Paganism is a religion based on the belief in the existence of several deities, and not in one creator God, as, for example, in Christianity.
The concept of paganism
The term “paganism” itself is inaccurate, since it includes too vast a layer of culture; today, instead of it, the terms “polytheism”, “totemism” or “ethnic religion” are used.
The paganism of the ancient Slavs is a term used to refer to the set of religious and cultural views of the ancient Slavic tribes before they adopted Christianity. There is an opinion that the term “paganism” in relation to the culture of the ancient Slavs does not come from the religion itself (polytheism), but from the fact that numerous Slavic tribes living on the territory of Rus' had the same language, although they were not connected with each other. Nestor the chronicler used the term “pagans” to designate the entirety of these tribes, that is, tribes united by one language. Later, paganism began to denote the peculiarities of the religious and cultural views of these ancient Slavic tribes.
The emergence and development of paganism in Rus'
Slavic paganism began to take shape in the 1st-2nd millennium BC, when Slavic tribes gradually began to separate from the peoples of the Indo-European group, settled in new territories and interacted with the cultures of neighboring peoples. It was from the Indo-European culture that the images of the thunder god, the fighting squad, the god of cattle and the important image of mother earth arose. Also important to Slavic paganism were the Celts, who not only introduced certain images into the Slavic religion, but also gave the Slavs the very word “god” to denote images. Slavic paganism has a lot in common with German-Scandinavian mythology - the presence of the motif of the world tree, dragons and other deities, transformed taking into account the living conditions of the Slavs.
After the Slavic tribes actively began to split up and move to different territories, paganism itself transformed, with its own elements appearing in each tribe. In particular, by the 6th-7th century the religion of the Eastern and Western Slavs was quite noticeably different from each other.
It should also be noted that often the beliefs of the ruling elite of society and the lower ones could also differ significantly, as mentioned in the ancient Slavic chronicles. What was believed in large cities may be different from what villagers believed.
With the formation of the ancient Russian centralized state, ties between the Slavs and Byzantium and other countries began to develop, paganism was increasingly subject to doubt, and in some cases, persecution - teachings against paganism appeared. In 988, the Baptism of Rus' took place and Christianity officially became the main religion, displacing paganism, however, it should be noted that, despite the fact that to this day Russia remains a Christian state, there are territories and communities where people still practice Slavic paganism.
The essence of Slavic paganism
Despite a sufficient number of historical sources, information about the beliefs of the ancient Slavs remains very fragmentary, so it is not easy to form an accurate picture of the world of our ancestors. It is generally accepted that the religion of the ancients was based on belief in the power of nature and the earth - hence the ruler gods of certain natural phenomena. In addition to the highest gods, there were also lower creatures - brownies, mermaids and others - who could not seriously influence human life, but could participate in it. The Slavs believed in the existence of hell and heaven, in the existence of a human soul, which was one of the important values.
The Slavs had many rituals related to the interaction of people and gods; they brought offerings, worshiped, asked for help and protection. As for sacrifices, oxen or other livestock were most often offered; there is no exact information about the human sacrifices of the Slavic pagans.
List of Slavic gods
Common Slavic gods:
- Perun - the thunderer, the main god of the pantheon;
- Mother - Cheese Earth - the female personification of the viviparous, fertile earth, she was worshiped, asking for a good harvest or a large number of children; there was also an “oath of the earth”, which was considered inviolable.
Gods of the Eastern Slavs (pantheon of Prince Vladimir):
- Perun is the main god, the patron of the prince and the squad, also the thunderer;
- Horse is the personification of the sun;
- Dazhdbog is a solar deity, considered the ancestor of the Russian people;
- Stribog is a deity associated with the winds;
- Simargl is a messenger between heaven and earth;
- Mokosh is a female deity, the patroness of spinning and weaving;
- Volos is the patron saint of livestock;
- Veles is the patron of storytellers and poetry;
- The clan and women in labor are deities personifying fate;
- Svarog - god-blacksmith;
- Svarozhich is the personification of fire.
Characters such as Maslenitsa, Kolyada, Kupala and others cannot be considered gods in the full sense of the word; they were only ritual personifications of certain phenomena, which were often burned during pagan holidays and rituals.
Persecution of pagans and the end of paganism
With the development of the Russian state and its increasing orientation towards more developed countries, paganism gradually began to be persecuted by supporters of Christianity. However, the population of many territories desperately resisted the adoption of Christianity even after the official baptism of Rus' - many newly-minted Christians returned to paganism, secretly performed old rituals and worshiped the old Slavic gods. The relationship between Christianity and paganism has always been very tense, however, along with the growing role of the Christian church in the political and social life of Rus', the new religion gradually replaced paganism and eventually almost destroyed it.
When you mention the term “paganism,” you immediately imagine something very ancient and dark, secret magic lost over millennia of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, rituals of worship of the forces of nature, amulets and sorcerers. In fact, paganism in Rus' peacefully coexisted with official Orthodoxy until the 19th century (calendar rituals and customs), and some of its artifacts remained in modern Russian culture and life.
By the way, interest in paganism in popular culture has not waned to this day: the cult of ancestors, animism, various energy practices and fortune telling draw their phenomenology from Slavic paganism, which once again emphasizes the preservation of “dual faith” in the form in which it developed immediately after baptism Rus'. According to Berdyaev, it is in dual faith that the identity of the Russian people lies; one can go further and argue that the mysterious Russian soul is precisely explained by the fusion of these two opposing elements - paganism and Christianity.
This article will analyze Russian and Soviet historiography on the influence of paganism in Ancient Rus' on the development of Russian culture. The issues of paganism were most closely studied by the Soviet archaeologist, academician B. A. Rybakov, who published two monographs - “The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” and “The Paganism of Ancient Rus'”. In them, the researcher of Slavic culture shows the enormous influence that paganism had on the state and national life of Kievan Rus, and also analyzes the continuity and refraction of pagan beliefs in the life of Rus' after the adoption of Christianity, and even their penetration into Orthodox rites.
Another major scientist who devoted himself to the study of ancient Russian paganism is E.V. Anichkov, who wrote the fundamental work “Paganism and Ancient Rus'”, published in 1914 in St. Petersburg and, unfortunately, never brought into the framework of modern spelling, which does not prevent, however, more and more generations of historians from becoming acquainted with it. Anichkov, being a literary historian, viewed paganism through the prism of folklore and folk art, and was also a supporter of syncretism in the study of culture.
In addition to Rybakov and Anichkov, another Russian scientist made a great contribution to the study of paganism in Ancient Rus' and showed its great importance for the development of Russian culture. This is Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor V. Ya. Petrukhin (V. Ya. Petrukhin’s monograph “Ancient Rus'. People. Princes. Religion” can be found on the Historian’s website).
In historical science, it is customary to consider paganism (any kind - both ancient Russian and ancient Egyptian) in two forms. Firstly, paganism represents an ideological stage in the development of any modern civilization; it is an established system of ideas about the world and the place of man in this world, based on the deification of the forces of nature, and, because of this, is primitive. Secondly, paganism is also a cultural model of the formation and development of any ethnic group, which endows it with characteristic unique features, and gives the people themselves originality and, to some extent, contributes to the formation of their mentality. Within the framework of these two models, we will consider ancient Russian paganism in this work.
Sources for the reconstruction of paganism in Ancient Rus'
To study paganism, it is necessary to use the entire range of historical sources available today. When analyzing the role of paganism in the development of Russian culture, researchers rely on sources: written, archaeological, folklore, ethnographic and linguistic. It is impossible to say which source is most important; an opinion about certain phenomena of the pre-Christian culture of Rus' should be based on a synthesis of information.
