Online Paintings

No direct accounts survive, but reconstructions speculate that he may directly continue aspects of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon and that he might have been imagined as serpentine, with horns and a long beard.Vels is one of few Slavic gods for which evidence of offerings will be found in all Slavic nations.

Volos is mentioned as god of cattle and pleasants, who will punish oath-breakers with diseases, the opposite of Perun who is described as a decision god of war who punishes by death in battle.

In the latter half of 10th century, Volos was one of seven gods whose statues Vladimir I, Prince of Kiev had erected in his city. It is very interesting that vele’s statue it seems that did not stand next others, but it also shows that worship of perun and veles had to be kept separate, while it was proper for Perun's shrines to be built high, on the top of the hill, Vele’s place was down, in the lowlands.

The reason of enmity between the two god’s is Vele’s theft of Perun's son, wife or, usually, cattle. It is also an act of challenge: Vele’s, in the form of an enormous serpent, slithers from the caves of the Underworld and coils upwards the Slavic world tree towards Perun's heavenly domain.

Perun retaliates and attacks Vele’s with his lightning bolts. Vele’s flees hiding or transforming himself into trees, animals or people. In the end he is killed by Perun, and in this ritual death, whatever Vele’s stole is released from his battered body in form of rain falling from the skies. 

This Storm myth, as it is usually referred to by scholars today, explained to ancient Slavs the changing of seasons through the year. The dry periods were interpreted as chaotic results of Vele’s thievery. Storms and lightning were seen as divine battles. The following rain was the victory of Perun over Vele’s and re-establishment of world order.

The majority of Peterhof's fountains are contained here, as are several small palaces and outbuildings. East of the Lower Gardens lies the Alexandria Park with 19th-century Gothic Revival structures such as the Kapella.

The Grand Cascade is modeled on one constructed for Louis XIV at his Château de Marly, which is likewise memorialized in one of the park's outbuildings.

At the centre of the cascade is an artificial grotto with two stories, faced inside and out with hewn brown stone. It currently contains a modest museum of the fountains' history. One of the exhibits is a table carrying a bowl of (artificial) fruit, a replica of a similar table built under Peter's direction. The table is rigged with jets of water that soak visitors when they reach for the fruit, a feature from Mannerist gardens that remained popular in Germany. The grotto is connected to the palace above and behind by a hidden corridor.

The fountains of the Grand Cascade are located below the grotto and on either side of it. Their waters flow into a semicircular pool, the terminus of the fountain-lined Sea Channel. In the 1730s, the large Samson Fountain was placed in this pool. 

It depicts the moment when Samson tears open the jaws of a lion, representing Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, and is doubly symbolic. The lion is an element of the Swedish coat of arms, and one of the great victories of the war was won on St Samson's Day. 

From the lion's mouth shoots a 20-metre-high vertical jet of water, the highest in all of Peterhof. This masterpiece by Mikhail Kozlovsky was looted by the invading Germans during the Second World War; see History below. A replica of the statue was installed in 1947.