Perkunatete, Perkunatele or Perkūnėlė is in

Baltic mythology Baltic mythology is the body of mythology of the Baltic people stemming from Baltic paganism and continuing after Christianization and into Baltic folklore. Baltic mythology ultimately stems from Proto-Indo-European mythology. The Baltic region w ...

the thunder goddess mother of

Perkūnas Perkūnas ( lt, Perkūnas, lv, Pērkons, Old Prussian: ''Perkūns'', ''Perkunos'', Yotvingian: ''Parkuns'', Latgalian: ''Pārkiuņs'') was the common Baltic god of thunder, and the second most important deity in the Baltic pantheon after Die ...

, in

Slavic mythology Slavic mythology or Slavic religion is the religious beliefs, myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century. The South Slavs, who likely settled in the B ...

referred to as Percunatele mother of

Perun In Slavic mythology, Perun (Cyrillic: Перýн) is the highest god of the pantheon and the god of sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, law, war, fertility and oak trees. His other attributes were fire, mountains, wind, iris, eagle, firmam ...

, which is probably derived from the Balts. Like many such goddesses absorbed into Christianity, she is, today, difficult to distinguish from the Christian madonna, Mary, one of whose

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

s was Panna Maria Percunatele. Professor Patricia Monaghan of

DePaul University DePaul University is a private university, private, Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-centu ...

also believes that she was originally derived from the Baltic thunder goddess. The character of Perkunatete seems to be present in the myths of Baltic sun goddess

Saulė Saulė ( lt, Saulė, lv, Saule) is a solar goddess, the common Baltic solar deity in the Lithuanian and Latvian mythologies. The noun ''Saulė''/''Saule'' in the Lithuanian and Latvian languages is also the conventional name for the Sun and o ...

. This solar goddess, after her daily ride, bathes in a sauna to rest and recover her strength for another daily travel, with Perkunatete waiting on her. In the book of Georges Dumézil, it is described that Perkunatele was represented as an oak tree with a cleft, resembling the female genitals, where lightning hit. A fire could sometimes break out when the wood was not humid, bringing pain to her. This can be two things, passion that leads to the delivery of a child or a bad lover. If it was the first, laughter will come out of her uterus. If the former, Perkunatele would scream in agony. Its the classic myth of fertility that is present on many cultures, you have to satisfy your lover to bring harmony to the act of coitus. Unlike the Christian Madonna, Perkunatele was not immaculate. The name derivates from PIE *Perkwunos, cognate to *perkwus, a word for "oak", "fir" or "wooded mountain". Laurinkienė, Nijolé. "Saulės ratų ir laivo mitiniai vaizdiniai: šviesulys paros cikle (Mythical Images of the Solar Carriage and Ship: the Heavenly Body in the Course of an Astronomical Day)". In: ''Tautosakos darbai'' t. 54, p. 13-25.

/ref>Straižys, Vytautas; Klimka, Libertas. "The Cosmology of the Ancient Balts". In: ''Journal for the History of Astronomy: Archaeoastronomy Supplement''. Vol. 28. Issue 22 (1997): p. S73

/ref>

References

Reference bibliography

* * Baltic goddesses Slavic goddesses {{europe-myth-stub