[103] Such dualism does not represent absolute good and evil, but the black gods become evil when acting out of agreement with older and stronger white gods. [237] In another instance, Lesiv observed a Ukrainian Rodnover who legitimised the practice of yoga by claiming that this spiritual tradition had originally been developed by the ancestors of modern-day Ukrainians. The name Radegast translates approximately to dear guest or welcomed guest. He is associated with many animals, particularly birds and snakes. In the Slavic mythology, Viy (or Bog Viy) is the guardian of the Heavenly Border, which separates the Light Halls the spiritual world inhabited by the gods and dead souls from the Dark Halls populated by demons and evil spirits. It connects the feminine energy to the lunar cycle, the menstrual periods, and brings to women health, fertility and protection from conspicuous eyes and evil spirits. [322], Rodnovery spread to the countries of former Yugoslavia in the early twenty-first century. The Spell of Domovoi [390] In Serbia, there is the Association of Rodnovers of Serbia "Staroslavci" (Serbo-Croatian: "", Udruenje rodnovernih Srbije "Staroslavci"). [382] According to the movement, which presents itself as the true, orthodox, olden religion of the Russians, the Slavs and the white Europeans,[382] Yngly is the fiery order of reality through which the supreme Godcalled by the name "Ramha" in Ynglist theologyongoingly generates the universe. Perhaps surprisingly, he is also a guardian of truth, hiding truthfulness from the vain and the selfish. Also worshipped were primary gods, associated with the sun, moon, skies, heaven and the underworld. The name "Ringing Cedars" derives from the beliefs held by Anastasians about the spiritual qualities of the Siberian cedar.
Slavic Native Faith - Wikipedia [186] It is probable that the Book of Veles was a literary composition produced by Mirolyubov himself. [119], Rodnovers express their anti-Christian views in various ways. [43] Slavic Native Faith adherents, as far as they are concerned, believe that they can take traditional folk culture, remove the obviously Christian elements, and be left with something that authentically reflects the historical beliefs of the Slavic peoples. Yakutovsky is critical of the Soviet type of communism, and rather proposes "social communism" as the ideal form of government. [239] Some Rodnover networks have established entire villages all over Russia; this is the case, among other examples, of those Rodnovers who are part of Anastasianism. [23], In developing Slavic Native Faith, practitioners draw upon the primary sources about the historical religion of Slavic peoples, as well as elements drawn from later Slavic folklore, official and popular Christian belief and from non-Slavic societies. Bog Hors is a god of the sun and the sunlight. [14] Laruelle has emphasised that Rodnovery "cannot necessarily be defined as a religion in the strict sense"; some adherents prefer to define it as a "spirituality" (dukhovnost), "wisdom" (mudrost), or a "philosophy" or "worldview" (mirovozzrenie). 5 out of 5 stars (1) $ 5.52. [181] Aitamurto observed that early Russian Rodnovery was characterised by "imaginative and exaggerated" narratives about history. [198], Like many other supporters of pseudoscientific ideas, Rodnovers often consider their teachings to be "true science" (or "Russian science"), in contrast to "Jewish" "academic" science ("Judeo-materialistic science"), which is allegedly written with the aim of hiding from the Slavs the "truth" about their great past and superiority over other peoples. [313] The 1940s Zadrugist movement inspired the establishment in 1996 of the Association of Native Faith (Zrzeszenie Rodzimej Wiary; now simply called Rodzima Wiara, "Native Faith"),[314] whose founder Stanisaw Potrzebowski wrote his doctoral thesis on the pre-war Zadrugism in German. [324] In Slovenia, a group called the Svetovid Parish of the Old Belief (Staroverska upa Svetovid) was established around 2005 through a union of an older group, Ajda, with the followers of the military historian Matja Vratislav Anur. [238] Veche is used as the name of some Rodnover overarching organisations, as well as international councils. [229] Circle-dances may be clockwise (posolon, i.e. [104], Pantheons of deities are not unified among practitioners of Slavic Native Faith. [194], Although their understanding of the past is typically rooted in spiritual conviction rather than in arguments that would be acceptable within the academia, in which their historiosophy is often regarded as