What religion was adopted by the southern Slavs. Ancient Slavs: how they lived and what they believed
"Beliefs and customs of the ancient Slavs"
religious belief Slavic custom
Introduction
Relevance of the topic
The topic of this essay is relevant in our time and this is due to a number of reasons. Firstly, it arouses interest not only among specialists in the field of history and historiography, but also among a wide range of the public. Secondly, in all Slavic countries, from time immemorial, great importance has been attached to ancient customs and beliefs, but scientists have an incredibly small amount of information about those times, so research in this direction is being very active. Once our great encyclopedist M.V. Lomonosov decided to systematize all the knowledge about the mythology and religion of the ancient Slavs, but was forced to note with disappointment: “We would have many fables, like the Greeks, if the Slavs had science in idolatry.”
The purpose of this essay, I outlined, is an attempt to generalize the religious beliefs, traditions and customs of the ancient Slavs. But, like every study, the topic of the beliefs and customs of the ancient Slavs has its own difficulties, they consist in the fact that there is still no consensus among scientists and specialists about the ancient pagan gods, spirits, and religious rites of the Slavs.
Degree of knowledge. The topic of beliefs and customs, as mentioned earlier, has been studied quite poorly, although research has been very active for many years. From about the middle of the 19th century. Systematic information began to be collected about the customs, rituals, and beliefs of the peasants. The beliefs of the Slavs attracted the attention of many scientists.
Historiographical review
Vasiliev M.A. Paganism of the Eastern Slavs on the eve of the baptism of Rus': Religious and mythological interaction with the Iranian world. Pagan reform of Prince Vladimir. -1999.
Zhuravlev A.F. Language and myth. Linguistic commentary on the work of A. N. Afanasyev “Poetic views of the Slavs on nature.” -2005.
Zelenin D.K. East Slavic ethnography. -1991.
Zelenin D.K. Selected works. Articles on spiritual culture. 2004.
Kagarov E. G. Religion of the ancient Slavs. -1918.
Kostomarov N. I. Slavic mythology. -1847.
Shepping D. O. Myths of Slavic paganism. - 1997. .
Leger L. Slavic mythology. -1908.
Voloshina T. A., Astapov S. N. Pagan mythology of the Slavs. -1996.
Gavrilov D. A., Nagovitsyn A. E. Gods of the Slavs: Paganism. Tradition. -2002.
Gavrilov D. A., Ermakov S. E. Gods of Slavic and Russian paganism. -2009.
Kulikov A. A. Cosmic mythology of the ancient Slavs. -2001.
Mansikk V. J. Die Religion der Ostslaven. I. Quellen // FF Communications. No. 43. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Helsinki, 1922. (“Religion of the Eastern Slavs”). Religion of the Eastern Slavs-2005. (Russian translation)
Niederle L. - Slavic antiquities - 1956.
Popovich M.V. Worldview of the ancient Slavs. -1985.
Putilov B. N. Ancient Rus' in the faces: gods, heroes, people. -1999.
Semyonova M.V. Life and beliefs of the ancient Slavs. -2001.
Syomina V. S., Bocharova E. V. Religion and mythology in the culture of the ancient Slavs. 2002.
Slavic antiquities: Ethnolinguistic dictionary. In 5 vols. Ed. N. I. Tolstoy:
Klein L. S. Resurrection of Perun: Toward the reconstruction of East Slavic paganism. -2004.
Pomerantseva E.V. Mythological characters in Russian folklore. -1975.
Rusanova I.P., Timoshchuk B.A. Pagan sanctuaries of the ancient Slavs. -1993.
Rusanova I.P. Origins of Slavic paganism. Religious buildings of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1st millennium BC. e. - 1st millennium AD e. -2002.
Rybakov B. A. Paganism of the ancient Slavs. -1981.
Rybakov B. A. Paganism of Ancient Rus'. -1987.
Tolstoy N.I. Essays on Slavic paganism. - M.: Indrik, 2003. - 622 p.
Uspensky B. A. Philological research in the field of Slavic antiquities (Relics of paganism in the East Slavic cult of Nicholas of Myra). - M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1982. - 245 p.
D. O. Scheppinga “Myths of Slavic paganism »
V. V. Sedov Origin and early history of the Slavs -1979. Archeology of the USSR: Eastern Slavs in the VI-XIII centuries. M., 1982. Slavs in antiquity - 1994. Slavs in the early Middle Ages - 1995.
In history, the Slavic people are considered relatively young. The first mentions of them appeared in written sources only from the 6th century. Currently, the region north of the Carpathians is recognized as the homeland of the Slavs. But when accurately defining its boundaries, scientists differ significantly in their opinions. The problems of the origin and settlement of the Slavs still remain controversial, but numerous studies by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnographers and linguists make it possible to draw a general picture of the early history of the Slavic peoples.
In the middle of the 1st millennium AD. On the general territory of Eastern Europe, from Lake Ilmen to the Black Sea steppes and from the Eastern Carpathians to the Volga, East Slavic tribes formed. Historians count about 15 such tribes. Each tribe was a collection of clans and then occupied a relatively small isolated area.
The Slavs raised cattle and pigs, as well as horses, and were engaged in hunting and fishing. In everyday life, the Slavs widely used the so-called ritual calendar, associated with agricultural magic. It marked the days of the spring-summer agricultural season from seed germination to harvest and especially highlighted the days of pagan prayers for rain in four different periods. Like all peoples who were at the stage of disintegration of the primitive communal system, the Slavs were pagans. The pagan culture of the Eastern Slavs was rich and varied. In its depths the first knowledge of our ancestors about nature and man was accumulated. The beginnings of astronomical, medical, biological, technical, and geographical knowledge lay in pagan ideas. They formed the basis of all human life; they determined work cycles, forms of housing construction, customs, rituals, etc.
Slavic mythology and religion were formed over a long period in the process of separating the ancient Slavs from the Indo-European community of peoples in the 2nd-1st millennium BC. e. and in interaction with the mythology and religion of neighboring peoples. Thus, the chronological overview of this study covers the II-I millennium BC (the period of formation of Slavic mythology). Therefore, there is a significant Indo-European layer in Slavic mythology. It is assumed that it includes images of the god of thunderstorms and fighting squads (Perun), the god of cattle and the other world (Veles), elements of the images of a twin deity (Yarilo and Yarilikha, Ivan da Marya) and the deity of Heaven the Father (Stribog). Also Indo-European in essence are such images as Mother Cheese-Earth, the goddess of weaving and spinning associated with her (Makosh), the solar deity (Dazhbog), and some others.
1. Beliefs of the ancient Slavs
.1 "People's faith" - paganism
In the middle of the first millennium AD. The Slavic tribes that inhabited the western part of the territory of the European part of Russia were at the last stage of development of the primitive communal system. Agriculture came first in their economic life. Their faith was based on the worship of deities who personified the forces of nature.
In Slavic fairy tales, it is not uncommon to encounter many magical and mystical characters - sometimes terrible and formidable, sometimes mysterious and incomprehensible, sometimes kind and peace-loving. Nowadays, these fairy tales seem like bizarre fiction, but in Rus' they firmly believed that the entire world around them was permeated with magic. “Such a faith was called paganism, i.e. “folk faith” (“people” is one of the meanings of the ancient Slavic word “language”).”
Since the Slavs were pagans, they valued the relationship between man and nature above all else. They worshiped the elements, believed in the kinship of people with various animals, and made sacrifices to deities. Each Slavic tribe had its own deities that they worshiped.
There were never uniform ideas about the gods for the entire Slavic world, since their tribes were not united into one common state, therefore the ancient Slavs were not united in their beliefs. In view of this, the Slavic gods were not related, although some of them were similar to each other.
In 980, the first collection of the main pagan gods appeared (under the Kiev prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich) - a pagan pantheon, but it cannot be called pan-Slavic since it mainly consisted of South Russian deities. In addition, their selection reflected not so much actual beliefs as it served political purposes.
1.2 Main Slavic pagan gods
The main deities of the ancient Slavs were considered:
Perun (adj. 1)
Dazhdbog (adj. 2)
Svarog (Stribog) (add. 3)
Makosh - Earth (add. 4)
Fire - Svarozhich
Yarila (adj. 5)
The serpent is Volos (Veles) aka Tsmog and the god Simargl. (adj.6)
Perun - Slavic thunderer. His cult is one of the oldest and dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. e., when warlike foreign Europeans (Aryans) on war chariots, possessing bronze weapons, subjugated neighboring tribes. Perun was more of a warrior god than the embodiment of the spring thunderstorms that fertilize the earth, so it is not surprising that until the 10th century. - during the military campaigns of the Kievites - his cult did not occupy a central place, and in some areas of the Slavic world it was completely unknown. Perun was called the "prince's god" because he was the patron of princes and symbolized their power. Such a god was alien to most communal Slavic farmers. The rise of the cult of Perun, his transformation into the supreme pagan god, begins with the military campaigns of the Kievites - they defeat the Khazars, fight on equal terms with Byzantium, and subjugate many Slavic tribes. Perun, according to legend, carries a quiver of arrows in his left hand, and a bow in his right hand; the arrow he shoots hits the enemy and causes fires. His club (hammer), as a sign of a punishing divine instrument, became a symbol of power, its functions were transferred to the royal scepter, priestly and judicial rods. There is a version that St. George the Victorious, slaying the serpent, is none other than Perun, who “wormed his way” into the calendar, hiding behind Christian name.
Dazhdbog was considered the sun god. His name means “giving God,” “giver of all blessings.” The symbols of this god were gold and silver. The cult of Dazhdbog especially flourished in Rus' in the 11th-12th centuries, during the era of state fragmentation, coexisting with Christianity. Russian people revered Dazhdbog as their protector, calling themselves his grandchildren. Dazhdbog was the god of sunlight, but by no means the luminary itself. “The Slavs believed that Dazhdbog rides across the sky in a wonderful chariot drawn by four white, fire-maned horses with golden wings. And sunlight comes from the fiery shield that Dazhdbog carries with him. Twice a day - morning and evening - he crosses the Ocean-Sea on a boat pulled by geese, ducks and swans. Therefore, the Slavs attributed special powers to talismanic amulets in the form of a duck with a horse’s head.”
Svarog was the god of Heaven among the Slavs. Svarog is the father of a number of gods (Perun, Dazhdbog, Semargl). Svarog is associated with heavenly fire and the celestial sphere. The name of God comes from the Vedic "svargas" - sky; The root “var” is also represented in this word - burning, heat. Legend says that Svarog gave people the very first plow and blacksmith's tongs, and taught them how to smelt copper and iron. In addition, it was believed that Svarog established the very first laws for the human community.
Makosh - Earth - personifies the feminine principle of nature and is the wife of Svarog. The expression Mother Earth, a modern version of the name of the ancient Slavic goddess, is still pronounced with respect and love by Russian people. Makosh was also the goddess of women's work, a wonderful spinner. She also spins the threads of fate, together with her assistants Dolya and Nedolya, determining the fate of people and gods. It provides a way out of the most hopeless situations, if a person does not despair, if he goes with all his strength, if he has not betrayed himself and his dream. And then Makosh sends the goddess of happiness and good luck to the person - Srecha. But if a person has given up, lost faith and given up on everything - they say, “The curve will take you out,” then he will be bitterly disappointed. Makosh will turn away his face. And the outcast will be led through life by monstrous old women - Dashing One-Eyed, Crooked, Difficult, Week, Nesrecha - to where the snakes lament over the graves of Karn and Jelly.
Fire - Svarozhich, was the son of Svarog and Mokosha. In ancient times, fire was truly the center of the world in which all human life took place. Evil spirits did not dare to approach Fire, but Fire was able to cleanse anything defiled.
The fire was a witness to vows, and this is where the Russian custom of jumping in pairs over a fire came from: it was believed that if a guy and a girl were able to fly over the flame without opening their hands, then their love was destined to live a long life. By the way. the true name of the Fire God was so sacred that it was not spoken aloud, replacing it with allegories. Apparently, this is why it never reached us; in any case, scientists do not have a consensus on this matter.
The name was forgotten, but the signs associated with Fire were not forgotten. The Russian matchmaker, who came to match the bride, stretched out her hands to the stove at any time of the year: thereby calling Fire to be her allies. The young husband solemnly led the newlywed three times around the hearth, asking God the Fire for a happy life and many healthy children.
Yarila was the god of fertility, reproduction and physical love among the ancient Slavs. It was this side of love, which poets call “ebullient passion,” that was under the “control” of the Slavic god Yarila. They asked Yarila for a good harvest when the first spring shoots appeared. They imagined him as a young, handsome man, an ardent groom in love. Yarila is also the Vernal Cow God, a warrior god who “defeats” Frost in the spring and “knocks off the horns of Winter.” 7. The Serpent - Volos (Veles) in Slavic pagan mythology is the divine opponent of Perun. The name Veles goes back to the ancient root “vel” with the meaning “dead”. It embodied the forces of primeval Chaos, violent, disordered, uninhabited nature, often hostile to ancient man, but essentially not at all evil. Veles is both the god of wisdom and poetry (the prophetic singer Boyan in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is called the grandson “grandson of Veles”). Veles is the son of the heavenly Cow and the primal god Rod, one of the most ancient Indo-Aryan gods, first as the patron of hunters, then of cattle breeding and wealth. It is he who blesses the traveler and helps him on the road. It is Veles who reveals the secrets of craft and medicine. According to legend, the Serpent God combines hairiness and scales in his appearance, flies with the help of membranous wings, and can breathe out fire, although he is very afraid of fire itself (especially lightning). The Serpent - Veles is a big lover of milk, hence his second name - Tsmog (Smog), which in Old Slavonic means Sucker. The pagan Slavs worshiped both divine opponents - Perun and the Serpent. Only the sanctuaries of Perun were in high places, and the sanctuaries of Veles were in the lowlands. Some legends suggest that the Serpent Volos, tamed and driven underground, became responsible for earthly fertility and wealth. The cult of Veles was very widespread in Rus'.
1.3 Minor Slavic pagan gods
In addition to the above gods, there were “minor deities.” “Minor” deities were those who lived side by side with man, helped him, and sometimes interfered with him, in various economic affairs and everyday concerns. Unlike the main deities, which no one had ever seen, these quite often appeared before people's eyes. The Slavs have a huge number of traditions, legends, fairy tales and even eyewitness accounts about these cases, from ancient times to the present day. Here are some of these deities: Brownie, Ovinnik, Bannik, Dvorovy, Polevik and Poluditsa, Leshy, Vodyanoy. The brownie is the soul of the house, the patron of the building and the people living in it. The brownie settled down to live underground, under the stove. He presented himself as a little old man with a face similar to the head of the family. By nature, he is an eternal troublemaker, grumpy, but caring and kind. People tried to maintain good relations with Domovoy, take care of him as an honored guest, and then he helped keep the house in order and warned of impending misfortune. Moving from house to house, Domovoy was always invited, through a conspiracy, to move with his family. Domovoy, who lives next to a person, is the kindest of the “small” deities. And immediately beyond the threshold of the hut, “your” world becomes more and more alien and hostile.
Dvorovy and Bannik. Dvorovy is the owner of the yard; he was considered a little less friendly than Domovoy. Ovinnik, the owner of the barn, is even less so, and Bannik, the spirit of the bathhouse, standing completely out of the way, on the edge of the yard, and even beyond it, is simply dangerous. In ancient times, the word “unclean” did not mean something sinful or bad at all, but simply less sacred, more accessible to the action of forces that were unkindly disposed towards a person.
