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organized his country during the legendary assembly at Duvanske Pole by dividing it into four parts orientated towards the four main directions from the place of counselling which constituted the axis (Banaszkiewicz 1987). A sanctuary was the tribal centre of the world, which was often stressed by locating it on a hill. Slavonic myths of settlement are connected with a mountain regarded as the centre of the land taken in possession, like ftip in Kosmas’s chronicie. The peak of Łysieć, surrounded with walls, was considered the centre of Little Poland, while Ślęża gave its name to Śląsk (Silesia).

If sacred places are supposed to reflect the cosmic order and its elements (Eliade, 1966, p. 361-380), it seems that Slavonic mythology was familiar with the ideas of the axis of the world, the four directions, the cosmic mountain and the hub of the world, the tree of life and the primeval water. Moreover, it is possible that the temples, in which gods were believed to reside, were meant to picture their heavenly houses, built on the ideał square plan, near which they sat at beautiful meadows, ruling over the earthlings from stone thrones. Perhaps they were surrounded by circular ramparts of the divine stronghold, which was as formidable as Asgard of the Scandina-vian Ases and located on a high mountain as Olympus. Maybe, the foot of the stronghold was washed by current of the primeval ocean, on whose coast a magnificent grove grew, beyond which there was the world of the dead (Bylina, 1992, p. 15). The latter was sometimes located in the underground (Bylina, 1992, p. 7-31), as the axis of the universe has also its underground end. The idea of three spheres: the sky, the earth and the underground, conflrmed by the recorded legend about Triglav from Szczecin, may be also traced in the triple division of the reliefs on the statuę from Zbruch. In the human world the axis was present wherever there was a sanctuary, which, through its consecration, was included into the construction of the cosmos. The world of the Slavs, the mir, had its mythological shape reflected in the social order, called mir too (Treśtik 1988). The fact that the same word expressed the two notions was by no means incidental.

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