[307] Many people became unemployed, and many turned to the past, nourishing the study of ethnic roots. [94] Cosmologically speaking, Rod is conceived as the spring of universal emanation, which articulates in a cosmic hierarchy of gods; Rod expresses itself as Prav (literally "Right" or "Order"; cf. ), a variant of the swastika (Sanskrit: "wellbeing", "wellness"). The Trojan symbol also represents the three elements: air, water and earth. [112] A similar view is espoused by Russian Ynglism,[100] while another distinctively monotheistic Rodnover movement that has been compared to Sylenkoism is Russian Kandybaism. [63] The term was originally also applied to the modern Pagan religions of non-Slavic groupsfor instance, in the Polish language Lithuanian Romuva has been referred to as Rodzimowierstwo litewskie ("Lithuanian Native Faith") and Celtic Paganism has been referred to as Rodzimowierstwo celtyckie ("Celtic Native Faith"),[63] however, "now, especially if you write [it] with the capital letter, the term is understood, first of all, as a designation of the Slavic Native Faith". His unit had a shrine to the god Svetovid in their secret forest base and held group rites in which they toasted a wooden image of the deity with mead. [127], Rodnover ethics deal with a wide range of contemporary social issues,[11] and they can be defined as conservative. [87] In the Russian and Ukrainian centres of Rodnover theology, the concept of Rod has been emphasised as particularly important. [40], The concept of double belief is especially significant in Russia and for the identity of the Russian Orthodox Church[41] and the folk Orthodoxy of the Old Believers;[42] in that country, it is an oft-cited dictum that "although Russia was baptised, it was never Christianised". 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". It is officially registered as a charity by the government of Australia. [380], The Way of Troyan ( , Tropa Troyanova; where "Troyan" is another name of the god Triglav, regarded as the patron god of Russia), incorporated as the Academy of Self-Knowledge ( ) and the All-Russian Association of Russian Folk Culture ( ), is a Rodnover psychological movement founded in 1991 by the historian and psychologist Aleksey Andreev (pseudonym of Aleksandr Shevtsov) relying upon a thorough ethnographic fieldwork, especially focused on the Ofeni tribe of Vladimir Oblast. It is also a popular feminist symbol. TScottFitzgerald 1 yr. ago. As of 2013, Rodnover groups in Bulgaria were described as having few members and little influence. The locution "Slavic Neopaganism" has been used within the academic study of the movement but it is never used by adherents themselves, who reject it for the connotations of both "new" and "pagan". [274] In 1954, a student group known as Klan Ausran was established at the University of d; officially dedicated to a study of Indo-European society, its members provided hymns and prayers. [258] Rodnover rituals and festivals often include martial arts displays; these sometimes symbolise seasonal change, such as the victory of spring over winter, or can be regarded as manifestations of bravery, strength, and honesty. [333] This attitude generated some mutual hostility between academics and practitioners of Rodnovery, rendering subsequent scholarly fieldwork more difficult. [418], Ivakhiv noted that Rodnovery remains "a relatively small niche in Ukrainian religious culture",[419] and that it faces a mixed reception in the country. Polytheism is accepted for its ability to "account for the complexity of the world with its multiple good and evil forces", and particularly emphasised is the popular Russian belief in the great goddess of the Earth (Mokosh or Mat Syra Zemlya). Among the members are eleven organisations including the Gontyna Association, the ertwa Association, the Pomeranian Rodnovers (Rodzimowiercy Pomorscy), the Drzewo Przodkw Association, the Circle of Radegast (Krg Radogost), the Kadus Association, the Swarga Group (Gromada "Swarga"), the WiD Group, ZW Rodzima Wiara and the Watra Rodnover Community (Wsplnota Rodzimowiercw "Watra"). [299] Ivanovite teachings are incorporated by Peterburgian Vedism. [447] In Lithuania there are also homesteads of the Anastasian movement. It is protective and some use it as a symbol of the goddess. 