pseudohistorical, many Rodnovers seek to promote their beliefs about the past among academics. [360] In 2009, on the occasion of a conference specifically dedicated to the subject held at the Moscow State University, the philosopher Alexander Dugin praised the renewal of Scythian culture as an inspiration that will be beneficial to all descendants of Indo-European peoples and to the whole world. "Slavic Traditions & Mythology" is the fourth book by Stefan Cvetkovi which sums up his research in the field of Slavic mythology. [327] These groups have strong political motivations, being extremely nationalistic, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic. [299], Anastasianism (Russian: , , ) or the Ringing Cedars ( ) is a spiritual movement that overlaps with Rodnovery. [255] Some Rodnover groups have appropriated or reappropriated Christian festivals. Veles is associated with creativity, honesty and determination, as well as common sense wisdom and personal responsibility. [160], Many other Rodnovers deny or downplay the racist and Nazi elements within their community, and claim that extreme right-wingers are not true believers in Slavic Native Faith because their interests in the movement are primarily political rather than religious. [383] They believe that "Yngling", a name that identifies the earliest royal kins of Scandinavia, means "offspring of Yngly", and that the historical Ynglings migrated to Scandinavia from the region of Omsk, which they claim was a spiritual centre of the early Indo-Europeans. [115] The United States-based Native Ukrainian National Faith established itself in Ukraine soon after independence, with the first congregation in Ukraine gaining official recognition in Kiev in 1991. Some Russians have embraced Watsdin by virtue of the fact that most of the ancient Scythians were assimilated by the East Slavs, and therefore many Russians wish to reclaim Scythian culture by naturalizing into the Ossetian religion. Dodola is the Slavic Goddess of rain, sometimes thought to be the goddess of the air, also. [262] In 1818, the Polish ethnographer Zorian Doga-Chodakowski (Adam Czarnocki; 17841825) in the work O Sawiaszczynie przed chrzecijastwem ("About the Slavs before Christianity") declared himself a "pagan" and stated that the Christianisation of the Slavic peoples had been a mistake. To the early Slavs especially, the stork was seen as good luck, but there is a more sorrowful side to many birds as well. [59] Rodna or rodnaya is itself a concept which can denote the "nearest and dearest", and such impersonal community as one's native home or land. Dobroslav's follower A. M. Aratov, director of the Russkaya Pravda publishing house, wrote about the onset of the Russian Era and the imminent end of Christianity and Judaism. [51][52] According to Laruelle, Rodnovers believe that it is a symbol of "accession to the upper world". In Christianity wolf was associated with evil spirits but still most of these . The scholar of religion Scott Simpson has stated that Slavic Native Faith is "fundamentally concerned with questions of community and ethnic identity",[141] while the folklorist Nemanja Radulovic has described adherents of the movement as placing "great emphasis on their national or regional identity". [119] Its anthropocentrism is ultimately deemed responsible for ecological disruption,[106] due to the fact that its theological exaltation of mankind above the world produces in turn an existential model for mankind's technocratic domination of the world of nature. [163] The scholars Kaarina Aitamurto and Roman Shizhenskii found that expressions of extreme nationalism were considered socially unacceptable at one of the largest Rodnover events in Russia, the Kupala festival outside Maloyaroslavets. It is protective and some use it as a symbol of the goddess. Throughout the 1970s, the nationalist dissident movement split into two branches, an Orthodox Christian one and another one that developed National Bolshevism, which eventually continued to harbour Pagan traditionalists. [7] The interplay with the gods and the cycle of nature which they represent is displayed through large-scale ceremonies which Aitamurto defines as "aesthetically lavish", vectors of a great deal of creativity. These gods are the personifications of the heavens, the earth and the underworld. [268], Whereas calls to re-establish pre-Christian belief systems existed within the German and Austrian far-right nationalist movements during the early twentieth century, in Russia the situation was different. [55] The term is adapted from Slavic forms, and variations of it are used in different Slavic languages: for instance, in Ukrainian it is Ridnovirstvo or Ridnovirya, in Russian Rodnoverie, in Polish Rodzimowierstwo, and in Czech Rodnov. [269] He claimed that in 1934 he underwent a spiritual revelation atop Mount Grekhit in the Carpathian Mountains. 