God
Supreme god, beginning, creation
late sources
Who is Prakorimas?
Prakorimas is a name known from a sixteenth-century list of gods. In his list of Lithuanian and Samogitian gods, Maciej Stryjkowski gives Prokorimos as the supreme god, the first and most important figure at the top of the whole structure.
When reconstructing a Lithuanian form of the name, W. E. J. Mannhardt proposed Prakūrimo dievas, from kurti, to create, while Vytautas Mažiulis proposed Prakorimas. The etymology links him with creation and beginnings, so Prakorimas is often understood as a deity of origin or creation.
The idea of the supreme god
Stryjkowski's naming of Prokorimos as the supreme god is interesting for several reasons. First, Perkūnas is not even mentioned in his list, showing that different sources imagined the highest god in different ways.
Prakorimas is best compared with other names for the supreme god: Andajas, Nunadievis, and Aukštėjas Visagalis. This shows that the Lithuanian supreme god was known under several names, with no single official name preserved.
Name, etymology, and creation
The name Prakorimas, reconstructed from the root kurti, to create, links him with the beginning and creation of the world. That fits the image of a supreme god, since the first god is often understood as the one from whom everything begins.
Still, caution is needed. We know only the name and Stryjkowski's brief description; no broader creation myth about Prakorimas has survived. The creation idea comes mostly from etymology, not from a full narrative.
How should Prakorimas be read?
Prakorimas belongs among list names considered fairly credible but only modestly attested. His image as a creator, however, is more a reconstruction than direct testimony.
It is therefore safest to present Prakorimas as the supreme deity according to Stryjkowski, and to describe the creation link as an etymological hypothesis. Lithuanian world-creation myths are more securely read through the folklore figures Dievas and the devil, who create the world in etiological legends.
Prakorimas today
Prakorimas helps explain the problem of the supreme god in Lithuanian mythology: different sources give different names for the highest deity, and none is final. Prakorimas is one of those names.
He is best read together with Aukštėjas Visagalis, Andajas, Nunadievis, and Dievas. Together they reveal how varied, and how fragmentary, the record of the supreme Baltic god is.
