Chernobog and Belobog

Researchers do not agree on the status of Chernobog and Belobog: many scholars recognize the authenticity of these theonyms and explain them, for example, as gods of good and evil; on the other hand, many scholars believe that they are pseudo-deities, and Chernobog may have originally meant "bad fate", and later associated with the Christian devil.

Although he lived in or near the Lusatian region, he probably only used written sources and monastic stories, and not field research, which made many historians deem his work unreliable, including Georg Fabricius and Petrus Albinus.

At the end of the 17th century, Abraham Frencel [de] also mentioned the Chernobog in his list of the Lusatian gods.

This information is also considered unreliable because it came into being late, when the Lusatian paganism was probably completely extinct and about half of the gods he mentioned are of Prussian origin.

Daniel Cramer, a theologian and professor from Szczecin, probably held in his hands a copy of a chronicle from this archive or saw a quote from it, because in his Pommerisches Kirchen-Chronicon he probably paraphrased a part of it:[1] To this monastery they (the founding monks) gave the name Belbug, [more] correctly Bialbuck, which in the Wendish tongue means literally ‘the white god,’ thus to give [the Slavs] to understand that, unlike their (the Slavs’) heathen ancestors, the Christians did not know of any black god.

[4][7] At least four views have developed in scholarship:[12] Helmold's information led to the 19th century concept according to which there was supposed to be dualism in Slavic religion, which reached the Slavs from the Iranian peoples (Scythians, Sarmatians or Bogomils); Chernobog and the hypothetical Belobog were compared to Ahriman and Ormuzd, the eternal enemies in Zoroastrian mythology.

[16] Such dualism was advocated, for example, by Aleksander Gieysztor,[17] Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov considered Chernobog to be a god who brings misfortune.

[20] On the other hand, many researchers considered Chernobog merely a personification of bad luck, some mistake by Helmold or a pseudo deity in general.

[9] Chernobog was also supposed to be the personification of bad luck according to Martin Pitro and Petr Vokáč[22] and Stanisław Rosik.

[23] Aleksander Brückner negated the existence of Chernobog (and Belobog) in Slavic religion and claimed that Chernobog was created under the influence of Christianity, including medieval depictions of the devil as a black demon, and compared him to the alleged Prussian god Pikulas, which ultimately derives from the Polish word piekło "hell".

byal bog "luck, success",[c] and toponyms: Czech Bělbog, Bělbožice [cs], Russian Belye bogi, Belovozhskiy monastyr, German Belboh, Belbog, Belbuk and others.

[31] Consequently, he considers Helmold's Chernobog to be a pseudo-deity,[32] which has been misidentified by modern scholars as a deity due to Helmold's calque of black god and white god into Latin as niger deus and bonus deus which suggests that Slavic bog used in these terms = Latin deus,[30] and personal names *Čŕ̥nobogъ "devil" and *Bělobogъ "God/Jesus" as semantic neologisms belonging to the Christian cultural circle, not pagan, as religious, not mythological terms, as may be further indicated by the toponymy (the Christian places of worship in Bielboh and Belovozhskiy monastyr).

[33] An alternative version of Chernobog named Chernabog appears in the symphonic poem Night on Bald Mountain by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky.