The God or Goddess Lada is mentioned in Polish sources multiple times but the Deity is characterized only three times.
- The Postilla Husitae anonymi aka Postilla Husitae Polonici uses the words “Alado gardzyna Yesse” meaning most likely “Lad(a), the guardian/hero/champion of Yesse.”
- Insignia seu clenodia regis et regni Poloniae of Jan Długosz says “Lada is a name of a Polish goddess which was venerated in Mazovia in the place and village Lada.” (Lada a nominee dee Polonice, que in Mazouia in loco et in villa Lada celebatur, vocabulum sumpsit exinde)
- In his Annales, Długosz refers to Lada as a male war God: “Mars they called Lada. The imagination of poets made him a leader and a war god. The prayed to him for victory over their enemies and for courage for themselves, honoring him with the wildest rites.”
So we have: a Champion (male or female), a female Goddess worshipped in Mazovia and a God of War.
What can you do with this?
Well, first of all we can ask what does the Name Lada mean?
Brueckner gives us the etymology or at least meaning of the word ład as this:
“ład, ładny; łado łado w przyśpiewie pieśni weselnych, ładzić z kim (‘zgadzać się’); prasłowiańskie; w cerk. tylko ładĭn, ‘równy’, u Czechów i na Rusi ład, jak u nas, rus. razład, ‘rozstrój’; niema odpowiednika w litew. i dalej. Służyło oznaczaniu »ładzącej z sobą pary« i przeszło wręcz na ‘męża i żonę’, albo ‘kochanków’ (tak w dawnem czeskiem i ruskiem, np. w Słowie o Igorze z r. 1186), i dlatego ten przyśpiew weselny, chociaż o żadnej bogini (niby o Wenerze słowiańskiej) niema w nim mowy.”
Essentially ład meant “order” and “harmony.” (Out of that original meaning the words ładny/ładna began to mean “pretty”).
The next step is to hearken back to Yessa/Yassa which, likely, refers to Iasion. Here perhaps we can rely on Greek myths a bit to help us solve this riddle. Specifically, Diodorus Siculus in his “Library of History” (5, 48, 2) says the folllowing:
“There were born in that land [of Samothrake (Samothrace)] to Zeus and Elektra (Electra), who was one of the Atlantides, Dardanos and Iasion and Harmonia . . . Zeus desired that the other of his two sons [Iasion] might also attain honour, and so he instructed him in the initiatory rites of the mysteries [of Samothrake], which had existed on the island since ancient times but was at that time, so to speak, put in his hands; it is not lawful, however, for any but the initiated to hear about the mysteries. And Iasion is reputed to have been the first to initiate strangers into them and by this means to bring the initiatory rite to high esteem. After this Kadmos (Cadmus), the son of Agenor, came in the course of his quest for Europe [i.e. his sister who had been abducted by Zeus] to the Samothrakians, and after participating in the initiation [into the Mysteries of Samothrake] he married Harmonia, who was the sister of Iasion and not, as the Greeks recount in their mythologies, the daughter of Ares. [N.B. The usual account was that Harmonia was given to Elektra mother of Iasion to raise as her own.] This wedding of Kadmos and Harmonia was the first, we are told, for which the gods provided the marriage-feast, and Demeter, becoming enamoured of Iasion, presented him with the fruit of the corn, Hermes gave a lyre, Athene the renowned necklace and a robe and a flute, and Elektra the sacred rites of the Great Mother of the Gods [Rhea-Kyebele], as she is called, together with cymbals and kettledrums and the instruments of the ritual; and Apollon played upon the lure and the Mousai (Muses) upon their flutes, and the rest of the gods spoke them fair and gave the pair their aid in the celebration of the weding. After this Kadmos, they say, in accordance with the oracle he had received, founded Thebes in Boiotia, while Iasion married Kybele (Cybele) [here identified with Demeter] and begat Korybas (Corybas) [leader of the Korybantes]. And after Iasion had been removed into the circle of the gods, Dardanos and Kybele [Demeter] and Korybas conveyed to Asia the sacred rites of the Mother of the Gods and removed with them to Phrygia . . . To Iasion and Demeter, according to the story the myths relate, was born Ploutos (Plutus, Wealth), but the reference is, as a matter of fact, to the wealth of the corn, which was presented to Iasion because of Demeter’s association with him at the time of the wedding of Harmonia. Now the details of the initiatory rite are guarded among the matters not to be divulged and are communicated to the initiates alone; but the fame has travelled wide of how these gods [the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri)] appear to mankind and bring unexpected aid to those initiates of their who call upon them in the midst of perils. The claim is also made that men who have taken part in the mysteries become both more pious and more just and better in every respect than they were before. And this is the reason, we are told, why the most famous both of the ancient heroes and of the demi-gods were eagerly desirous to taking part in the initiatory rite; and in fact Jason and the Dioskouroi (Dioscuri), and Herakles and Orpheus as well, after their initiation attained success in all the campaigns they undertook, because these gods appeared to them.”