From written sources we have access to chronicles, lives of Russian and Byzantine saints, epistolaries, legal documents (treaties, etc.), memoirs of travelers, historical chronicles. Thus, it is from the chronicle called The Tale of Bygone Years that we learn about Vladimir’s pagan pantheon, which he ordered to be established in Kyiv, and then forced the local population to pray for it. In the text of the treaties concluded by the Rus with Constantinople, we see that the princes and squad swore by Perun, and we understand that he was the supreme deity in the Russian pagan tradition. Data from archaeological excavations tell us about burial rituals, that the pagan Rus preferred to cremate their dead and build mounds over the burnt ashes. We also learn that our ancestors had ambivalent attitudes towards the dead themselves, often endowing them with supernatural powers. Songs, epics and fairy tales, which have come down to our time in a form revised by numerous unknown storytellers, tell us about the rituals, conspiracies and cults that were in use in Ancient Rus'. Ethnography shapes our view of ancient Russian paganism as an original cultural phenomenon in the interrelation of its material and intangible components. For example, it is reported that to this day ancient Russian pagan images are preserved in embroidery and folk crafts. Finally, linguistics determines for us the origin of certain pagan gods, reveals patterns of borrowing and interweaving of various cultures, and often helps to establish the geographical location of a particular object of material culture.
We find a lot of evidence about what ancient Russian paganism was like in various messages of church hierarchs. The messages themselves, of course, were intended to show people that worshiping “filthy” gods is bad, but for the researcher these sermons represent the most interesting material. Among other things, they themselves are living witnesses to the fact that even after baptism, paganism in one form or another continued to exist in Rus'.
An interesting source from the point of view of paganism is the “Word of St. Niphon about the Rusalia.” Saint Niphon himself was a remarkable personality; his lengthy life had a great influence on the Orthodox tradition in Rus'. “The word...”, of course, was said in order to get rid of demonic games, however, thanks to the meticulousness of the Byzantine saint, modern historians have learned a lot of interesting things about mermaids and mermaids. The mermaid processions were accompanied by singing and dancing, playing the flute and represented a kind of festive procession that drew other people they met into their orbit; those who could not go and have fun threw money at the mermaids. Such celebrations were nationwide and were often held in streets and squares.
Old Russian pantheon
As mentioned above, written sources on Russian pagan mythology are mostly all Christian. In Rus' there was no complex of legends about the Slavic gods, such as, for example, in Greek or Scandinavian mythology (sagas). We did not have our own Homers and Ovids, who could translate mythology into the language of poetry and prose, and thus popularize it, therefore, among other things, we draw knowledge about the ancient Russian gods from oral folk art. In addition, there are numerous notes from eyewitnesses - Christian, Arab or Jewish (Khazar) travelers who compiled memoirs about the life and customs of Ancient Rus'. Unfortunately, today we do not know a single Russian written source created in the era preceding the baptism of Rus'. Even the very first historical source - the Tale of Bygone Years - dates back to the 11th century at the earliest; there is nothing before it, no written evidence.
As noted, to study paganism, scientists have to use the entire range of sources available to them - ethnographic, folklore, archaeological, but using them in synergy (and this is the only way to use them) leads to the emergence of numerous methodological problems, differences in interpretations, interchangeability of different phenomena, etc. n. Overcoming such difficulties, historical science still strives to build an integrated approach to the categorization of the pantheon of Slavic gods, which it at least succeeds in doing.
So, today we know the following Slavic deities:
Perun- the supreme god, the double of Zeus and Thor, because he throws lightning and is also called the thunderer. He is also the patron of the princely family; the princely squad swears by him when concluding international treaties. It is mentioned in the Tale of Bygone Years, as well as by Procopius of Caesarea, who, however, does not name it directly, but points out that the Slavs have a thunder god to whom they sacrifice bulls.
Horse- apparently the sun god. Historians have been unable to find out the origin of the name of this god and, according to several sources (one of which is hagiographic), he was attributed to personifying the sun. In one of the sources, Horse is called a Jewish god, which may indicate that it was borrowed from the Khazar Khaganate, which professed Judaism. Researcher of Russian paganism V.N. Toporov believes that the name Khorsa is of Iranian origin and passed into the Slavic pantheon from the Scythians and Sarmatians.
Dazhbog, Stribog, Semargl- deities from the pantheon established by Prince Vladimir before the baptism of Rus', in Kyiv. Their purpose is not defined. Dazhbog is associated with the sun (but in this case it turns out that there are already two claiming the sun - Khors and Dazhbog, which makes no sense), Stribog with the wind, Semargl, unfortunately, could not be classified, what element or phenomenon it is attributed to remains unclear. According to O. Bodyansky, Dazhbog is just another name for Khorsa; in our opinion, this statement really makes sense.
Among the Slavic pantheon there are also female deities (it’s hard to call them goddesses), one of them is Mokosh, patroness of weaving and crafts in general. The purpose of Mokosha was derived from its etymology, which does not contradict the folklore traditions and rituals associated with this name. Mokosh in the Christian tradition was transformed into Paraskeva Friday.
All of the above deities are present in the so-called pantheon of Vladimir. When Vladimir Svyatoslavich took the Kiev throne, he decided to restore paganism, which had been “abolished” by his brother Yaropolk, who had previously ruled in Kyiv. The Tale of Bygone Years tells that Vladimir “placed idols on the hill behind the tower courtyard: a wooden Perun with a silver head and a golden mustache, and Khors, Dazhbog, and Stribog, and Simargl, and Mokosh. And they made sacrifices to them, calling them gods, and brought their sons and daughters, and made sacrifices to demons, and desecrated the earth with their sacrifices. And the Russian land and that hill were defiled with blood.” Judging by these chronicles, people were sacrificed to Perun and the others, since desecration by blood is applicable only to human sacrifices, animal sacrifices were not stigmatized in the chronicles (but were not encouraged either) and were considered simply a demonic custom, one of many. In the Christian tradition, any sacrifices are prohibited.
Vladimir Svyatoslavich at the “Millennium of Russia” monument in Veliky Novgorod. With his foot he tramples the idol of Perun
V. Petrukhin pointed out one interesting point. All of the deities listed are of Slavic origin, while the squad and princes of the early centuries of Russian history proper are Varangians. That is, the Varangians-Rus did not bring with them the Scandinavian gods - Thor, Odin, etc., but accepted the locals and even made them their patrons (Perun is the patron of the prince and his squad).
The supreme god of the Eastern Slavs (specifically the ethnic group, as opposed to the princely gods) is considered to be Svarog, the god who, according to legend, gave fire to humanity and taught how to forge metal. Svarog was especially revered by the peasants, since he was the first plowman: having defeated the huge monster - the Snake, he used it to plow a barrier furrow along the Dnieper. The appearance of Svarog in mythology dates back to the Iron Age, i.e., to the Proto-Slavic community.
Material confirmation of the existence of such a pantheon is the Zbruch Idol, which was discovered in 1848 in the Zbruch River (hence the name) by residents of the village of Gusyatin in Ukraine. The idol is carved from stone and dates back to the 10th century. B. A. Rybakov identified one of the female figures depicted on the sides of the idol as Mokosh, because she holds a horn in her hand, and the second as Lada, the goddess of spring and marriage, because she holds a ring in her hand. One of the male figures with a sword and horse is identified by scientists as Perun (god of the squad), and the other, on whose clothes the image of the sun appears, as Dazhbog (Horse). The lowest tier of the Zbruch idol is represented by only one male figure, which seems to support the remaining tiers with its hands. Apparently, this is a figure of Volos (see below for more information about him).
Zbruch idol. OK. X century. Stone. Height 2.67 m. Krakow Archaeological Museum, Krakow, Poland
It is worth highlighting Mother Cheese Earth, as the general supreme female deity. She is not present in the pantheon of Vladimir, however, we find traces of her in all chronicles, as well as epics and folklore.
Another interesting Slavic god, mentioned here and there in chronicles and lives - Hair or Veles, the so-called “cattle god”. Volos entered the Orthodox tradition as a devil or a demon. There were idols of Volos in many Russian cities; they were located mainly where artisans and peasants lived, that is, residents engaged in labor, as opposed to the squad, which they “fed.”