Meadow. The spirit of the meadows, popularly depicted as a small green man dressed in grass, who helps mow the grass during haymaking. Considered to be Polevik's child. The meadow grower can be very angry when the mowing is missed - it drives the grass into wild growth and tangles it so that it cannot be cut or torn; and even dries the grass on the root. If mowers come for such mowing, they tear the braids.
Field worker. When they began to clear forests and plow the land for fields, pastures and new lands, they immediately came into contact with other “small” deities - the Fieldmen, according to popular beliefs, called upon to protect the grain fields. When the grain is ripe and the villagers begin to reap or mow it, the field worker runs away from the swings of the sickle and scythe and hides in those ears of corn that are still standing. In general, there are many beliefs and signs associated with the grain field. Thus, the division of agricultural crops into “male” and “female” survived until the last century. For example, bread was sowed only by men who carried seed grain in special bags made from old pants. Thus, they seemed to enter into a “sacred marriage” with the plowed field, and not a single woman dared to be present. But turnips were considered a “female” crop. And women sowed it, trying to transfer part of their reproductive power to the Earth. Sometimes people met an old man in the field, unprepossessing in appearance and extremely snotty. The old man asked a passerby to wipe his nose. And if a person did not disdain, a purse of silver would suddenly appear in his hand, and the old Polevik would disappear. In this way, our ancestors expressed the simple idea that the Earth generously bestows only on those who are not afraid to get their hands dirty.
Half-woman. The working day in the villages began early, but it was better to wait out the midday heat. The ancient Slavs had a special mythical creature who strictly ensured that no one worked at noon. This is Poluditsa. They imagined her as a girl in a long white shirt or, on the contrary, as a shaggy, scary old woman. The half-women were afraid: for non-compliance with the custom, she could punish, and severely - now we call it sunstroke.
Leshy. Behind the fence of the dwelling of the ancient Slav, the forest began. This forest determined the entire way of life. In pagan times, in a Slavic house literally everything was made of wood, from the dwelling itself to spoons and buttons. In addition, the forest provided game, berries and mushrooms in a huge variety. But besides the benefits bestowed upon man, the wild forest has always been fraught with many mysteries and deadly dangers. When going into the forest, every time one had to be prepared to meet its owner, Leshiy. "Leshy" in Old Church Slavonic means "forest spirit." Leshy's appearance is changeable. He can appear as a giant, taller than the tallest trees, or he can hide behind a small bush. The goblin looks like a person, only his clothes are wrapped, on the contrary, on the right side. Leshy's hair is long, gray-green, there are no eyelashes or eyebrows on his face, and his eyes are like two emeralds - they burn with green fire. A goblin can walk around an unwary person, and that person will rush around inside the magic circle for a long time, unable to cross the closed line. But Leshy, like all living nature, knows how to return good for good. But he needs only one thing: that when a person enters the forest, he respects the forest laws and does not cause harm to the forest.
Water. The water deity was Vodyanoy - a mythical inhabitant of rivers, lakes and streams. The merman was represented in the form of a naked, flabby old man, goggle-eyed, with a fish tail. Spring Waters were endowed with special powers, because springs, according to legend, arose from the lightning strike of Perun. Such keys were called “rattling” and this is preserved in the names of many sources. Water - like other natural essences - was an originally good, friendly element for the Slavic pagans. But, like all the elements, it demanded that it be addressed as “you”. She could have drowned her, destroyed her for nothing. It could have washed away a village placed “without asking” from Vodyanoy - we would say now, without knowledge of local hydrology. This is why the Vodyanoi often appears in legends as a creature hostile to humans. Apparently the Slavs, as experienced forest dwellers, were less afraid of getting lost than of drowning, which is why Vodyanoy in the legends looks more dangerous than Leshy.
Slavic mythology is characterized by the fact that it is comprehensive and does not represent a separate area of the people's idea of the world and the universe, but is embodied even in everyday life - be it rites, rituals, cults or the agricultural calendar, preserved demonology (from brownies, witches and goblins to banniks and mermaids) or a forgotten identification (of pagan Perun with the Christian Saint Elijah). Therefore, practically destroyed at the level of texts until the 11th century, it continues to live in images, symbolism, rituals and in the language itself.
2. Traditions and customs
One of the main customs of the ancient Slavs was that all generations of the family lived under one roof, and also somewhere not far from the house there was a family cemetery, so that long-dead ancestors invisibly took part in the life of the family.
There were much more children born in those days than in our time, i.e. In terms of the number of children in the family of the ancient Slavs and modern families, they are very different; in addition, among the pagans, it was not considered shameful for a man to bring into his house as many wives as he could support. Those. In such a house lived approximately four or five brothers with their wives, children, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and second cousins. Each person who lived in such a family considered himself, first of all, a member of the clan, and not an individual. And also any Slav could name his ancestors several centuries ago and tell in detail about each of them. Numerous holidays were associated with the ancestors, many of which have survived to this day (Radunitsa, parent's day).
When getting acquainted, the ancient Slavs had to mention whose son, grandson and great-grandson he was; without this, people would have considered that a person who did not name his father and grandfather was hiding something. Each clan had a certain reputation. In one, people were famous for their honesty and nobility, in the other, there were scammers, therefore, if you met a representative of this kind, you should keep your eyes open. The man knew that at the first meeting he would be assessed as his family deserves. On the other hand, he himself felt responsible for the entire large family.
In those days, the everyday clothing of every Slav was his complete “passport”. Each person’s clothing contained a huge amount of details that spoke about its owner: what tribe he was from, what kind of family, etc. Looking at the clothes, one could immediately determine who he was and where he was from, and therefore how to behave with him.
In such a family there have never been any forgotten children or abandoned old people, i.e. human society took care of each of its members, worrying about the survival of the species and society as a whole.
The house, which has always been a protection, a refuge, in beliefs was opposed to everything else, alien. He was the first concern of any man who decided to separate himself from his previous family. The place for construction was chosen very carefully; it depended on whether there would be good luck, happiness and prosperity in the house. The place where there used to be a bathhouse, where a suicide was buried, where a house burned, etc. was considered bad. In a place they liked, they placed water in a container in the open air overnight. If by morning it remained clean and transparent, then this was considered a good sign. When starting work, they prayed for the sunrise and drank the drink given by the owner. Three things were placed in the front, “holy” corner: money (coin) - “for wealth”, incense - “for holiness”, sheep’s wool - “for warmth”. A carved comb with carved figures, for example, a rooster, was placed on top under the roof. As a prophetic bird, he was greatly revered by the ancient Slavs. It was believed that the rooster awakens the sun to life and returns light and warmth to the earth. In the guise of a rooster, the Slavs personified heavenly fire. He protected the house from fire and lightning strikes. They moved to a new house at night, during the full moon. It was accompanied by various rituals. The owners usually carried with them a rooster, a cat, an icon and bread and salt; often - a pot of porridge, coals from an old stove, garbage from a previous house, etc. Garbage in the beliefs and magic of the ancient Slavs is an attribute of the house, a receptacle for the souls of ancestors. It was carried during relocation, hoping that the spirit - the guardian of the house, good luck, wealth and prosperity - would move with it to the new home. They used garbage in fortune-telling and for various magical purposes, for example, fumigated with the smoke of burning garbage from the evil eye.
One of the sacred centers of the house was the stove. Food was cooked in the stove, people slept on it, and in some places it was used as a bathhouse; Traditional medicine was mainly associated with it. The stove symbolized a woman giving birth to a woman's womb. She was the main talisman of the family inside the house. Oaths were taken at the stove, a contract was concluded at the stove pillar; the baby teeth of children and the umbilical cords of newborns were hidden in the stove; The patron of the house, the brownie, lived in the basement. The table was also an object of special veneration. When the house was sold, the table was necessarily transferred to the new owner. It was usually moved only during certain rituals, such as weddings or funerals. Then they carried out a ritual walk around the table, or carried the newborn around it. The table was both the starting and ending point of any path. They kissed him before a long journey and upon returning home.
A part of the house endowed with many symbolic functions is the window. It was often used as an “unconventional way out of the house” to deceive unclean spirits, illness, etc. For example, if children died in the house, the newborn was passed through the window so that he could live. Windows were often perceived as a path for something holy and pure. It was not allowed to spit through the windows, pour out slops, or throw out garbage, since, according to legend, the Angel of the Lord stands under them. If the house was protection, a refuge, then the gate was a symbol of the border between one’s own, mastered space and someone else’s, the outside world.
They were considered a dangerous place where all kinds of evil spirits lived. They hung images on the gate, and in the morning, leaving the house, they prayed first to the church, then to the sun, and then to the gate and on all four sides. They often attached a wedding candle to them, stuck harrow teeth into them or hung a scythe for protection from unclean spirits, and stuck thorny plants in the cracks of the gate as a talisman against witches.
Various magical actions have been performed at the gate since ancient times. Traditionally, fires were lit in them in early spring, which cleared the space of the gate, and with it the entire space of the yard.
2.1 Initiation, funeral and wedding as main rites
Initiation
To become a member of the tribe, a child had to undergo an initiation rite. It happened in three stages. The first - directly at birth, when the midwife cut the umbilical cord with the tip of a combat arrow in the case of a boy, or with scissors in the case of a girl, and swaddled the child in a diaper with signs of the birth.
When the boy reached three years of age, he was pulled up - that is, he was put on a horse, girded with a sword and driven around the yard three times. After this, they began to teach him the actual duties of a man. At the age of three, the girl was given a spindle and a spinning wheel for the first time. The action is also sacred, and the first thread spun by her daughter was used by her mother to girdle her on her wedding day to protect her from damage. All nations associated spinning with fate, and from the age of three, girls were taught to spin the fate of themselves and their home. At the age of twelve - thirteen, upon reaching marriageable age, boys and girls were brought to men's and women's houses, where they received a full set of sacred knowledge they needed in life. After this, the girl jumped into a poneva (a type of skirt worn over a shirt and indicating maturity). After initiation, the young man received the right to carry military weapons and marry.
Marriage customs among different Slavic peoples were different. The most common ritual was this. The wedding consisted of the worship of Lada, Triglav and Rod, after which the sorcerer called for a blessing on them, and the newlyweds walked around the sacred tree three times, as usual around a birch), calling the gods and beregins of the place where the ceremony took place as witnesses. The wedding was necessarily preceded by the abduction of the bride or conspiracy. In general, the bride had to go to a new family (clan) by force, so as not to offend the guardian spirits of her clan (“I don’t give it away, they lead by force”). Therefore, the bride’s long, sad, mournful songs and her sobs are associated with this.
The newlyweds did not drink at the feast, they were forbidden, it was believed that they would be drunk with love.
The first night was spent on distant sheaves covered with furs (a wish for wealth and many children).
Funeral
The Slavs had several funeral rites. The first, during the heyday of paganism, was the ritual of burning, followed by the pouring of a mound. The second method was to bury the so-called “hostage” dead - those who died a suspicious, unclean death. The funeral of such dead people consisted of throwing the body further into a swamp or ravine, after which the body was covered with branches on top. The ritual was performed in precisely this form so as not to desecrate the earth and water with the “unclean” dead person. Burial in the ground, common in our time, became widespread only after the adoption of Christianity. Conclusion: Many traditions, customs and rituals that existed among the ancient Slavs have survived to our times.
Conclusion
The culture of the ancient Slavs has always been distinguished by its diversity and deep meaning. Much of what was noticed by our ancient ancestors still remains valuable in our modern culture. Remnants of memories of pagan holidays are preserved in almost all Christian holidays in Russia. And the entire Christian culture was largely rethought in accordance with the traditional pagan ideas of the Slavs.
But, unfortunately, due to the fragmentation of the ancient Slavs, very little information about paganism has been preserved, and even then it is quite meager. Researchers learn about the highest Slavic gods, as a rule, from Christian teachings against paganism; about “minor” mythology (beliefs about various spirits) - from folklore (fairy tales, rituals); Much information is obtained thanks to archaeological excavations of places of pagan prayers and found treasures of women's and men's jewelry with pagan symbols. In addition, comparisons with the ancient religion of neighboring peoples help, as well as with epic tales (for example, Russian epics), which are not directly related to religion, but retain echoes of myths.
But, despite the small amount of known information, many elements of the pagan culture of the ancient Slavs entered the everyday life of modern society and are the foundation for new traditions and customs.
Bibliography
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Karamzin N.M. On the history of the Russian state / Comp. A.I. Utkin. - M.: Education, 1990.
Katsva L.A., Yurganov A.L. History of Russia VIII-XV centuries. M.: 1994
Information from the site about Slavic Paganism #"justify">.#"justify">.#"justify">.#"justify">.#"justify">.#"justify">.#"justify">.V. Polikarpov: “History of Religions”
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The ancient, pre-Christian religion of the Slavic peoples is still not well known to us. Scientists began to be interested in it from the end of the 18th century, when national self-awareness arose among many Slavic peoples, and interest in folk culture and folk art began to show itself in European literature. But by this time all the Slavic peoples, who had long since been converted to Christianity, had forgotten their ancient beliefs; They have preserved only some folk customs and rituals that were once associated with these beliefs.
The ancient Slavs were never united either politically or economically, and they could hardly have common gods or common cults. Obviously, each tribe had its own objects of veneration, and even each clan had its own. But, of course, much was the same or similar among different tribes.
Funeral cult and family-tribal cult of ancestors
The Slavs maintained a patriarchal clan system for a very long time. According to the Kyiv Chronicle, “I live each in my own place and in my own place, owning each of my kind.” Therefore, it is natural that they also preserved the family-tribal cult in the form of veneration of ancestors, associated with the funeral cult.
Throughout the territory inhabited by Slavic tribes, there are numerous burial grounds and mounds with burials. Funeral customs were complex and varied: cremation (especially among the Eastern and partly Western Slavs; not attested among the Southern Slavs), corpse deposition (everywhere from the 10th-12th centuries), often buried or burned in a boat (a relic of water burial). A mound was usually built over the grave; They always put different things with the deceased; during the burial of nobles, they killed a horse, and sometimes a slave, even the wife of the deceased. All this is connected with some ideas about the afterlife. The word "paradise" - a pre-Christian common Slavic word - meant a beautiful garden, which was apparently the image of the afterlife; but it was probably not available to everyone. Subsequently, the Christian doctrine of the “future life” blocked these ancient ideas; Perhaps, only the Ukrainians have preserved a vague mythological belief about some blessed country - Viry (Iriy), where birds fly in the fall and where the dead live.
But beliefs concerning the relationship of the dead to the living were amazingly firmly held, and they are completely different from Christian ones. The dead were divided very sharply into two categories. This division, preserved in the beliefs of at least the Eastern Slavs, was perfectly defined by D.K. Zelenin: one category - “pure” dead people who died a natural death: from illness, old age - they were usually called, regardless of age and gender, parents ; the other is the “unclean” dead (the dead, the dead), those who died an unnatural, violent or premature death: murdered, suicides, drowned, drunkards (those who died from drunkenness); this also included children who died unbaptized (the influence of Christianity!), and sorcerers. The attitude towards these two categories of the dead was fundamentally different: the “parents” were revered and looked upon as the patrons of the family, while the “dead” were feared and tried to be neutralized.