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". The Proto-Slavic reconstruction is *dadjbog, and is composed of *dadj, imperative of the verb *dati "to give", and the noun *bog "god". [437] They also observed that males constituted the majority of the community. [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. Scholars of religion regard Slavic Native Faith as a modern Pagan religion. [146] In this vein, they often oppose what they regard as culturally destructive phenomena such as cosmopolitanism, liberalism and globalisation,[115] as well as Americanisation and consumerism. [190] In claiming an Aryan ancestry, Rodnovers legitimise their cultural borrowing from other ethno-cultural groups whom they claim are also Aryan descendants, such as the Germanic peoples or those of the Indian subcontinent. They recover the pre-Christian social institution of the veche (assembly), which they also see as reflecting the concept of sobornost formulated in twentieth-century Russian philosophy. It was believed that dead ancestors existed within the same spiritual plane as the Slavic deities. [397] The movement abhors moral decay, while emphasising discipline and conservative values, and even though Belov's early works do not have a radical right-wing posture, many adherents espouse such position. [11], Some involved in the movement avoid calling their belief system either "paganism" or "religion". [435] Simpson observed that in the country, Rodnovers were "still relatively young",[436] and saw an overlap with the community of historical re-enactors. Vedic ta, "Right"), was usurped by the Christians. [115] In Poland, Rodnovery also influenced various forms of folk and popular music. [175] Western liberal ideas of freedom and democracy are traditionally perceived by Russian eyes as "outer" freedom, contrasting with Slavic "inner" freedom of the mind; in Rodnovers' view, Western liberal democracy is "destined to execute the primitive desires of the masses or to work as a tool in the hands of a ruthless elite", being therefore a mean-spirited "rule of demons". The Witcher 3 runes are all based on Slavic gods. In general, the strengthening of the "Aryan" ideas among the Russians remains little studied and little realized. [143] Rodnovery typically emphasises the rights of the collective over the rights of the individual,[144] and their moral values are the conservative values typical of the right-wing of politics: emphasis on patriarchy and traditional family. [96] Triglav and Svetovid ("Worldseer") are concepts representing the axis mundi and, respectively, the three qualities of reality and their realisation in the four dimensions of space. [352], Various organisations have been established in the late 2000s and 2010s, including Merjamaa and Merya Mir ( , "Merya World"). "Slavic Traditions & Mythology" is the fourth book by Stefan Cvetkovi which sums up his research in the field of Slavic mythology. [197] In turn, Rodnovers have accused academics of being part of a conspiracy to conceal the truth about history. [100] In the wake of this theology, it is common among Slavic Native Faith practitioners to say that "we are not God's slaves, but God's sons",[101] many of them emphasising the ontological freedom of the different subsequent emanations so that the world is viewed as a "dialectical manifestation" of the single transcendental beginning and continuous co-creation of the diversified gods and the entities which they generate. [27] Other influences include documents like the Book of Veles, which claim to be genuine accounts of historical Slavic religion but which academics recognise as later compositions. Sventovit is the Slavic god of war. [284] He subsequently left Europe and moved first to Canada and then the United States. Air is associated with communication, wisdom or the power of the mind. Kolovrots turning left are less popular and if they appeared, they referred to darkness, night and magic. It is a symbol, also, of protection. [405] This was partly because there were several Rodnover groups active on the social network VK which had over 10,000 members. ), 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. [111] A Sylenkoite centre, the Temple of Mother Ukraine, was established in Spring Glen, New York. [236] The Ukrainian organisation Ancestral Fire of the Native Orthodox Faith promotes a healing technique called zhyva that has close similarities to the Japanese practice of reiki. 1938). [180] Archaic patterns of meaning re-emerge at different levels on the spiral of time. [270][271] One of the most influential Ukrainian Rodnover ideologues was Volodymyr Shaian (19081974), a linguist and philologist who worked at Lviv University. [13] The usage of this term suggests that the religion is restricted to a particular ethnic group. The Triskele is an ancient Celtic symbol used in modern witchcraft and neo-paganism. [190] Temple buildings (, khram) may be present. [55] The term derives from the Proto-Slavic roots *rod, which means anything "indigenous", "ancestral" and "native", also "genus", "generation", "kin", "race" (e.g. [213], Christians have also been responsible for opposition to Slavic Native Faith, for instance through the establishment of social media groups against the movement. [351], Meryan Rodnovery is a movement present in the Russian regions of Ivanovo, Kostroma, Moscow, Vladimir, Vologda, Tver, and Yaroslavl. [14] The ethnonym "Slavs" (Polish: Sowianie, South Slavic: Sloveni, Russian: