Mokosh, the Hearth Beneath the Soil

(a.k.a. She-Who-Endures, Womb of Stone and Seed, Mother of Blood and Barley, The World Mother, The Maiden, Mother and Crone)

In Balgrendia, The World mother is named Mokosh. Mokosh is revered not as a goddess of softness, but of resilience—a figure of earth, labor, and pain endured without complaint. She is the soil that bears weight, the body that bleeds and still feeds, the voice that hushes storms and scolds the hungry flame. While she is known elsewhere as the gentle World Mother, in Balgrendia she is stoic and immense, carved from stone and root and the low hum of the earth itself.

She is the second most venerated deity in Balgrendia, beneath only The Queen of Dreams and Shadows. But while the Queen rules over shadow, Mokosh holds dominion over what lies beneath—the womb, the field, the bone-buried grave. She is not just creation, but the cost of creation.

Iconography and Presence

Mokosh is depicted as a broad-hipped, weatherworn woman, often faceless or with her features softened by age and time. She is shown pregnant or breastfeeding, her body tangled with roots or carved from earth. Some shrines depict her with seven breasts, one for each day of the week, symbolizing the cycle of labor and rest.

Her sacred symbols include:

The spiral of seed, traced in ash.

The pentacle of grain, drawn into soil.

A single handprint, pressed in clay or blood

Shrines and Rituals

Mokosh’s shrines are always outdoors—earthen mounds, stone circles sunken with age, or groves where the ground has never been tilled. Her presence is strongest where the land has known both birth and burial—fields that grew grain after war, or glades where women once labored in pain beneath the moon.

The Harvest's Heart

is the most sacred festival held on the autumn equinox. Villagers bake loaves of dark bread using last year’s grain, kneading tears and salt into the dough, then burying the first loaf at the edge of the field while whispering old prayers of endurance and thanks. The health of the following year's crops is believed to depend on the sincerity of the grief and gratitude offered.

Planting of the Mother’s Bed:

Another sacred practice are the gardens grown not for food but for beauty and balance, tended exclusively by women. If the plants wilt, it is believed that Mokosh has turned her face away.

The Rite of Antler and Earth

A Rite carried out on the first day after the Spring Equinox celebrating the harvest to come with a fertility rite. This rite honours both followers Karvach and Mokosh, honouring their courtship symbolically in the hope of gaining a good harvest.

Offerings

Handwoven cloth, dyed with bark and berry, laid at her feet in reverence.

Loaves of bread kneaded with tears, left in the fields to ask her blessing.

Milk, clay figures, and wildflowers, especially those grown in cursed or barren soil.

In times of desperation, women may offer a single drop of blood upon a stone, asking for safe childbirth, healing, or to bury a child in peace.

Priests of Mokosh

Called Earth-Wives or Mothers of the Fold, her priests are almost always women—matrons, midwives, and keepers of old songs. They wear robes of green and brown, often layered over hides or cloth patched many times. Each carries a river-smoothed stone idol, hung around the neck or buried in the garden during the solstice.

They are healers, scolders, and guardians of memory. No oath is spoken in a village without a Mother of the Fold to hear it. If she repeats it, it becomes binding.

They do not eat the flesh of animals unless it dies of natural cause or sacrifice. And they do not lie. Not because they are forbidden—but because truth is part of the soil, and Mokosh does not suffer shallow roots.

Whispers in Balgrendia

“Mokosh watches the sowing, and the digging. She does not care which it is.” “Her hands are calloused, but they still cradle.” “Bury it deep. If she weeps, it will grow.”

In Balgrendia, Mokosh is the ground beneath all things—the weight and the gift, the pain and the patience. She is neither cruel nor kind, but enduring. Worship of her is not a celebration—it is a promise to labor, to bleed, and to protect what grows.

Divine Classification

Deity

Church/Cult

The Old Faith