25.03.2010", " ( )", "Paganos de Rodnovery tambin participan en el conflicto ucraniano", "Locked up in the Donbas A look at the mass arrests and torture of civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk", "Some in Donbas who want to create a new 'Russian world' are reaching back to pre-Christian times", "Sprawozdanie z III Oglnopolskiego Zjazdu Rodzimowiercw", " : ", All-Russia Population Census 2010 ( 2010), " : ", "Eestis registreeritud usulised hendused", "Vernacular Beliefs and Official Traditional Religion", " ' ', " '': ' ', " ", "The Three-Headed One at the Crossroad: A Comparative Study of the Slavic God Triglav", "Scythian Neo-Paganism in the Caucasus: The Ossetian Uatsdin as a 'Nature Religion', "Olav's Rose, Perun's Mark, Taranis's Wheel", " ' ' ( )", "Saving the Native Faith: Religious Nationalism in Slavic Neo-paganism (Ancient Russian Yngling Church of Orthodox Old Believers-Ynglings and Svarozhichi)", " ", " Ultima Frontiera : ", Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, "In Search of Deeper Identities: Neopaganism and 'Native Faith' in Contemporary Ukraine", " - ' ' ", " ", "A Preliminary Quantitative Study of the Mysticism and Religious Maturity of Contemporary Slavic Neopagans in Poland", " ", " ", " : ", "Alternative Identity, Alternative Religion? [331] From the mid-2000s, Rodnovers made increasing use of social media to communicate with other members of their community. [77], By the mid-1930s, the term "Neopagan" had been applied to the Polish Zadrugist movement.
Baba Yaga's Book of Witchcraft: Slavic Magic from the Witch of the [58] Aitamurto stated that in addition to being the most used term, it is the most appropriate because of its meanings.
Slavic Mythology: Gods, Symbols & Stories - Study.com Ruling over the Slavic pantheon was Perun, the god of thunder and lightning, associated with fire and mountains and more. Koliada is the God of the new year and of the rising of the new sun each day. It was in Chicago that he established the earliest groups of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (Sylenkoism) in 1966. [429] The political scientist O. Kravtsov has called for making Druva the national religion of Belarus. [76] Thus, Czech Rodnover groups have coined Jazynictv and Slovak Rodnovers have coined Jazynctvo. Such idea that Russians may derive, at least in part, from Scythians is popular in many Rodnover circles. He was associated with thunder, lightning, storms, fire, mountains, fertility, law, war and weapons. [92] Many Rodnovers believe in casteism, the idea that people are born to fulfill a precise role and business in society; the Hindu varna system with its three castes priests, warriors and peasants-merchants is taken as a model, although in Rodnovery it is conceived as an open system rather than a hereditary one. [111] Sylenko acknowledged that the ancient Slavs were polytheists but believed that a monotheistic view reflected an evolution in human spiritual development and thus should be adopted. It is represented by organisations such as the Centre of EthnocosmologyKriya (Belarusian: "") by Syargei Sanko and the Tver Ethnocultural AssociationTverzha (Russian: "") founded in 2010. [286] Three years later he reported sociological researches suggesting Ukrainian Rodnovers to be 90,000 or 0.2% of the population. [286] Native Ukrainian National Faith congregations were established among Ukrainian emigree communities in other parts of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The physical symbols that represented this deity were dolls made of natural materials such as wood (or straws) as well as water in the form of ice and snow. [177] Aitamurto has defined the Rodnover idea of the veche as a form of grassroots democracy, or, using the term preferred by the Ynglists, as a samoderzhavie, that is to say a system of "self-power", "people ruling themselves". [59] It has deep senses related to its Slavic etymology, that would be lost through translation, which express the central concepts of the Slavic Native Faith. [403], Writing in 2000, Schnirelmann noted that Rodnovery was growing rapidly within the Russian Federation. Air. [180] Archaic patterns of meaning re-emerge at different levels on the spiral of time. [288] Joseph Stalin himself was a supporter