Macedonian word “склепа/sklepa” , which can be translated as “to mend something in a hurry”, but it can also mean to put things together in order to make something out of them, like for instance putting two sticks to make a crutch. A god of healing called Asklepios, id est Склепиј/Sklepiy , is perfectly fitting to his agency. Once again, the Macedonian meaning fits and explains the function of the deity without it going into obscurantism.

There is a somewhat obscure deity that goes by the name of Bedi. Some, like …  claim that this was a deity of the air, because the priests prayed to Bedi for salvation. However, it is most likely that this was a water deity and purely autochthonous. Starting with the name itself, Clement of Alexandria noted that it comes from the Phrygian word for water. Now, when we remember that the Koine “B” is read as “V”, we get “vedi”, “vodi/води” in modern Macedonian. So basically the name means waters (vodi is the plural form of voda/water). Second thing, Herodotos has noted that the Macedonians offered sacrifices to the rivers before battle, as an act of gratitude for the river saving the royal house. These two things confirm that this is a purely Macedonian deity and in actuality of the waters. 

A small digression here. This also proves another thing, the continuity of Bryghian/Phrygian => Macedonian => “Slavic” Macedonian. The name of the ancient city of Edessa in Macedonian is Voden (wet/watery). Now Proeva in her book says that this is a “Slavic” translation of the name, but this is no translation, it has been called as such by the ordinary people in perpetuity. The fact that “vodi” and “vedi” are the same word speaks for itself, yet Proeva either knowingly and willingly glosses over this fact, or is a reluctant hostage of her position and does not want to accept it. It’s not just her, but a plethora of other scholars see these things and choose to ignore them. They drone on about how there is no evidence that connects the Ancient Macedonians to the “Slavs” of Medieval times, yet the evidence is there right under their nose and they choose not to accept it!   

Speaking of waters, a few sentences should also be said for the god of the oceans, and one of the most important figures in mythology, Poseidon. Like with the other gods, the origin of his name is proposed to be unclear and so is his meaning, but if we apply our Macedonian knowledge, or Interpetatio Macedonica, it starts to make sense.

Poseidon comes from “posed” , meaning “property”, plus “on/he” , literally “he property”, but this is to be taken as his role of master of the oceans, where the oceans are his property. In other words, Poseidon is the proprietor of the oceans.  

This exact sense, this meaning, is reflected with the Celts, specifically the Britons of Wales. But we’ll get to that in the following post.

The Titans

It is not just the gods but also the titans as well – as we saw with Helios – have a Macedonian/Pelasgian genesis. In my post on the origins of the name “Macedonia” I pointed out to this by showing how the titaness Gaia got her name from the Macedonian word “гаи/gai” “to nurture”, now I will point to Ouranos, or Uranus, in Latin.  Ouranos is taken to mean “sky/heaven”, thus giving us the dichotomy, heaven – earth (Gaia, meaning earth in Hellenic), but as is always the case, if we break down the name into syllables we get a different meaning and a different connotation.

“Ou – ran – os”, without the “-os”, “Ou – ran”, or “U – ran”. In Macedonian the name is rendered as Уран/Uran,  hence “У (in) – ран (early) ”. So this gives us the meaning of “in the early”, or better yet, “the early one”. We can even interpret this as the first one, the erstwhile.

This would make Uranus the first deity, fitting since he is the father. The sky, the heavens is there first, as well as the earth, then comes the rest. Thus, we get the bigger picture of a whole heavenly cosmology – the names themselves reveal the relations of how these instances occur.

We have Uran (the sky/the early), then Se (the First Sun, who comes from the early, in other words the sun rises in the early hours ) who is in the sky, who then brings us the day (Dion/Denon) and the bright sky (Adraya). During the day the sun shines brightly so it gives us (Iliy/physical light/warmth) and (Apollon/spiritual light).

Even the name Titan is Macedonian, stemming from the verb “татне/tatne”, “thundering”. There is an interesting remark by Strabo who writes that “since the paeanismos (paean) of the Thracians was called by the “Greeks” , “Titanismos” in imitation of the cry uttered in paeans, the Titans were also called Pelagonians.” Elsewhere he writes that the Paeonians shouted loudly when entering battle and that is how they got their names.

So two things here:

1. There is a loud cry uttered in peans rendered as Titanismos. What happens then, when a thunder peals? A loud, booming sound occurs. Hence the loud cry, reminiscent of a thunderclap is called Titanismos (from татне/татнеж).
2.  The paean is Macedonian (evident by the name, “пеан/pean” means “sung”. (When we want to say that someone was immortalised in a song we say “опеан/opean”, which is exactly what a pean is, a tribute to someone) since the Paeonians are a Macedonian tribe. And if  Pelagonians = Paonians = Macedonians, then the Titans who are called Pelagonians are Macedonian.   

So there we have it, another celestial phenomenon iterated through the Macedonian lexicon. With one small passage Strabo proved my two points.

Like so it is revealed to us that in its raw form, beneath all the added on layers of stories, legends myths … the so-called “Greek” mythology, hides a pure, conventional Macedonian wisdom and belief. In its most basic form, it is a metaphor of the movement of the celestial phenomena (from morn to day) and from this phenomena the spiritual wisdom was derived. This spiritual wisdom was then transmitted to the north, primarily via the Celts, and to the middle-east, where it gave the foothold of later Judeo-Christian thought.