Post-Christian Veles
After the advent of Christianity, Veles was split into several different characters. As a god of the Underworld and dragons, he, of course, became identified with the Devil. His more benevolent sides were transformed to several Christian saints. As a protector of cattle, he became associated with Saint Blaise, popularly known among various Slavic nations as St. Vlaho, St. Blaz, or St. Vlasiy. In Yaroslavl, for example, the first church built on the site of Veles's pagan shrine was dedicated to St Blaise, for the latter's name was similar to Veles and he was likewise considered a heavenly patron of shepherds. As mentioned already, in many Eastern Slavic folk tales, he was replaced by St. Nicholas, probably because the popular stories of the saint describe him as a giver of wealth and a sort of a trickster.
It is remarkable that Veles managed to hold so many versatile attributes in ancient Slavic mythology and was not split into more characters until the arrival of Christianity; by contrast, his opponent, Perun, was never venerated as nothing more and nothing less than a god of thunder and storm, a very narrow sphere of influence compared to Veles' versatility. In other Indo-European mythologies, similar gods were schematically divided into several different deities. For instance, in Greek mythology, at least four different characters show similarities to Veles: Pan (music and cattle), Hermes (magic and trickery), Hades (death and the underworld), and Typhon (serpentine enemy of the Greek thunder god, Zeus). Only in Celtic mythology do we find a deity similar to Veles in his attributes and his complexity: Cernunnos, god of druids, nature, horned animals, and shamanism, whose symbol was a ram-headed serpent.
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