B. A. Rybakov noted several layers in Slavic paganism, as if replacing each other. These layers can be compared with the historical eras of the existence of Slavic mythology, which, according to the scientist, is the successor of Egyptian and Greek mythology. The connecting link between these eras is the Rod and women in labor - the deities of fate and tribal unity. To this day, the Russian language has retained the stable expression “it was written in the family,” which quite accurately conveys the purpose of these pagan phenomena. The clan and women in labor were often denounced in Church Slavonic literature, since the rituals of honoring them were preserved throughout the entire Christian era in Rus'. In the Russian Trebnik of the 16th century, which was used by priests as a kind of test program for confession, there is a question for women: “Did they cook porridge on the day of the Nativity of Christ?” The custom of “cooking porridge”, kutya or baking pies and bringing them to church the day after Christmas is an example of Russian dual faith. It was women in labor who patronized the fate of the newborn who were honored with porridge and bread; therefore, for the Russians of that time it was more than a good reason to appease the pagan deities immediately after the birth of the Christ child. The Church tried to condemn, and where it could even prohibit, such rituals, but they, nevertheless, remained in the everyday culture of the Russian peasantry.
WITH By birth and women in labor The rituals of honoring ancestors (ancestors) and propitiating the house (the spirit of the house) are closely related.
The same Rybakov builds the following sequence of ancient Russian gods who were worshiped by the Slavs (based on the “Words of St. Gregory invented in masses about how the first trash of the pagans worshiped idols”): 1) mermaids (ghouls and beregins) water demons; 2) clan and women in labor (to the spirits of clan and fate); 3) Perun. As we see, beliefs move from more primitive forces of nature to increasingly complex and personified deities. By the way, archaeological data generally confirm such an evolution of pagan beliefs.
Let us once again emphasize the fact that we learn about all the gods of the Slavic pantheon mainly from Christian sources, in particular from the Tale of Bygone Years. Recorded legends about Perun and other gods appear much later. This is due to the fact that the Slavic language, in which the first scribes wrote, was considered the sacred language of the Russian Church, since it was spoken and brought to Rus' by the first Slavic ascetics - Cyril and Methodius. Accordingly, the first Russian scribes did not dare to describe “filthy” customs and “filthy” gods on it. Yes, and in principle they did not have such a task. For example, Nestor’s task was to derive the history of the Russian land from the cosmogonic beginning of the entire earth, that is, from the “tongues” that were scattered after the Flood, and also to attribute it to the diocese of one of the apostles (in this case, Andrew the First-Called was chosen). Naturally, at that time the influence of folk culture itself, which professed paganism and animism, on the development of the nation was not recognized. And only in the period of modern history was this influence recognized as fundamental.
Low mythology
In addition to the gods, ancient Russian paganism is rich in representatives of lower mythology, all these vampires, mermaids, goddesses and kikimoras. The forces of nature and their patrons - goblins, water and field - existed on a par with the patron gods of atomspheric phenomena. The lower mythological entities also include people endowed with demonic properties - witches, veshtits, pestilences, sorcerers, warlocks. All sorts of demons of diseases are also represented in various ways, including diseases of livestock, devils, demons, demons of fate.
The most important witch in the pagan mythology of the Slavs is well known to all of us. Baba Yaga is a witch who lives in a hut on chicken legs. According to the descriptions, this hut is very similar to the house in which the ashes of the dead were buried after cremation. Therefore, folklore researchers concluded that Baba Yaga is actually a “bad” dead person, a restless soul living in her hut-coffin and harming people. The attributes of Baba Yaga are, in addition to the hut, which always stands on the edge of the forest, a bone leg, a mortar in which she flies and chases people, and a broom. As you can see, the attributes are completely similar to the attributes of medieval witches who flew on a broom. The bone leg tells us that Baba Yaga is a character of two worlds - this and the other world, in fact, she is a guide of souls to the afterlife. In the initial period of Slavic history, blood sacrifices were made to her in order to appease her. According to the testimony of Ibn Fadlan, who was present at the burial ceremony of a noble Slav, it was also attended by an old woman witch, whose duties included the ritual murder of concubines who agreed to follow the deceased to the next world. It is quite possible that the image of Baba Yaga was transformed from this real-life character.
Hood. V. M. Vasnetsov Baba Yaga, 1917, House-Museum of V. M. Vasnetsov, Moscow
Vampires or ghouls- these are the unburied dead, or those who during their lifetime were sorcerers or witches, whose souls do not accept the next world, and they remain there. At night they rise from their graves, attack people and drink their blood. Belief in vampires is confirmed by archaeological evidence. Numerous burials in which stakes, knives, spears were stuck into the remains, or whose graves were filled with stones, indicate that the belief in “hosted” dead originates in the pagan tradition. Belief in ghouls persists in Russian folklore to this day.
A character from Slavic mythology well known to us from fairy tales. Above we cited the testimony of St. Nifont about the mermaid procession. According to the hierarch, this holiday was more of a fun procession, a kind of carnival, which is quite curious, since the mermaids themselves, water nymphs, are rather negative characters. According to legends, they lured people into the swamps and could tickle them to death. According to some sources, a mermaid is also a “hostage” deceased who died as a result of drowning and remained unburied. A mermaid, as the term suggests, is a female character. Later, in the Orthodox tradition, drowned women who remained unbaptized began to be classified as mermaids.
Hood. V. Prushkovsky. Mermaids. 1877, National Museum, Krakow, Poland
Goddesses- a rather specific character of lower Slavic mythology, since they are dangerous only for pregnant women and women in labor. According to legend, goddesses are old or ugly women who themselves died during childbirth or were unbaptized and now attack women in labor and kidnap babies. They also replace children, strangle women in labor during sleep, take away milk, etc. Children who are taken by goddesses or who are killed by their mothers become demons. The habitat of goddesses is similar to mermaids; goddesses also live near bodies of water, and sometimes under water.
The word has been preserved in the Russian language to this day, as today they call an ugly or poorly dressed woman or old woman. Kikimora in lower Slavic mythology is the wife of a brownie, lives in a house behind the stove or in a barn and causes minor mischief to the household. Unbaptized babies, stillborn babies and those with congenital deformities, as well as “hosted” dead people become kikimoras. It is believed that the image of the kikimora is similar to the image of the supreme deity Mokoshi, who is related to the cult of agriculture, fertility, and weaving. Kikimora also spins wool, sometimes shears sheep, thus stealing from their owners. According to legends, you can come to an agreement with a kikimora and even have conversations, ask her about anything, she answers with a knock. If she is in a good mood, she can predict the future.
Kikimora. Drawing by I. Ya. Bilibin
With deities and spirits of loci (patrons of the forces of nature), not everything is so simple. Actually, before the baptism of Rus', many of these supernatural creatures were peaceful. The goblin and the water goblin were the patrons of their elements and were not seen in sabotage. With the advent of the Christian tradition, all these spirit loci were outlawed and, accordingly, acquired a demonic essence.
It was after the establishment of Christianity that the goblin became a demon of the forest, which confused people and forced them to wander around the same place. In the pagan tradition, a goblin is a kind spirit of the forest who understands the language of animals and birds, keeps order in the forest and helps (!) unlucky travelers find their way if they get lost.
Accordingly, the merman is the spirit of lakes, rivers, springs, it is believed that he has power over mermaids and other swamp creatures, lives under water, in ice holes, in abandoned mills. The merman has his own livestock, which he grazes; these are, of course, fish - catfish, carp and pike.
Water. Drawing by I. Ya. Bilibin
Folklore tradition of Ancient Rus'
As you can see, Slavic pre-Christian mythology is very rich and diverse. Thanks to ethnographic research, today we can recreate the life and culture of our ancestors in all the diversity and multicolor of folk traditions, crafts, epics, legends and rituals. We can say that folklore tradition is a mirror of the life of Ancient Rus'.
