[1] Within the movement, it has also been used to define the community of Native Faith practitioners themselves as an elective group. One of the earliest exponents of Russian Rodnovery, Moscow State University-graduated psychologist Grigory Yakutovsky (1955, known as a shaman by the name Vseslav Svyatozar), asserted that ancient Slavic religion was fundamentally shamanic, and Siberian shamanism plays a central role in his doctrines. The word Koliada is derived from the Slavic word for wheel or cycle. [59] Rod is conceived as the absolute, primordial God, supreme ancestor of the universe, that begets all things,[59] and at the same time as the kin, the lineage of generation which is the ancestral bond to the supreme source. [220] Laruelle has observed that most Rodnover groups emphasise the exoteric aspect of the religion, organising large communal, popular celebrations, and spreading exoteric knowledge open to all. Later, Avdeyev abandoned Eurasian ideas and came to racial doctrine. [24] Among these foreign influences have been beliefs and practices drawn from Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Germanic Heathenry,[25] Siberian shamanism,[26] as well as ideas drawn from various forms of esotericism. 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. [23] Both in Russia and in Ukraine, modern Rodnovers are divided among those who are monotheists and those who are polytheists. [323] A Serbian Native Faith group known as the Slavic Circle (Slovenski Krug) existed during the 1990s and 2000s, merging historical Slavic religion with a ritual structure adopted from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Koliada Viatichey is theologically dualistic, giving prominence to the complementary principles of Belobog and Chernobog, respectively governing spirit and matter, a polar duality which reflects itself in humanity as the soul and the body. Baba Yaga's Book of Witchcraft: Slavic Magic from the Witch of the List of Slavic creatures | Myths and Folklore Wiki | Fandom In 2012 they presented their official flag. [185] The fact that many scholars outspokenly reject the Book as a modern, twentieth-century composition has added to the allure that the text has for many Rodnovers. The name Radegast translates approximately to dear guest or welcomed guest. He is associated with many animals, particularly birds and snakes. [238] Veche is used as the name of some Rodnover overarching organisations, as well as international councils. 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). It was believed that Rod could be personified through all living beings as he presented fate and destiny. Is the Kolovrat really an ancient pagan Slavic symbol? [329] The Internet helped the spread of Rodnovery and a uniformisation of ritual practices across the various groups. [109] In keeping with the pre-Christian belief systems of the region, the groups who inherit Volodymyr Shaian's tradition, among others, espouse polytheism. [76] According to Demetria K. Green of the Johns Hopkins University, Rodnovery is strictly intertwined with the development of East Slavic languages, and especially of Russian language, which preserved embedded in themselves ideas and terminology of ancient Slavic religion over the centuries facilitating its revival in the modern era. [122], Rodnovers value individual responsibility as the cornerstone for the further maturation of humanity, equating the conversion to Rodnovery with such maturation. TScottFitzgerald 1 yr. ago. These gods are the personifications of the heavens, the earth and the underworld. [379], Authentism (Russian: ), incorporated as the Tezaurus Spiritual Union ( ""), is a Rodnover spiritual philosophy and psychological order created by the psychologist Sergey Petrovich Semenov in 1984, in Saint Petersburg. [14] Some practitioners regard "ethnic religion" as a term synonymous with "Native Faith", but others perceive a distinction between the two terms. [120], Rodnovers blame Christianity for transferring personal responsibility into a transcendent future when actions will be judged by God and people either smitten or forgiven for their sins, in fact exempting people from responsibility in the present time,[121] while at the same time imposing a fake moralism of self-deprecation, self-destruction and suppression of the flesh. In Slavic mythology, Stribog was the god of air, wind and storms. Slavic Native Faith - Wikipedia [1] The portmanteau Ridnovir began to be used by Ukrainians to refer to the broader movement (not restricted to Sylenkoism) by at least 1995,[60] popularised by Volodymyr Shaian. 