Encyclopaedia Iranica Online

UACILLA (UACELLA, UACELIA), popular patron of thunderstorms and crops in the Ossetian religious-mythological system, in honor of whom important celebrations were conducted during the year and to whom many shrines were devoted.The main celebration devoted to Uacilla, accompanied by sacrificial rituals (often of a goat or a bull, but sometimes of a sheep), was agricultural in its nature and was conducted in summer. This festival was connected to the summer solstice. The most important of the shrines to Uacilla is situated in a …

i. In Mythology Uaštịrdži is unmistakably identified in Ossetian solar myth by his specific epithets such as “golden” or “golden winged.” His central role in this myth is key to understanding both his ritual functions and attributes on a synchronic level, as well as solving the main diachronic problems of his origin and transformations when two traditions, endogenous—Iranian/Indo-European—and exogenous—Byzantine Christian, were interacting during the Middle Ages. From a historical point of view, he…