Saule
;)
was the Baltic sun goddess and, according to one tradition, the mistress of the thunder god Perkuno. She was worshipped by Lithuanians, Prussians and Letts before they were converted to Christianity. Her worship took the form of looking after a harmless green snake. Every house kept one: under the bed, in a corner, even under the table. Apart from ensuring a household's wealth and fertility, the kindness shown to the snake was regarded as a guarantee of Saule's generosity. To kill a snake was an act of sacrilege. The sight of a dead one was believed to bring tears to the eyes of the sun goddess. Even after the conversion of the Lithuanians to Christianity in the fifteenth century - they were the last people to he Christianized on the continent - the peasants continued to revere green snakes. It was long held that seeing one in the countryside meant that either a marriage or birth would follow.
Saule was imagined as pouring light from a jug. The golden liquid which she generously gave to the world was the basis of life itself, the warmth so necessary after the cold north-eastern European winter. Another fragment of myth about Saule concerns the Baltic equivalent of the Greek Dioscuri, who were the divine twins Castor and Polydeuces. The unnamed Baltic twins are said to have rescued Saule from the sea and built a barn in which the goddess could rest.