Veles, the Slavic god of waters, earth, and the underworld. [50] Those who visited Constantinople were instead impressed by the arts and rituals of Byzantine Christianity. [11] It has been argued that the essence of early Slavdom was ethnoreligious before being ethnonational; that is to say, belonging to the Slavs was chiefly determined by conforming to certain beliefs and practices rather than by having a certain racial ancestry or being born in a certain place. Mone. Many elements of the indigenous Slavic religion were officially incorporated into Slavic Christianity,[2] and, besides this, the worship of Slavic gods has persisted in unofficial folk religion until modern times.

In the case of a Christian Latinization of the Eastern Slavic countries, this may not have been the case.

[49] The fiery "six-petaled roses" that umbego the Ognyena are one of the variants of the whirling symbol of the supreme God (Rod). Slavic religious symbol of god Biaobg(Belobog). The Christianisation of the Slavic peoples was, however, a slow andin many casessuperficial phenomenon, especially in what is today Russia. [56] Moreover, chronicles from that period, such as the Pskov Chronicle, and archaeological data collected by N. M. Nikolsky, testify that back in the fifteenth century there were still "no rural churches for the general use of the populace; churches existed only at the courts of boyars and princes". worship of ancestors), though the Slavs did not keep genealogical records.

Christian saints were identified with Slavic godsfor instance, the figure of Perun was overlapped with that of Saint Elias, Veles was identified with Saint Blasius, and Yarilo became Saint Georgeand Christian festivals were set at the same dates as pagan ones. The most significant change was however the adoption of the sunwise direction in Christian ritual procession.

Historical documents about Slavic religion include the Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kiev around 1111, and the Novgorod First Chronicle compiled in the Novgorod Republic. [11], The linguistic unity, and negligible dialectal differentiation, of the Slavs until the end of the first millennium CE, and the lexical uniformity of religious vocabulary, witness a uniformity of early Slavic religion. The latter occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century:[1] The East Slavs came under the sphere of influence of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity, beginning with the latter's official adoption in 988 CE by Vladimir of Kievan Rus';[2] the West Slavs came under the sphere of influence of the Roman Catholic Church since the 12th century, and Christianisation for them went hand in hand with full or partial Germanisation,[3] although Great Moravia had an earlier contact with Orthodox Christianity in the 860s; from Moravia, Orthodox Christianity spread to Bulgaria and to most South Slavs.[4]. [24], The "Zbruch Idol" preserved at Krakow Archaeological Museum, The cosmology of ancient Slavic religion, which is preserved in contemporary Slavic folk religion, is visualised as a three-tiered vertical structure, or "world tree", as common in other Indo-European religions. [2] Joyfulness and beauty were the primary characteristics of pre-Christian Slavic ceremonies, and the delegates sought for something capable of matching these qualities.

[55], That the vast majority of the Russian population was not Christian back in the fifteenth century would be proven by archaeology: according to Vlasov, mound (kurgan) burials, which do not reflect Christian norms, were "a universal phenomenon in Russia up to the fifteenth century", and persisted into the 1530s. Such a value is found in "The Song of Igor's Campaign", where the winds are called "stribozhimi grandchildren." [33] Ebbo himself documented that the Triglav was seen as embodying the connection and mediation between Heaven, Earth and the underworld. [68], Ivanits attributes the tenacity of synthetic Slavic folk religion to an exceptionality of Slavs and of Russia in particular, compared to other European countries; "the Russian case is extreme", she says, because Russiaespecially the vastity of rural Russianeither lived the intellectual upheavals of the Renaissance, nor the Reformation, nor the Age of Enlightenment, which severely weakened folk spirituality in the rest of Europe. [18], Northwestern Slavic hierarchy of the divine, as illustrated by Ignc Jan Hanu. [2] The temple at Arkona had a squared groundplan, with an inner hall sustained by four pillars which contained Svetovid's statue. [25] All the bright male deities were regarded as the hypostases, forms or phases in the year, of the active, masculine divine force personified by Perun ("Thunder"). Join Maha_Sanskriti community and be a part of the revolution to take our culture, rich heritage, history, food and our people to the next level. According to legend, Vladimir sent delegates to foreign states to determine what was the most convincing religion to be adopted by Kiev.