The veneration of “parents” is a real family (and previously, obviously, ancestral) cult of ancestors. It is attested by medieval authors (Thietmar of Merseburg: “domesticos colunt deos” - “they honor the household gods”) and has partly survived as relics to this day. Russian peasants remember their parents on certain days of the year, especially on parental Saturday (before Maslenitsa, as well as before Trinity), on Radunitsa (after Easter week). Belarusian peasants celebrated the holiday of dzyads (that is, grandfathers who died) several times a year, especially solemnly in the fall (mostly on the last Saturday of October). They diligently prepared for the holiday, cleaned and washed the home, prepared ritual dishes; Dzyadov were invited to take part in the meal, which was always held very solemnly. Serbs and Bulgarians still practice - and not only peasants, but also city dwellers - strangulations, commemoration of the dead in cemeteries, where they bring food supplies, eat and drink at the graves, and leave some for the dead. It is unclear whether the dead are viewed as patrons of the family. But before, undoubtedly, they looked at it that way.
The Serbian custom of celebrating family glory (krano ime), which has survived to this day, should also be considered a relic of the ancient family cult of ancestors. Glory is celebrated on the day of the Christian saint - the patron saint of the family; but the very nature of the holiday and its origin are undoubtedly pre-Christian, and before it was celebrated, apparently, in honor of the ancestors - the patrons of the family.
Another trace of the once existing cult of ancestors is the fantastic image of Chur or Shchur. It is very likely that this was a revered ancestor. His cult is not directly attested, but convincing traces of it have been preserved in the Slavic languages. Exclamations of “Church!”, “Church me!”, “Church, it’s mine!” apparently meant a spell, calling Chur for help; now it is preserved in children's games; Ukrainian (and Polish) “Tsur tobi” - also in the sense of a spell. The verb “to shy away” is to stay aloof, that is, as if to be protected by Chur. And the word “too much” clearly comes from the concept of Chura, as if guarding some boundaries, the borders of the ancestral land, probably. That Chur-Shchur was precisely an ancestor is evident from the word “ancestor,” great-ancestor. Perhaps the images of Chur were made of wood, as hinted at by the Russian word “churka” - a stump of wood *.
* (See A. G. Preobrazhensky. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. M., 1958, pp. 1221-1222.)
Finally, the last remnant of the ancient family-tribal cult of ancestors is the belief in the brownie, which has survived to this day, especially among the Eastern Slavs, where the patriarchal family structure lasted longer. The brownie (housekeeper, housekeeper, owner, neighbor, etc.) is the invisible patron of the family; according to popular belief, he is in every house, usually lives under the stove, behind the stove, under the threshold; humanoid; monitors the household, patronizes hardworking owners, but punishes the lazy and careless; requires self-respect and small sacrifices - a little bread, salt, porridge, etc.; loves horses and takes care of them, but only if their color is to his liking, otherwise he may ruin the horse. The brownie can appear in the form of an old man, a deceased owner, or even a living one. His image seemed to personify the well-being and ill-being of the family and household. The preservation of this image from ancient times is explained by the stability of patriarchal life in Russian and Belarusian peasant families; Ukrainians have preserved this way of life less well, which is why faith in the brownie has faded. The Western Slavs have similar images: skrzhitek - among the Czechs, Khovanets - among the Poles.
Unclean Dead
The attitude towards the “unclean” dead, who had not the slightest relation to either the family or clan cult, was completely different. The unclean were simply feared, and this superstitious fear was obviously generated either by the fear of these people during their lifetime (sorcerers), or by the very unusual cause of their death. In superstitious ideas about these unclean dead, there are apparently very few animistic elements: the Slavs were afraid not of the soul or spirit of the dead man, but of himself. This is evident from the fact that until recently there were popular superstitious methods for neutralizing such a dangerous dead person: in order to prevent him from rising from the grave and harming the living, the corpse was pierced with an aspen stake, a tooth from a harrow was driven in behind the ears, etc.; in a word, they were afraid of the corpse itself, and not of the soul, and believed in its supernatural ability to move after death. The unclean dead were also credited with having a bad influence on the weather, such as drought; to prevent it, they dug up the corpse of a suicide or other corpse from the grave and threw it into a swamp or filled the grave with water. Such unclean dead were called ghouls (a word of unclear origin, perhaps purely Slavic, since it is found in all Slavic languages), among the Serbs - vampires, among the northern Russians - heretics, etc. Perhaps the ancient word "navier" (" naviy") meant just such unclean and dangerous dead; at least, in the Kyiv Chronicle there is (under 1092) a story about how the frightened people explained the pestilence (epidemic) that happened in Polotsk by saying that “the navye (the dead) are beating the Polochans.” Among the Bulgarians, navii are still the souls of unbaptized children. This is probably where the Ukrainian Navkas and Mavkas come from.
Community agricultural cults
Along with family and clan forms of cult, the Slavs also had communal cults, associated primarily with agriculture. There is, however, no direct and clear evidence about them, but numerous and very stable remnants of the agrarian cult have been preserved in the form of religious-magical rites and holidays dedicated to the most important moments of the agricultural calendar and subsequently merged with church Christian holidays: Christmastide falling on the winter solstice (Christmas-New Year cycle); Maslenitsa at the beginning of spring; spring rituals, now attributed to Christian Easter; the summer cycle of holidays, partly dedicated to Trinity Day, partly to the day of John the Baptist (Ivan Kupala); autumn brothers - community meals after the harvest. All these customs and rituals of the agricultural cycle are very similar among all Slavic peoples, as well as among non-Slavic peoples. They once arose, in all likelihood, from simple meals, games and holidays dedicated to the beginning or end of certain agricultural work (V.I. Chicherov showed this well in his studies), but magical rituals and superstitious ideas were intertwined with them. Agricultural magic was either beginner ("magic of the first day" - customs and fortune telling on New Year's Eve), or imitative (ceremonies during sowing, for example, burying a chicken egg in a furrow, etc.). These magical rituals were preserved until recently.
Much less clear is the question of those personified images of deities - patrons of agriculture, which the Slavs undoubtedly had. In the literature, however, there are names of some mythological creatures that supposedly patronize agriculture (Koleda, Yarilo, Kupala, Lel, Kostroma, etc.), and previous authors, especially supporters of the mythological school, wrote a lot about them. But all these images are very doubtful: they were either formed under the influence of Christianity (Kupala is John the Baptist, because people associated Christian baptism with bathing; Lel - from the Christian “hallelujah”), or are simple personifications of holidays and rituals (for example, Koleda - from the ancient holiday of the Kalends, which coincided with the Slavic winter holidays).
Ancient Slavic pantheon
Written sources preserved the names of ancient Slavic deities, and some of them - later lost - apparently had something to do with agriculture. These were, presumably, the solar deities Svarog, Dazhdbog, Khors. Apparently, there was also a cult of the earth goddess, although it is not directly attested. It is possible that the thunder god Perun (the name seems to be an epithet and means “strike”), who later became a princely god in Rus', was also associated with agriculture; whether he was revered by the peasants is unknown. The patron of cattle breeding was undoubtedly Beles (Volos), the cattle god.
The female deity Mokosh mentioned in Russian sources is very interesting. This is not only almost the only female image attested in the ancient East Slavic pantheon, but also the only deity whose name has been preserved among the people to this day. Mokosh is apparently the patron goddess of women's work, spinning and weaving. In the northern Russian regions there is still a belief that if sheep shed, it means that “Mokosh is shearing the sheep”; There is a belief that “Mokusha goes around houses during Lent and disturbs the spinning women” *.
* (G. Ilyinsky. From the history of ancient Slavic pagan beliefs. "News of the Society of Archeology, History and Ethnography at Kazan University", vol. 34, no. 3-4. 1929, p. 7.)
The religious and mythological significance of Rod and Rozhanitsy, which, according to various sources, was worshiped by the ancient Slavs, is unclear. Some researchers see in them ancestral spirits-ancestors (Kin - ancestor), others - spirits of birth and fertility. According to B. A. Rybakov, Rod in the pre-Christian era managed to become the supreme deity of all Slavs; but this is doubtful.
In general, did common Slavic deities exist? There was a lot of debate about this. Many authors, in their romantic Slavophile passion, considered almost all well-known mythological names, even the most dubious, as names of common Slavic gods. Subsequently, it turned out that some gods are mentioned by the Eastern Slavs, others by the Western Slavs, and others by the Southern Slavs. Only the name Perun is repeated among different groups of Slavs, but, as already said, this is simply an epithet of the thunder god. Svarog and Dazhdbog, and sometimes Beles, are often considered common Slavic; but this is all unreliable.
One can also speak only speculatively about the cult of tribal gods. Some names, apparently of tribal or local gods of the Western, especially Baltic, Slavs are given by medieval writers and chroniclers Adam of Bremen, Thietmar of Merseburg, Samson the Grammar and other authors. It is possible that some of these tribal gods became more widely known and perhaps became intertribal. Such was Svyatovit, whose sanctuary stood in Arkona, on the island of Ruyan (Rügen), and was destroyed by the Danes in 1168; Radgost was the god of the Luticians, but traces of his veneration were preserved even among the Czechs. Triglav was god's Pomeranian. Also known are the tribal gods Rugevit (on Ruyan), Gerovit, or Yarovit (in Volgast), Prov (among the Vagrs), the goddess Siva (among the Polabian Slavs), etc. Among the Serbs, the tribal patron was believed to be Dabog, who later turned into an antagonist Christian god. Many other names of deities have been preserved, but they are doubtful.
"God", "demon" and "devil"
Salyu the word "god" is originally Slavic, common to all Slavic languages, and also related to the ancient Iranian baga and the ancient Indian bhaga. The main meaning of this word, as shown by language data, is happiness, good luck. Hence, for example, “god-aty” (having God, happiness) and “u-god” (“u” is a prefix meaning loss or removal from something); Polish zbože - harvest, Lusatian zbožo, zbože - livestock, wealth. Over time, ideas about luck, success, happiness, luck were personified in the image of a certain spirit that gives good luck. Back at the beginning of the 15th century. in Moscow, at the royal wedding, one boyar said to another, arguing with him over a place: “Your brother has God in his kika (that is, happiness is in his kichka, in his wife), but you don’t have God in his kika”: the brother of the second boyar was married on the king's sister *.
* (See V. Klyuchevsky. Course of Russian history, part 2. 1912, p. 195.)
Another common Slavic designation for a supernatural being is demon. This word, apparently, initially meant everything supernatural and terrible (compare Lithuanian baisas - fear, Latin foedus - terrible, disgusting). The words “mad” and “besitsya” are still preserved in the Russian language. After the adoption of Christianity, the word “demon” became synonymous with an evil spirit, equivalent to the concept of the devil, Satan.
The same fate befell the idea of the trait. But the pre-Christian meaning of this image is unclear, just as the etymology of the word “devil” is not entirely clear. Of the various attempts to explain it, the most plausible is the old assumption of the Czech Karel Erben: he traces it to the Old Slavic krt, which sounds in the name of the Western Slavic god Krodo, in the names of the household spirit among the Czechs křet (skřet), among the Poles skrzatx among the Latvians krat. Apparently, the same root is in the word “krachun” (“korochun”), which is also known to all Slavs and some of their neighbors. The word "krachun" ("korochun") has several meanings: the winter holiday of Christmastide, ritual bread baked at this time, as well as some kind of spirit or deity of winter, death. "Korochun grabbed him" in Russian means: he died .
One might think that the ancient Slavs believed in a certain deity of winter and death, perhaps the personification of winter darkness and cold. There are also traces of some kind of bifurcation of the krt-crt image, which may be associated with the beginnings of a dualistic idea of a light and dark beginning. But the root “krt” has almost disappeared, and “chrt” - devil - has been preserved in almost all Slavic languages as the personification of all kinds of evil supernatural power. The devil has become synonymous with the Christian devil.
Development of tribal cults into state cults
When the Slavic tribes, as class stratification began, began to move to state forms of life, conditions arose for the transformation of tribal cults into national and state ones. Perhaps the cult of Svyatovit spread among the Pomeranian Slavs precisely in connection with this. Among the Eastern Slavs, an attempt to create a national pantheon and state cult was made by the Kiev prince Vladimir: according to the chronicle, in 980 he gathered on one of the hills of Kiev a whole host of idols of various gods (Perun, Veles, Dazhdbog, Khors, Stribog, Mokosha) and ordered pray to them and make sacrifices. Some hypercritical researchers (Anichkov) believed that these “Vladimir gods” were from the very beginning princely or warrior gods and their cult had no roots among the people. But this is unlikely. The solar deities Khors, Dazhdbog and others, the female goddess Mokosh, apparently were also folk deities; Vladimir only tried to make of them, as it were, the official gods of his principality, in order to give it ideological unity. It must be assumed that the prince himself was not satisfied with the attempt to create his own pantheon of gods of Slavic origin - just 8 years later he adopted Christianity from Byzantium and forced the entire people to do so. The Christian religion was more consistent with the emerging feudal relations. Therefore, although slowly, overcoming the resistance of the people, it spread among the Eastern Slavs. The same thing happened among the southern Slavs. And the Western Slavs, under great pressure from the feudal-royal authorities, accepted Christianity in the Catholic form from Rome.
The spread of Christianity was accompanied by its merger with the old religion. The Christian clergy itself took care of this in order to make the new faith more acceptable to the people. Old agricultural and other holidays were timed to coincide with the days of the church calendar. The old gods gradually merged with the Christian saints and for the most part lost their names, but transferred their functions and attributes to these saints. Thus, Perun continued to be revered as the deity of thunderstorms under the name of Elijah the Prophet, the bestial god Veles - under the name of Saint Blaise, Mokosh - under the name of Saint Paraskeva or Saint Friday.
"Lower mythology" of the Slavs
But the images of “lower mythology” turned out to be more stable. They have survived almost to this day, although it is not always easy to distinguish what in these images actually comes from ancient times, and what was layered on them later.
All Slavic peoples have beliefs about nature spirits. Spirits - personifications of the forest are known mainly in the forest zone: Russian goblin, Belarusian leshuk, Pushchevik, Polish duch lesny, borowy. They personified the cautious hostility of the Slavic farmer towards the dense forest, from which land had to be conquered for arable land and in which a person was in danger of getting lost and dying from wild animals. The spirit of the water element - Russian water, Polish topielec, wodnik (topielnica, wodnica), Czech vodnik, Lusatian wodny muž (wodna žona), etc. - inspired much more fear than the relatively good-natured joker goblin, for the danger of drowning in the pool, the lake is much worse than the danger of getting lost in the forest. The image of the field spirit is characteristic: Russian poludnitsa, Polish poludnice, Lusatian pripoldnica, Czech polednice. This is a woman in white, who supposedly appears to be working in the field in the midday heat, when custom requires taking a break from work: midday punishes the violator of the custom by twisting his head or in some other way. The image of midday is the personification of the danger of sunstroke. In the mountainous regions of Poland and Czechoslovakia, there is a belief about mountain spirits guarding treasures or protecting miners: skarbnik among the Poles, perkman (from the German Bergmann - mountain man) among the Czechs and Slovaks.
The image of a pitchfork, especially common among the Serbs (among the Bulgarians - samovila, samodiva), is more complex and less clear; it is found in both Czech and Russian sources. Some authors consider it to be primordially and pan-Slavic; others are still only South Slavic. Vilas are forest, field, mountain, water or air maidens who can behave either friendly or hostile towards a person, depending on his own behavior. In addition to beliefs, pitchforks appear in South Slavic epic songs. The origin of the image of the pitchfork is unclear, but it is certain that different elements are intertwined in it: here is the personification of natural elements, and, perhaps, ideas about the souls of the dead, and the power of fertility. The word itself is apparently Slavic, but its etymology is controversial: from the verb “viti” - to drive, to fight, or from “viliti” - to rush around in a stormy dance (Czech vilny - voluptuous, lustful, Polish wit - scarecrow, scarecrow, wity - nonsense, crazy antics).