of the idea of Slavic Vedism, the shared Indo-European origins of Vedic and Slavic cultures. The sacrificial ground is usually in the northern part of the square, so that during the sacrificial ceremonies both the priests and the laymen look towards the divine North Pole; otherwise, in the cases of those communities who give more importance to the cycle of the Sun, it is located in the eastern part of the square. [292] The first manifesto of Russian Rodnovery is considered to be the letter "Critical remarks by a Russian man" (Kriticheskie zametki russkogo cheloveka) published on such journal, anonymously in 1973, by Valery Yemelianov (19291999), who was then close to Khrushchev. [359] Makeyev himself, in a 2007 publication entitled "Assianism and world culture" (Assianstvo i mirovaya kul'tura), presented the religion as a worldwide spiritual heritage. [148] Aitamurto suggested that Russian Rodnovers' conceptions of nationalism encompass three main themes: that "the Russian or Slavic people are a distinct group", that they "haveor their heritage hassome superior qualities", and that "this unique heritage or the existence of this ethnic group is now threatened, and, therefore, it is of vital importance to fight for it". [70] Men are seen as innately disposed towards "public" life and abstract thought, while women are seen as better realising themselves in the "private" administration of the family and the resources of the house. [186] In Russia there was a shared belief among the intellectual circles that Slavic paganism had survived within the "folk Orthodoxy" of the common people (which was regarded as a dvoeverie, a "double faith"), and the Old Believers' movements. He is associated with herders and cattle farmers. By using terms of mile Durkheim, Aitamurto says that what Rodnovers reject is "egoistic individualism", not "moral individualism". The Proto-Slavic reconstruction is *dadjbog, and is composed of *dadj, imperative of the verb *dati "to give", and the noun *bog "god".
Slavic and Baltic Pagan CoA's | Paradox Interactive Forums [261], The origins of Slavic Native Faith have been traced to the Romantic movement of late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe, which was a reaction against rationalism and the Age of Enlightenment. [164], Laruelle has observed that even in groups which reject extreme nationalism or are apolitical, ethnic identity is still important, and a good Rodnover is considered one who is conscious of ethnic identity, national traditions, and knows the history of the ancestors. The study of this syncretic popular religion and philosophy was the foremost interest for late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian intellectuals: early revolutionaries (Alexander Herzen, Nikolay Ogarev, Mikhail Bakunin), Narodniks (Populists), and early Bolsheviks were inspired by the radical forms of society practised within folk religious communities, which in many ways were precursors to socialism. [99], Sylenko proclaimed himself a prophet, bringing to the Slavs a new understanding of God that, according to him, corresponds to their own and original understanding of God. [202] They consider the Abrahamic religions and their later secular ideological productionsMarxism, capitalism, the general Western rationalism begotten by the Age of Enlightenment,[203] and ultimately the technocratic civilisation based on the idea of possession, exploitation and consumption of the environment[119]as "mono-ideologies", that is to say ideologies which promote "universal and one-dimensional truths", unable to grasp the complexity of reality and therefore doomed to failure one after the other. [26] Other leaders who emerged in this period were Aleksandr Asov, author of numerous books on Rodnover philosophy which have sold millions of copies, Aleksandr Belov, founder of the Slavic-Hill military type of Rodnovery integrating Rodnover philosophy and martial arts, and Viktor Kandyba, founder of Kandybaism. [408] Physicists were particularly well represented; in this Aitamurto drew comparisons to the high number of computer professionals who were present in the Pagan communities of Western countries. Meryan Rodnovers also rely upon the uninterrupted traditions of the Mari Native Faith; on 27 September 2015, they organised a joint Mari-Merya prayer in the Moscow region. Currently based on early Kirillitsa of the 9th 10th century, used to translate religious script into a new language. [99] Sylenko was a charismatic leader, and his followers praised his talents and oratorial skills. Rodnovery draws upon surviving historical