Zapis

Excerpt from "Srpski mitološki rečnik" (Serbian mythological dictionary) 

"Holy oak - In the recent past, Kuči (Tribe from Montenegro) did not have a single whole church. The people had no place to gather or perform religious rites..."

"...Feeling the need for a consecrated place they turned to oaks, a practice common among other Serbs and which, in all likelihood, has its origins in a very ancient, pre-Christian veneration of oaks, and trees in general, among the Slavs..."

"...Any large oak growing in a conspicuous place in or near the village became the village temple. The priest performed church rites under it. People gathered around it for village assemblies and celebrations... "

"...The ground around these holy oaks was considered consecrated too, so people buried their dead around some of these holy oaks too..." 

Cemetery from Gornja Morača region in Montenegro inhabited by Serbs, with an ancient oak growing in its centre. I talked about this in my post "Mountain Serbs from Montenegro"...

"...Even now, very old oaks can be seen growing in many old Kuči cemeteries. And in Kuči villages that do not have their own churches, in the middle of the village there is a consecrated oak, around which stone slabs are arranged for sitting..."

These holy trees were once indeed found in every Serbian village. A large cross, often made of stone, may be erected beside the holy tree, and the surrounding area may be fenced...

The most common name people use for these holy trees, is "zapis" literally "inscription", the name most likely derived from the fact that all these sacred trees were at some stage Christianised by a cross "inscribed", cut into, the tree trunk...

People believed that these trees protected the village on whose land they grew. In settlements without a church, ceremonies such as weddings and baptisms were once conducted under the tree...

Even in villages which had churches, the village church ceremonies, like celebrations of the village Saint, the protector of the village, were held under these holy trees...

Particularly prayers to God for protection against destructive weather conditions were always held under the village holy tree. Interestingly, most of these trees were large oaks, the holy trees of the Slavic Thunder God Perun...

An old oak struck by lightning burning from the inside. For Pomeranian, South Baltic, Slavs, trees struck by lightning have a special status, believed to guard off demonic forces and possess purifying power. This was probably because "Perun, The thunder god, now resided in them"

Some of these hollow oaks were converted to chapels...I talked about this in my post "Oak chapel"...

People firmly believed that a great misfortune will befall anyone that dares fell a zapis (sacred tree). Climbing it, sleeping under it, and picking its fruits and twigs, were also forbidden. Even the branches and fruits that fell from the tree were never collected...

A village may have had more than one zapis: the main one in the settlement or near it, and several others in the village's fields, usually chosen so that they mark the village boundaries...

This was done both to insure magical protection of the village land, but also to protect the village land boundaries from being changed, as there was a taboo about cutting these trees...Hence they preserved borders between villages and peace...

In that way holy trees played the role similar to ancient boundary stakes, which eventually became standing stones and totems. I talked about them in my posts "Stake" and "Colossus"

According to Serbian scholar Veselin Čajkanović, the veneration of the "zapis" holy trees is inherited from the pre-Christian religion of the Serbs, in which it had been used as a temple...

The proof for that can be found in reports left by Christian missionaries in all Slavic land. One of the main accusations against Slavs found in all of them was that "Slavs venerated trees, stones and wells (springs), to which they prayed and sacrificed"...

How the Pagan Slavs saw and respected trees, particularly oak, can be seen from Serbian Yule log rituals, during which an oak tree is addressed as god, prayed to and sacrificed to. In Serbia, when a young oak tree is about to be cut for a Yule log, it is addressed in the way you would address a living god: "Good morning and happy Christmas Eve to you o Holy Badnjak. I have come to take you to my home..."  I talked about this in my post "Badnjak"...

You can find these church reports accusing Slavs of tree worship listed in this article (Serbo-Croatian): "Pogled u Slovensku botaničku mitologiju" (A look at Slavic botanical mythology) 

These church reports also state the measures undertaken to "Christianise" Slavic peasant population, which involved cutting holy trees and groves, with the intention to eradicate the vile tree worship...

This was obviously only partially successful, as you can see from this article... 🙂

Anyway, you might find this article, "The shushing place", interesting...It talks about the most common words for forest in Slavic languages...

You also might find this article, "Lesnik", interesting too. It is discussing how old this tree worship could be. 

You also might find this post, "Hazel", interesting too. It talks about veneration of hazel trees among the Slavs...In some places, they were considered even more sacred than oaks..

And this article, "Willow in Slavic folklore", could be of interest too...

Lesnik

The most commonly used Serbian word for forest is "šuma". I love this word. Serbian word "šum" means rustling, which is the sound of deciduous forests. This makes forest "the shushing place". 

But this is not the only Serbian word for forest... 

Another word used for forest, but more specifically for mountain forest, and mountain in general is "gora". Like this one on Mt Tara:

I talked about this word a lot when I talked about words for sun, fire and warmth in Serbian and Irish languages

Yet another word used for forest is "dubrava". This word which means "oak forest" comes from Proto-Slavic root "*dǫbъ" (oak). This is a very common toponym found all over Central Europe wherever Slavs live or have once lived...

Oak was the holy tree of the Slavs. It is still considered a holy tree in Serbia, where people in villages still hold masses under ancient oaks called "zapis", like this one from South Eastern Serbia, also marked with a "Celtic" :) cross...

The holy status of oaks can be seen from the fact that when a young oak is cut in Serbia to be used for Yule log, it is addressed and treated as living god...