Thus, we have Harmonia, a sister of Iasion. Harmonia is the Goddess of, well, harmony and concord. And Diodorus connects Her with Iasion.
Diodorus, however, says something else as well. He says that other myths relate Harmonia to be a “daughter of Ares,” i.e., the God of War. And, indeed, the earlier writer Apollonius of Rhodes says the following in his Argonautica (2, 986):
“The Amazons of the Doiantian plain [by the river Thermodon on the Black Sea] were by no means gently, well-conducted folk; they were brutal and aggressive, and their main concern in life was war. War, indeed, was in their blood, daughters of Ares as they were and of the Nymphe Harmonia, who lay with the god in the depths of the Akmonian (Acmonian) Wood and bore him girls who fell in love with fighting.”
Harmonia, in this telling is a nymph and a mother of the Amazons. A mother of Amazons and daughter of Ares would certainly make a worthy Champion for Jassa, whether or not She was His Sister…
Then there is something else… Lada was a Goddess worshipped in Mazovia. Mazovia’s etymology has always been unclear (it may refer to a marsh region) although a number of people tried to derive the name from the Amazons. Now, according to King Alfred’s Orosius, north of the northern Croats there lay the country of Maegdaland (Be norþan Horoti is Mægþa land; and be norþan Mægþa londe Sermende oþ þa beorgas Riffen), a land of virgins (maids).
The idea of a female warrior Goddess, an Athena (Minerva) that is a protector (gardzyna) of a male Chief God who Himself comes and wanes with the seasons is appealing to explain the worship of Mary in Poland. Here is a painting of the Mary the Green Mother of God (Matka Boża Zielna) – the “green” refers to the harvest. This is a feast celebrated on August 15th and is commonly known as the Feast of the Assumption of Mary (the painter is Adam Setkowicz).
Going back to Greek myth we also note that, according to Diodorus, Harmonia marries Cadmus. Cadmus is the founder of Thebes but he also is involved in the killing of Ismenios, a dragon whose teeth were then sown by Jason (but, according to Pseudo-Apollodorus‘ Bibliotheca (1, 128 – 130), Iason) to produce warriors (spartoi). Here we see that Jason too sows seeds into the Earth much like the “agricultural” Iasion and, here, even, the name Iason (not Jason) is used.
Jason himself, like Cadmus, confronts a dragon and also, in some tellings, comes across a dragon called Ladon (incidentally, spawned by a half-snake, half-woman creature known as Echidna – compare with the Polish ohyda/ohydna)… Also, here too note that Cadmus sows the dragon’s teeth (in this telling Ares’ dragon’s) much as Jason in the Jason myth.
Whether Jason’s Colchis refers to kołki, that is a peg, a stake or a spike (like a sown dragon tooth sticking out of the ground) I’ll let the reader to think through.
Cadmus (or Jason?) fighting the dragon with Harmonia (or Lada?) on the left (or right?)
Copyright ©2018 jassa.org All Rights Reserved