Voloska

Not to be confused with Volosko or Alexey Voloskov.

Voloska
Goddess of the home and the hearth
Other names	Vlasta
Genealogy
Spouse	Veles

Voloska, sometimes dubbed Vlasta,^[1] is a Croatian and Slavic hearth pseudo-deity that has not been attested in historical sources on Slavic paganism.^[2] The first known published source that attests to Voloska is the 1943 book Hrvatska narodna mitologija ("Croatian National Mythology") by psychiatrist Nikola Sučić,^[3] which has been criticized by Croatian ethnologists as "incorrectly assessing" pagan myths and as unreliable due to a lack of sources.^[4][5][6]

According to Sučić, Voloska was the spouse of Veles and the protector of agricultural workers, symbolized by a cow and a swallow. He claims that all Slavic homes featured an alcove ("mirište") where a small flame would be lit in Voloska's honor. This alcove would allegedly also include statuettes of Voloska made from wood, wax or amber.^[3]

In popular culture

After the publishing of Sučić's book, Voloska was mentioned in the poems of Vladimir Nazor ("Miti i legende", 1948) and Boro Pavlović ("Slavenska lipa", 1960).^[3]

Commonly cited publicist and movie director Franjo Ledić, whose interpretation of Slavic mythology was cited as "romanticized" by ethnologist Tea Škokić^[7] and "uncritical" by Lidija Bajuk,^[6] wrote a chapter on Voloska based on the work of Sučić and the previously mentioned poems.^[8]

References

1. Ledić 1969, p. 180.
2. Gayatri Horvat, Irena (2014). "U potrazi za ženskim arhetipom: Slavenske i indijske boginje" [In Search of a Female Archetype: Slavic and Indian goddesses] (PDF). Zagreb Ethnographic Museum (in Croatian). p. 17. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
3. Ledić 1969, p. 183.
4. Zorić, Damir. "Hrvatsko bajoslovlje | Kolo 2, 2018". Matica hrvatska (in Croatian). Retrieved 2024-07-03.
5. Pletenac, Tomislav (2013). "Pogovor" [Afterword]. Hrvatska narodna mitologija: Biserje priča čarobnog carstva drevnih vremena [Croatian National Mythology] (in Croatian). Edicije Božičević. ISBN 9789536751983. Retrieved 4 August 2024.
6. Bajuk 2018, p. 2.
7. Škokić, Tea (2010). "Elipsa ljubavnog mita u tradicijskoj praksi" [Ellipsis of the love mythos in traditional praxis]. In Marjanić, Suzana; Prica, Ines (eds.). Mitski zbornik [Mythological Almanac] (in Croatian). Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies, Croatian Ethnological Society. p. 319. ISBN 978-953-7387-18-1.
8. Ledić 1969, p. 179–183.

Bibliography

• Ledić, Franjo (1969). Mitologija Slavena: tragom kultova i vjerovanja starih Slavena. Vol. 1. Zagreb.
• Bajuk, Lidija (2018). "Odjeci slavenskoga mita u nematerijalnoj kulturi Međimurja" [Echoes of Slavic mythology in the immaterial culture of Međimurje] (PDF). Retrieved 4 August 2024.