Although, for example, E.V. Anichkov, considered paganism in Ancient Rus' “poor”, Slavic gods “pathetic”, and morals “rude”. And indeed, if we compare the myths and legends of the Slavs with the rich mythology of Ancient Greece or Scandinavia, the comparison will not be in favor of Rus'. Pagan Russian rituals are indeed very primitive, but ancient Russian folklore can be considered one of the most significant. Rybakov, in order to refute Anichkov’s point of view, conducted serious research on ancient Russian pagan mythology and, one might say, “proved” that we are no worse, and our paganism can be poetic and comprehensive.
Above we presented a three-part scheme for the development of Slavic beliefs, to which we will add a few comments in this paragraph. In particular, it is noted that the belief in ghouls, mermaids, brownies and other demonic creatures has long survived the era of paganism and is still found today. Second note: the worship of Perun, the supreme deity, occurs long before the formation of the Old Russian state (Iranian and Scythian-Sarmatian roots can be traced in the etymology of the name). Thus, talking about the inheritance of the stages of development of paganism identified by Rybakov can be quite conditional.
All three stages of paganism are reflected in the folklore of Ancient Rus'; naturally, it is quite difficult to analyze the chronology of folklore, which is why primitive demons and perfect heroic gods exist at the same time.
As already noted, the written tradition in Rus' had as its goal to determine the place of the new, newly born statehood in Christian civilization, and therefore swept from the pages of books everything that contradicted Orthodoxy. All this was, first of all, paganism, with its “filthy” fables and heroes, the Church called them “blasphemers.” However, it was not possible to completely banish paganism from the lives of people of that time. If earlier the worship of pagan gods required certain ceremonies, sacrifices and rituals, then from the moment of the baptism of Rus', it lost its sacredness and remained in everyday life in the form of amusements, tales, fables, youth games, fortune telling, etc. In this way, one might say, In a relaxed form, paganism has survived to the present day, influencing the development of all Russian culture and continues to do so to this day.
In general, the ancient Russian folklore tradition and the rituals and customs associated with it had close ties with the agricultural calendar. The change of season was considered by our ancestors as a struggle between cold and heat, symbolic death and rebirth.
Old Russian paganism also had its own priests, they were called Magi and attributed to them magical power and authority. After the Christianization of Rus', the Magi tried to regain power in the minds of the inhabitants, however, their attempts, known in history as the “revolt of the Magi,” failed. In the 11th century, rebellious Magi appeared either in Novgorod or Kyiv, sometimes the people and princes took their side, sometimes the Magi were “beaten”.
Hood. A. P. Ryabushkin. Prince Gleb Svyatoslavovich kills the sorcerer at the Novgorod Veche (Prince's Court), 1898, Nizhny Tagil Art Museum of Fine Arts, Nizhny Tagil
The very phenomenon of the sorcerer, sorcererism, is a cross-cutting plot of the Slavic folklore tradition. Let us remember the death of the Prophetic Oleg from a horse, prophesied by the Magi, the legend of Vseslav of Polotsk, who was born not from love, but from sorcery (witchcraft), the Magi predict the victories and defeats of Russian princes. It is typical that the wise men fight witches, accusing them of hiding the harvest or causing drought, famine and disease (pestilence). In order to lift the curse, the witch had to be killed and a loaf of bread or fish cut out of her stomach, after which the disaster would recede. The priests fought these cruel customs as best they could; sorcery was declared heresy and thus outlawed.
Hood. V. M. Vasnetsov. Oleg's meeting with the magician. 1899, watercolor, State Literary Museum, Moscow
The most famous phenomenon in the Russian folklore tradition is, of course, epics. We adhere to the point of view that epics as a heroic epic originated precisely in Ancient Rus', and perhaps earlier, with the coming to power of a prince and his retinue.
There are many theories regarding the origin of epics as a genre; in modern science, the sum of these theories is recognized as correct. That is, epics are also legends in which heroes (a kind of doubles of the Slavic gods) fight adversity (forces of nature) and emerge victorious; in epics we also see echoes of real historical events, romanticized by subsequent retellers and censuses; Of course, some epics or their elements were borrowed from the folklore of their western and eastern neighbors. Thus, Russian epics are a complex phenomenon, depending on who turns to its study (historian, literary critic, linguist), one or another of its facets is revealed.
From the point of view of history, of course, real historical events were reflected in epics. “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, epics of the Vladimirov cycle, Zadonshchina - are based on real facts that have been confirmed in official science. In this regard, the epic epic received the status of historical folklore.
In the development of the epic epic, two large stages can be distinguished. The first is the origin of the epic as a genre, the pagan period itself. In the epics of this cycle there are almost mythical heroes-heroes. They personify the forces of nature and have not just physical, but supernatural strength. This is how we picture the giant Svyatogor, who is not held by Mother Cheese Earth, Mikula Selyaninovich - a pre-Christian hero-plowman who challenged Svyatogor. Mikula's daughter, Vasilisa, is a cross-cutting female character in the entire Russian epic. Volga Svyatoslavich is another ancient character in epics; he can turn into different animals and “reads from books.”
Hood. A. P. Ryabushkin. Mikula Selyaninovich. 1895. Illustration for the book “Russian epic heroes”
After the ancient period, two more epics are distinguished - Kiev and Novgorod, formed after the baptism of Rus' and therefore not related as such to ancient Russian paganism. In the Kiev cycle, the heroes-heroes are grouped around the figure of Vladimir the Red Sun (most likely a poetic image of the real-life Prince Vladimir); in the Novgorod cycle, Sadko and Vasily Buslaev act.
In conclusion, we note that paganism in Ancient Rus' was quite multifaceted. We will not agree here with Anichkov’s opinion, which considered him pitiful and wretched. Of course, ancient Russian mythology cannot be compared with the ancient Greek pantheon, but in Rus' the lower sphere of mythology is strong, with its pawned dead, elemental demons and other evil spirits. Such a wealth of goblins, brownies and kikimoras is not found in any other pagan religion.
An important feature of ancient Russian paganism is its all-pervasive nature, as well as the preservation of “dual faith” throughout the history of our country. Rituals, spells, amulets and fortune telling have remained in our culture to this day; pagan semiotics has firmly entered the Orthodox tradition despite numerous prohibitions from church leaders that were issued already in the first years after the baptism of Rus'.
The influence that paganism had on Russian literature is enormous: epics, fairy tales, ritual songs can be traced in almost all works of classical and modern Russian literature. Pushkin, Gogol, Platonov and even Mayakovsky turned to pagan origins in their works.
The pagan tradition of Ancient Rus' played and continues to play a huge role in the development of all Russian culture.
In Slavic fairy tales there are many magical characters - sometimes terrible and formidable, sometimes mysterious and incomprehensible, sometimes kind and ready to help. To modern people they seem like fanciful fiction. but in the old days in Rus' they firmly believed that Baba Yaga’s hut stood deep in the forest, that a serpent abducting beauties lived in the harsh stone mountains, they believed that a girl could marry a bear, and a horse could speak with a human voice.
This faith was called paganism, i.e. “folk faith.”
The pagan Slavs worshiped the elements, believed in the kinship of people with various animals, and made sacrifices to the deities that inhabited everything around them. Each Slavic tribe prayed to its own gods. There were never common ideas about gods for the entire Slavic world: since the Slavic tribes in pre-Christian times did not have a single state, they were not united in beliefs. Therefore, the Slavic gods are not related, although some of them are very similar to each other.
Due to the fragmentation of pagan beliefs, which never reached their peak, very little information about paganism has been preserved, and even then it is rather meager. Actually, Slavic mythological texts have not survived: the religious-mythological integrity of paganism was destroyed during the period of Christianization of the Slavs.
The main source of information on early Slavic mythology is medieval chronicles, annals written by outside observers in German or Latin and Slavic authors (mythology of Polish and Czech tribes), teachings against paganism (“Words”) and chronicles. Valuable information is contained in the works of Byzantine writers and geographical descriptions of medieval Arab and European authors.