The question of the origin of the image of the mermaid is clearer, although the latter is even more complex. The image of a mermaid, or at least some similar one, is known among all Slavs. There was a lot of debate about it: some considered the mermaid to be the personification of water, others believed that the mermaid was a drowned woman, etc. The word itself was derived either from “brown” (light, clear), or from “bed” (river), etc. Now, however, it can be considered proven that the word is not of Slavic, but of Latin origin, from the root “rosa”.
The most detailed study about East Slavic mermaids belongs to D.K. Zelenin *; he collected enormous factual material about these beliefs, but his view of their origin suffers from one-sidedness. Already from the time of the works of Miklosic (1864), Veselovsky (1880) and others, it became clear that it was impossible to understand the beliefs about mermaids and the rituals associated with them if we did not take into account the influence of ancient and early Christian rituals on the Slavs. Among the peoples of the Mediterranean, the spring-summer holiday of the Trinity (Pentecost) was called domenica rosarum, pascha rosata, in the Greek form ρoυσαλια. These Greco-Roman rusalia were transferred along with Christianity to the Slavs and merged with local spring-summer agricultural rituals. Until now, the Bulgarians and Macedonians know rusalia, or rusalnitsi, as summer holidays (before Trinity Day). The Russians also celebrated mermaid week (before Trinity), as well as seeing off the mermaid; the mermaid was depicted by a girl or a straw effigy. The mythological image of a mermaid itself - a girl living in the water, or in a field, in a forest - is late: it is attested only from the 18th century; this is largely the personification of the holiday or ritual itself. But this image apparently merged with ancient purely Slavic mythological ideas, and quite diverse ones at that: here is the personification of the water element (the mermaid loves to lure people into the water and drown), and ideas about women and girls who died in the water, about unbaptized dead children (unclean dead), and beliefs about fertility spirits (mermaids in southern Great Russian beliefs walk in the rye, roll on the grass and thereby produce a harvest of bread, flax, hemp, etc.). Obviously, this new and complex image of a mermaid replaced the original Slavic ancient images of beregins, waterworts and other female water spirits.
* (See D.K. Zelenin. Essays on Russian mythology. Pg., 1916.)
Modern Slavic peoples have preserved many other superstitious ideas about supernatural beings, some hostile, some benevolent to humans. They personified either fear of the elements of nature, generated by the underdevelopment of material production, or social conditions. Some of these ideas date back to the pre-Christian era, others arose in relatively new conditions of life; Among the later ones are, for example, Ukrainian beliefs about evil spirits - small spirits personifying the ill-fated fate of the poor peasant. Under church influence, most of these mythological images were united under the collective name of evil spirits (among Belarusians - evil spirits).
Ancient Slavic cult and its servants
The question of ancient Slavic clergy, performers of religious rites is very unclear. The ritual of the family-clan cult was most likely performed by the heads of families and clans. The public cult was in the hands of special professionals - the Magi. The word itself has not been satisfactorily explained, despite numerous attempts. There is an opinion that it reflected the connections of the Slavs with the Celts ("Voloh", "Valach" - the former designation of the Celts), or with the Finns (from the Finnish velho - sorcerer), or even with the Germans (vo"lva - prophetess). In any case case, there is no doubt the connection of the word “magician” with the word “magic”, “magic”. But who were the magi? Simple sorcerers, shamans or priests of the gods? Were there any differences, ranks, specializations between the magi? It is difficult to answer. However, other designations for performers of religious and magical rituals have also been preserved: sorcerer, sorcerer, prophet, accordionist, sorcerer, magician, etc.
There is news that after the adoption of Christianity in Rus', the Magi acted as defenders of the old faith and at the same time as leaders of anti-princely and anti-feudal uprisings (for example, in 1071). And this is understandable, because Christianity came to Rus' as a purely feudal-princely religion. In later times, all Slavic peoples retained sorcerers, sorcerers, and warlocks, to whom secret knowledge and relations with evil spirits were attributed. But along with them, specialists in healing magic associated with traditional medicine - healers (whisperers, sorcerers) - have survived from the ancient era. In popular beliefs, they distinguished themselves from sorcerers and often contrasted themselves with them, claiming that they acted with the help of the power of God, and not evil spirits.
It is very characteristic that the Russians considered foreigners to be more powerful sorcerers and healers: Finns, Karelians, Mordovians, etc. This phenomenon, however, is known to other peoples.
In the ancient Slavic religion, undoubtedly, there were sacred and sacrificial places, and in some places real sanctuaries and temples with images of gods, etc. But only very few are known: the Arkon sanctuary on the island of Rügen, the sanctuary in Retra, the pre-Christian sanctuary in Kiev (under Church of the Tithes).
The question of mythology and the general nature of the Slavic religion
Unfortunately, ancient Slavic mythology has not been preserved at all, although it probably existed. The scarcity of the remains of the ancient Slavic religion prompted some researchers to consider this religion pitiful and wretched in comparison with the religions of other ancient peoples. “The paganism of Rus' was especially wretched,” said, for example, E.V. Anichkov, “its gods were pitiful, its cult and morals were rude.” But the point, apparently, is simply a matter of insufficient knowledge of the religion of the ancient Slavs and the paucity of sources. If we knew as much about it as about the religion of, for example, the ancient Romans, the Slavic religion would hardly seem to us more wretched and pitiful than the Roman one.
* (E. V. Anichkov. Paganism and Ancient Rus'. St. Petersburg, 1914, p. XXXVI.)
The religion of the ancient Slavs is a set of religious views and attitudes that developed in pre-Christian Slavic culture, as well as ways of organizing spiritual experience and behavior. Historically, the religion of the Slavs goes back to the religion of the ancient Indo-Europeans. It acquired relative integrity and originality during the era of Slavic unity, which lasted until the second half of the 1st millennium AD. Gradual settlement led to the emergence of differences in religious ideas and cults; in addition, some forms of religious life appeared, borrowed by the Slavs from neighboring peoples.
Information about the ancient Slavs was preserved mainly in oral tradition. The only written source, " Veles's book", raises serious doubts among experts about its authenticity.
Slavic ideas about the sacred were associated with ideas about superhuman power, life-giving and filling beings with the ability to grow. There was a developed system of concepts denoting supernatural forces. The highest rank were the gods. The concept of “God” means the giver of a share, inheritance, wealth. The gods, just like in ancient religion, were divided into heavenly, underground and earthly.
Referred to as the heavenly gods Perun - patron god of princely power, squads and military craft. He had the anthropomorphic appearance of a warrior, sometimes on horseback. Stribog- the god of atmospheric phenomena, and above all the wind. Dazh-god or Dazhdbog - a giving god who was associated with the sun. Chore(solar - compare Horus or Horus among the ancient Egyptians) and Simargl(mythological image of a huge eagle associated with the upper world).
Refers primarily to the underground gods Earth, “Mother of Cheese Earth”, “Breadbearer””, which among the Slavs does not have an erotic connotation and is subsequently identified with Mokosh. Mokosh - This is a female deity who is endowed with only positive qualities. However, the Slavs also had ideas about evil female deities to whom bloody human sacrifices must be made. The male underground god was considered Whiter, who was also called the cattle god and was believed to bestow abundant offspring, and therefore wealth. Another property of Beles was considered clairvoyance.
The earthly gods are the gods of the world inhabited by people. Their responsibility extends to cultural activities, social and family relationships, everyday life and the environment. This is first of all Svarog - the god of fire placed at the service of man. The continuity of generations originating from common ancestors is personified in the image Rhoda, next to which they mention women in labor- maidens of fate, determining the share, the fate of the newborn. There were ideas about gods associated with the professional occupations of people.
Along with ideas about higher gods, there were beliefs in lower-level gods, spirits, and werewolves. A significant detachment was called demons, which were attributed to malevolence and destructive power. Demons included the spirits of places dangerous to visit: the wilderness (goblin), swamps ( bogweed, swampweed) whirlpools (water). They lived in the field noon. Externally, demons were represented in human, animal or mixed form.
The most dangerous group was a group of half-demons of human origin - these are people who have not completed their life path, - ghouls, ghouls, witches, mermaids. They harm the human race and must be feared. There was also a personification of diseases: passing, fever, mara, kikimora and etc.
Another group personified the concept of fate: Share, Nedolya, Dashing, Grief, Truth, Falsehood and etc.
The Slavs believed in the immortality of the soul, in its posthumous existence. During burial, it was necessary to observe all the subtleties of the ritual, and only in this case the soul will find peace and will subsequently help the descendants. The Slavs resorted to various forms of burial, often cremation. Water occupied a special place in the Slavs’ understanding of the world. They believed that water is an element connecting the living and other worlds.
In difficult years, the Slavs resorted to ritual killing of old people in the hope that another relative who had passed into the world would ease the fate of the living. This ritual was called " plant on a splint."
There were many rituals accompanying a person to another world, but no fewer rituals had to be observed after the funeral. Of greatest importance was funeral feast - competitions and feasting; The meaning of this ritual is to activate the forces of life, to defeat it over the forces of death.
A funeral rite is a rite of passage. Rites of transition also include weddings and the birth of a child. There was also a calendar ritual: Christmastide, Maslenitsa. Sometimes the rituals were accompanied by human sacrifices, but more often the sacrifices were bloodless in the form of food or other gifts. Often sacrificial food was eaten during a feast. There is a lot of evidence of sacrificial feasts preserved in folklore. The Slavs believed that God was present at these feasts in the form of a guest and at the same time the owner of the ritual feast, who was called “ Lord
Fortune telling was widespread. Since water was the border between the worlds - the otherworldly and thisworldly, many fortune telling involves manipulation of water.
The primary cell of religious life was family or community of families - genus. The rituals were performed by the head of the family. There were no special priests, although there were masha experts - Magi.
The topic “Beliefs of the Eastern Slavs” is interesting to me, since paganism is an integral part of the history of our country - mysterious, appearing either in rock compositions, or in works of fiction, in publications on art, or as told by one of our grandparents as “what the great-grandfathers told” and, as far as I understand, worries not only me, as an idle amateur, but, as it turns out, occupies the minds of many modern people who believe that paganism is not at all a thing of the past.
The most important cultural prerequisite for the history of Russian civilization is the beliefs of the Eastern Slavs. They were associated with the predominantly agrarian nature of production in the 6th-9th centuries. and the tribal nature of society, divided according to the principle of kinship and neighborhood
Pagan religion corresponded to the era of the primitive communal system among the Eastern Slavs. Slavic paganism is a whole complex of beliefs, ideas, rituals that came from ancient times and which reflected the complete dependence of ancient people on the forces of nature. These are polytheistic beliefs and rituals that existed among the Slavs before the adoption of the monotheistic religion - Christianity.
The term “paganism” appeared in the Old Russian language after the adoption of Christianity to designate all pre-Christian and non-Christian cults and was used by Orthodox preachers. In other words, the term “paganism” is conditional and does not mean any specific beliefs, but any traditional folk religion. In modern scientific literature, the term “polytheism” is more often used (from the Greek polys - numerous, and theos - god; i.e. polytheism, belief in many gods).
Paganism belongs to an archaic type of culture, very different from the traditional and modern types. Ancient paganism differs from world religions in that the imperfection of man was not associated with his falling away from the divine ideal (the Fall). Imperfection was considered a quality inherent in the entire world, both earthly and heavenly, both the world of everyday life and the world of the mysterious forces of nature. In essence, man himself was one of these forces. To achieve his will, he could frighten and force a brownie or a goblin to obey him, and people with witchcraft powers, such as magician priests or tribal leaders, could control the forces of nature: send and prevent rain, illness, crop failure, famine , ensure victory in the war.
This worldview created a rather comfortable image of the world, in which there were no insoluble contradictions, there was no gap between everyday life and the ideal, man and God, the appearance of which in the great cultures of the East and Greece in the 8th-2nd centuries BC allowed the philosopher K. Jaspers to call This is the time of the “axial”, dividing the history of mankind. The spiritual revolution of the “Axial Age” aroused in people the need to strive for the ideal, to seek “salvation” from their imperfections. The emergence of world religions and great philosophies and traditional culture is associated with it. The Slavs in the pre-Christian period did not have a religion common to all tribes. However, their ideas about nature, the surrounding world, and the elements that dominate it are very close to each other. This allows us to talk about the existence of a special folk faith among the ancient Slavs, i.e. Paganism. Paganism is the national religion. Unlike the great world religions, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, which do not recognize national borders, paganism is addressed only to the Slavs, or only to the Germans, or only to the Celts, etc., perceiving each people as a tribal family community and contrasting it with the rest to the world.
The religion of the Eastern Slavs is strikingly similar to the original religion of the Aryan tribes: it consisted in the worship of physical deities, natural phenomena and the souls of the departed, tribal, domestic geniuses; We do not notice any traces of the heroic element, which so strongly develops anthropomorphism among our Slavs - a sign that no conquering squads were formed among them under the command of heroic leaders and that their migrations were carried out not in a squad, but in a tribal form.
The Eastern Slavs did not know all this until the 10th century. Their world was inhabited by many strange creatures that personified the forces of nature. Gods and spirits were everywhere: in the rain, in the sun, in the forest, under the threshold of a house, in water, on earth. The Slavs tried to find a common language with everyone, to appease some and frighten others. These were local deities, numbering in tens and hundreds. They, like people, were good and evil, simple-minded and cunning. Some helped a person achieve his goals, while others, on the contrary, hindered him. There was nothing in them of the omnipotence and perfection of the Christian God. In order to communicate with the pagan gods, there was no need to fight for spiritual purity, as Christian monks did, but only needed to know certain technical techniques: rituals, prayers, spells.
Having arisen in ancient times, when human consciousness was just beginning to form, Slavic paganism did not remain petrified, but developed along with primitive society. In the 12th century, interesting notes were compiled on the development of pagan beliefs among the ancient Slavs: “A word about how pagan peoples worshiped idols and made sacrifices to them.” Its author divided the history of Slavic beliefs into three periods: first, the Slavs made sacrifices to ghouls and beregins (in other sources? written “beregins”); then they began to “set a meal” for Rod and the women in labor; finally, in the late period of paganism, they began to pray to Perun. (This periodization takes place in the educational book for grades 10-11 of educational institutions, I.N. Ionov “Russian civilization, 9th-early 20th century”? M.: Prosveshchenie, 1995 ).
Another source (A. Lukutin “History. Graduation grades 9-11”, M.: AST-PRESS SCHOOL, 2006) provides the following data: scientists note 4 stages in the development of Slavic paganism.
The first stage corresponds to the Stone Age, the Slavs made sacrifices to “ghouls” and “beregyns”. Ghouls and bereginii are evil and good local gods. Ghouls are vampires, werewolves, mermaids, and goblins. Usually these are former people who did not die a natural death, were not buried and are taking revenge for this while alive. You can fight them by knowing protective rituals. Ghouls especially often inhabited remote, rarely visited places: forests and rivers. In villages they were looked for in wells. For a long time, Christian priests accused the peasants that they “eat (pray) to demons and swamps and wells.” Beregini were good deities. For example, the idea of a brownie, who can be both evil and good - depending on how you appease him, has come down to our times. N.M. Karamzin wrote in “History of the Russian State”: “In the superstitious traditions of the Russian people we also discover some traces of ancient Slavic worship of God: to this day, ordinary people talk about goblins, who look like satyrs, seem to live in the darkness of forests, equal to trees and grass, terrify wanderers, go around them and lead them astray, about mermaids, or nymphs of oak forests (where they run with their hair flowing, especially before Trinity Day), about beneficent and evil brownies, about kikimors.”
