[445], There are also practising Rodnovers among Lithuania's[446] and Estonia's ethnically Russian minorities. [307] Many people became unemployed, and many turned to the past, nourishing the study of ethnic roots. [22] During the war, Stefan Potrzuski led a unit in the Peasant Battalion which battled the Nazi occupation of Poland. [290] The journal attracted various personalities, including Anatoly Ivanov, the artist Konstantin Vasilyev (19421974), and Nikolay Bogdanov, among others. He represents virility. [96], The founder Aleksandr Belov (Selidor) was originally a Karate master, and in the 1970s and 1980s he began researching and reviving ancient Slavic martial techniques mixing them with elements of English catch wrestling and other styles, codifying the practice in the book Slavic-Hill Wrestling and popularising it by founding, in 1986, the group of the Descendants of Svarog (-, Svarozhychey-Tryverov), which in 1989 took part in the creation of the Moscow Slavic Pagan Community; in 1995 Belov left the group and the following year he established the Russian Federation of Slavic-Hill Wrestling, which was officially registered by the state in 2015 as the Association of Slavic-Hill Wrestling Fighters ( - ). [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. [14] In 2002, six Russian Rodnover organisations issued the "Bittsa Appeal" (Bittsevskoe Obraschchenie), in which, among the many topics discussed, they expressed the view that "Rodnovery" should be regarded as the foremost name of the religion. [119], Rodnovers express their anti-Christian views in various ways. [22] Textual evidence for historical Slavic religion is scant, has been produced by Christian writers hostile to the systems being described and is usually open to multiple interpretations. [121] In other words, fleeing from the commitment towards the forces at play in the present context is the same as a denial of the gods; it disrupts morality, impairing the individual, society and the world itself. [99] This theological explanation is called "manifestationism" by some contemporary Rodnovers and implies the idea of a spiritmatter continuum; the different gods, who proceed from the supreme God, generate differing categories of things not as their external creations (as objects), but embodying themselves as these entities. Slavic Native Faith underwent dramatic growth in Ukraine during the early and mid 1990s. Tropa Troyanova does not identify itself as a "religion", but rather as a "traditional worldview". [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. [262] This was accompanied by a growth in nationalism across Europe, as intellectuals began to assert their own national heritage. "" - slavic sun wheel - "kolovrat" means "spinning wheel" in a number of slavic languages. [410] A high proportion were also involved in specialist professions such as engineering, academia, or information technology, and the majority lived in cities. Rather, he describes the movement as having been "built up artificially by urbanised intellectuals who use fragments of early pre-Christian local beliefs and rites in order to restore national spirituality". [172], The Aryan myth in Slavic neo-paganism is part of a contemporary global phenomena, which consists in the creation of "traditions". [83] Some practitioners describe themselves as atheists,[84] believing that gods are not real entities but rather ideal symbols. [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. Slavic Symbols - Visual Library of Slavic Symbols [105] Different Rodnover groups often have a preference for a particular deity over others. Her symbol, or star, serves as protection against negative energy or dark forces. Finally, the Trojan symbol may be said to connote the three dimensions of time: past, present and future. [288] Joseph Stalin himself was a supporter of the idea of Slavic Vedism, the shared Indo-European origins of Vedic and Slavic cultures. [332], Russian Rodnovery also attracted the attention of Russian academics, many of whom focused on the political dimensions of the movement, thus neglecting other aspects of the community. [226] Symbols such as the trident, the swastika, and objects representing fire, are prominent features of Rodnover rituals. The Triskele is an ancient Celtic symbol used in modern witchcraft and neo-paganism. Koliada is the God of the new year and of the rising of the new sun each day. [448], In Australia there is Southern Cross Rodnovery, a Rodnover organisation that caters to Australians of Slavic ethnicity. Air. There, he established the Order of the Knights of the Solar God (Orden Lytsariv Boha Sontsia), a religio-political group that he hoped would affiliate itself to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the Second World War. [281] This text was brought to the public by the Russian Yury Petrovich Mirolyubov (18921970), who claimed that it had been discovered by a friend of his, Fodor Arturovich Isenbek, while serving as a White Army officer during the Russian Civil War. Aitamurto summarised Rodnover ethics in the concepts of patriarchy, solidarity and homogeneity, with the latter two seen as intrinsically related. The letter criticised Christianity as a product of Judaism serving the interests of Zionism. [444] Though Rodn Vra no longer maintains structured territorial groups, it is supported by individual adherents scattered throughout the Czech Republic. [58] Aitamurto stated that in addition to being the most used term, it is the most appropriate because of its meanings. [93] Mathieu-Colas defines Rod as the "primordial God", but the term also literally means the generative power of family and "kin", "birth", "origin" and "fate" as well. [405] This was partly because there were several Rodnover groups active on