All these data relate mainly to the eras that followed the Proto-Slavic era, and contain only individual fragments of pan-Slavic mythology. Archeological data on rituals, sanctuaries, and individual images (Zbruch idol, etc.) coincide chronologically with the pre-Slavic period.
Funeral rites.
The stages of development of the pagan worldview of the ancient Slavs were largely determined by the Middle Dnieper historical center. The people of the Middle Dnieper laid “sacred paths” to Greek cities and placed stone idols with a cornucopia on these paths. Somewhere on the Dnieper there must have been the main sanctuary of all the Skolots - farmers, in which the sacred heavenly plow was kept. In the religious history of Kievan Rus, much will be clarified thanks to an appeal to the ancestors of Rus.
The evolution of funeral rites and different forms of funeral rites mark significant changes in the understanding of the world.
A turning point in the views of the ancient Slav occurred back in pre-Slavic times, when the burial of crumpled corpses in the ground began to be replaced by the burning of the dead and the burial of burnt ashes in urns.
The crouched burials imitated the position of an embryo in the mother's womb; crouching was achieved by artificially tying up the corpse. The relatives prepared the deceased for his second birth on earth, for his reincarnation into one of the living beings. The idea of reincarnation was based on the idea of a special life force that exists separately from a person: the same physical appearance belongs to a living person and a dead one.
The crouched position of corpses persists until the turn of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The crouched position is replaced by a new form of burial: the dead are buried in an extended position. But the most striking change in funeral rites is associated with the advent of cremation, the complete burning of corpses.
In real archaeological traces of funeral rites, the coexistence of both forms is constantly observed - ancient inhumation, burial of the dead in the ground.
During the burning of corpses, a new idea of the souls of ancestors, which should be somewhere in the middle sky, and, obviously, contribute to all heavenly operations (rain, snow, fog) for the benefit of the descendants remaining on earth, appears quite clearly. Having carried out the burning, sending the soul of the deceased to the host of other souls of his ancestors, the ancient Slav then repeated everything that was done thousands of years ago: he buried the ashes of the deceased in the ground and thereby provided himself with all those magical benefits that were inherent in simple inhumation .
The elements of the funeral rite include: burial mounds, a funeral structure in the form of a human dwelling, and the burial of the ashes of the deceased in an ordinary food pot.
Pots and bowls with food are the most common things in Slavic pagan burial mounds. A pot for preparing food from the first fruits was often considered a sacred object. The pot, as a symbol of goodness and satiety, dates back, in all likelihood, to very ancient times, approximately to the agricultural Neolithic, when agriculture and pottery first appeared.
The closest thing to the relationship between the sacred pot for the first fruits and the urn for burying ashes are anthropomorphic stove-vessels. Vessel-stoves are a small pot of a simplified shape, to which is attached a cylindrical or truncated-conical tray-stove with several round smoke holes and a large arched opening at the bottom for burning with wood chips or coals.
The connecting link between the god of the sky, the god of fruitful clouds and the cremated ancestors, whose souls are no longer embodied in living beings on earth, but remain in the sky, was the pot in which for many hundreds of years primitive farmers boiled the first fruits and thanked the god of the sky with a special festival .
The ritual of corpse burning appears almost simultaneously with the separation of the Proto-Slavs from the general Indo-European massif in the 15th century. BC e. and existed among the Slavs for 27 centuries until the era of Vladimir Monomakh. The burial process is imagined as follows: a funeral pyre was laid, a dead man was “laid” on it, and this funeral was accompanied by a religious and decorative structure - a geometrically precise circle was drawn around the pyre, a deep but narrow ditch was dug in a circle and a light fence was built like a fence made of twigs, to which a considerable amount of straw was applied. When the fire was lit, the flaming fence, with its flame and smoke, blocked the process of burning the corpse inside the fence from the ceremony participants. It is possible that it was precisely this combination of the funeral “mass of firewood” with the regular circumference of the ritual fence that separated the world of the living from the world of dead ancestors that was called “theft.”
Among the Eastern Slavs, from the point of view of pagan beliefs, the burning of animals, both domestic and wild, along with the deceased is of great interest.
The custom of burying in domovinas, or more precisely, erecting domovinas over Christian graves, survived in the land of the ancient Vyatichi until the beginning of the 20th century.
Animal deities.
In a distant era, when the main occupation of the Slavs was hunting. rather than farming, they believed that wild animals were their ancestors. The Slavs considered them powerful deities who should be worshiped. Each tribe had its own totem, that is, a sacred animal that the tribe worshiped. Several tribes considered the Wolf to be their ancestor and revered him as a deity. The name of this beast was sacred, it was forbidden to say it out loud.
The owner of the pagan forest was the bear - the most powerful animal. He was considered a protector from all evil and a patron of fertility - it was with the spring awakening of the bear that the ancient Slavs associated the onset of spring. Until the twentieth century. many peasants kept a bear's paw in their houses as a talisman-amulet, which was supposed to protect its owner from disease, witchcraft and all kinds of troubles. The Slavs believed that the bear was endowed with great wisdom, almost omniscience: they swore by the name of the beast, and the hunter who broke the oath was doomed to death in the forest .
Of the herbivores in the hunting era, the most revered was Deer (Moose), the ancient Slavic goddess of fertility, sky and sunlight. In contrast to real deer, the goddess was thought to be horned; her horns were a symbol of the sun's rays. Therefore, deer antlers were considered a powerful amulet against all night evil spirits and were attached either above the entrance to the hut or inside the dwelling.
The heavenly goddesses - the Reindeer - sent newborn fawns to earth, which fell like rain from the clouds.
Among domestic animals, the Slavs most revered the Horse, because once upon a time the ancestors of most peoples of Eurasia led a nomadic lifestyle, and they imagined the sun in the guise of a golden horse running across the sky. Later, a myth arose about the sun god riding across the sky in a chariot.
Household deities.
Spirits inhabited not only forests and waters. There are many known household deities - well-wishers and well-wishers, at the head of which is the table of the brownie, who lived either in the oven or in a bast shoe hung for him on the stove.
The brownie patronized the household: if the owners were diligent, he added good to the good, and punished laziness with misfortune. It was believed that the brownie paid special attention to the cattle: at night he combed the manes and tails of horses (and if he was angry, then on the contrary he tangled the animals’ hair into tangles), he could take away milk from cows, and he could make the milk yield abundant, he had power over life and the health of newborn pets. That’s why they tried to appease the brownie. When moving to a new house, on the eve of the move, take 2 pounds of white flour, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 0.5 pounds of butter, 2 pinches of salt. They kneaded the dough and took it to the new home. They baked bread from this dough. If the bread is good, then life is good; if it’s bad, then you’ll have to move soon. On the 3rd day, guests were invited and dinner was served, and an extra device was placed for the brownie. They poured wine and clinked glasses with the brownie. They cut the bread and treated everyone. One hump was wrapped in a rag and stored forever. The second one was salted 3 times, a piece of silver money was stuck in edgewise and placed under the stove. We leaned on this stove 3 times on 3 sides. They took the cat and brought it to the stove as a gift to the brownie: “I give you the brownie, father, a shaggy animal for a rich yard.” After 3 days we looked to see if the wine had been drunk; if it had been drunk, it was topped up again. If the wine was not drunk, then they asked for 9 days 9 times to taste the treat. Treats for the brownie were given every 1st day of the month.
Belief in the brownie was closely intertwined with the belief that dead relatives help the living. In people's minds, this is confirmed by the connection between the brownie and the stove. In ancient times, many believed that it was through the chimney that the soul of a newborn came into the family and that the spirit of the deceased also left through the chimney.
Images of brownies were carved from wood and represented a bearded man in a hat. Such figures were called churs and at the same time symbolized deceased ancestors.
In some northern Russian villages, there were beliefs that in addition to the brownie, the housekeeper, the cattleman and the Kutnoy god also took care of the household (these good-timers lived in the barn and looked after the cattle, they were left with some bread and cottage cheese in the corner of the barn), as well as the guardian ovinnik grain and hay reserves.