Slavyane), derives from the Proto-Slavic root *slovo, "word", and means "those who speak the same words", and according to Rodnovers it has the religious connotation of "praising one's gods". [309], Since the 1990s, Russian Rodnovery has expanded and diversified. [119] Although some Rodnovers aspire to paradise, they argue that retribution is not deferred to a transcendent future but realised in the here and now; since gods manifest themselves as the natural phenomena, and in people as lineage descendants, Rodnovers believe that actions and their outcomes unfold and are to be dealt with in the present world. Crossroads - Most Slavic people worshipped in natural circles and groves; and it plays a large part in all kinds of magic. [358], There are various Watsdin organisations in North OssetiaAlania affiliated with Scythian Assianism, including the Atst organisation led by Daurbek Makeyev. 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. This was changed with the promulgation of a law "on freedom of conscience and religious organisation", backed by three deputies professing Rodnovery, whose members organised the pro-Russian Svarozhich Battalion (of the Vostok Brigade) and the Rusich Company. [253] A questionnaire distributed at the Kupala festival in Maloyaroslavets suggested that Rodnovers typically had above-average levels of education, with a substantial portion working as business owners or managers. 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. The wheel equally symbolizes the power of life and knowledge. [85], Monotheism and polytheism are not regarded as mutually exclusive. [186] It is probable that the Book of Veles was a literary composition produced by Mirolyubov himself. In religious terms, it is in the guise of "Russian National Socialism" by Alexey Dobrovolsky (Dobroslav); in historiographical terms, it is the desire to demonstrate the "glorious Aryan past of the Rus"; in political terms, it is the slow transfer of "Aryan" allusions from the environment of extremist nationalist parties of the ultra-right wing to the political tools of more moderate groups (for example, the Party of Spiritual Vedic Socialism of Vladimir Danilov). In the Slavic mythology, Veles (or Bog Veles) is the guardian of the Heavenly Gates, which separate the spiritual world from the physical world. Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich was assigned by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party the task of studying folk religious movements, and in 19081910 a faction of the Bolsheviks, represented by Anatoly Lunacharsky, Alexander Bogdanov, Maxim Gorky, and Vladimir Bazarov, formulated the "God-Building" movement (Bogostroitelstvo), whose aim was to create a new religion for the proletariat through a synthesis of socialism with folk religion. [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. sfnm error: no target: CITEREFLesiv2013 (, sfnm error: no target: CITEREFIvakhiv2005 (, Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities, the mental constraints which were imposed by feudalism and by what they call "mono-ideologies", Slavic Native Faith's theology and cosmology, Slavic Native Faith's identity and political philosophy, the rights of the collective over the rights of the individual, Slavic Native Faith's calendars and holidays, List of Slavic Native Faith's organisations, " / Translation from French by Dmitry Bayuk. [183] However, Aitamurto and Gaidukov later noted that the most imaginative narratives were typical of the 1980s, and that more realistic narratives were gaining ground in the twenty-first century. Triskele. Slavs belong to the group of Indo-European peoples, also called Aryan peoples (do not confuse this term with the term 'Aryan race'). [64] Many Rodnovers have adopted terms that are already used to refer to other religions, namely "Vedism", referring to the historical Vedic religion and the ancient Iranian religion, and "Orthodoxy", commonly associated to Orthodox Christianity. In Slavic mythology, Perun is the god of the sky and of thunder and lightning. The symbols in this category predominantly originate from the pre-Christian period and are related to the gods (bogs) of the Pagan Slavic mythology. [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". Long before Russia adopted Christianity in the 10th century, folk tales, songs and rituals existed as an established art form. [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. [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. 