[37], Besides Triglav and Svetovid, other deities were represented with many heads. The Primary Chronicle also contains the authentic text of Rus-Greek treatises (dated 945 and 971) with native pre-Christian oaths. [67], According to Ivanits, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Slavic folk religion's central concern was fertility, propitiated with rites celebrating death and resurrection. [21] Before its conceptualisation as Rod as studied by Rybakov, this supreme God was known as Deivos (cognate with Sanskrit Deva, Latin Deus, Old High German Ziu and Lithuanian Dievas). Dvok, "The Slav Epic". Chvar) both meaning the same thing, indicating Indo-European etymological relation. Stribog, in East Slavic mythology, the god of wind, born from the breath of Rod. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures. mieszne materiay na Kwejk.pl - kliknij po wicej! Triglav is Perun in the heavenly plane, Svetovid in the centre from which the horizontal four directions unfold, and Veles the psychopomp in the underworld. Slavic paganism or Slavic religion define the religious beliefs, godlores and ritual practices of the Slavs before the formal Christianisation of their ruling elites. [60], When Patriarch Nikon of Moscow launched his reform of the Orthodox Church in 1656, he restored the withershins ritual movement. Christianisation was vigorous in western and central parts of what is today Ukraine, as they were closer to the capital Kiev, but even there, popular resistance led by volkhvs, pagan priests or shamans, recurred periodically for centuries. From the eleventh century onwards, various Rus writings were produced against the survival of Slavic religion, and Slavic gods were interpolated in the translations of foreign literary works, such as the Malalas Chronicle and the Alexandreis. Ivanits also reports that in the region of Vladimir old people practised a ritual asking Earth's forgiveness prior to their death. [21], Template:Slavic religion , . PERUN Slavic God of Thunder Wooden Hand Carved Slav Mythology Eastern Pagan Viking Warrior Tribal Medieval Middle Ages Dark Age Storm.

This posed a great hitch to the Russian Orthodox Church's project of thorough Christianisation of the masses. Vladimir canonised a number of deities, to whom he erected a temple on the hills of the capital Kiev. [36] Helmold defined Svetovid as deus deorum ("god of all gods"). MahaSanskriti.com all right reserved, made with, #Maha_Sanskriti #theunexploredlegacy The Largest Community of Experts, Enthusiasts and Committed Professionals. [21], In 988, Vladimir of Kievan Rus' rejected Slavic religion and he and his subjects were officially baptised into the Eastern Orthodox Church, then the state religion of the Byzantine Empire. [7] The Slavs' resistance to Christianity gave rise to a "whimsical syncretism" which in Old Church Slavonic vocabulary was defined as dvoeverie, "double faith". [2], According to Ivakhiv, Christianisation was stronger in what is today western and central Ukraine, lands close to the capital Kiev. The Largest Community of Experts, Enthusiasts and Committed Professionals The Largest Community of Experts, Enthusiasts and Committed Professionals. The latter were particularly hardwearing in Slavic religion, represented by the widespread devotion to Mat Syra Zemlya, the "Damp Mother Earth". ** At least one telephone number is required. [57] It was only by the sixteenth century that the Russian Orthodox Church grew as a powerful, centralising institution taking the Catholic Church of Rome as a model, and the distinctiveness of a Slavic folk religion became evident.

[12] Ivanov and Toporov identified Slavic religion as an outgrowth of a common Proto-Indo-European religion, sharing strong similarities with other neighbouring Indo-European belief systems such as those of Balts, Thracians, Phrygians and Indo-Iranians. 5508 ?