Completely different deities lived in the bathhouse, which in pagan times was considered an unclean place. Bannik was an evil spirit that scared people. To appease the bannik, after washing, people left him a broom, soap and water, and sacrificed a black chicken to the bannik.
The cult of “small” deities did not disappear with the advent of Christianity. The beliefs persisted for two reasons. Firstly, the veneration of “minor” deities was less obvious than the cult of the gods of sky, earth and thunder. Shrines were not built for “minor” deities; rituals in their honor were performed at home, with family. Secondly, people believed that small deities live nearby and people communicate with them every day, therefore, despite church prohibitions, they continued to venerate good and evil spirits, thereby ensuring their well-being and safety.
Deities are monsters.
The ruler of the underground and underwater world, the Serpent, was considered the most formidable. The serpent, a powerful and hostile monster, is found in the mythology of almost every nation. The ancient ideas of the Slavs about the Snake were preserved in fairy tales.
The Northern Slavs worshiped the Serpent - the lord of underground waters - and called him the Lizard. The Lizard's sanctuary was located in swamps, the banks of lakes and rivers. The coastal sanctuaries of the Lizard had a perfectly round shape - as a symbol of perfection and order, it was opposed to the destructive power of this god. As victims, the Lizard was thrown into the swamp with black chickens, as well as young girls, which was reflected in many beliefs.
All Slavic tribes who worshiped the Lizard considered him the absorber of the sun.
With the transition to agriculture, many myths and religious ideas of the hunting era were modified or forgotten, the rigidity of ancient rituals was softened: human sacrifice was replaced by horse sacrifice, and later stuffed animals. The Slavic gods of the agricultural era are brighter and kinder to people.
Ancient sanctuaries.
The complex system of pagan beliefs of the Slavs corresponded to an equally complex system of cults. The “minor” deities had neither priests nor sanctuaries; they were prayed to either individually, or as a family, or by a village or tribe. To venerate the high gods, several tribes gathered, for this purpose temple complexes were created, and a priestly class was formed.
Since ancient times, mountains, especially “bald” ones, that is, with a treeless peak, have been the place for communal prayers. At the top of the hill there was a “temple” - a place where a cap - an idol - stood. Around the temple there was a horseshoe-shaped embankment, on top of which kradas - sacred bonfires - burned. The second rampart was the outer boundary of the sanctuary. The space between the two shafts was called the treasury - there they “consumed”, that is, ate, sacrificial food. At ritual feasts, people became, as it were, table companions with the gods. The feast could take place in the open air and in special buildings standing on that temple - mansions (temples), originally intended exclusively for ritual feasts.
Very few Slavic idols have survived. This is explained not so much by the persecution of paganism, but by the fact that the idols, for the most part, were wooden. The use of wood, rather than stone, to depict the gods was explained not by the high cost of the stone, but by the belief in the magical power of the tree - the idol, thus, combined the sacred power of the tree and the deity.
Priests.
Pagan priests - the Magi - performed rituals in sanctuaries, made idols and sacred objects, using magic spells, they asked the gods for a bountiful harvest. The Slavs for a long time kept faith in cloud-busting wolves, who turned into wolves, in this guise they rose to the sky and called for rain or dispersed clouds. Another magical effect on the weather was “sorcery” - spells with a charm (bowl) filled with water. Water from these vessels was sprinkled on crops to increase the yield.
The Magi also made amulets - female and male jewelry covered with spell symbols.
Gods of the era.
With the transition of the Slavs to agriculture, solar gods began to play an important role in their beliefs. Much in the cult of the Slavs was borrowed from the neighboring eastern nomadic tribes; the names of the deities also have Scythian roots.
For several centuries, one of the most revered in Rus' was Dazh-bog (Dazhdbog) - the god of sunlight, warmth, harvest time, fertility, God of summer and happiness. Also known as the Generous God. Symbol: Solar disk. Dazhdbog is located in a golden palace on the land of eternal summer. Sitting on a throne of gold and purple, he is not afraid of shadows, cold or misfortune. Dazhdbog flies across the sky in a golden chariot trimmed with diamonds, pulled by a dozen white horses with golden manes breathing fire. Dazhdbog is married to the Month. A beautiful young maiden appears at the beginning of summer, grows older every day and leaves Dazhdbog in winter. They say that earthquakes are a sign of a couple's bad mood.
Dazhdbog is served by four maidens of exceptional beauty. Zorya Utrennyaya opens the palace gates in the morning. Zorya Vechernyaya closes them in the evening. The Evening Star and the Star Dennitsa, the Morning Star, guard the wonderful horses of Dazhdbog.
Dazhbog was the god of sunlight, but by no means the luminary itself. The Sun God was Khors. Horse, whose name means “sun”, “circle”, embodied a luminary moving across the sky. This is a very ancient deity who did not have a human form and was represented simply by a golden disk. The cult of Khorsa was associated with a ritual spring dance - round dance (movement in a circle), the custom of baking pancakes on Maslenitsa, resembling the shape of a solar disk, and rolling lighted wheels, also symbolizing the luminary.
The companion of the gods of the sun and fertility was Semargl (Simorg) - a winged dog, guardian of crops, god of roots, seeds, sprouts. Symbol – World tree. Its animal appearance speaks of its antiquity; The idea of Semargl, the protector of crops, as a wonderful dog is easily explained: real dogs protected fields from wild roe deer and goats.
Khors and Semargl are deities of Scythian origin, their cult came from the eastern nomads, therefore both of these gods were widely revered only in Southern Rus', bordering the Steppe.
The female deities of fertility, prosperity, and the blossoming of life in spring were Lada and Lelya.
Lada is the goddess of marriage. abundance. time of harvest ripening. Her cult can be traced among the Poles until the 15th century; in ancient times it was common among all Slavs, as well as the Balts. The goddess was approached with prayers in late spring and during the summer, and a white rooster was sacrificed (the white color symbolized goodness).
Lada was called “Mother Leleva.” Lelya is the goddess of unmarried girls, the goddess of spring and the first greenery. Her name is found in words associated with childhood: “lyalya”, “lyalka” - a doll and an address to a girl; "cradle"; “leleko” – a stork bringing children; “cherish” - take care of a small child. Young girls especially revered Lelya, celebrating the spring holiday Lyalnik in her honor: they chose the most beautiful of her friends, put a wreath on her head, sat her on a turf bench (a symbol of sprouting young greenery), danced round dances around her and sang songs glorifying Lelya, then the girl “Lelya” presented her friends with wreaths prepared in advance.
The common Slavic veneration of Makosha (Moksha) - the goddess of the earth, harvest, female destiny, the great mother of all living things - goes back to the ancient agricultural cult of Mother Earth. Makosh, as the goddess of fertility, is closely connected with Semargl and griffins, with mermaids irrigating fields, with water in general - Mokosh was worshiped at springs, and girls threw yarn into wells for her as a sacrifice.
The male fertility deity associated with the lower world was Veles (Volos). God of trade and animals. Also known as the Guardian of the Herds. Symbol - A sheaf of grain or grain tied into a knot. Sacred animals and plants: Ox, grain, wheat, corn. Volos is a benevolent god who regulates trade and makes sure promises are kept. Oaths and covenants are sworn in his name. When Perun became the greatest god of war, he recognized that, unlike Svarozhich, he needed a cool head to advise. Due to this, he recruited Volos to be his right-hand man and advisor.
The hair also has another side. He is the protection of all tamed animals. Volos appears in the guise of a bearded shepherd. Volos is the patron god of armor.
Among the common Slavic gods of fertility, a special place is occupied by the warlike gods to whom bloody sacrifices were made - Yarilo and Perun. Despite the great antiquity and, therefore, wide popularity of these gods, they were little revered by most Slavic tribes because of their warlike appearance.