Later, when the ancient Slavs made a transition from a nomadic to a sedentary way of life, when agriculture appeared, the cult of Rod and Rozhanitsa, fertility deities, arose, which is associated with the development of the clan system and agriculture among the Slavs. The Rod simultaneously personified the forces of the fertility of the earth and the unity of generations of people. After all, according to the beliefs of the Slavs, the fertility of the land is ensured by the ancestors, and if the land does not bear fruit, then the sacrifice must be made to them. The pagan idea of the unity of the world was also manifested in the fact that man’s ability to produce offspring was considered to stimulate the creative forces of nature.
Therefore, the spring holidays in honor of Rod and Rozhanitsy were accompanied by general drunkenness (“not to the law, but to revelry” and obscenity. At this stage of the development of pagan beliefs, attempts appeared to depict the gods in humanoid form.
It is significant that after the adoption of Christianity, peasant women prayed to the Mother of God on a par with the Christian Mother of God. According to the beliefs of the ancient Slavs, Rod is the creator of the entire Universe. He “breathed” life into people, commanded the sky, rain, fire, and sent lightning to the earth. Famous historian B.A. Rybakov in his work “History. The initial centuries of Russian history” writes about Rod: “God Rod was the supreme deity of heaven and the universe. He was compared to Osiris, Baad-Gad and the biblical Host. This was a more significant deity than the warrior-princely Perun who replaced him.” And here is another interesting version of his own: “On the Dnieper, 120 km from Kiev, at the mouth of the Rosi River, there was the city of Roden, from which what now remains is a settlement on a high mountain - Prince’s Mountain.
Judging by its location in the middle of the area of antiquities of the Rus of the 6th-7th centuries, Roden could have been the tribal center of the Rus and was called by the name of the main god of the ancient Slavs - Rod... Such an assumption would fully explain the chronicle phrase (possibly taken from Greek sources of the 9th century) “ Give birth, we are called Rus'...” The name of the union of tribes based on a common deity can also be traced in the name of the Krivichi, named after the ancient native (Lithuanian) god Kriva - Kriveite. The Rus on the Ros River could get their name from the god Rod, whose place of worship was Roden on the Ros.”
Gradually, many of the functions of the Family became the responsibility of other gods.
Rod now has assistants - Yarilo and Kupala.
Yarilo personified the awakening spring. He appeared to the Slavs as a handsome young man who rode through fields and villages on a white horse and in a white robe.
Kupala was seen as the fruitful deity of summer. His day was celebrated on June 24, and was preceded by “Rusalia” - celebrations dedicated to the nymphs of fields and waters.
The worship of the god Veles (Volos), the patron saint of livestock and cattle breeding, arose during the period when the ancient Slavs learned to tame wild animals. It was believed that this god contributed to the accumulation of wealth.
In the 8th-9th centuries, a “divine” picture emerged, where each deity had its own place:
Svarog is the ruler of the sky, to whom the entire Universe obeys (he can be compared to Zeus among the ancient Greeks). Svarog had several children.
Svarozhich, son of Svarog, is the god of fire, the patron saint of blacksmiths and blacksmithing, as well as jewelers.
Dazhbog is the son (according to another version, daughter) of Svarog, personifying the sun. According to Slavic beliefs, Dazhbog lives far to the east, in the land of eternal summer. Every morning, on his luminous chariot, Dazhbog makes a circular tour across the sky.
Horse is a deity close to Dazhbog and directly connected with him. He was represented as a white horse, also running over the earth from east to west.
Stribog is the god of wind, storms, hurricanes and all kinds of bad weather. He was worshiped by people whose activities depended on weather conditions: farmers, travelers, sailors, etc.
Mokosh (Makosh) is the patroness of women, women's handicrafts, as well as trade, mother of the harvest, goddess of the earth.
Simargl (Semargl) - seemed to be a sacred winged dog. It was not possible to fully understand the purpose of this deity. It is only clear that he was a deity of a lower order, a winged dog who guarded seeds and crops and was considered the god of the underworld. (Simargl and Khoros, or Khors, mentioned in the Tale of Bygone Years, are apparently Iranian deities brought to Rus' by the Khorezm guard hired by the Khazars).
Over time, when military campaigns took a significant place in the life of the Eastern Slavs, Perun became one of the most revered gods - the lord of thunder and lightning, the patron of the prince, warriors and military affairs in general.
The phenomenon of thunderstorms and lightning is the most amazing of natural phenomena; it is no wonder that primitive man gave it first place among all other phenomena: man could not help but notice the beneficial influence of a thunderstorm on the life of nature, he could not help but notice that the light of lightning independently reveals its power at any time, whereas, for example, the action of the sun is limited , is subject to a known law and can be revealed only at a certain time, yielding dominion to another, opposite and, therefore, hostile, principle - darkness; the sun was eclipsed, died in the eyes of man, and lightning never lost power in his eyes, was not defeated by another principle, because the light of lightning is usually accompanied by rain that is life-giving for nature - hence the necessary idea that Perun sends down rain to thirsty nature, which without him would die from burning rays of the sun. Thus, lightning was for primitive man a productive force, with the character of a supreme deity, active, ruling primarily, moderating, correcting the harm caused by other deities, while the sun, for example, for the pagan who worshiped him was something passive, subordinate. Finally, lightning received the significance of the supreme deity-ruler in the eyes of the pagan due to its terrible punitive power, acting quickly and directly.
Gradually, Perun seizes supreme power over the rest of the pagan gods, pushing Svarog into the background. The latter retains the right to patronize artisans engaged in metal processing.
The oath of arms, Perun and Veles is already known from the story of the treaty of 911 between the Kyiv prince Oleg (882-912) and the Byzantines.
The Tale of Bygone Years, AD 980, says that the Kiev prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich, having captured Kiev and began reigning there, even before the baptism of Rus', placed wooden idols of the gods on the Mountain, not far from the princely palace: Perun, Khors, Dazhbog , Striboga, Simargla, Mokoshi. However, among the gods there were no Rod, Rozhanits, Svarog, Svarozhich and Volos. Scientists explain this choice of the prince by the fact that the pagan pantheon of Vladimir was intended for prayer not of ordinary people, but of the Kyiv nobility, who lived on the Mountain and preferred to worship their gods.
The Slavic pagan world is surprisingly poetic, permeated with magic and the belief that all the nature around us is alive. Our distant ancestors worshiped the elements, believed in the kinship of people with animals, and were convinced that the animal ancestor of their family always patronized its human descendants. The pagan Slavs made numerous sacrifices, most often allocating part of their hunting catch, fish catch or harvest to the deities, good and evil spirits that inhabited the world around them. Each Slavic tribe prayed to its own especially revered gods, but often they differed only in the pronunciation of names.
Very little information has been preserved about the paganism of the ancient Slavs. In most cases, the supreme Slavic gods are known from later Christian teachings against them. Speaking about pagans, Metropolitan Macarius in the 17th century. wrote: “Their places of worship are nasty: forests, and stones, and rivers, and swamps, and springs, and mountains, and hills, the sun and the moon, and the stars, and lakes. And simply put, everything that exists was worshiped as if it were God, and they were honored and sacrifices were made.” Deifying the world around them, the Slavs seem to concentrate all their scattered beliefs around three main phenomena in their primitive life: hunting, agriculture and housekeeping. Forest, field and house - these are the three pillars of the Slavic universe, around which the entire pagan Slavic mythology is formed; in Slavic paganism the entire life path of a communal peasant is reflected and expressed: the cycle of agricultural work, home life, weddings, funerals, etc.
Hunting beliefs were very widespread.
In the primitive era, the forest not only gave the Slavs the opportunity to survive, get food, build a strong home, and heat it with fire, fuel for which was abundantly available around, but also endowed them with special ideas about their origin. Hunting clans and tribes believed that their distant ancestors were wild animals with supernatural magical abilities. Such animals were considered great deities and their totems were worshiped, that is, sacred images that protected the clan. Each tribe had its own totem.
The most important deity of the forest pantheon of the ancient Slavs was the BEAR. His mighty image was perceived as the image of the great owner of the forest - the most powerful beast. The true name of this beast is forever lost, because it was not pronounced out loud and, apparently, was known only to the priests. Oaths and contracts were sealed with this sacred, unpronounceable name. In everyday life, hunters called their god “honey badger,” which is where the name “bear” comes from. The ancient root “ber”, preserved in the word “den”, i.e., the lair of a ber, sounds the same as the Scandinavian word “ber” - bear, and means “brown”.
Extremely widespread, especially among the northern Slavs, was the cult of the WOLF. During holidays and important rituals dedicated to this animal, the men of the tribe dressed up in wolf skins. The wolf was perceived as a devourer of evil spirits; it was not for nothing that the priests of the wolf cult and even simple warriors from the “wolf” tribes were considered good healers. The name of the powerful patron was so sacred that it was forbidden to say it out loud. Instead, the wolf was designated by the epithet “fierce.” Hence the name of one of the large Slavic tribes “Lyutichi”. The feminine principle, always associated with fertility, was personified in the forest era by the great goddess DEER or MOOSE. Unlike real female deer and elk, the goddess had horns, which also brings to mind a cow. Horns were considered symbols of the sun's rays, so they were a talisman against dark forces and were attached above the entrance to the home.
Both hunters and farmers revered the HORSE. They represented the Sun in the form of a Golden Horse running across the heavens. The image of the sun-horse was preserved in the decoration of the Russian hut, decorated with a ridge with one or two horse heads. Amulets with the image of a horse's head, and later just a horseshoe, were considered solar symbols and were perceived as powerful amulets.
The rituals of those distant years were consistent with pagan beliefs. For example, rites of ancestor worship (worship of the souls and geniuses of the deceased). In ancient Russian monuments, the focus of this cult is, with the meaning of the guardian of relatives genus with their women in labor, i.e. grandfather with grandmothers - a hint at the polygamy that once prevailed among the Slavs. The same deified ancestor was honored under the name chura, in Church Slavonic form shura; this form has survived to this day in the compound word ancestor The significance of this ancestor-grandfather as the guardian of all relatives has hitherto been preserved in a spell against evil spirits or unexpected danger: Forget me! those. protect me, grandfather. While protecting his relatives from evil, he also protected their family property. The legend that left traces in the language gives the chur a meaning identical to the Roman Therm, the meaning of a guardian of ancestral fields and borders. Violation of the boundary, the proper border, the legal measure, we now express in the word too, Means, too much - measure, limit. This meaning of chura can, it seems, explain one feature of the funeral rite among the Russian Slavs, as described in the Initial Chronicle. The deceased, having performed a funeral feast over him, was burned, his bones were collected in a small vessel and placed on a pole at the crossroads where paths intersect, i.e. the boundaries of different possessions converge. Roadside pillars are boundary signs that guarded the boundaries of the ancestral field or grandfather's estate. Hence the superstitious fear that seized Russian people at crossroads: here, on neutral soil, a relative felt in a foreign land, not at home, outside his native field, outside the sphere of the power of his protective churs.
The infant people could not understand the spiritual existence beyond the grave and imagined the souls of their departed forefathers accessible to all sensations of this white light; They thought that winter was a time of night, darkness for the souls of the departed, but as soon as spring begins to replace winter, the night journey for souls that rise to the heavenly light, the moon and others, and rise to a new life, ceases. On the first holiday of the newborn sun, on the first winter Kolyada (a holiday that now coincides with the holiday of the Nativity of Christ), the dead were already rising from their graves and frightening the living - hence now the time of Christmastide is considered the time of wandering of spirits.
An essential rite of the holiday consists of going to praise the deity and collecting alms, as can be seen in pagan times, offerings were collected for a common sacrifice.
Maslenitsa, the spring holiday of the sun, is also a week of remembrance, which is directly indicated by the consumption of pancakes, a memorial food. Since ancient Maslenitsa, the living greet the dead, visit their graves, and the Red Hill holiday is connected with Radunitsa, a holiday of light and sun for the dead; it is believed that the souls of the dead rise from prison during commemoration and share the memorial food with the person who brought it.
So, spring is celebrated on Krasnaya Gorka, and round dances usually begin, the religious significance of which and their relationship to the sun is beyond doubt. The time of resurrection of all nature and intensification of desires was considered the most decent time for marriage and for congratulating young spouses: this congratulation is known under the name of Vyunitism. The long struggle with the holiday of Maslenitsa of the Church ultimately ended only with its removal from the period of Lent before Easter. However, the pagan character of the holiday was preserved. According to the beliefs of some Slavic tribes, on Maslenitsa days, the winter deity Moran cedes his power to the spring deity Lada. According to other beliefs, this is the holiday of the death and resurrection of the fertility goddess Maslenitsa or Kostroma, whose straw image was burned at the end of the holiday, and the resulting coals were scattered over the winter crops.
The importance of games and laughter during Christmastide and Maslenitsa was important. Particularly characteristic in this sense are games of weddings and the capture of snowy towns. Laughter was of a ritual nature: it was supposed to ensure fun and harvest for the entire next year. The attitude towards the burning of Maslenitsa was more complicated. According to custom, some people were supposed to cry at this time, and others were supposed to laugh. This ritual expresses the idea of immortality of the creative forces of nature, the absence of death.
The current Christian holiday of Easter is associated with the custom of visiting the graves of deceased relatives, but these are echoes of the pagan holiday that occurred before plowing. It was associated with the desire of the peasants to achieve support from their dead ancestors in awakening the fruitful forces of the earth and ensuring the harvest. The time after Easter was known as the Navi holiday, that is, the holiday of the dead. At this time, boiled eggs were rolled on the graves, oil, wine, and beer were poured on them. All these were sacrifices that were supposed to remind the dead of their family ties and duty to the living. By the way, such sacrifices were made repeatedly during the spring and summer; the church later turned them into the celebration of parental Saturdays, a visit to the cemetery, accompanied by the remembrance of the dead.
In direct connection with the belief that in the spring the souls of the dead rise to enjoy the new life of nature, there is a holiday of mermaids, or mermaid week. Mermaids are not at all river nymphs or any kind of nymphs; their name does not come from the riverbed, but from light brown ( those. light, clear); mermaids are the souls of the dead, coming out in the spring to enjoy the revived nature. Mermaids appear on Holy Thursday, as soon as the meadows are covered with spring water and the willows bloom. Even if they seem beautiful, they always bear the imprint of lifelessness and pallor.
CM. Soloviev wrote about mermaids this way: “The lights coming out of the graves are the lights of mermaids, they run through the fields, saying: “Boom!” Bang! Straw spirit. My mother gave birth to me, she left me unbaptized.” Until Trinity Sunday, mermaids live in the waters, coming to the banks only to play, but among all pagan peoples, the waterway was considered a conductor to the underworld and back from it, which is why mermaids appear in rivers and near wells. But already from Trinity Day, the mermaids moved into the forest, into the trees - the favorite place for souls to stay until death. Mermaid games are games in honor of the dead, as indicated by dressing up, masks - a ritual that was necessary not only among the Slavs during the holiday of the shadows of the dead, since it is common for a person to imagine a dead person as something terrible, ugly and to think that especially the souls of evil people are transformed into terrible and ugly creatures.