and archaeological sources and folk religion, often integrating them with non-Slavic sources such as Hinduism (because they are believed to come from the same Proto-Indo-European source). [11], Some involved in the movement avoid calling their belief system either "paganism" or "religion". [73], In Slavic languages the closest equivalent of "paganism" is poganstvo (taking for instance Russian; it itself deriving from Latin paganus), although Rodnovers widely reject this term due to its derogatory connotations. The poles, or statues, are called rodovoy stolb ("ancestral pole"), idol, chur,[242] but also kapy. [435] Simpson observed that in the country, Rodnovers were "still relatively young",[436] and saw an overlap with the community of historical re-enactors. [46], The most commonly used religious symbol within Rodnovery is the kolovrat ("spinning wheel", e.g. Aitamurto summarised Rodnover ethics in the concepts of patriarchy, solidarity and homogeneity, with the latter two seen as intrinsically related. The four points of the star represent faith, freedom, righteousness and honor, while the circle represents the Sun. Black magic spells were also used for revenge, protection, and power. Also, Saint Leontius of Rostov is appropriated as a native god. Her symbol, or star, serves as protection against negative energy or dark forces. "[199], Victor Bezverkhy (Ostromysl) in 1998 predicted the death of the "civilization of loan interest and slavery" in 2003. Her main themes are weather, winter, spring, protection, death, rebirth, the cycle of changes, and growth. [269] He turned to recorded Ukrainian folklore to find what he regarded as the survivals of the ancient Slavic religion. They hold that the Saga ob Ynglingakh, their Russian version of the Germanic Ynglinga saga (itself composed by Snorri Sturluson on the basis of an older Ynglingatal), proves their ideas about the origins of the Ynglings in Omsk, and that the Germanic Eddas are ultimately a more recent, western European and Latinised version of their own sacred books, the Slavo-Aryan Vedas. Concerted efforts by the communities of Moscow and Kaluga led to the establishment of the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities in 1997, characterised by nationalist views. The Slavs believed in three planes of existence: the heavens, governed by Perun, Dazhbog, Mokosh and Lada, symbolized by the sun and the moon; the earthly plane, occupied by humanity; and the underworld, symbolized by snakes and darkness, ruled over by Veles. In doing so, pre-Christian belief systems underwent a rehabilitation. [193] The Rodnover movement claims to represent the return to a "Golden Age", while the modern world is seen as having entered a stage of meaninglessness and collapse; Rodnovery heralds the re-establishment of the cosmic order, which cyclically dies but then revives in its original form, either by returning to the lifestyle and life-meaning attitudes of the ancestors (retro-utopia), or by radically restructuring the existing world order on the principles of a renewed primordial tradition (archeofuturism). [309], Since the 1990s, Russian Rodnovery has expanded and diversified. The movement promotes traditional Russian healing methods, psychoanalysis and martial arts. and the "Perun's sign", or "thunder wheel" (e.g. [355] An organised attempt at a renewal of the Scythian religion by the Cossacks started in the 1980s building upon the folk religion of the Ossetians, who are the modern descendants of the Scythians. Paperback - April 17, 2021. ), represent the thunder god Perun or the supreme God (Rod), expressing itself as power of birth and reproduction, in its various forms (whether Triglav, Svetovid, Perun and other gods) and were still carved in folk traditions of the Russian North up to the nineteenth century. [333] This attitude generated some mutual hostility between academics and practitioners of Rodnovery, rendering subsequent scholarly fieldwork more difficult. On the same occasion, they once again expressed disapproval for some authors and movements, including the large Skhoron ezh Sloven, which is also present in Belarus and Ukraine. Only the new people, the sun-worshippers, will be able to survive. The statue remained in place for some time until being removed by the authorities in 2007 when a decision was made to construct a church nearby. It originated in the early twentieth century and experienced a revival after the collapse of the Soviet Union, relying upon the Russian philosophical tradition, especially that represented by Vladimir Vernadsky and Pavel Florensky.