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. Slavs are the largest ethnic group in Europe that share a linguistic and cultural history. [290] An intellectual circle that cultivated themes of Slavic indigenous religion formed as a wing of the predominantly Orthodox Christian samizdat nationalist journal Veche (19711974). [292] Other influential texts in this period were Valery Yemelianov's Desionizatsiya ("De-Sionisation")[182] and later Istarkhov's Udar russkikh bogov ("The Strike of Russian Gods"). Mokosh is sometimes called the Great Mother. 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. It was in Chicago that he established the earliest groups of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (Sylenkoism) in 1966. Ynglism meets widespread disapproval within mainstream Rodnovery, and an international veche of important Rodnover organisations has declared it a false religion. [137] There is an academic consensus that the Proto-Slavic language developed from about the second half of the first millennium BCE in an area of Central and Eastern Europe bordered by the Dnieper basin to the east, the Vistula basin to the west, the Carpathian Mountains to the south and the forests beyond the Pripet basin to the north. [22] Also Jan Stachniuk fought against the Nazi occupation during the Warsaw Uprising. In Yakutovsky's Rodnovery, male gods are secondary in importance compared to goddesses, and he claims that this was typical of ancient Slavic religion, which according to him was matriarchal. [8] The historian Marlne Laruelle has described Rodnovery as "more inclusive than just adherence to a pantheon of pre-Christian gods". [279], Wadysaw Koodziej (18971978) later claimed to have established, before the Second World War, the Holy Circle of the Worshippers of Svetovid (wite Koo Czcicieli wiatowida), although there is no evidence that they conducted regular meetings until many years later. [61], The appropriate name of the religion is an acute topic of discussion among believers. [241] The basic structure of a temple of the Slavic Native Faith, the ritual square (, kapishche), is constituted by a sacred sacrificial precinct, accessible only to the priests, at the centre of which are placed poles with carved images of the gods and a ritual fire (krada). [115], Rodnovery emphasises the "this-worldliness" of morality and moral thinking, seen as a voluntary and thoughtful responsibility towards the others and the environment that sprouts from the awareness of the interconnectedness of all things and of the continuity of spiritmatter and not as a strict set of rules. [276] He did not develop his ideas into a religion, and those who shared his views remained "a very loose and diverse intellectual clique". 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. Slavic Pagan Design. [51], The Anglicised term "Rodnovery", and its adjective "Rodnover(s)", have gained widespread usage in English and have been given an entry in the second edition (2019) of the academic Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation. In Slavic pagan beliefs, souls are separate from the body and dwelt on earth for forty days after someone died. [243] In 2015, the Temple of Svarozich's Fire, in the form of a simple wooden architecture, was opened by the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities in Krasotynka, Kaluga. She is the Slavic god of female endeavours, such as spinning, weaving, and shearing. [426] It is popular among some intellectuals of the pro-Russian cultural factions (for instance, Uladzimir Sacevi),[427] that is to say those who consider the Belarusians as a branch of the Russians, while other Rodnovers are pan-Slavist, considering the Belarusians a branch of the Slavs on par with the Russians. [335][336], Donbas has been documented as being a stronghold of Russian Rodnover groups that are reorganising local villages and society according to traditional Indo-European trifunctionalism (according to which males are born to play one out of three roles in society, whether priests, warriors or farmers). sunwise, rightwise) in those rituals dedicated to the gods of Prav (overworld), or counterclockwise (protivosolon, i.e. [166] For many others, rituals may include magical practices and are meant at the creation of shared meanings and new community ties. Nevertheless, according to Aitamurto, on the basis of the amount of literature that Ynglists publish and the presence of their representatives at various Rodnover conferences, is clear that Ynglism has a "substantial number of followers". According to him, the "races" should be ready for this, so they need to study "the heroism of Emperor Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem." [223], Most Rodnover groups strongly emphasise the worship of ancestors,[224] to continue and cultivate the family, the kin and the land,[126] as the ancestors are those personalities who effectively generated presently living offspring. [10] In 2005, Ivakhiv noted that there were likely between 5000 and 10,000 practitioners in Ukraine.