Among the Russian Slavs, the main holiday of mermaids was Semik - the great day of mermaids, on which their farewell took place. And the end of the mermaid week - Trinity Day - was the final holiday of mermaids; on this day, according to legend, mermaids fall from the trees - the time of spring pleasures ends for them. On the first Monday of Peter's day there was a game in some Slavic places - escorting mermaids to their graves. By the way, Semik was considered a girl's holiday, dedicated to Yarila and Lada, the goddess of family harmony. At this time, young birch trees, the sacred tree of Lada, were collected with ribbons and houses were decorated with birch branches. The girls went into the forest to weave flower wreaths, dance in circles and sing ritual songs. On Thursday of Semitic week, in the afternoon, at the height of the holiday, a viewing of brides took place. In the evenings, young people “chased mermaids” - they played burners with stems of wormwood or buttercup in their hands. According to legend, these herbs protected against the machinations of evil spirits. On the last day, the birch tree was cut down, and the maiden wreaths were floated down the river. The one whose wreath floats far will get married soon. For the fun and fortune-telling, the Semitic week, which was celebrated back in the last century, is called green Christmastide.
On June 24, a great holiday was celebrated, which has come down to us as Midsummer's Day, or Ivan Kupala. This holiday, however, like Maslenitsa and Kolyada, is a common holiday, i.e. not only for all Slavic, but also for foreign peoples. Although from the rituals of the holiday one can guess that it refers to three elemental deities - both Svarozhich, the sun and fire, and water, but it can also be attributed to one sun. The night of Midsummer was accompanied by the gathering of herbs, which were credited with miraculous powers; bathing (because the sun, according to the beliefs of the Slavs, having a miraculous effect on everything, also had it on water) - after all, bathing during the summer solstice is healing; lighting fires and jumping over them, because the jump was used to judge luck in marriage (in addition, lighting fires is necessary for sacrifices). And on the summer holiday, the ritual of exterminating the effigy of Mara is repeated - cold and death: she is drowned in water or burned (Ionov calls her the goddess of spring Lada. The sun, which gives life and growth to everything that exists, was supposed to be a force that arouses natural desires - hence The festival of Kupala was connected with the festival of Yarila, by the way, during it, some negative (in the opinion of the later clergy) phenomena mainly occurred, for example, the kidnapping of girls.Ivan Kupala was considered, and even now, also the most famous and witchcraft of the pagan holidays.
These are the main initial features of the beliefs of the Eastern Slavs. Over time, they could be distorted: the same deity had different names among different tribes; later, with the convergence of the tribes, different names could appear as different deities. The elemental deities initially did not have gender and therefore later easily changed it: for example, the sun could easily be both male and female, and the husband and wife of the month.
CM. Soloviev believes that the main distorters of the original religion of the people were always and everywhere priests and artists, and that is why among our Eastern Slavs, who did not have a class of priests and the custom of depicting deities as idealized was not widespread, religion was preserved in much greater simplicity. The chronicles are silent about the existence of temples and priests among the Eastern Slavs (but if the temples existed, this would certainly be reflected in the chronicles, as well as their destruction).
The Eastern Slavs did not have a priestly class, but they had magicians, fortune-tellers, sorcerers, sorcerers and witches. Very little is known about the Slavic Magi, but there is no doubt that they had a close connection with the Finnish Magi due to the close proximity and alliance of these two peoples, especially since after the adoption of Christianity, the Magi mainly appear in the Finnish north and from there they trouble the Slavic population (and From time immemorial, the Finnish tribe was distinguished by its inclination towards magic, and from time immemorial it was famous for it: the Finns were developed mainly about evil deities, about evil spirits and about communications with them.
So, Magi is the ancient Russian name for the servants of pagan cults. They were first mentioned in the chronicle in 912: one of the wise men predicted the death of the Kyiv prince Oleg from his own horse. Under 1071, the story is told about unrest in the Rostov land during the famine, led by two wise men. Later, astrologers, sorcerers, and “warlocks” were called “magi” - that is, people who possessed some secret knowledge and told fortunes using “renounced books.” In the Christian tradition, it was believed that demons endowed the Magi with the gift of prediction and miracles. Witchcraft was later prohibited by the decisions of the Stoglavy Council; they were persecuted, punished, persecuted, and executed.
The pagan gods were, first of all, local deities, and the planting of their cult in other tribal lands (for example, the cult of Perun in Novgorod) was not always possible. On this basis, it was unthinkable to achieve the spiritual unity of the country's population, without which the creation of a strong state is impossible.
Pagan religion gradually ceased to be a connecting link between various social groups in Kievan Rus. Sooner or later it had to give way to another religion, which could, to one degree or another, satisfy the interests of all social strata.
Pagan beliefs did not enjoy authority in the countries closest to Rus': Christian Byzantium, Jewish Khazaria and Bulgar, which converted to Islam. In order to have equal relations with them, it was necessary to join one of the great world religions. Actually, this is what happened. The aforementioned Vladimir 1 Svyatoslavich converted to Christianity around 987-88 and began to plant a new religion, calling on Greek priests for help.
Persecuted paganism had one path: first to the outskirts of Rus', and then to the corners of people’s souls, into the subconscious, to remain there, apparently forever, no matter what they called it: superstition, remnants of a past faith, etc.
And if you think about it, how much is new really new, and how old is irrevocably obsolete?
Paganism had a significant influence on the formation of Christian cult and ritual. For example, between Christmas and Epiphany there are pre-Christian Christmastide. Pagan Maslenitsa became the threshold of Great Lent. Pagan funeral rites, as well as the ancient Slavic cult of bread, were woven into Christian Easter, and the cult of birch and grass, as well as other elements of the ancient Slavic Semik, were woven into the Trinity holiday. The Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord was combined with the holiday of collecting fruits and was called the Apple Savior. Pagan influence can sometimes be traced in the ornaments of monuments of ancient Russian temple construction - solar (solar) signs, decorative carvings, etc. Pagan beliefs left their mark on monuments of literary and oral folk art, especially in epics, epics, and songs. At the level of everyday superstitions, paganism was preserved, constantly remaining a means of man's mythological exploration of nature.
I find the data that I read very interesting when preparing to write this test. It turns out that paganism is not only the past of our country (I do not mean residual phenomena that were preserved in holidays, etc.). This is a religion that is still active today! Since the following data (which, I confess, I found on the Internet) shocked me, I decided to present them in my test work (in quotes, because these are quotes).
“Currently, there are a number of pagan movements and communities operating in Russia that have as their goal the revival of the original Russian faith. Despite the fact that the total number of their members is significantly less than the number of followers of various Christian and other religious movements, their ranks are constantly replenished with new members - true Russian patriots. Russian pagans are continuers of a long historical process. Modern paganism is a complex worldview, the basis of which is the path of personal self-improvement using independent thinking. According to intellectuals, paganism is Poetry; In various cities of Russia, in recent decades, pagan communities have emerged that set themselves the goal of restoring the faith of their ancestors in its entirety and in accordance with modern understanding. Over a thousand years, paganism has gone from decay and oblivion to scientific, and then aesthetic and, finally, spiritual revival. In light of this, the process of formation of Slavic paganism seems irreversible. Paganism inherits all the diversity of human communication with the spirits and forces of Nature, to which the Magi and ordinary people of past centuries turned. All these practices still take place today. Paganism, being a universal and comprehensive philosophy, remains a deeply national phenomenon. This tradition is manifested through the totality of traditions of each specific people, presented in a language that is understandable and characteristic of it, taking into account all the specifics of the national worldview.
One of the characteristic features of modern Russia is the presence of certain differences between urban and rural lifestyles. Modern urban pagans, as a rule, pay more attention to philosophical and historical concepts, literary and scientific activities, etc., while rural pagans give preference primarily to the practical side of things (rituals, arrangement of temples, accompanying craft activities, etc. ). However, recently there has been a tendency to merge small communities into larger ones, where both of these currents meet, which in the future will make it possible to restore historical traditions lost over the past seventy years. Paganism, devoid of any rigid systems, dogmas and regulations that must be followed by all people without taking into account their personal characteristics, is capable of returning to modern man a holistic view of the world, stimulating his personal spiritual search and not fitting it into a narrow framework.
The official map of the Losiny Ostrov national park shows a pagan temple - one of the dozens operating in the capital. Only 17 religious organizations of pagans are registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation (most of them on the territory of Mari El), but religious scholars claim that there are actually several hundred pagan communities in our country. This is much more than Catholic ones and is comparable to the number of Old Believers. Most Russian pagans do not need registration - for now everyone is allowed into the forest. “To take the path of paganism,” says the sorcerer Ingeld, “you must go beyond the threshold and follow an inconspicuous path into the forest. And there, listen closely to the rustling of leaves, the creaking of tall pines, the murmur of a spring. And it, paganism, will come and take you over.”
It is only from the outside that it seems that the new Russian paganism is marginal. Take a walk in the morning after the summer Ivan Kupala (July 7) or winter Kolyada (December 25) through Tsaritsynsky or Bitsevsky park - and you will see fresh fire pits, colorful ribbons on the trees, grains of wheat and flowers sacrificed to the spirits of the forest. Although the pagans do almost no missionary work, thousands gather for their colorful festivals and performances. Every city in central Russia has its own “sacred trees,” and in tourist centers such as Suzdal or Pereslavl-Zalessky, crowds of tourists “worship” pagan shrines - Perunova Mountain and the Blue Stone. The pagans also consider “theirs” to be those millions of Russians who unconsciously participate in pre-Christian rituals - decorating Christmas trees, leaving vodka and bread on graves, telling fortunes and spitting over their right shoulders.”
“According to the British Center for Religious and Sociological Research, Russia ranks fourth in Europe in terms of the number of pagans. 3rd place is occupied by neighboring Ukraine, and 1st and 2nd respectively by Iceland and Norway.”
To be honest, I don’t quite understand the desire to revive paganism, even in new forms. My generation, in principle brought up on the ideas of atheism, can hardly, in my opinion, seriously and consciously accept the pagan religion. Most likely, this is a tribute to fashion (somewhat paradoxical: we rush from one extreme to another, we want to stand out from the crowd, to show “how extraordinary we are!”). Although, again, this is my personal opinion. By the way, an example of the fact that modern paganism is just a fashionable trend is New Age paganism, which some consider sophisticated and elitist. It absorbs all the “most fashionable” in this world: “ecological consciousness”, “free love”, feminism, music in the “ethno” style.
For me, paganism is, as the poet put it, “the traditions of deep antiquity,” which I respect and which fascinate with their primitiveness, amaze with the beauty, naivety and pristineness of the surviving cultural monuments, but that’s all. I respect paganism as an integral part of our history and culture. But modern paganism, as a movement, gives me a feeling of surprise and misunderstanding.
You can polemicize on this topic as much as you like, but it is impossible to begin the history of Russian culture with the baptism of Rus', just as it is impossible to derive it from Byzantium. It is impossible to deny that the entire Christian culture was largely reinterpreted in accordance with the traditional pagan ideas of the Slavs. This revealed the syncretism of Russian culture - the fusion of various, often contradictory elements in it. And the fact that the pagan beliefs of the Slavs are the most important cultural prerequisite for the history of Russian civilization is proven by history itself.
Literature
pagan religion slavic belief
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Rybakov B.A. World of history. - M.: Young Guard, 1987.
Mironenko S.V. History of the Fatherland: people, ideas, decisions. / Essays on the history of Russia 9th - early 20th centuries. - M.: Politizdat, 1991.
The world of Russian history. / Encyclopedic reference book. - St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg branch named after V.B. Bobkova, Russian Customs Academy, 1998.
Putilov B.N. Ancient Rus' in faces. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000.
Ionov I.N. Russian civilization (9th - early 20th century). - M.: Education, 1995.
Lyubimov L. The Art of Ancient Rus'. - M.: Education, 1974.
Soviet encyclopedic dictionary. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1982.
The World History. People, events, dates. / Encyclopedia. ? Rider/s Digest, 2001.
Merkulov. Rus' has many faces. - M.: Soviet writer, 1990.
Kravtsov N.I., Lazutin S.G. Russian oral folk art. - M.: Higher School, 1983.
Karamzin N.M. History of Russian Goverment. - M.: Eksmo, 2005.
http://heathenism.ru/target.
http://heathenism.ru/new_edge.
http://heathenism.ru/slav.
The religion of the ancient Slavs, which historically existed in Slavic cultures, is a form of religious life that arose in the pre-Christian period as the original religion of the Slavs and passed after the introduction of Christianity to the position of an “unofficial” folk belief. The religion of the ancient Slavs is a set of religious views and attitudes that developed in pre-Christian Slavic culture, as well as ways of organizing spiritual experience and behavior. Historically, the religion of the ancient Slavs goes back to the religion of the ancient Indo-Europeans. It acquired relative integrity and originality during the era of Slavic unity, which lasted until the second half. 1st millennium AD The gradual resettlement of tribes from the Proto-Slavic homeland (lands between the Vistula and Oder) led to the formation of differences in the religious ideas and cults of the southern, western, Baltic and eastern Slavs, which, however, retained, with increasing characteristics, features
indigenous community. As new lands were explored, some forms of religious life, borrowed by the Slavs from neighboring peoples, were added to the ancient Indo-European mythology and the Proto-Slavic religious tradition. The religion of the Eastern Slavs included fragments of Iranian, Finno-Ugric and some other beliefs. In the 10th century some ancient Slavic religions, for example, Kievan Rus, reached the stage of early state religion.
The Slavs' ideas about the sacred are rooted in the Indo-European ancestral basis: from the Indo-European root *k"uen- (*k"wen-) a large family of Slavic words with the element *svet-, denoting the sacred, originates. Indian, Iranian and Baltic linguistic evidence shows that Indo-European ideas about the sacred were originally associated with the idea of a superhuman power that gives life and imbues beings with the ability to grow. Related meanings of strength, growth, increase are established for Slavic words that expressed ideas about the sacred.
The Slavs endowed holiness with heaven and earth, sources of water, plants, fire, certain areas of space, periods of time, forms of activity and a number of other phenomena that in their perception had a special vital value and in which they saw the presence of an extraordinary power of growth, abundance, and life-giving. The element svet-, denoting corresponding qualities, was part of many Slavic names: Sventovit - the name of the god of the Baltic Slavs, Svyatogor - the name of a mythological hero, Svyatoslav, Svyatopolk - the names of princes, etc. The ancient Slavs had a developed system of concepts about alien human beings, intimately present in the world and, if necessary, revealing their anthropomorphic, zoomorphic or theriomorphic appearance and their power. The highest category of such creatures were the gods.
The word god itself existed among the Slavs already in the pre-Christian era and,
judging by the related words of the Indo-European group, it originally meant share, inheritance, happiness (this meaning is retained in Russian, wretched - “deprived of a share”, rich - “having a share”), as well as the giver of a share. The Slavs took the position of polytheism, and the composition of the gods, their names, and functions in different areas of Slavic culture differed significantly, although there were also common Proto-Slavic gods.
