This article is about the god Veles, for the city in Macedonia see Veles, Macedonia
Veles (Volos, Weles, Voloh) is a Slavic god, thought to be the deity of: cattle, commerce, music, the underworld. He was depicted with horns later, and became associated with flocks and herds as well as the underworld. He has many associations with wealth and the magical forces of the spirit world. Some romanticist artists tended to make Veles the foe of Perun in a dualistic reproduction of the Slavic heathen faith. The character of Veles is definitely more complex, as he is said to be the Slavic Cernunnos.
Veles also became associated with commerce, wealth, and prosperity; merchants often sealed their agreements by swearing upon his name, and legal documents sometimes concluded with oaths to him.
Rybakov argues that Veles emerged during the neolithic era as a "master of the forest" – presiding over the souls of wild animals killed for food – then underwent a transformation to a "god of flocks" as Slavic societies made the transition from hunting and gathering to a more settled, agricultural existence.
In others, Veles was depicted as the devil; the fact that he had often been pictured as a horned god made this equation natural, and as late as the 16th century, the Czechs referred to Veles as a demon.
Veles is mentioned in the diaries of the travelers as a town situated on the both sides of river Vardar, which is the image it sill caries.
Together with the Macedonian dialect spoken in Prilep, the Veles dialect is part of the central Macedonian dialects that comprise the basis for the modern standard/literaty Macedonian language.
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