Yarilo is the god of spring and fun. The symbol is a garland or crown of wild flowers. Sacred animals and plants - wheat, grain. Cheerful Yarilo is the patron saint of spring plants.
The Slavic thunderer was Perun. The symbol is a crossed ax and hammer. His cult is one of the oldest and dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. e. when warlike shepherds on war chariots, possessing bronze weapons, subjugated neighboring tribes. The main myth of Perun tells about the battle of God with the Serpent - the kidnapper of cattle, waters, sometimes luminaries and the wife of the Thunderer.
Perun is a snake fighter, owner of a lightning hammer, closely associated with the image of a magical blacksmith. Blacksmithing was perceived as magic. The name of the legendary founder of the city of Kyiv, Kiy, means hammer. Perun was called the “prince’s god” because he was the patron of princes and symbolized their power.
Svantovit is the god of prosperity and war, also known as the Strong. The symbol is a cornucopia. Svantovit is worshiped in richly decorated temples guarded by warriors. There is a priest's white horse kept there, always ready to ride into battle.
Svarozhich is the god of strength and honor. Also known as scorching. Symbol: Black buffalo head or double-sided axe.
Svarozhich is the son of Svarog, and the fact that he rules the pantheon together with Dazhdbog is the intention of Svarozhich’s father. Svarog's gift - lightning - was entrusted to him. He is the god of the hearth and home and is known for his faithful advice and prophetic power. He is the god of a simple warrior who values peace.
Triglav is the god of plague and war. Also known as the Triple God. The symbol is a snake curved in the shape of a triangle.
Triglav appears as a three-headed man wearing a golden veil over each of his faces. His heads represent the sky, earth and lower regions, and he rides on a black horse in wrestling.
Chernobog is the god of Evil. Also known as the Black God. Symbol: Black figurine. It brings failure and misfortune; she is the cause of all disasters. Darkness, night and death are associated with her. Chernobog is in all respects the opposite of Belbog.
Paganism in urban life in the 11th-13th centuries.
The adoption of Christianity as the state religion did not mean a complete and rapid change in the way of thinking and way of life. Dioceses were established, churches were built, public services in pagan sanctuaries were replaced by services in Christian churches, but there was no serious change in views, a complete rejection of the beliefs of our great-grandfathers and everyday superstitions.
Paganism was reproached for polytheism, and Christianity was given credit for the invention of monotheism. Among the Slavs, the creator of the world and all living nature was Rod - Svyatovit.
Russian people isolated Jesus Christ from the Trinity and built churches of the Savior, replacing the pagan Dazhbog.
Christianity also reflected primitive dualism. The head of all the forces of evil was Satanail, undefeated by God, with his numerous and extensive army, against which God and his angels were powerless. Almighty God could not destroy not only Satan himself, but also the smallest of his servants. A person himself had to “drive away demons” with the righteousness of his life and magical actions.
Such an important section of primitive religion as the magical influence on higher powers through a ritual action, a spell, a prayer song, was at one time absorbed by Christianity and remained an integral part of church ritual. Religious support for statehood at the time of the progressive development of feudalism, the prohibition of blood sacrifices, a wide flow of literature heading to Rus' from Byzantium and Bulgaria - these consequences of the baptism of Rus' had progressive significance.
An outbreak of sympathy for ancestral paganism occurs in the second half of the 12th century. and, perhaps, is connected both with the disappointment of the social elite in the behavior of the Orthodox clergy, and with the new political form, which brought closer in the 12th century. local princely dynasties to the land, to the zemstvo boyars, and partly to the population of their principalities in general. One might think that the priestly class improved its ideas about the magical connection between the macrocosm and the microcosm of personal clothing, about the possibility of influencing life phenomena through incantatory symbolism and pagan apotropaia. Dual faith was not just a mechanical combination of old habits and beliefs with new, Greek ones; in some cases it was a thoughtful system in which ancient ideas were quite consciously preserved. An excellent example of Christian-pagan dual faith are the famous amulets - serpentines, worn on the chest over clothing.
Dual faith was not just the result of the church’s tolerance for pagan superstitions, it was an indicator of the further historical life of aristocratic paganism, which, even after the adoption of Christianity, developed, improved, and developed new subtle methods of competition with religion imposed from outside.
Pagan rituals and festivals of the 11th – 13th centuries.
The annual cycle of ancient Russian festivals consisted of different, but equally archaic elements, dating back to the Indo-European unity of the first farmers or to the Middle Eastern agricultural cults adopted by early Christianity.
One of the elements was the solar phases: winter solstice, spring equinox and summer solstice. The autumnal equinox is very weakly noted in ethnographic records.
The second element was a cycle of prayers for rain and the effect of vegetative force on the crop. The third element was the cycle of harvest festivals. The fourth element was the days of remembrance of ancestors (rainbow). The fifth could be carols, holidays on the first days of each month. The sixth element was Christian holidays, some of which also celebrated solar phases, and some were associated with the agricultural cycle of the southern regions of the Mediterranean, which had different calendar dates than the agricultural cycle of the ancient Slavs.
As a result, a very complex and multi-basic system of Russian folk holidays was gradually created.
One of the main elements of Christmas rituals was dressing up in animal-like clothes and dancing in “mashkers”. Ritual masks were depicted on silver bracelets.
Masquerades continued throughout the winter holidays, acquiring a special revelry in their second half - from January 1 to January 6, on the “terrible” Veles days.
After the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, there was a calendar contact between ancient pagan holidays and new, church-state holidays, obligatory for the ruling elite. In a number of cases, Christian holidays, which, like the Slavic ones, arose on a primitive astronomical basis, on solar phases, coincided in timing (Nativity of Christ, Annunciation), and often they diverged.
Rusal incantation rituals and dances were the initial stage of a pagan festival, which ended with an obligatory ritual feast with the obligatory consumption of sacrificial meat: pork, beef, chickens and eggs.
Since many pagan holidays coincided or calendared with Orthodox ones, outwardly decency was almost observed: the feast was held, for example, not on the occasion of the feast of women in labor, but on the occasion of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, but it continued the next day as a “lawless second meal” .
Historical development of Slavic-Russian paganism.
“Paganism” is an extremely vague term that arose in the church environment to designate everything non-Christian, pre-Christian.
The Slavic-Russian part of the vast pagan massif cannot in any case be understood as a separate, independent and unique variant of religious primitive ideas inherent only to the Slavs.
The main determining material for the study of paganism is ethnographic: rituals, round dances, songs, children's games into which archaic rituals degenerated, fairy tales that preserved fragments of ancient mythology and epic.
As primitive society developed, the complexity of its social structure was increasingly based on religious ideas: the identification of leaders and priests, the consolidation of tribes and tribal cults, external relations, wars.
Speaking about evolution, it should be noted that deities that arose in certain conditions can acquire new functions over time, and their place in the pantheon can change.
The world of the then pagans consisted of four parts: earth, two heavens and an underground water zone. This was not a specific feature of Slavic paganism, but was the result of a universal, stage-convergent development of ideas that varied in detail, but were mainly determined by this scheme. The most difficult thing to unravel is the ancient ideas about the earth, about a large expanse of land filled with rivers, forests, fields, animals and human dwellings. For many peoples, the earth was depicted as a rounded plane surrounded by water. Water was concretized either as the sea or in the form of two rivers washing the earth, which may be more archaic and local - wherever a person was, he was always between any two rivers or rivulets limiting his immediate land space.
Medieval people, regardless of whether they were baptized or not, continued to believe in their great-grandfather’s dualistic scheme of the forces governing the world, and with all archaic measures they tried to protect themselves, their homes and property from the action of vampires and “navi” (alien and hostile dead).
Under princes Igor, Svyatoslav and Vladimir, paganism became the state religion of Rus', the religion of princes and warriors. Paganism strengthened and revived ancient rituals that had begun to die out. The young state's commitment to ancestral paganism was a form and means of preserving state political independence. Updated paganism of the 10th century. was formed in conditions of competition with Christianity, which was reflected not only in the arrangement of magnificent princely funeral pyres, not only in the persecution of Christians and the destruction of Orthodox churches by Svyatoslav, but also in a more subtle form of contrasting Russian pagan theology with Greek Christian.
