As well as all other religions and peoples, the Slavic religion also has its own genesis story. One of the first questions of every conscious being is related to the genesis. Where did everything come from? Where did the man's environment come from and how did it come to be? What is the purpose of the man on the Earth? How should one behave and act? Religions answer plenty of these questions with a genesis myth. Where there is a beginning, there is a cause, and where there is a cause, there is the purpose of existence.
Rod is a creator. Actually, he is everything that exists. He was self-born. In the beginning, there was only darkness, and Rod was, like a bud, trapped in an egg. When he gave life to the love goddess, Lada, the shell cracked and love went out through the openings (this manner of creation of the Universe reminds us of the Big Bang). Having cut his own yolk stalk, Rod separated celestial waters from the waters of the ocean by placing the Earth between them. When he released himself from the egg, he continued creating. He separated the truth from a lie, light from darkness, Nav from Jav, good from evil. After that, he created Mother Earth who entered the ocean. Rod is the creator of all gods. At the end of the creation, Rod made celestial bodies, nature, and natural phenomena from himself. He made the Sun from his face, the Moon from his chest, stars from his eyes, sunrise and sunset from his forehead, dark nights from his thoughts, winds from his breath, rain, snow, and hale from his tears, and thunders and lightnings from his voice. By doing this, Rod became the principle of the universe. He created a cow Zemun and a goat Sedunia. Their milk was spilt and it created the Milky Way. Svarog completed the creation of the world by setting up 12 pillars which support the celestial vault. It is mentioned in some sources that Rod created the stone Alatir which he used to stir the milk of life and from the milk, Mother Raw Earth (Mother Earth, mentioned earlier) and the Milky Ocean were created. According to the same sources, Alatir remained at the bottom of the Milky Ocean, and the duck Sveta (‘sveta’ meaning ‘holy’), which later hatched many gods was created from sea foam.
Rod actually represents a monotheistic side of Slavic religion. Although there are many gods with the Slavs, Rod actually represents a God which fits into present monotheistic religions. Also, Rod fits into the scheme of Nietzsche’s God, who existed in order to create the world and establish the principles of the universe. Once he had completed his goal, he was able to disappear, to die. Rod has become the principle and stopped appearing as a god, stopped interfering directly with the lives of mortals and gods, however, he is always present in them and the principles he represents influence everything. He is in everything, in fact, he is the foundation of everything. All the visible and invisible represents Rod.
Rod is worshiped in another way as well, however, that way has also something to do with the genesis. Rod is a protector of fruits, birth, and family. In all Slavic languages, all of the following nouns have a common root – ROD (urod [fruits], rodjenje [birth], porodica [family]). The following words also contain ROD in their roots: rodjak [cousin], rodbina [relatives], porod [offspring], priroda [nature], narod [people]. This shows how much the Slavs respected Rod and to which extent they saw the foundation of everything in him. The literal translation of the Slavic word ‘priroda’ which means ‘nature’ is ‘close to Rod’; and the word ‘narod’ which means ‘people’ literally translates as ‘on Rod’, and Rod is also the protector of people.  Rod is the protector of kinship and relations between clans. Rod is in everything as a foundation or as a sort of a base. Rod is everywhere around us in the manner later represented in Christianity (with the difference that Rod is deprived of his name, because Christian god is nameless).
It is quite possible that numerous Slavic gods are just epithets or incarnations of Rod. There is a similar phenomenon in Hinduism, where Krishna has a lot of incarnations. Thus, there is a connection between the Slavs in Europe and the period before their arrival in Europe when they, as well as all Indo-European people, had lived on the territory of modern India before they moved to Europe. There are many analogies which go in favour of this theory, starting with the fact that some Slavic words originate in Sanskrit (e.g. Swarga, which means ‘sky’ in Sanskrit).

Nikola Milošević
Translated by Jelena Salipurović