Sources indisputably testify to the Slavs’ worship of the Thunder God, the earliest mention of which dates back to the 6th century. (Dig through Caesarea. War with the Goths). The god of the stormy sky, typical of pan-Indo-European religious mythology in East Slavic culture, is known under the name Perun. Among the Eastern Slavs, Perun is a warrior god, the patron of princely power and squads, and military craft. Perun was given a distinctly anthropomorphic appearance of a formidable warrior, sometimes on horseback; Perun's attributes were lightning, "thunder" arrows, axes and other weapons; Perun's sacred tree was oak. According to the Tale of Bygone Years, the Eastern Slavs in pre-Christian times revered Beles (Volos) as one of the main gods, whose cult has its counterparts in other Slavic religions. White - “cattle god”, i.e. god of offspring and harvest, god of the life-giving forces of the earth. The power of Beles over the life-giving juices of the earth indicates his involvement in the underworld, which was perceived by the Slavs not only as the “world of the dead,” but also as the foundation of the earthly world, the root of its vital forces. As the patron saint of cattle, Beles was associated with wealth, and therefore with gold, so red and yellow colors were the attributes of Beles; Another attribute of this god is wool, a symbol of wealth. In the ideas of the Eastern Slavs, wool and shaggyness indicate the relationship between Beles and the bear.
We can talk about the East Slavic cults of Dazhbog (“the giving god”) - the god of the sun, Stribog - the god of the winds, Svarog - the god of fire, possibly heavenly, solar fire, Rod - the god who personified
continuity and integrity of generations coming from one ancestor. The Baltic Slavs worshiped Sventovit - the warrior god, honoring as his attributes a sword and a white horse, Svarozhich (Radgost) - the god of the sun and military success, Triglav - the god of magical knowledge and some other deities. Little reliable information has been preserved about other gods of Slavic religions, their names, functions, statuses, and degree of prevalence. There is practically no exact data about the ancient gods of the southern and western Slavs, although scientific reconstructions indicate the existence of images that corresponded to the common Slavic ones. Some cults were borrowed by the Slavs from neighboring peoples, such as the East Slavic cults of the gods Khors and Simargl, adopted from Iranian beliefs.
Along with male deities, the Slavs revered female ones, associated primarily with marriage, birth and needlework. Among the Eastern Slavs, such are women in labor and the goddess Mokosh (Makosh), the patroness of spinning and household chores, whose anthropomorphic image was retained by tradition until the 19th century. Female deities formed marriage pairs with male deities, but exact correspondences have not yet been established.
In 980 of Kievan Rus, Prince Vladimir, in the course of religious reform, attempted to streamline the hierarchy of gods within the national pantheon. He established for official worship the cults of Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl, Mokosh under the leadership of the princely warrior god Perun. The state cult established by Vladimir did not stand the test of time and was abolished by Vladimir a few years later.
In addition to clearly personified images of gods, the pre-Slavic religious consciousness developed an idea of the divinity of the sky, perceived as masculine, and the earth, endowed with a feminine nature. The sacred marriage of heaven and earth was thought of as the source of life for all things. In the religion of the Eastern Slavs, the earth appeared in an anthropomorphic
in the image of the ancestor - Mother Earth, Mother of the damp earth, nurse, patroness and - what is especially noteworthy - compassionate absolver of sins.
The veneration of heaven and earth was supplemented in the Orthodox religion by the worship of water elements, certain tree species and animal species, which, as a result of personification, could acquire a personified appearance or receive the status of impersonal forces and spirits. Such personified creatures also represented good or ill-fated states of human life - such as, for example, fever, mara - or certain habitats - brownie, goblin, water, etc. Together, they constituted the lowest category of Slavic mythology in relation to the gods - pandemonium. The evil characters of the Slavic pandemonium were called demons.
Ideas about gods, good and evil spirits were subordinated to the idea of dualism of light and darkness, good and evil, truth and falsehood, inherent in the religious worldview of the Slavs.
The Slavs had widespread ideas about the origin of the entire human race from the ancestral land, which at the same time acted as a participant and accomplice of each new birth of a human being. Human life was considered initially predetermined, while the mythological image of fate among the Slavs, like most other Indo-European peoples, was a thread that was spun by divine spinners at the time of birth (in Rus', perhaps, women in labor and Makosh). The religion of the Slavs was not reduced, however, to absolute fatalism, for man was recognized as having the right to compete with the immutability of fate.
The Proto-Slavs shared the belief, rooted in Indo-European antiquity, in the existence of an immortal soul, which is separated from its bodily shell under special circumstances (for a sorcerer - during witchcraft,
for example), as well as at the moment of death. According to Slavic beliefs, which are very inconsistent in this part, the world of the dead, to which the soul went after death, could be located both underground and in heaven. The Slavs thought of this world as a fertile land, a place of peace after earthly troubles. There was no idea of hell in the Proto-Slavic religion. Serious sinners, people who died an unnatural death, the dead who were left without burial, could not pass on to the afterlife, becoming, according to Slavic beliefs, evil spirits, navyas, ghouls. The beliefs of the Slavs allowed the idea of posthumous reincarnation of the soul both in the human body and in another, primarily zoomorphic, form. It was also believed that some people had the magical ability to become werewolves: such, for example, were the wolf-man-wolves.
Belief in the immortality of the soul and posthumous existence was the basis of the Slavic cult of ancestors. According to Slavic ideas, relatives who passed into the “other world” gained access to the controlling elements of alien beings and forces, before which they could act as intercessors for their family; on the other hand, the ancestors themselves acquired special power, good or evil, in their posthumous existence. The pre-Slavic cult of ancestors included memorial days, commemoration rites, rituals of seeing off to the “other world” and “meeting” the souls of ancestors, veneration of cult images, etc. Until the 11th century. In the Slavic environment, the rite of ritual killing of old people was widespread, due to the belief in the magical power of creatures of the “other world” and the hope for their protection.
At the general clan and tribal level, the cult of ancestors took shape in the veneration of forefathers, genealogical heroes who founded the community and performed miraculous deeds for the benefit of their descendants. In East Slavic culture, the genealogical heroes attested by the Tale of Bygone Years are Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv; Among the Novgorod Slovenians, the memory of their ancestors - the founders - was preserved in legends about Slovenia and
The most important Proto-Slavic rituals were closely connected with agricultural labor, with natural cycles, forming in their interweaving a circle of calendar rituals. The basis of calendar rituals, celebrated at certain times - holidays ("holy days"), was agrarian magic.
When performing rituals, ritual objects were used, among which the most important role was played by cult images of gods and ancestors, often three-dimensional idols (Old Russian cap).
Significant events in public or personal life were accompanied by occasional rituals designed to ensure a favorable outcome. Home (family) rituals, performed during everyday activities - eating, working, etc., filled the everyday life of the ancient Slavs.
Proto-Slavic rituals knew “rites of passage”, the performance of which mediated the change of a member of the archaic collective of his social position. Rites of youthful initiation (which, however, did not leave a deep trace in Slavic culture), wedding rituals were built on the idea of the symbolic death of the main characters and their subsequent rebirth in a new capacity. These rites involved ritual tests and demonstration by applicants of relevant knowledge and skills. Funerals were framed as a “rite of passage,” sending the soul of the deceased to the “other world” to reunite with the community of their ancestors.
Pre-Slavic rituals included prayers, spells, magical actions using fire, water, amulets or other ritual objects. Sacrificial rituals were of particular importance. In some circumstances, human sacrifices were performed. But usually the Slavs offered the gods sacrificial animals, cereals, intoxicating drinks, money and other valuables as gifts. Often the sacrifice took on the character of a ritual feast. In the context of ideas about
sacrificial meal, in which the god invited by prayer participated simultaneously as host and guest (Proto-Slavic gostb), the Old Slavic gospodb was formed with the meaning “guest and host of the sacrificial feast.”
A significant place in the Proto-Slavic religion was occupied by fortune-telling rituals, the most important of which were confined to “borderline” states of time - the winter solstice, the transition from winter to spring, etc. Ancient sources indicate that the Slavs told fortunes by the behavior of the sacred horse, by the lot that fell, by signs, by prophetic dreams, and in other ways. Many gods were associated with the practice of fortune telling - for example, Sventovit and Svarozhich among the Baltic Slavs.
Family rituals were performed at home, the most important of them in specially designated places in the house. For the performance of collective sacred rites, particularly remarkable areas were used - river banks, groves, etc., as well as specially equipped sanctuaries - temples. Some rituals, on the contrary, gathered participants in “wild” places - at crossroads, in abandoned dwellings, etc.
The religious community of the Slavs did not represent a single whole, neither from the point of view of a harmonious agreement of beliefs, nor from an organizational point of view. Religious differences and local peculiarities already existed among the most ancient Slavic tribes. As the Slavs settled from their historical ancestral home, these differences were internalized. However, within specific communities the ordering of religious life was quite strict.
The primary unit of the religious life of the Proto-Slavs was the family or consanguineous community of families - a clan united by the cult of common ancestors. The main character in the performance of household rituals was the head of the family. The worship of common gods, genealogical heroes, and local spirits united clans and families within a settlement or tribe. Initially, the most important sacred ceremonies at this level were performed by elders and princes. Tribal alliances and early state formations
established state cults, created sanctuaries and temples for the worship of common gods - such as the temple of Perun near Novgorod, the Kiev sanctuary of the six Vladimir gods, the temple of Sventovit in Arkona, etc.
Gradually, a special layer of people emerged in the Slavic environment (among the Eastern Slavs - the Magi), professionally engaged in the performance of the main rituals, storage and transmission of religious knowledge. The Eastern Slavs revered the Magi as intermediaries between people and gods, as soothsayers and sorcerers.
The organization of religious life reached its most developed forms among the Polabian-Baltic and Eastern Slavs.
The development of the religion of the ancient Slavs was interrupted by Christianization, which began among the Slavs in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium AD. The Polabian-Baltic Slavs fought for the longest time to preserve their ancestral beliefs, seeing in the Christianity spread by papist missionaries a phenomenon hostile to their national independence, for the missionaries accompanied the German feudal lords who seized the Slavic lands. During the uprisings against German rule, forcibly baptized Slavs destroyed churches, expelled and killed clergy, reviving pre-Christian beliefs and ritual practices. The last attempts to return to the original religion took place in the 14th century. in the lands of the Lusatians. Such persistence in defending former beliefs is explained, in addition to political and social reasons, by the fact that the religion of the Polabian-Baltic Slavs at the beginning of Christianization was quite highly developed and firmly fused with ethnic identity.
In other Slavic lands, the preservation of Proto-Slavic beliefs was to a lesser extent associated with processes of mass irreconcilable opposition to Christianity from the standpoint of the original religion. Here, after baptism, the original religious traditions move to the position of “unofficial” folk beliefs and continue to exist in complex
relations of confrontation and mutual influence with Christianity for a long time. As a result of the interaction of the Proto-Slavic religion and Christianity, a unique religious phenomenon was formed, called “dual faith.” “Dual faith” took root most deeply and thoroughly among the Eastern Slavs. In the culture of the Eastern Slavs, “dual faith” is a form of organization of religious life that syncretically combines native Slavic beliefs and customs with Orthodox ones.
In the culture of the Eastern Slavs, the formation of “dual faith” took place on the basis of the counter-development of pre-Christian ideas and those aspects of Orthodoxy that were in close contact with popular religiosity. Thus, under the influence of Christianity, primarily Christian heresies (Bogomils, etc.) and apocryphal literature, the Proto-Slavic ideas about the dualism of creative principles that create human destiny were further developed, the cosmology inherited from antiquity, mythological images and some others changed in the direction of rapprochement with Christianity aspects of the traditional Slavic worldview. Significant changes took place in the East Slavic pantheon and pandemonium. In particular, the cults of the Family and women in labor came to the fore; under the influence of biblical mythology, the image of Rod, judging by medieval written evidence, acquires the features of a god - the creator of humanity; Solar images of Yarila, the god of the spring sun and love passion, Kupala, appear in a personified form. The East Slavic pandemonium is replenished with some images borrowed from Middle Eastern and Greek demonology. It is characteristic that the pre-Slavic deities and spirits, losing their former place in the hierarchy of higher powers with the introduction of Christianity, retained in the popular consciousness signs of possessing the quality of holiness in its ancient understanding - they were credited with the presence of superhuman power, life-giving or deadly.
For its part, Russian Orthodoxy met the proto-Slavic
beliefs, combining the images of Christian saints with the images of the ancient Slavic gods (Elijah the Prophet - with Perun, Blasius - with Beles, etc.) or adopting the images of Proto-Slavic mythology as “demons”, matching the church calendar and rituals with the agrarian magical practice of rural population, as well as allowing other serious and insignificant deviations from canonical norms, which ultimately took the form of the so-called “folk Orthodoxy”.
Mutual concessions and mutual influence of the original Slavic religion and Russian Orthodoxy led to the formation of syncretic religiosity, which was organically combined with the foundations of folk spirituality and folk life, coexisting until the 20th century. next to church life, and sometimes in it itself. The doctrinal provisions of this syncretic religiosity received their most systematic presentation in spiritual verses.
At the beginning of the 20th century. In Russia, among the creative intelligentsia, interest in pre-Christian Slavic beliefs has sharply increased as a phenomenon that can play a positive role in modern spiritual development. Throughout the 19th century. The cultural prerequisites for this kind of religious quest were taking shape. Domestic ethnographers and folklorists collected and published enormous material on the history of the spiritual culture of the Slavs, revealing the ideological richness, ethical and aesthetic merits of traditional folk religiosity. Literary and pictorial works appeared that poeticized Russian antiquity in its pre-Christian or “double-faith” form. Romanticism gave national antiquity the status of an ideal state and purity of the national spirit. Based on these cultural prerequisites, a significant part of the creative intelligentsia turned to the “primordial” and “authentic” culture, untouched by the influence of Christianity. Pre-Christian beliefs were seen as an elixir of youth, capable of returning “freshness” and “clarity” to the worldview to “decrepit” Europe. A tribute to this passion, mixed with mysticism, theosophy
and other fashionable trends at that time were given by V. Rozanov, D. Merezhkovsky, M. Prishvin and many other writers and artists of the “Silver Age”.
In the 80s XX century Once again there was a tendency towards the revival of Slavic paganism. It is primarily due to the growth of Russian ethnic self-awareness and increased interest in the historical past of the Fatherland. In its most radical forms, Russian “neopaganism” is associated with a certain type of Russian nationalism, from the position of which Christianity as a supranational religion cannot become the spiritual basis of national self-affirmation. “Neo-paganism” refers to the images of the Proto-Slavic gods (especially willingly to the images of Perun and Rod), widely uses ancient symbolism (for example, the image of lightning - “Perun’s arrows”, stylized images of birds, mermaids, etc.), gravitates towards revival of details of traditional Slavic costume and pre-Christian rituals. The mythology and dogma of Russian “neopaganism” are largely based on the “Book of Veles,” which is considered as a reliable ancient source. Meanwhile, the dating and authenticity of this text have been questioned by modern science.
Shinto
Syntonism developed in the VI-VII centuries. The term "Shinto" ("way of the gods") appeared in the Middle Ages. The mythological tradition contained in the first Japanese written monuments reflected the complex path of formation of the system of Shinto cults, which included the deities of the tribes of Northern Kyushu, who came to Central Japan, and the gods of the local population living here.
The local gods were supplanted, and the “solar” goddess Amaterasu became the supreme deity, who “created” the Japanese islands and sent her grandson Ninigi to earth, who laid the foundation for the “divine” imperial dynasty.
