Deity · Slavic · c. 1170 CE
Chernobog
Also called Czernobog, The Black God
The Slavic black god, known from one sentence in one hostile German chronicle — and the foundation of everything later written about Slavic dualism, which is more than one sentence can hold.
Single lineage
Helmold of Bosau reports that at Wendish feasts a bowl is passed and words are said over it in the name of a good god and an evil one, whom they call the black god. That is the entire evidence. There is no Slavic text, no idol identified with certainty, no counterpart 'white god' attested in any source — Belobog is a modern inference from the symmetry of the name. This entry exists to hold the gap open rather than to fill it: the corpus carries one witness and says so, because the alternative on offer everywhere else is a fully articulated Slavic dualism built out of nothing but a priest's aside and the assumption that dualism is what pagans do.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None recorded. He exists in one sentence about a bowl passed at a Wendish feast
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Chronica Slavorum · c. 1170
- Named there as
- Zcerneboch
- Rank
- The Black God
- Pantheon
- Slavic
- Order
- Slavic pantheon
- Base of operations
- None recorded. He exists in one sentence about a bowl passed at a Wendish feast
- Era
- c. 1170 CE
- Traditions
- Slavic
Traits
- Domain
- Ill fortune, whatever the good god is not
- Traditional form
- None recorded
Stats
2 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 2 offices attributed to Chernobog, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- social1
- malefic1
1 texts
Which texts say so?
Named in the account of Wendish feasts as the evil god invoked over the passing bowl alongside a good one. The corpus's only witness for him, and a hostile one.
Connections
What is it connected to?
No relationship to another figure in this corpus is recorded in the texts cited above. Where an edge exists here it is because a source states it, so an empty section means the sources are silent rather than that the connection is unknown.
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Chernobog?
What rank is Chernobog?
How else is Chernobog spelled?
What is Chernobog said to do?
How old is Chernobog?
Nearest in the corpus
If Chernobog is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Dazhbog
The Giving God · Slavic
The Slavic sun god of Vladimir's pantheon at Kiev, whose people are still calling themselves his grandsons in a poem written two centuries after they were baptised.
Perun
Thunder God · Slavic
Chief god of Vladimir's pantheon at Kiev, whose idol was thrown into the Dnieper at the conversion in 988.
Stribog
Lord of the Winds · Slavic
The Slavic wind god of Vladimir's pantheon, whose grandsons in the Tale of Igor are the winds themselves, blowing arrows across the steppe at an army.
Veles
God of Cattle and the Underworld · Slavic
Perun's opponent, god of herds, wealth and the world below — and one of the clearest cases of a god converted directly into a devil.
Artemis
Mistress of Animals · Greek
Huntress and protector of the young, whose Ephesian cult statue looks nothing like her and whose temple gave the ancient world one of its most durable protective formulas.
Hades
Lord of the Underworld · Greek
Ruler of the dead by lot rather than by punishment — a god of the underworld who is not evil, a distinction Christian cosmology cannot express.
The book behind Chernobog
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. It is public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.