the social network VK which had over 10,000 members. [309], Since the 1990s, Russian Rodnovery has expanded and diversified. Perhaps surprisingly, he is also a guardian of truth, hiding truthfulness from the vain and the selfish. [376], Ivanovism is a spiritual discipline based on the teachings of the mystic Porfiry Ivanov, based on the Detka healing system and religious hymns. For instance, the Association of Sons and Daughters of Ukraine of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (OSIDU RUNVira), one of the churches of Ukrainian Sylenkoism, holds a weekly "Holy Hour of Self-Reflection", in which practitioners read from Sylenko's Maha Vira, sermons are given, the ancestors are commemorated, and prayers and hymns are given, and the meeting ends with the singing of the national anthem of Ukraine. [322], Rodnovery spread to the countries of former Yugoslavia in the early twenty-first century. These festivals all were associated with symbols of pagan . [296] In the 1980s, Boris Rybakov published his last books, including The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs (1981) and The Paganism of Ancient Russia (1988). Lada is the Slavic goddess of beauty and fertility. [233] The structure of these Syenkoite rites is modelled on those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. [151] Some blame many of the world's problems on the mixing of ethnic groups,[152] and emphasise the idea of ethnic purity,[153] promoting ideas of racial segregation,[154] and demanding the legal prohibition of mixed-race marriages. 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. [149] There are Rodnovers with extreme right-wing nationalist views,[150] including those who are Neo-Nazi and openly inspired by Nazi Germany. [350] Yet, they espouse Russian nationalism, ancestrality and ecology, and oppose Christianity (but not folk Orthodoxy, which is regarded as a continuation of Russian indigenous religion) and the Western "technocratic civilisation". [146] A number of youth subcultures have been identified as introducing people to Rodnovery, among them heavy metal, historical re-enactment, and the admirers of J. R. R. [284] Sylenko presented himself as a prophet of Dazhbog who had been sent to the Ukrainian people. [284] Sylenkoism was influenced by deism and Theosophy. The movement also rejects extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic ideas. [63] The spread of the term reflected the degree of solidarity in establishing a broader brand and a sense of international movement despite the disagreements and power struggles that permeated the groups. [89] While most Rodnovers call it Rod, others call its visible manifestation Svarog or Nebo ("Heaven"), and still others refer to its triune cosmic manifestation, Triglav ("Three-Headed One"): PravYav-Nav, SvarogBelobog-Chernobog, SvarogDazhbog-Stribog, or DubSnop-Did. "[199] An example is Yuri Sergeev's adventure novel "Stanovoi Ridge" (1987), whose protagonist in the 1920s in the Yakut taiga discovers elderly "Old Believers" who store knowledge of "the wonderful beauty of religion, which they defiled and killed", and a secret library with texts, citing the Book of Veles. [260] Other martial arts styles that are popular among Rodnovers are "bench wrestling" (lavochki) and "wall against wall" (stenka na stenku). [407], Aitamurto observed that a substantial number of adherentsand in particular those who had been among the earliestbelonged to the "technical intelligentsia". It consists in the establishment of an ethnoreligious identity among those Russians who have Meryan ancestry; Merya are Volga Finns fully assimilated by East Slavs in the historical process of formation of the Russian ethnicity. Ancient Slavs lived in tribal societies, presided over by tribal chieftains, and practiced a multi-theistic form of Paganism. Mokosh is sometimes called the Great Mother. History . It was in Chicago that he established the earliest groups of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (Sylenkoism) in 1966. [140], There are, nonetheless, recurrent themes within the various strains of Rodnovery. [406] In 2019, Anna A. Konopleva and Igor O. Kakhuta stated that "the popularity of Neopaganism in Russia is obvious". [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. [431] Some Bulgarian Rodnovers identify themselves as the descendants of the Turkic Bulgars and therefore lean towards the Central Asian shamanic type of Rodnovery, influenced by the ancient Turko-Mongolian religion; they are incorporated as the Tangra Warriors Movement (Bulgarian: " "). Slavic Paganism - Etsy In recent times, the movement has been increasingly studied by academic scholars. They are those responsible for holding rites for worshipping the gods and leading communities and religious festivals. [138] Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov studied the origin of ancient Slavic themes in the common substratum represented by Proto-Indo-European religion and what Georges Dumzil defined as the "trifunctional hypothesis". [61] From Ukraine, the term began to spread throughout other Slavic countries. Sources that Rodnovers rely upon include valued scholars like Vladimir Dal and Boris Rybakov. Many Rodnovers regard their religion as a faithful continuation of the ancient beliefs that survived as a folk religion or a conscious "double belief" following the Christianisation of the Slavs in the Middle Ages. These gods are the personifications of the heavens, the earth and the underworld. The moon was a symbol of masculinity in Slavic mythology and was venerated during lunar feasts as a symbol of health and prosperity. [186] In following decades the work would have caused a sensation,[282] with many emigrees regarding it as a genuine tenth-century text. [22] Also