The name Stare Juchy is derived from the word jucha, meaning the blood of animals that were not eaten. Centuries ago it was said to flow from a large boulder, treated by the Yotvingians as a sacrificial altar. According to one of the Mazurian folk tales, the first Teutonic priest tracked down the pagans who were planning to make a blood sacrifice of a goat. The priest, having superhuman power, threw the boulder up into the air, and it fell to the ground and broke into two pieces. The Yotvingians, seeing what the Teutonic Knights, endowed with the power of the new god, were doing, immediately decided to baptize themselves. According to tradition, the church in Nowa Jusza (today’s temple in Stare Juchy) was built in such a place to stop the pilgrimages of curious people drawn to the legendary boulder.
In pre-Christian times places of worship were sacred groves, trees, stones, lakes, springs, etc. Gifts, usually of food, were offered to deities and ancestors. Before 1945 the bones of a sheep were said to have been found near a boulder in Juska.
After the Teutonic Order conquered the Prussians and Yotvingians had to abandon their old religion and cult rituals. It was strictly forbidden to make sacrifices to old deities or to burn the dead. However, the elements of old beliefs could still be found in Masurian folklore for centuries – they told, among others, about kautkach (dwarfs), latancach (clowns), drownings and marauding.
The first Christians who arrived in Juchy before 1454 were Catholics. They built their own church in 1487. In 1525 local inhabitants converted to Lutheranism (Evangelical-Augsburg Church). Significant confessional changes occurred only after 1945. In the Elk county many representatives of the indigenous population converted to the Evangelical-Methodist Church. The majority of the immigrants were Roman Catholics, but there also lived Greek Catholics, Orthodox and members of other Protestant churches.