[1], The religions of other Slavic populations are less documented, because writings about the theme were produced late in time after Christianisation, such as the fifteenth-century Polish Chronicle, and contain a lot of sheer inventions.

Being a master of wind Stribog can cause or stop a storm front, or any other phenomenon associated with the wind.Slavs celebrate day Stribog August 21. It was by this period that much of the Russian population became officially part of the Orthodox Church and therefore nominally Christians. Many gods were regarded by kins (rod or pleme) as their ancestors, and the idea of ancestrality was so important that Slavic religion may be epitomised as a "manism" (i.e. Kutarev, O. V. (2016). [32] Triglav represents the vertical interconnection of the three worlds, reflected by the three social functions studied by Dumzil: sacerdotal, martial and economic. [62], In the eleventh century, Slavic pagan culture was "still in full working order" among the West Slavs. [3], Burning the straw effigy of Marzanna, on Maslenitsa holiday, in Belgorod, Ethnography in late-nineteenth-century Ukraine documented a "thorough synthesis of pagan and Christian elements" in Slavic folk religion, a system often called "double belief" (Russian: dvoeverie, Ukrainian: dvovirya). [21] The various spirits were believed to manifest in certain places, which were revered as numinous and holy; they included springs, rivers, groves, rounded tops of hills and flat cliffs overlooking rivers.

[16], According to Adrian Ivakhiv, the Indo-European element of Slavic religion may have included what Georges Dumzil studied as the "trifunctional hypothesis", that is to say a threefold conception of the social order, represented by the three castes of priests, warriors and farmers. Other gods attested in medieval documents remain largely mysterious, for instance Lada and her sons Lel and Polel, who are often identified by scholars with the Greek gods Leda or Leto and her twin sons Castor and Pollux. The Largest Community of Experts, Enthusiasts and Committed Professionals [20], There were also holy places with no buildings, where the deity was believed to manifest in nature itself; such locations were characterised by the combined presence of trees and springs, according to the description of one such sites in Stettin by Otto of Bamberg. [69], Slavic folk religious festivals and rites reflect the times of the ancient pagan calendar. [3] The priests (volkhvs), who kept the temples and led rituals and festivals, enjoyed a great degree of prestige; they received tributes and shares of military booties by the kins' chiefs. - 7 2016 - . .

beauty". These ritual banquets are known variously, across Slavic countries, as bratchina (from brat, "brother"), mol'ba ("entreaty", "supplication") and kanun (short religious service) in Russia; slava ("glorification") in Serbia; sobor ("assembly") and kurban ("sacrifice") in Bulgaria. According to Gimbutas Slavic religion represented an unmistakable overlapping of Indo-European patriarchal themes and pre-Indo-Europeanor what she called "Old European"matrifocal themes. [28], The West Slavs, especially those of the Baltic, worshipped prominently Svetovid ("Lord of Power"), while the East Slavs worshipped prominently Perun himself, especially after Vladimir's 970s980s reforms. [43] Mokosh, the only female deity in Vladimir's pantheon, is interpreted as meaning the "Wet" or "Moist" by Jakobson, identifying her with the Mat Syra Zemlya ("Damp Mother Earth") of later folk religion. This is attested by chroniclers who wrote about West Slavs, including Saxo Grammaticus (c. 11601220). The movement draws from ancient Slavic folk religion, often combining it with philosophical underpinnings taken from other religions, chiefly Hinduism. For instance, the Christmas period is marked by the rites of Koliada, characterised by the element of fire, processions and ritual drama, offerings of food and drink to the ancestors.

His name goes back to the ancient roots of "Strega", which means "big", "paternal uncle." 2019 MahaSanskriti.com all right reserved, made with by KP TECHNOSYS. [44], According to Ivanits, written sources from the Middle Ages "leave no doubt whatsoever" that the common Slavic peoples continued to worship their indigenous deities and hold their rituals for centuries after Kievan Rus' official baptism into Christianity, and the lower clergy of the newly formed Orthodox Christian church often joined the celebrations.

