--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> The Polish traditional names for Venus as the Morning/Evening Star
> are Gwiazda Poranna (or Zaranna) and Gwiazda Wieczorna (no "-
iaia") --
I'm sure I double typed "ia". I don't recall what the Polish looks
like, but there are often more than one way to transliterate
characters in Polish or Norweigan or whatever that we don't have in
English. Maybe the -ia came from that.
> descriptive terms like the English ones, and referring to the
> celestial body, not to a deity (or deities). I'll check earlier
names
> (if any) in Old Polish, but "Dnieca" strikes me as implausible. I
> suspect it is a phantom name quoted circularly by popular sources.
Quite likely. I hate it when they do that!
I
> don't think there are any records of a planet cult in Poland.
I really haven't come across a planet cult in any of the northern
mythologies save for associations, some perhaps from more recent
times, of the Venus goddess.
PS: there was a Gaulish goddess called Sirona, seemingly
meaning "star", that we might associate with Venus. However, she was
a goddess of fertility and healing - not quite exactly the maidenly
love and sexuality goddess we would want, but still in the ballpark.
At
> these northerly latitudes the visibility of Mercury is very poor
and
> the early Slavs may well have been quite unaware of its existence
> (though I don't believe in the apocryphal story of Copernicus
> complaining on his deathbed that he'd never seen Mercury with his
own
> eyes; he would not have missed any opportunity to sight it during
his
> studies in Italy, if not in Poland).
>
> Piotr
>
>
I live on the 45th parallel and saw Mercury quite clearly just this
summer. Of course, I happened to be on a hill not very far from the
Pacific Ocean, and so I had a clear view just after sunset.
It is because of the rarity of Mercury's visibility that I have
speculated that the 'divine horse twin gods' originated from the
rising and setting Mercury. One twin dies, the other ascends to
heaven as a god. In Russian and Baltic myth they are involved in
the 'celestial marriage' that variously involves the sun, moon, and
Venus. They also, I think are related to the horses that pulled the
solar chariot - i.e. the planet Mercury again. The Romans, meanwhile,
had Lucifer, the 'light bringer' said to be associated with Venus.
Impossible. Venus was associated with Venus. Lucifer held a torch,
running ahead of the sun - i.e. the rising Mercury.
>
> --- In cybalist@..., cas111jd@... wrote:
>
> > The Russians have the goddess Vechernyaya Zvezda `The Evening
> > Star', 'she of the aurora of Dusk/ Twilight', Pol. Wieczorniaia),
> and
> > the dawn-goddess Utrennyaya ('she of the aurora of Morning', Pol.
> > Dnieca).