Some Slavs believed that the Earth was an Island floating in water that the sun was immersed in every evening. At the center of this Island stood the world tree or mountain. The roots of this tree extended deep into the underworld and the branches reached high up into the realm of the sky gods, Irij.

Nav was the underworld, realm of the dead from whence it gets its name. Weles/Wolos, the God of cattle and wealth and Lada, Goddess of springtime were also said to reside here. This is not really surprising, considering that most cthonic deities, such as Pluto, Saturn and Ops were also associated with wealth and that the crops are pushed upward from inside the Earth. Also, Lada would return from the underworld in the spring, much like Kore, Persephone and Ostara of the Teutons did.

Like the native Americans, each Slavic tribe had a totem animal that the clan was usually named after. It was considered taboo to kill or eat this animal except for specific religious rituals. Each member of the tribe was thought to have an animal twin, and the death of that twin could cause the death of the tribe member. The World Tree

The Slavs believed that the world tree was divided into three parts; The roots existed in the realm of the underworld, "Nav", and were where the zaltys lived. The main section existed in the mundane world and the uppermost branches reached into the land of the sky Gods. A magical bird was said to live in the branches. Although the Slavs did have Viking influence, the world tree beliefs seem to come more from the native Siberians. These Asian peoples each keep a tree, usually a linden, near their home and see it as a sort of "telephone" to the other realms. Creation Myths

(Russian 1071 CE - the transcript of Lavrentij) - A Slavic magi was recorded as saying:
"We know how man was created: God was washing in the bathhouse and, after sweating,
he wiped himself with a towel that he threw onto the ground; then Satan entered into dispute with God as to who should make man out of this towel; and God breathed a soul into him, therefore after death man's body returns to the soil and his spirit to God."

The origins of Slavic belief, like that of the rest of the world's, rest in animism and ancestral worship. The first two types of spirit were called the beregyni - female spirits that bring life and are the forerunners of the Rusalki, and Upyr - the spirits of death who eventually became our modern Vampire (Wampyr). From this original dualism sprang belief in all of the nature spirits, and eventually in the Rod and Rozhenitsa, the God and Goddess who imbue the newborn child with a soul and his/her fate. Although nearly all deities were originally ancestral, Rod and Rozhenitsa eventually pulled the Slavic mind out of that way of thinking and opened the doorway for the later "Indo-European" way of thinking, although the original "Old European" way of thinking kept a stronger hold on the average Slav.

Dualism permeates all of Slavic Pagan spirituality and actually seems to be the basis for most of it. This should not be confused with the dualistic good against evil beliefs of the Christian religion which have unfortunately seeped into the Slavic spirituality of today. It is a system of complimenting opposites such as darkness and light, winter and summer, female and male, cold and hot more similar to the yin/yang. The God-brothers Bialybog "white-god" and Czarnebog "black-god" who rule the light half and dark half of the year respectively, are further illustrations of this polarity. Unfortunately, because of the introduction of Christianity, these two gods later became confused with "God" and Satan.

Other examples of dualism are - the two Rozhinitsy, the mother and daughter fates, the spirits of midnight, Polunocnitsa and noon, Poludnitsa - both times seen to be equally as frightening, and the Zorya - Goddesses of dusk and dawn. The Elements