Overview: Bogowie: A Study of Eastern Europe’s Ancient Gods is an earnest and careful analysis of East European folklore, history, and mythology, and a credible summary of Slavic paganism.

Verdict: T.D. Kokoszka grew up in Texas with a Jewish mother and a Polish-American father. While he was aware of roots going back to Eastern Europe from both families, he found it hard to learn very much about them. He knew that Polish people would whack one another with palm leaves around Easter, and he knew that his great-grandmother purportedly believed in forest spirits known as borowy.

However, it wasn’t until he was in his teens that he became vaguely aware of an ancient people known as the Slavs who gave rise to the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Slovakian, Slovene, and Czech languages. It quickly became clear to him that this was a family of cultures currently under-represented in popular culture, and even in western scholarship.

Not simply a regurgitation of scholarship from the Soviet period - and presenting new analyses by using previously neglected resources - Bogowie: A Study of Eastern Europe’s Ancient Gods offers one of the most painstaking scholarly reconstructions of Slavic paganism.

These new resources include not only an overview of folklore from many different Slavic countries but also comparisons with Ossetian culture and Mordvin culture, as well as a series of Slavic folktales that Kokoszka analyzes in depth, often making the case that the narratives involved are mythological and shockingly ancient.

So, growing up, and having delved into this a little bit back in the day, the question of What do Slavic pagans believe? came up several times, believe it or not. And even though the Slavic pagan religion wasn’t monotheistic, there was still a supreme god, called Perun. The closest equivalent from other cultures would be Zeus from Greek mythology and Thor from Norse mythology since they reign the heavens as the gods of thunder and lightning.

Something else I grew up hearing was a myth known to all Slavs that tells how God ordered a handful of sand to be brought up from the bottom of the sea and created the land from it. Usually, it is the Devil who brings up the sand; in only one case, in Slovenia, is it God himself. This earth-diver myth is diffused throughout practically all of Eurasia and is found in ancient India as well.

But I digress, for Bogowie: A Study of Eastern Europe’s Ancient Gods is an articulately woven together smorgasbord of well-told, well-informed folk tales that walk hand in hand with enlightened explanations about the Pagan beliefs interlaced found within them.

The book also manages to showcase just how intellectually savvy Kokoszka is with regard his earnest and careful analysis of East European folklore, history, and mythology. Of course, the state of the research on Slavic paganism is fairly difficult to praise currently, for there are still significant barriers preventing the type of research that needs to happen from taking place.

But one that remains in effect to this day is ethnic and national boundaries. The most logical approach to this topic is to analyze traditions from all 13 Slavic countries, and reconstruct a body of shared elements. It is precisely these shared elements that are most likely to represent old traditions from the Common Slavic or Proto-Slavc period. However, one has always been rationalism, and the goal to put forward a narrative of national or ethnic exceptionalism. While there are indeed many exceptional cultures in Eastern Europe, this book will attempt to show the incredible benefits that come with an international approach to understanding the ancient principle that folklore concepts found in multiple isolated communities are more likely to be ancient than those found in a single location. Based on this, a localized approach to understanding Sklavic paganism - or even one focused on material from just one nation - is unnecessarily limited.

In conclusion, there are, of course, other circumstances that have stymied the field, thus readers will recognize many European folktale types and possibly even learn to look at these folktales differently after reading this book. But all values require some sentimentality in order to become more than just words. For an increasing number of us in the modern world, the poetic beauty of mythology and folklore is intimately connected with our passion for our principles.

About the Author - T.D. Kokoszka studied Microbiology at Texas State, graduating in 2013 with a B.S. in Microbiology, and currently works at a human tissue bank (Parametrics Medical). However, he used his time at Texas State to research leading scholars like Vernadsky and Ivanits on the topic of Slavic history. During this time, he also cultivated connections with ADF (Arn Draiocht Fein) and utilized their research-oriented methodology for his own purposes. He lives in Austin, TX.

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