I talked about Serbian Yule log rituals in my post "Badnjak".

To Serbs, and other Slavs, oak was an extremely important tree. Its hard, durable, water resistant wood was used for building houses, boats, kitchen utensils, tools, furniture, carts...You could say that in the past, Slavic culture was built around oak...

I talked about this in my post "Oaks".

Balkans Slavs also ate acorns until the mid 20th c. Most lowland people only during "hungry years", but some mountain populations regularly. Forests of sweet acorn oaks called "sladun" (sweat oak) "medun" (honey oak) were planted and maintained on village boundaries...

These "sacred" oak forests, cultivated as a source of acorns, for people and pigs, were called "gaj" (cultivated forest), "zabran" (forbidden forest), "lug" (light forest, as oak forests are very airy and bright) and "zabel, zabela"... 

I talked about these cultivated forests in my post "Pelasgos".

Knowing the importance oak held in Serbian culture, I was surprised to discover that one other tree was maybe venerated even more: hazel. 

When village holy oak suddenly died, people planted hazel in its place and prayed to it for protection. Why? 

More about Serbian hazel lore can be found in my post "Hazel".

Well, the last word for forest used in Serbia is: "les" or "lijes". This is a Slavic wide word, found in all Slavic languages. Now interestingly, the word for hazel in Slavic languages is "leska". Now this can mean that "leska" literally just means "tree", or that "les" literally just means "hazels"...You will see why this confusion is very important...

And this handsome guy is Lesnik, Leshy, Leśniczy, Lasowik...a tutelary deity of the forests in Slavic mythology. 

His name basically means "Of the forest"...Except this depiction of Lesnik from 1906 is wrong...It depicts him in a wrong forest...Fir, Pine forest...Not hazel forest...

In Slavic languages "bor" means pine but also a conifer forest...So the forest spirit on the picture above should better be called by his other name: Boruta, Borowy, Боровой (of conifer forest) or even Svyatobor (Holy pine, holy forest) also known as Svyatibog (Holy god)...Interestingly "Bor" is in Serbian also used with the meaning "god", instead of "bog", like in phrases "Bora mi" (instead of Boga mi, meaning May god be my witness)...

Now here is the interesting bit :) 

Few years ago I wrote a post about post ice age floral repopulation of Europe. 

In it I talked about how different tree species migrated back into Europe at different times. 

At the end of the Ice Age, the only trees left in Europe were conifers...

At that time, fir, conifer meant tree, as there were no other trees, and it meant forest, as the only forest left were fir, conifer forests...By the way did you know that "forest" comes from Proto-Germanic *furhiþą (forest, wooded country), from Proto-Germanic *furhō (fir, pine).

Now add to Germanic "fir" (fir, conifer, forest) Slavic "bor" (pine, conifer forest, forest spirit, god)...

How old is this linguistic and cultural root? Could it be that this comes to us from the time when the only trees left around were fir, pine, conifers? From about 12000 years ago? 

Interestingly, after the weather got warmer, the first trees that really moved in, in a big way, and took over were birches...That must have been some site...Dark fir forests and white birch forests...It still is...

But then in the yet warmer early Boreal period (7000 - 5500 BC) hazel and pine expanded into the birch woodlands to such a degree that palynologists refer to the resulting ecology as the hazel-pine forest. Now this is interesting...

We still have fir forests and now pine forests are joining them. 

But hazel forest are taking over, to the point when hazel became dominant tree species in Europe...

Is this when "bor" (pine, tree, conifer forest, forest,  Borovoi-forest spirit) became "les" (hazel, tree, deciduous forest, forest, Lesnik-forest spirit)?

Is this the time when the confusion between les (hazel, tree) and les (forest) was created in Slavic languages? About 7000 years ago?

This was all happening before first Oak (dub) even bothered looking up north...But when they did finally decide to move up north, they truly took over...The age of oaks began...

Now if we look at the chronology, we have Fir (Jela), Birch (Breza), Pine (Bor), Hazel (Les-ka) then Oak (Dub)...All Slavic holy trees...All very difficult trees to spread by themselves because of big heavy nuts, acorns, cones... All edible...

Now in my post about post ice age floral repopulation of Europe I asked whether people helped oaks to move up north after the last Ice age? They just spread too quickly...And we know that people used acorns as food...They are very nutritious and very easy to store. I talked about human consumption of acorns in the posts linked from this page. But did they help fir, birch, pine, hazel too? 

Was this Garden of Eden, the endless forest of edible trees and berries full of wild animals, birds, fish...planted by men or god? Or both? I talked about this in my post "Christmas trees from Garden of Eden"

To be devil's advocate, I tried to think if the links fir-tree-forest-forest god, oak-tree-forest, hazel-tree-forest-forest god could have been forged in recent time too. And the two out of three of these links could:

1. fir-tree-forest-forest god could have been forged in Scandinavia and Northern Russia where fir is still the predominant tree species. Considering that only Slavs have the forest spirit, the link was probably forged by them and then transmitted to their Germanic neighbours

2. oak-tree-forest could have been forged in vast oak forests of Central Europe by Central European Slavs

But the link hazel-tree-forest-forest god, could only have been forged at the time when hazel forests covered most of Europe...And the last time that was the case was during early Boreal period (7000 - 5500 BC)...