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The article is dedicated to the Mediterranean Ethnological Summer School (MESS) anthology that was edited by Bojan Baskar and Irena Weber and published in Ljubljana in 2002. The publication contains a discussion on several conclusions suggested by L. Moszyński in his article Between Fantasy and Scholarship: On Alleged Early Slavic Deities. Certain doubts have arisen concerning his attempt at Celtic interpretations of certain Slavic theonyms (Prove, Veles). It is also somewhat surprising that Moszyński has not taken into account some of the most recent research works on the reconstruction of Slavic paganism (on the reconstruction of the »principal myth« based on Slovene tradition, on the latest works on Daž’bog, and others) as well as the data from Baltic mythology. This article in an invitation to all Slavicists presently engaged in the research of mythological themes to take part in a constructive discussion and contribute their views on the subject.

The paper examines a mythological tractate of the Lusatian researcher Michael Frenzel (Fren{t}zel) on Slavic deities from the 17th century. The tractate (“three dissertations”), which contains an eclectic description of the Slavic and the Lusatian pantheons, is a typical case of the so-called “cabinet mythology”. This kind of literature, nevertheless, also needs to be analyzed: in part as a monument to scientific thought, partly (although with a large dose of caution) as a secondary source for the reconstruction of local - in this case Lusatian - mythological tradition.

The treatise deals with certain questions concerning the use of some Slovene data for the reconstruction of Slavic mythology.

The author analyses the progress of mythological research methods in the last few years. From the theoretical point of view it is important to distinguish between the general, archetypal discussion of mythological on the one hand, and between the concrete researches on the other. From the practical point of view, the value of the concrete studies, which refer to the mythological material, is important. The article deals with two books of general mythological value: Z. Šmitek, Kristalna gora, Ljubljana 1998 and M. Yevzlin, El jardín de los monstruos, Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid 1999.

The treatise deals with certain questions concerning some data on the reconstruction of Slavic mythology.

When comparing the Slavic teonym Henillo/Honidlo (Thietmar, Knauthe), which is presumably of Slavic origin, with the Baltic Goniglis (Stryjkowski) the author arrived at a conclusion that is somewhat different from the one provided by Leszek Moszyński. Rather than being entirely contrary, it supplements and adds to Moszyński’s interpretation.