[41] These deities, recorded in the Primary Chronicle, were five: Perun, Xors Dazhbog,[42] Stribog, Simargl and Mokosh. At the top there is the heavenly plane, symbolised by birds, the sun and the moon; the middle plane is that of earthly humanity, symbolised by bees and men; at the bottom of the structure there is the netherworld, symbolised by snakes and beavers, and by the chthonic god Veles.

[20] The biographers of Otto of Bamberg (1060/10611139) inform that these temples were known as continae, "dwellings", among West Slavs, testifying that they were regarded as the houses of the gods. [20] Different continae were owned by different kins, and used for the ritual banquets in honour of their own ancestor-gods. Many of these images were seen and described only in the moment of their violent destruction at the hands of the Christian missionaries.

Twentieth-century scholars who pursued the study of ancient Slavic religion include Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Marija Gimbutas, Boris Rybakov,[9] and Roman Jakobson amongst others. A. E. Musin, an academic and deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church published an article about the "problem of double belief" as recently as 1991. Rybakov said the continuity and gradual complexification of Slavic religion, which started from devotion to life-giving forces (bereginy), ancestors and the supreme God, Rod ("Generation" itself), and developed into the "high mythology" of the official religion of the early Kievan Rus'. [17], Hierarchy of the divine, with the two categories proceeding from the supreme God, as illustrated by Georg F. Creuzer and Franz J. Other figures who in medieval documents are often presented as deities, such as Kupala and Koliada, were rather the personifications of the spirits of agrarian holidays. [70]:50, Linda J. Ivanits reconstructed a basic calendar of the celebrations of the most important Slavic gods among East Slavs, based on Boris Rybakov's studies on ancient agricultural calendars, especially a fourth-century one from an area around Kiev. [23], The Slavs perceived the world as enlivened by a variety of spirits, which they represented as persons and worshipped. [54] This occurred as an effect of a broader complex of phenomena which Russia underwent by the fifteenth century, that is to say radical changes towards a centralisation of state power, which involved urbanisation, bureaucratisation and the consolidation of serfdom of the peasantry. [2] According to the Primary Chronicle, after the choice was made Vladimir commanded that the Slavic temple on the Kievan hills be destroyed and the effigies of the gods be burned or thrown into the Dnieper. [38] They were wooden buildings with an inner cell with the god's statue, located in wider walled enclosures or fortifications; such fortifications might contain up to four continae. [14], The affinity with Proto-Indo-Iranian religion is evident in shared developments, including the elimination of the name of the supreme God of Heaven, *Dyeus, and its substitution by the term for "cloud" (Slavic Nebo),[11] the shift of the Indo-European descriptor of heavenly deities (Avestan daeva, Old Church Slavonic div; Proto-Indo-European *deiwos, "celestial", derived from Dyeus) to the designation of evil entities, and the parallel designation of gods by the term meaning both "wealth" and its "giver" (Avestan baga, Old Church Slavonic bog). The name may be related to Sanskrit Svarga and Persian xwar (pron. According to him, a nominal, superficial identification with Christianity was possible with the superimposition of a Christianised agrarian calendar ("ChristianEasterWhitsunday") over the indigenous complex of festivals, "KoliadaYariloKupala". [27] Slavic traditions preserved very ancient Indo-European elements and intermingled with those of neighbouring Indo-European peoples. In the right hand, the statue held a horn of precious metal, which was used for divination during the yearly great festival of the god. They were built on upraised platforms, frequently on hills,[30] but also at the confluences of rivers. Withershins movement was employed in popular rituals, too, though only in those occasions when it was considered worthwhile to act against the course of nature, in order to alter the state of affairs. [70]:26 Some Rodnover groups focus almost exclusively on folk religions and the worship of gods at the right times of the year, while others have developed a scriptural core, represented by writings purported to be centuries-old documents such as the Book of Veles; writings which elaborate powerful national mythologemes such as the Maha Vira of Sylenkoism;[71] and esoteric writings such as the Slavo-Aryan Vedas of Ynglism. . Perun and Veles symbolised an oppositional and yet complementary duality similar to that of the Vedic Mitra and Varuna, an eternal struggle between heavenly and chthonic forces. [61] Veletskaya highlighted how the Old Believers have preserved Indo-European and early Slavic ideas and practices such as the veneration of fire as a channel to the divine world, the symbolism of the colour red, the search for a "glorious death", and more in general the holistic vision of a divine cosmos. ), which are so common in Slavic folk crafts, and which were still carved on edges and peaks of roofs in northern Russia in the nineteenth century, were symbols of the supreme life-giver Rod. [34] Adam of Bremen (c. 1040s1080s) described the Triglav of Wolin as Neptunus triplicis naturae (that is to say "Neptune of the three natures/generations") attesting the colours that were associated to the three worlds, also studied by Karel Jaromr Erben (18111870): white for Heaven, green for Earth and black for the underworld. Familypedia is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. [48] Belief in a mother goddess as receptacle of life, Mat Syra Zemlya ("Damp Mother Earth"), was preserved in Russian folk religion up to the 20th century, often disguised as the Virgin Mary of Christianity. According to some interpretations the fire-god Svaroi (latinized Zuarasici) was the son of Svarog. South Slavic Bogomilism produced a large amount of apocryphal texts and their teachings later penetrated into Russia, and would have influenced later Slavic folk religion. The church condemned "heresies" and tried to eradicate the "false half-pagan" folk religion of the common people, but these measures coming from the centres of church power were largely ineffective, and on the local level creative syntheses of folk religious rituals and holidays continued to thrive. [52], V. G. Vlasov quotes the respected scholar of Slavic religion E. V. Anichkov, who, regarding Russia's Christianisation, said:[53], According to Vlasov the ritual of baptism and mass conversion undergone by Vladimir in 988 was never repeated in the centuries to follow, and mastery of Christian teachings was never accomplished on the popular level even by the start of the twentieth century.

