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Concept
Dievas
Summary
Lithuanian Dievas, Latvian Dievs, Latgalian Dīvs, Old Prussian Dìews, Yotvingian Deivas was the primordial supreme god in the Baltic mythology and one of the most important deities together with Perkūnas and he was brother of Potrimpo. He was the god of sky, prosperity, wealth, ruler of gods, and creator of universe. Dievas is a direct successor of the Proto-Indo-European supreme sky father god *Dyēus of the root *deiwo-. Its Proto-Baltic form was *Deivas.
Dievas had two sons Dievo sūneliai (Lithuanian) or Dieva dēli (Latvian) known as the Heavenly Twins.
Since the baptism of Latvia and Lithuania and continuing in modern times, this word refers to the Christian God.
In English, Dievas may be used as a word to describe the God (or, the supreme god) in the pre-Christian religion of Balts, where Dievas was understood to be the supreme being of the world. In Lithuanian and Latvian, it is also used to describe God as it is understood by major world religions today. Earlier *Deivas simply denoted the shining sunlit dome of the sky, as in other Indo-European mythologies. The celestial aspect is still apparent in phrases such as Saule noiet dievā, from Latvian folksongs. In Hinduism, a group of celestial deities are called the devas, a result of shared Proto-Indo-European roots.
The conception of divinity in the old Lithuanian religion still is not always clear to modern scholars. A number of them suggest that Lithuanians had a pantheistic concept to their religion. This concept, according to the ideas of modern researchers, had to include the following:
recognition of a single Divine Being, that is the core entity of the Universe.
recognition of multiple divine beings, that are on a different level of the main God or, in other words, hypostases of the single God.
recognition of direct participation of the single God in lower levels in the shape of lower beings (manifestations of the single God). The known later sources give an exclusively human shape to the God, but it may be a limitation added by Christianity.
Official source
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