General/Non-Specific: Syncretic Polytheism

[Zlote Jablko]

Cool quotes deleted for space.

Oooh!  Thank you for this!  I will take a look.

Wikipedia lists the morning and evening star(s), aka Venus, as daughters of the Lithuanian Saule, which gave me something to search further on.

I am aware that Zarya (Dawn) and Zvezda (Stars) are important to Slavic culture.

The three golden apples... those could be meteorites....

[Off to read...]

Feel free to speculate on the golden apples. They’re sort of a riddle in Slavic folklore, and in European traditions in general. There’s a reason that my username is Polish for “Golden Apple.”

I’m sure you’re familiar with at least a few examples. They are often associated with youth or immortality. However, sometimes they also have destructive properties. They also seem to feature frequently in divine courtship/ marriage myths, like the Serbian verses mentioned by Ralston. A more well-known example would be Frey’s attempt to woo Gerda in Norse mythology. She eventually gets Frey’s sword as a bride price, but the very first thing offered is golden apples. Weird, huh?

[SunflowerP]

... Stirona (Gaulish goddess of healing springs)....

Đirona, a Gaulic goddess, is probably linguistically connected to Aster/Star.

I'm wondering whether, in each of these cases, you meant Sirona, but were sneak-attacked by the Dread Typo Monster when you weren't looking?

Sunflower

[Darkhawk]

They also seem to feature frequently in divine courtship/ marriage myths, like the Serbian verses mentioned by Ralston. A more well-known example would be Frey’s attempt to woo Gerda in Norse mythology. She eventually gets Frey’s sword as a bride price, but the very first thing offered is golden apples. Weird, huh?

From my own research, I note that apples are significant enough in (I can't remember if it's general Slavic or just Polish) marriage customs that young people who died unmarried were buried with an apple branch so they wouldn't come back and haunt people because they were alone in the afterlife.

[EmberHearth]

I'm wondering whether, in each of these cases, you meant Sirona, but were sneak-attacked by the Dread Typo Monster when you weren't looking?

Sunflower

It's not a typo, AND in double-checking my sources, Sirona is an alternate spelling.

The Đ spelling is from Deo  Mercurio,
http://www.deomercurio.be/en/sironae.html

Who says:

The goddess’s name is of interest for several reasons. First, we should explain the intial letter, which we have written as Ð but can also appear in the texts as Θ, TH, S or (the commonest variant of all) S. This shape-shifting letter, which Virgil calls the “tau gallicum”,[6] is in reality a local adaptation of the Greek theta for the Roman alphabet as used for Gaulish (this is why we have placed Ð, like theta, between H and I in alphabetic order). The horizontal bar should actually extend nearly from one side to the other within the D, as it does in theta. How the tau gallicum was pronounced is a matter of debate. Etymologically, it is related to Proto-Indo-European *st and *ts, but it is represented by a letter that in ancient Greek was pronounced as [th]. The pronunciation [ts] is the one most often suggested, but we can hardly exclude such possibilities as [tθ] or [θ]. While the spelling Sirona is the most common, we prefer the variant Ðirona to indicate that this is, in any case, not a normal sound.

[EmberHearth]

The Đ spelling is from Deo  Mercurio,

Also, for the curious, here is a link about Senuna:
https://earthandstarryheaven.com/2018/03/28/senuna/

This blog indicates that Senuna comes from *seno, meaning old.  So, as I said, this one could be unrelated.

[SunflowerP]

It's not a typo, AND in double-checking my sources, Sirona is an alternate spelling.

The Đ spelling is from Deo  Mercurio,
http://www.deomercurio.be/en/sironae.html

Good to know! Thank you.

Sunflower