Of primary importance for the ancient Japanese were the ancestral deities - “ujigami” (“uji” - clan, “kami” - deity). The functions of the “ujigami” included protecting the clan and protecting the life and various activities of its members. In addition to tribal deities, the deities who lorded the natural elements were of great importance: earthquakes, hurricanes, rain and snow, as well as numerous landscape deities with which the Japanese populated the entire world around them. Any mountain, hill, forest, river, waterfall had its own kami - a guardian god, whose power extended specifically to this area and, as a rule, exceeded the capabilities of the main deities of the Shinto pantheon.
In the cult of the goddess Amaterasu there are three “divine” regalia - a mirror, a sword and jasper pendants. According to mythological tradition, the sun goddess passed them on to her grandson Ninigi, sending him to earth with instructions - to illuminate the whole world and rule it, conquering the rebellious. -An interpretation of regalia, adapted to life practice, as symbols of the most important virtues also emerged: a mirror - a symbol of honesty, jasper pendants - compassion, a sword - wisdom. The highest embodiment of these qualities was attributed to the personality of the emperor. - The main Shinto shrine complex was the shrine in Ise - Ise Jingu (founded, apparently, at the end of the 7th century). Ise Jingu is considered the shrine of Amaterasu, where her cult is celebrated as the supreme deity and progenitor deity of the imperial house, and through it, all Japanese.
At the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th century. in Central Japan, the struggle between the heads of clans for influence in the general tribal association intensified. The process of transition from an early class society to an early feudal one intensified and expanded. The internecine struggle reached its greatest aggravation in the relations between the Soga clans and the coalition of the military clan Mononobe with the priestly clan - Nakatomi. In their quest for power, the Soga used a foreign religion - Buddhism. First mentions in sources about penetration
Buddhism dates back to the beginning of the 6th century. In 538, the embassy of the Korean kingdom of Baekje, which arrived in Yamato, presented the king with several Buddhist sutras and a statue of the founder of Buddhism, Shakya Muni, but information about Buddhism was known to the population of Yamato much earlier.
Confucianism also spread in the country. Confucian ideas of the cult of Heaven found fertile ground for their perception among the royal elite and its aristocratic entourage, cultivating their “unearthly”, “divine” origin. The desire for power of tribal clans was fully consistent with the ethical program of Confucianism with its clear hierarchical division of society and strict fixation of the place and responsibilities of everyone in it. Particular attention of the Japanese was attracted in Confucian ethics by the principle of filial piety and filial duty - for the lower strata this principle was clearly realized in the cult of ancestors, for the higher strata it was equally unequivocal - in the unquestioning and comprehensive submission of subjects to the “divine” dynasty of rulers.
Confucian ideas were widely used in the concrete reproduction of state institutions borrowed from the mainland on Japanese soil, but in the struggle for power for Cora in 587, the widespread spread of Buddhism began, numerous Buddhist monasteries and temples were built, they were provided with lands, slaves, and significant funds were allocated from treasury.
Buddhas and bodhisattvas were endowed with the same magical properties as kami; they were approached with specific requests: to heal diseases, send a rich harvest, protect from evil, “be a guardian of some area, village, etc. In the vast pantheon of Shinto, by this time a division of gods into “heavenly and earthly” had appeared, reflecting the desire of the Yamato kings to strengthen their religious prestige: the “heavenly” gods living in the “Heavenly Country” were declared the ancestors of the royal house, the “earthly” gods - the ancestors of the conquered, subordinate clans. Buddha and
Bodhisattvas naturally entered this pantheon as new gods. At the same time, the sphere of relations between different segments of the population and nature belonged to Shinto. Shinto, which arose as a religious practice of an agricultural community, was a reflection of collective views and requests, while Buddhism had in mind the individual, appealing directly to the individual. Local beliefs and Buddhism divided the life practices of the Japanese: bright, joyful events - birth, marriage - remained under the jurisdiction of the ancestral gods, headed by the “solar” goddess Amaterasu; death, interpreted by Shinto as defilement, was protected by Buddhism, introducing the concept of “rebirth”, “salvation in Buddha’s paradise”.
Thus, the merging of two religions gradually took place - syncretization, in Japanese terminology “ryobushinto” - “the path of Buddhism and Shinto”. Government activities providing official support to local cults were of no small importance. The Taihoryo Code of Laws (701) noted the creation of a special department, Jingikan (Office for the Affairs of Heavenly and Earthly Deities), whose functions included Shinto rituals during state religious celebrations and control over the activities of large state shrines. Another way to support the interaction of the two religions was government decrees on local kami - as protectors of Buddhist deities. By order of Shotoku, Shinto and Buddhist rituals are combined even in such a main and sacred ceremony as “eating the fruits of the new harvest” - Buddhist monks are invited to it. The construction of a huge statue of the Buddha Vairocana during the construction of the Todaiji Temple in Nara is also indicative, when before the start of work they asked for “advice” from Amaterasu. Local Shinto gods “suggested” a place in the north of the country where the gold needed to cast the statue was mined. But the highest form of religious syncretism was the concept of “honji suijaku”, according to which the deities of the Shinto pantheon can be considered as temporary incarnations of Buddhas
and bodhisattvas. Thus, the solar goddess Amaterasu became the incarnation of the Buddha “Diamond Light” Vairocana.
A stage in the development of Shinto was the emergence of the concept of “Ise Shinto,” the main goal of which was to strengthen the cult of the emperor. One of the reasons for the emergence of this concept was the increased authority and influence of shrines, especially Ise jingu, during and after the Mongol invasion (1261-1281). Then the cult of the “progenitor” of the imperial house, Amaterasu, who “lived” in Ise and provided assistance to her descendants, grew unprecedentedly - the divine “kamikaze” wind, having twice scattered the attacking fleet, averted the threat. Development of Ise Shinto in the second half of the 16th century. led to the emergence of a new cult that allowed the deification of a person during his lifetime, and the basis was not belonging to the imperial family, but major political and social acts. This reflected the general situation in the country that had developed at the end of the 12th century, when the military-feudal nobility (samurai) came to power, which actually made the power of the imperial house nominal, limiting it to the sphere of the Shinto cult. The feudal dictator Oda Nobunaga (1533-1572), who fought for the unification of the country, declared himself a god and demanded worship of himself as a kami. His associate dictator Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) was also deified. According to the will of the shogun (head of the military-feudal government) Tokugawa Izyasu, several shrines and a chapel were to be built to worship his spirit.
During the reign of the Tokugawa dynasty (1603-1687), various currents of Confucianism enriched Shinto with ethical ideas, creating a broad basis for the activation of Shinto - Confucian syncretism. Schools emerged that set the task of substantiating the cult and institution of imperial power using historical material. Based on ancient mythological codes, these schools comprehensively and scrupulously presented the idea of the authenticity of the origin and actions of the divine dynasty of Japanese emperors, emphasizing the role of the “tenno” (emperor) as the source and bearer of the “national”
originality. The forgotten wisdom of the ancient “Way” - “miti” (Chinese “Tao”) of Japan was being revived, and “Shinto of antiquity” (“Fukko Shinto”) was being restored.
The ideas of protecting the emperor and restoring imperial power became the ideological basis of the opposition movement to overthrow the shogunate system.
Discovery of the country in the middle of the 19th century. After two and a half centuries of seclusion and the appearance of foreigners, the flood of Western culture that poured into the country deepened the crisis of feudal society and worsened the situation of the majority of the population. The slogan “sonno joi” (“honor the emperor, expel the barbarians”), put forward by scientists of the Mito school at the beginning of the 20th century, primarily by its prominent representative Aizawa Seishisai (1781-1863), found response and support in various social strata, including in opposition samurai circles. The anti-foreign and anti-shogun movements united under one slogan. Thousands of protests against the shogun were started by pilgrims to Shinto shrines in the fall of 1867 and became the first stage of the bourgeois Meiji revolution (1867-1868).
The completion of the struggle, which led to the collapse of the shogunate system and the restoration of imperial power, meant the choice of a new path - the modernization of the country, the transformation of all public life, including the sphere of religious consciousness. However, in order to fulfill the assigned tasks, the new government bodies had to reckon with the historically established traditional structure of the national social organism, including the specifics of culture. The optimal principle seemed to be “wakon yosai” - “Japanese spirit, European knowledge.”
In March 1868, a decree was published on the return to the unity of the system of religious ritual and the management of public affairs (unity of religion and politics). Jingikan, the Office for the Affairs of Heavenly and Earthly Gods, was restored; 660 BC - date of accession to the throne of the emperor of the mythological period of Japanese history Jimmu - was
declared the beginning of chronology from the “foundation of the Japanese Empire.” At the same time, to increase the religious and political authority of the imperial house, ancient Shinto rituals began to be restored. The cult of the emperor - Tennoism - became the center of state Shinto, which actually replaced many gods with one “living god”. The theoretical basis for tennoism was a complex set of concepts - “kokutai” (roughly translated “national essence”, literally “body of the state”). The components of kokutai are the “divine” origin of the Japanese and their state, the continuity through the centuries of the imperial dynasty, national identity, embodied in the special character of the Japanese with its moral virtues, loyalty and filial piety. The ideology of Tennoism, using the traditional concept of a “harmonious state,” contributed to the strengthening of nationalist tendencies, and ultimately, in the upcoming wars, to the sanctification of militarism (by promoting the “divine mission” - “hako iti u” - “the whole world under one roof”).
In general, the state Shinto complex included: dynastic Shinto, which was the property of the imperial family; Tennoism - cult of the emperor; temple - in which the veneration of both general Japanese and local gods is essential; home - with kamidan - a miniature analogue of a temple place of sacred rites.
After Japan's defeat in the Second World War, in the conditions of a general democratic upsurge, the country's democratization began. Measures were taken to eradicate militarism and tennoism. In 1946, in a New Year's address to the people, Emperor Hirohito renounced his divine origin. Progressive reforms were carried out in the education system, and “moral education” in schools, based on the cult of the emperor, was abolished. The Constitution of 1947 changed the status of the emperor; he was now declared “a symbol of the state and the unity of the nation.”
However, the position of state Shinto was not radically changed. The main direction of the policy of reviving Tennoism is attempts to restore Shintoism to the status of a state religion. In 1946, the highest Shinto leadership created the Association of Shinto Shrines - Jinja Honcho, which made it possible to maintain a single centralized shrine management system. A significant part of them joined the Association - more than 78 thousand. This made it possible to achieve the transfer to the ownership of the sanctuaries of the vast land plots they occupy, which previously in most cases belonged to the state.
Already in 1952, the rituals of the imperial court acquired the character of official state ceremonies. Shinto ceremonies for the elevation of Akihito (the son of the reigning Emperor Hirohito) to the rank of heir to the throne and his wedding in 1959 were held as a state act. An equally important stage in strengthening the idea of state Shinto was the revival of obarai - a rite of great cleansing from filth of the entire Japanese nation. The symbolic participation of the highest religious person in the ritual emphasized the unity of the national religion and imperial power.
In 1966, the holiday “kigensetsu”, the day of the founding of the state, which was celebrated annually on February 11, was restored, abolished by the 1947 constitution. The mythological era of history was again included in school textbooks with information about the “divine” origin of the imperial dynasty and people. A special place in the desire to restore Tennoism is occupied by the Yasukuni Shrine, built in 1868 in Kyoto in honor of the warriors who died for the emperor, and after the bourgeois revolution moved to Tokyo. The sanctuary was administered by the Department of the Army and Navy.
In 1969, based on the Association of Shinto Shrines, the Shinto Political League was created - an organization that for the first time since
the liquidation of state Shinto openly set the political goal of participation in government. In January 1989, Emperor Hirohito died. The Shinto system determined the entire diverse set of ceremonies in the ritual of succession to the throne. The creed of the “divine regalia”, the state and imperial seal, the first reception by the emperor of high-ranking officials by government decision were carried out not only as purely religious ceremonies, but also as an act of state.
Conclusion
National religions are religions that are widespread and addressed to a certain nation, nationality, or ethnic group. These religions often accompany the process of formation and development of an ethnic community and, as a result, act as components of its history. Sometimes they are associated with the formation of national statehood, their functioning is intertwined with the functioning of government bodies, which gives grounds to call them national-state (Confucianism, Judaism). For the sake of objectivity, it should be noted that in the development of the state of a particular people, a world religion (for example, Islam in the Arab world) can also play an important role, that is, not only a national religion, but also a world religion can be a state religion, which is why the term “national-state religion” ” is not entirely legal. The category “national religion” itself is often used to define religions that can be classified as transitional religions (for example, the religion of the ancient Greeks), or local ones, which are widespread in a certain region, but are not addressed to a specific people or nation (for example, Zaraostrism ). In the first case, they forget that a nation is a product of a fairly high level of development of society. Since it is impossible to talk about the ancient Greek or ancient Egyptian nation, then we can attribute the religion of the Ancient
It is impossible for Egypt and Ancient Greece to become national. Even if we recognize the existence of the ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek nationalities, these religions do not adequately meet the criteria of national ones. Based on this, some researchers distinguish between early national religions (which includes the same religions of Ancient Greece, etc.) and later ones, which can hardly be considered correct. According to the recognition of local religions, the criterion here should be the answer to the question of whether that community, to which Gregory Morris Japanese candles, balconies veka is addressed, is a religion, a nation, an ethnic group, a people. This approach helps to clearly recognize and determine whether a particular religion is truly national or early national (with all the ambiguity of such a term) or local, etc. Some scientists use the terms “ethnic” and “folk” religions to define certain types of national religions.
Based on the etymology of the Greek word etnikos (tribal, folk, pagan), folk religions are identical, in fact, to ethnic ones in the narrow sense of the word. Folk religions are traditionally considered to be the so-called natural religions, that is, those that arise naturally as a result of the gradual and long-term development of ideological ideas of a particular ethnic community about the natural and supernatural world, which are presented in the form of myths, traditions, customs, rituals, and cults. A certain ethnic community arises and is maintained thanks to a single genetic (blood) origin, common territory of residence and language of communication, common historical memory, which are recorded in tribal legends about the origin of the people and are constantly reproduced in the implementation of collective rituals. Some researchers even identify ethnicity and ethnic religion, considering the components of an ethnic group to be what constitutes its ethnic religion.
Folk religions include such religious complexes that arose among early ethnic groups and corresponded to their spiritual, ideological, and cultural needs. These are, first of all, ancient Iranian, ancient Egyptian, ancient Indian, ancient Greek, ancient Slavic and other religions, which were transmitted to the more developed religions of state ethnic groups (Zoroastrianism, Greek or Roman polytheism, the religion of the Aztecs or Incas, the religion of the East Slavic tribes of Kievan Rus, etc. ). Folk religions are manifestations of autochthonous traditions that not only preserve them, but also develop and improve them. Folk religions are obligatory for members of certain ethnic communities to practice. As a rule, they are not chosen, they are born into them.
The characteristic features of national religions include:
1. The presence in one form or another of the idea of “godlikeness” of a given people.
2. The presence of one form or another of restrictions on contacts (joint activities, marriage, etc.) with representatives of other faiths.
3. Specific ritual (cult).
4. Ritualization of everyday life (transformation of some everyday action into a ritual, for example, “mekvah” in Judaism).
5. National religions reflect the socio-political conditions of life of a given people (Confucianism and the imperial system in China, Hinduism and the caste division of society in India).
6. National religions reflect the mentality and psychology of their people.
Main:
1. Lebedev V. Yu. Religious Studies. - M.: “Yurait”, 2013. - 629 p.
2. Yablokov I.N. Fundamentals of Religious Studies. - M.: Gardariki, 2002. - 511 p.
Additional