Jan Stachniuk fought against the Nazi occupation during the Warsaw Uprising. The symbol for Prov represents truth. [46], The most commonly used religious symbol within Rodnovery is the kolovrat ("spinning wheel", e.g. [278] In the same year, Zdzisaw Harlender (18981939), independently wrote the book Czciciele Dadbg Swaroyca ("Worshippers of Dadbg Swaroyc"), published in 1937, in which he laid out his vision for the revival of the pre-Christian Slavic religion. The movement promotes traditional Russian healing methods, psychoanalysis and martial arts. It is believed that Slavic mythology can trace its roots back to the Proto-Indo European period, and perhaps as far back as the Neolithic era.The early Proto-Slav tribes split into groups, consisting of the East, West Slavs, and South Slavs.Each group created its own distinct set of localized mythologies, deities, and rituals based upon the beliefs and legends of the original Proto . Triskele. [107] Rodnovers also worship tutelary deities of specific elements, lands and environments,[108] such as waters, forests and the household. [113] Lesiv reported about a Sylenkoite follower who said that "we cannot believe in various forest, field and water spirits today. [271] The adherents believe that the class of the warriors should have the superior and leading role in society (espousing the idea of a military state and rejecting communism and democracy), and should be always ready to sacrifice themselves for the community. [225], A number of Rodnovers have expressed their religion through visual arts, with Svyatoslav I of Kiev being one of the most popular historical subjects among Rodnover artists. [161] There are groups that espouse positions of cultural nationalism and patriotism, rather than extreme ethnic nationalism and racism. [212] He reported that there were under 900 regularly active members of the main four registered Polish Native Faith organisations,[433] and around as many adherents belonging to smaller, unregistered groups. [229] Circle-dances may be clockwise (posolon, i.e. 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. Svarog, in the Slavic mythology, was the god of fire, sun and heaven (heaven being the world of the gods and dead souls). [1] Within the movement, it has also been used to define the community of Native Faith practitioners themselves as an elective group. [339], There are many denominations of Rodnovery as it is in general a democratic, free, or "open-source religion", that emphasises the "equality of men in their access to the divine" from different perspectives. [398], The Way of Great Perfection (Russian: ) is an esoteric doctrine of Rodnovery elaborated by Ilya Cherkasov (volkhv Veleslav), offering a perspective which according to him never existed in Slavic religion, a Slavic left-hand path. [267] It was this Romantic rediscovery and revaluing of indigneous pre-Christian religion that prepared the way for the later emergence of Rodnovery. Once Christianity became the official religion in Russia, the clergy did all it could to suppress folklore, worried that it was too pagan at its core. Air is associated with communication, wisdom or the power of the mind. ", " '', " ( )", " : XXI ", " : ", "Neo-paganism and Ethnic Nationalism in Eastern Europe", "Ancestral Wisdom and Ethnic Nationalism: A View from Eastern Europe", "Strategies for Constructing Religious Practice in Polish Rodzimowierstwo", " : Merjamaa ", N.N. [191], Rodnovery has a "cyclical-linear model of time", in which the cyclical and the linear morphologies do not exclude each other, but complement each other and stimulate eschatological sentiments. [414] Rodnovery is also spread through a variety of newspapers and journals. 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 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. [234] Some Rodnover groups incorporate practices which are not Slavic in origin. An insight into Slavic mythology: How to spot a Slavic witch? In 2012, in Russia, representatives of the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities, the Circle of Pagan Tradition and the Circle of Veles, signed an "Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Priests" that defined the criteria for the ordination of those wishing to become Slavic priests. [365] According to the definition of Sylenko himself, Sylenkoite theology is a solar "absolute monotheism", in which the single God is identified as Dazhbog. Animals such as wolves, bears, hares or foxes thanks to the wide area of distribution firmly entrenched themselves in various legends, stories, mythology and art of Slavic people. According to him, the "races" should be ready for this, so they need to study "the heroism of Emperor Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem." Other Slavic kingdoms took more liberties with color choices. The Slavic Kremlin Vitaly Sundakov is one of such centres, located in the Podolsky District of Moscow Oblast. In doing so, pre-Christian belief systems underwent a rehabilitation. [216] Some Russian Rodnovers have attempted themselves to improve relations with the Orthodox Church, arguing that Russian Orthodoxy had adopted many elements of historical Slavic belief and rites,[217] though for some by corrupting their original meaning. Antecedents of Rodnovery existed in late 18th- and 19th-century Slavic Romanticism, which glorified the pre-Christian beliefs of Slavic societies. [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. The Trojan symbol represents Triglav, which translates literally as three-headed. The three heads in question are those of Svarog, Perun and Veles. [74] Indeed, many Slavic languages have two terms that are conventionally rendered as "pagan" in Western languages: the aforementioned pogan and yazychnik.