ladysstoneheart:

MYTHOLOGY MEME: GODDESS FROM A TO Z  | ZEMYNA

Zemvna, holiest of all Baltic deities, ceaselessly creates and nourishes all life on Earth, including animals, plants, insects, and humans. Zemvna is Earth, and she is the spirit of Earth’s abundance, too. The mother and protectress of the living and the dead. Zemvna does not bring or cause death: she is a goddess of life, not death. She receives the dead into her body via burial, then transforms death into new life in an
eternal cycle. 

Zemyna is the daughter of a primordial pre-Baltic deity called Zemyna of the
Marshes or Zemyna of the Swamps.
In traditional pre-Christian Lithuanian religion, all celebrations begin with an
invocation of Zemyna. Devotion to Zemyna the Earth Goddess was primarily
maintained by peasants and farmers. She was not particularly significant to the ruling
elite who venerated male spirits like Perkunas. Because of this, Zemyna was
somewhat ignored during the transition to Christianity, allowing her veneration to
quietly persist. 

Documents indicate that as late as the seventeenth century, Zemyna’s
priestess sacrificed black suckling pigs to Zemyna, which were then consumed by
participants during rustic harvest festivals. Zemyna, the life-giver, bestows the power to give life: she has dominion over
fertility. As a goddess of justice, oaths are sworn on her. Zemyna is literally Earth., but she also manifests as a woman.