Rusal’nalia Week culminates in today, Trinity Sunday. Also known as the Feast of the Holy Trinity, Pentecost, or Duhovi (Serbian for “Spirits”), today is the special day in Serbian culture when folks go to church to weave a bit of folk magic into their lives using the everyday plant medicine of tall grasses. The Divine Liturgy is long, painfully so, and it requires a lot of physical dexterity on the part of the officiating Bishop and the congregation, especially since kneeling on the marble church floor for extended periods of time is required. But the sacrifice in physical pain is worth it, as one by one, prayers and magical intentions are set in the fibers of grass as they’re woven together to create an individual venac, or wreath.

Clearly, this is a Pagan practice that the Orthodox Church in its centuries-long campaign to convert the Southern and Eastern Slavs couldn’t stamp out, so it wisely incorporated it into its ecclesiastical calendar, which is designed to align itself with the agricultural and animal husbandry cycles that inform the lives of country folk.

The symbol of the circle is tied to so many concepts, chiefly the Sun and the notion of the cycles of time, which find expression in Slavic Native Faith as the kolovrat and in virtually every Slavic culture as a circle-based form of folk dance. Throughout the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, the dance is called a kolo, for “wheel.” Among the East Slavs, the word is khorovod, etymologically linked to the Solar deity of Khors, Who is mentioned as being among Prince Vladimir’s courtly Pantheon in the tenth-century Russian Primary Chronicles.

The idea of celebrating a “Trinity” also predates the arrival of Christianity, as the Pagan Slavs—especially the South and West Slavs—honored a polycephalic Deity named Triglav, for His three heads or faces.

It’s likely that “Triglav” (“Three Heads”) is a euphemism as saying the name of the actual God was more than likely a taboo, especially when so much of this Deity’s lore—even in modern-day Slovenia—is chthonic, with devotional practices and documented spellcraft (for fertility of the fields) taking place in caves.

As I was working on the writing of Slava! Slavic Paganism and Dual-Faith Folk Ways exactly a year ago, at the Summer Solstice last year I had an incredible dream of Triglav that I actually believe was a visitation from Him, with me journeying to the Underworld in order for the meeting to happen. The Triglav statue in the above photo that I received as a gift from my cousin Neli in Beograd, Serbia several months later confirmed to me that He indeed visited me, as the hair and beard were identical to how He appeared to me in the dream.

Hence I believe the build-up to Solstice is a very powerful time of year to feel Triglav’s energies.

The other Slavic God I associate with June is another polycephalic Power: the four-faced Svetovid. We have documented spell work among country people in modern-day Bosnia and Serbia of appeals to Svetovid for success in one’s occupation and for optical/ eye health and the removal of eye diseases as taking place every June, specifically the dates June 15 and June 28, the days assigned by the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches, respectively, to a wholly fictitious Saint named St. Vitus or Vid. The Catholic Church, to its credit, admits the Saint’s hagiography is pure legend, at any rate, so it’s clear that Vitus/Vid was meant to displace the peoples’ reverence for Svetovid.

One of the fascinating aspects of working in the Dual-Faith tradition is having the ability, born of unmistakable clarity, to peel back the onion layers of Christian influence and get to a very Pagan core of things. So I have no qualms at all about going to Trinity Sunday service for the express magical purpose of praying and weaving my grass wreaths. For what is spell work but applied prayer? And I even have the chutzpah to then take wreaths made in a monastery and bring them home to adorn the heads of statues of my ancestral Gods.

A Prayer to Triglav and Svetovid

Slava, Triglava! Slava, Svetovidu!

Holy Ones, All-Seeing Ones,

Guides of the Slavic peoples,

Keepers of ancestral wisdom,

Keep me free of all baleful influences.

Bless my eyes and my heart to see

The truth of all peoples and situations,

Not what I wish them to be.

May Your swords cut away all illusions

And grant me the ability to stand unwavering

In truth and the peace that comes from it.

Bless my hands to do Your work in the world.

I honor You, Holy Ones, Eternal Powers,

And give great thanks to be able to open my

Heart and my life to deepen our connection.

And so it is!

Slava Rodu!