Rybakov is noted for his effort of re-examination of medieval ecclesiastical texts, synthesising his findings with archaeological data, comparative mythology, ethnography and nineteenth-century folk practices, and for having given one of the most coherent pictures of ancient Slavic religion in his major book Paganism of the Ancient Slavs and other works. [20] The Slavs also worshipped star-gods, including the moon (Russian: Mesyats) and the sun (Solntse), the former regarded as male and the latter as female.

[10] Among earlier, nineteenth-century scholars there was Bernhard Severin Ingemann, known for his study of Fundamentals of a North Slavic and Wendish mythology. Indo-European origins and other influences, Cosmology, iconography, temples and rites, Kievan Rus' official religion and popular cults, Vladimir's baptism, popular resistance and syncretism, Continuity of Slavic religion in Russia up to the 15th century, Sunwise Slavic religion, withershins Christianity, and Old Belief, Anna Dvok, in the upper right section of. Africa | Adinkra Cloth Symbols Chart | Aaron Mobley - Heart of Afrika Designs.

Among Poles and East Slavs, rebellion outbreaks occurred throughout the 11th century. Mokosh spins flax and wool at night and shears sheep. [60] A large number of Russians and ethnic minorities converted to the movement of the Old Believers, in the broadest meaning of the termincluding a variety of folk religionspointed out by Bernshtam, and these Old Believers were a significant part of the settlers of broader European Russia and Siberia throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, which saw the expansion of the Russian state in these regions. [51], Scholars have highlighted how the "conversion of Rus" took place no more than eight years after Vlardimir's reform of Slavic religion in 980; according to them Christianity in general did not have "any deep influence in the formation of the ideology, culture and social psychology of archaic societies" and the introduction of Christianity in Kiev "did not bring about a radical change in the consciousness of the society during the entire course of early Russian history".