Mother of the gods. Lada is the Slavic goddess of love and beauty. In Russia, when a couple is happily married, it is said they “live in lada”, in love. Lad is also a word meaning “peace, union, harmony” as in the proverb “When a husband and wife have lad, they don’t require klad (Treasure)”. She is said to reside in the underworld, vrij, until the Vernal Equinox, Maslenica, when she returns, bringing the lark and springtime with her. She is also said to be responsible for the ‘rising’ in animals and men in the spring. Lada is often portrayed as a goddess who is born and dies yearly. Her sacred tree is the lime/linden, supposedly because its leaves are shaped like hearts. Linden trees are all over Bulgaria, and all the other Slavic nations. Just try and walk down any street, in any Slavic city without finding a linden tree.

Rod, sometimes referred to simply as god (Div, Diy; in the Veda Slovena Diy or Dia), is probably the most ancient deity in the Slavic pantheon. It is likely that several other gods, most notably Svarog, were initially epithets or incarnations of Rod. Svarog Rod meant Heavenly Rod. Later on these incarnations separated from Rod and were worshipped as separate entities. Very little is known about actual worship of Rod. In Slavic mythology Rod is the first god—progenitor of deities, creator of the Universe and its manager. He is the supreme universal principle, which established the divine law Pravda (Prav). He is a protector of blood-ties and clan relations, a patron of kinship and clan unions. At the beginning of Time, at the very beginning of the Cosmos, only Rod existed and there was nothing around him. According to some believers, he later created the Universe and the three worlds Jav, Prav and Nav, and arranged everything inside them. Rod also introduced the superior principle of balance between elements and enforced the highest law Pravda, which every creature and power (physical or metaphysical, material or energy) must obey.

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The Hero god, also known as the Thracian Horseman, as he was worshiped by the Thracians, was not a specific person. Although ancestor worship of real people who had done great deeds bled into it, the Thracian Hero was an abstract figure, the idea of a Hero. It is this metaphysical entity around which worship centered. The Hero was no doubt the central figure in Thracian religion, the hope and faith of the people. Their hero was all­seeing and all­hearing, he was the sun and also the ruler of the nether world, he was the protector of life and health, and kept the forces of evil at bay. In modern Bulgaria he continues to perform that function going by the name of St. George.

The Thracian Hero was depicted all the time, all over the place. Always on a horse, slaying something, slaying anything, usually with a spear. Over 1500 stone reliefs and more than 100 bronze statuettes of the Horseman have been uncovered on the territory of present-day Bulgaria. From antiquity, through Roman times, through the middle ages, and today, the immage of the Horseman is inescapable in Bulgaria.

The Thracian Hero is also responsible for the Greek word ‘Heros’ from which the English word ‘hero’ is derived.

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Herodotus found the Oracle of Dionysus in the land of the Satrians remarkable: “[…] it is a prophetess who utters the oracles, as at Delphi.” Other sources provide evidence of at least two of those oracles which left a mark on world history.

Undoubtedly, the most important record in this regard is Suetonius’ account of the visit paid by the first Roman Emperor’s father to the Temple of Dionysus in the Rhodope. The prophets sat in a roofless oval chamber and, as the Roman historian tells us: ” … When Octavian, father of Augustus, at the head of his army, came upon the Holy Mount of Dionysus, he consulted the oracle about his son, and the prophets said to him that his son was to rule the world, for as the wine was spilt onto the altar, the smoke rose up above the top of the shrine and even unto heavens, as had happened when Alexander the Great himself had sacrificed upon that same altar.”
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The god of the here and now, of overwhelming immediacy, who is at the same time the god of inexpressible distance, the god of eternity - the god who holds life and death together. The bringer of liberation, ecstasy, inspiration and the most blessed deliverance is also the bringer of madness, wildness, terror.

In his most ancient form Dionysus is a dark and angry god. A phallic deity, always depicted with an erect phallus, he is the god who fertilizes the great mother goddess so that the earth can be born.

The legend goes that Zeus took the infant Dionysus and gave him in charge to the rain-nymphs of Nysa, who nourished his infancy and childhood, and for their care Zeus rewarded them by placing them as the Hyades among the stars (see Hyades star cluster). Alternatively, he was raised by Maro.

When Dionysus grew up he discovered the culture of the vine and the mode of extracting its precious juice; but Hera struck him with madness, and drove him forth a wanderer through various parts of the earth. In Phrygia the goddess Cybele, better known to the Greeks as Rhea, cured him and taught him her religious rites, and he set out on a progress through Asia teaching the people the cultivation of the vine. The most famous part of his wanderings is his expedition to India, which is said to have lasted several years. Returning in triumph he undertook to introduce his worship into Greece, but was opposed by some princes who dreaded its introduction on account of the disorders and madness it brought with it. (See King Pentheus or Lycurgus.)

As a young man, Dionysus was exceptionally attractive. Once, while disguised as a mortal on a ship, the sailors attempted to kidnap him for their sexual pleasures. Dionysus mercifully turned them into dolphins but saved the helmsman, Acoetes, who recognized the god and tried to stop his sailors. In a similar story, Dionysus desired to sail from Icaria to Naxos. He then hired a Tyrrhenian pirate ship. But when the god was on board, they sailed not to Naxos but to Asia, intending to sell him as a slave. So Dionysus turned the mast and oars into snakes, and filled the vessel with ivy and the sound of flutes so that the sailors went mad, and leaping into the sea, were turned into dolphins. Others say that Dionysus came on board after these sailors, having leapt ashore, captured him, stripped him of his possessions, and tied him with ropes.
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