4000+ Symbols - PDF - Ready to print. Dodola is the Slavic Goddess of rain, sometimes thought to be the goddess of the air, also. She is the Slavic god of female endeavours, such as spinning, weaving, and shearing. The cultural center "Vyatichi" in the "Russian Pagan Manifesto" of 1997 (Nikolai Speransky - Velimir and others) on the threshold of the third millennium announced the end of the "night of Svarog" and "the morning of the new great day of the gods. Nemiza is the Slavic god of death, in that he or she would cut the thread of life. The god was depicted, at different times, as both male and female. [399] He borrows from various Eastern traditions, including Hinduism (Tantrism), Buddhism and Taoism,[400] but also Western Neoplatonism, Hermeticism and alchemy, as well as the medieval German mysticism of the Friends of God (Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler). [110] Sylenko characterised Dazhbog as "light, endlessness, gravitation, eternity, movement, action, the energy of unconscious and conscious being". [417] The religion's "main base" consisted of ethnic Ukrainians who were "nationally oriented" and who displayed higher than average levels of education. In Slavic mythology, Rod separated the physical world from the spiritual world. Rodnovers share the strong feeling that their religion represents a paradigmatic shift which will overcome the mental constraints which were imposed by feudalism and by what they call "mono-ideologies". [273], In Poland, Jan Stachniuk (19051963) established the Zadruga magazine in 1937, which gave rise to the movement of Zadrugism. Rodnover theology and cosmology may be described as pantheism and polytheismworship of the supreme God of the universe and worship of the multiple gods, the ancestors and the spirits of nature who are identified in Slavic culture. [299] Schnirelmann reported in 2008 that Ivanovism was estimated to have "a few dozen thousand followers". [325] As of 2013, it had between ten and fifteen members. Here is a list of (almost) all Slavic mythical creatures. Perun is heavily masculine, and is representative of the most active parts of nature. The poles, or statues, are called rodovoy stolb ("ancestral pole"), idol, chur,[242] but also kapy. [45] According to her, the case of Russia is exceptional compared to western Europe, because Russia neither lived the intellectual upheavals of the Renaissance, nor the Reformation, nor the other movements which severely weakened folk spirituality in Europe. [74] Indeed, many Slavic languages have two terms that are conventionally rendered as "pagan" in Western languages: the aforementioned pogan and yazychnik. [143] Some Rodnovers espouse ideas similar to those of Jewish Kabbalah, namely the discipline of Vseyasvetnaya Gramota ("Universal Script"), which holds that there is a connection between language, script and the cosmos (corroborated by the etymological connection between the word yazychnik, "pagan", and yazyk, "language", which share the same root): the Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts, and their alleged ancestor, are considered to have magical usefulness to cooperate with the universe and communicate with God, and to see past events and foresee future ones. [221] For many Rodnovers, greater importance is given to the construction of "authentic" Slavic rituals rather than psychologically empowering practices. 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. Rodnover organisations often characterise themselves as ethnic religions, emphasising their belief that the religion is bound to Slavic ethnicity. [38] Halyna Lozko of the Federation of Ukrainian Rodnovers, which directly inherits Volodymyr Shaian's orthodox doctrine, advanced vehement critiques of Sylenkoism, deeming Lev Sylenko a "false prophet" and accusing him of having tried to lead Ukrainians in the Abrahamic religions' "quagmire of cosmopolitan monotheism". [387] Despite this, Ynglism continues to operate as an unregistered religious phenomenon represented by a multiplicity of communities. [81], Prior to their Christianisation, the Slavic peoples were polytheists, worshipping multiple deities who were regarded as the emanations of a supreme God. In one gruesome instance near the Ukrainian border in 1997, a man and his nephew attacked a woman who they claimed used black magic to cast a spell on them. The Sventovit symbol is one of protection for pregnant women, and wearing it is said to encourage the birth of healthy children. Ivanov, who declared himself a Zoroastrian and subscribed to "Arism" or "Slavism", published a fervently anti-Christian pamphlet entitled "The Christian Plague" (Khristianskaya chuma). Today, the swastika is officially used by Baltic neo-pagan organizations such as Romuva and Dievturiba. [444] Though Rodn Vra no longer maintains structured territorial groups, it is supported by individual adherents scattered throughout the Czech Republic. "Rodnovery" is a widely accepted self-descriptor within the community, although there are Rodnover organisations which further characterise the religion as Vedism, Orthodoxy, and Old Belief. [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. 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. [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".