Kupala

The record states the awkward thing about this figure rather than working around it: the festival is certainly old and certainly pagan, and the *god* is probably a back-formation from its name. Kupalo is named as an idol in early modern East Slavic chronicles, but the noun means 'bather', and the consensus reading is that a clerical writer met a festival called Kupala and inferred a god behind it. Sex is left unspecified for the same reason — the sources do not agree, and a figure derived from a neuter festival name has no attested sex to record. This is ingested because a personification named as a god in the source tradition's own chronicles is a figure the registry should hold; it is ingested at medium weight with the derivation stated because the alternative — quietly writing a solstice god with a birth, a consort and a domain list — is exactly the kind of invention this programme refuses.

Domains

• midsummer and solstice
• purification by water and fire

Sources

• Reference treatments of Kupala Night and Ivan Kupala Night across the Slavic world.