The adoption of Christianity to a very small extent changed the religious life of the Russian village in the 10th – 12th centuries. The only innovation was the cessation of corpse burnings. Based on a number of secondary signs, one can think that the Christian teaching about a blissful posthumous existence “in the next world,” as a reward for patience in this world, spread in the village after the Tatar invasion and as a result of initial ideas about the inescapability of the foreign yoke. Pagan beliefs, rituals, conspiracies, formed over millennia, could not disappear without a trace immediately after the adoption of a new faith.
The decline in the authority of the church reduced the strength of church teachings against paganism, and in the 11th – 13th centuries. did not fade away in all layers of Russian society, but passed into a semi-legal position, as church and secular authorities applied harsh measures to the pagan Magi, including a public auto-da-fe.
In the second half of the 12th century. There is a revival of paganism in the cities and in princely-boyar circles. An explanation for the revival of paganism can be the crystallization of one and a half dozen large principalities-kingdoms that took shape since the 1130s with their own stable dynasties, the increased role of the local boyars and the more subordinate position of the episcopate, which found itself dependent on the prince. The renewal of paganism was reflected in the emergence of a new doctrine about an inscrutable light, different from the sun, in the cult of a female deity, and in the appearance of sculptural images of the deity of light.
As a result of a number of complex phenomena in Rus', by the beginning of the 13th century. a kind of dual faith was created in both the village and the city, in which the village simply continued its religious ancestral life, being listed as baptized, and the city and princely-boyar circles, having accepted much from the church sphere and widely using the social side of Christianity, not only did not forget their paganism with its rich mythology, deep-rooted rituals and cheerful carnivals with their dances, but also raised their ancient religion, persecuted by the church, to a higher level, corresponding to the heyday of Russian lands in the 12th century.
Conclusion
Despite the thousand-year dominance of the state Orthodox Church, pagan views were the people's faith until the 20th century. manifested themselves in rituals, round dance games, songs, fairy tales and folk art.
The religious essence of rituals and games has long faded away, the symbolic sound of the ornament has been forgotten, fairy tales have lost their mythological meaning, but even the forms of archaic pagan creativity unconsciously repeated by descendants are of great interest, firstly, as a bright component of later peasant culture, and secondly, as an invaluable treasury of information about the millennia-long journey of understanding the world by our distant ancestors.
Of great importance in those days were fetishism, magic and totemism. The last direction stood in a separate place. The most revered were the rooster, eagle and falcon among birds, the bear and horse among animals.
Paganism in Ancient Rus', according to modern researchers, went through several stages of its development.
The initial period was characterized by the deification of the forces of nature. The symbolism of art reflects the attitude of people of that time towards nature. In their opinion, it was inhabited by many spirits. The paganism of Ancient Rus' at the initial stage was expressed in the worship of the Slavs of Mother Earth. Its symbol was a square divided into four squares with dots in the center. Water cults were also very developed; groves and forests were revered as the dwellings of the gods. In the pagan forest, the Bear was the master.
By the first millennium AD, the deities of the ancient Slavs began to take on an anthropomorphic appearance. From that moment on, human traits in deities gradually replaced animal ones.
Paganism in Rus' of that period is characterized by the worship of such deities as Dazhbog, Svarog, Veles, Stribog, Khors, Makosh, Yarilo. These gods were the most revered among the Slavs.
Svarog personified the sky and was considered the ancestor of all deities. For several centuries, the most revered was Dazhbog - the god of sunlight, harvest ripening, and warmth. His symbols were silver and gold.
Khors was His name means “circle”, “sun”. This deity did not have a human form. It was represented by a simple gold disc. Worship of the Horse was expressed by the spring round dance, the custom of baking pancakes on Maslenitsa, and the rolling of lighted wheels symbolizing the sun.
Paganism in Rus' at the second stage of its development is characterized by the cult of Rozhanits and Rod - goddesses of fertility and the creator of the universe. This direction of religion was closely connected with the veneration of ancestors, home, and family.
The genus was considered thunderstorms, the sky. The Slavs said that he rides on a cloud and throws rain on the ground. This is how children are born. The genus was Rozhanitsy were nameless goddesses of prosperity, abundance and fertility. The Slavs also revered them as protectors of young children and young mothers.
During the same period, paganism in Rus' came to a three-part idea of the world. The image of the structure - the lower (underground), middle (earthly) and upper (heavenly) worlds - can be seen on the surviving idols.
Sacrifice and worship took place in special sanctuaries. They were rounded earthen or wooden structures that were erected on hills or embankments. Later they became quadrangular.
The Slavs artistically consolidated the process of continuous struggle between the dark and light forces of nature in their ideas about the temporal cycle. The starting point coincided with the onset of the new year at the end of December. The celebration of the birth of the new sun was called “Kolyada”.
At the last third stage of development, pagan religion exalted the cult of the god Perun. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, in 980 attempted to carry out a reform in religion, seeking to elevate popular worship to the state level.
It should be noted that among the common Slavic fertility deities, a special role and importance was assigned to the warlike gods. The Slavs offered bloody sacrifices to them. These were the gods Perun and Yarilo. The second personified death and resurrection; a young sheep was sacrificed to him. Perun was worshiped as the thunder god; the rise of his cult began with the first campaigns of the Kievites.
Despite the adoption of Christianity in 988, paganism in Rus' existed for quite a long time.
Paganism was the main religion of our ancestors before the adoption of Christianity in Rus', what is it, what exactly was meant by this name, was it such an unambiguous evil as it appears in the early Christian chronicles of the beginning of the second millennium?
Many questions can be asked on this topic, and not all of them can be answered even by recognized experts in the study of that era. Let's just try to understand in general terms what it was and how it affected people.
origin of name
The term paganism itself is derived from the word peoples (pagans) in Church Slavonic; this language was the main written means of communication at the dawn of Christianity in Rus'. Accordingly, the largest part of written evidence about events related to the change of religion has reached us written from the point of view of Christian missionaries and preachers.
And the attitude, quite justified from their point of view, was extremely negative towards the competing religion. Accordingly, any people professing a religion other than Christianity were collectively called pagans.
Reasons for the emergence of paganism
Thus, it becomes clear that in Rus' before the advent and establishment of Christianity there was no one single religion, and the beliefs of the different tribes and nationalities inhabiting northeastern Rus' were different in many ways, but at the same time they had one common basis that was rooted in similar conditions life, way of life and cultural traditions.
North-Eastern Rus', with its location and topography, also determined the main methods of obtaining food for the tribes inhabiting it. A large number of large forests, an abundance of rivers, lakes, and wetlands meant hunting, gathering, and later livestock breeding coupled with agriculture as priority sources of food.
Against this background, as culture and social relations between tribes developed, the objects deified by the people also changed. At first, at the dawn of its formation, these were the simplest things on which human survival depended. These could be stones, tools, animals and the like. Gradually they improved, acquiring more humanized forms, for example, even in the last century in Belarus there was a lively belief that stones in the old days were alive and could even reproduce..... animals over time took on semi-human features like, for example, God Veles. The elements and natural phenomena were also revered, which, due to their constancy and the reasons for their existence that cannot be explained, became the main ones in the pantheon of Russian gods during pagan times.
Pagan gods
By the time of the arrival of Greek-Byzantine Christianity in Rus', the generally revered gods in the Slavic tribes were Rod (the god of fertility, sun and thunderstorms) as the supreme god he had four hypostases: Khors (Kolyada), Yarilo, Dazhdbog (Kupaila) and Svarog (Svetovit). Each hypostasis corresponded to the time of year. A common misconception is that these are separate gods who were worshiped at different times of the year, which is fundamentally incorrect and hinders the understanding of how significant the god Rod was in the life of an ordinary Russian person. As a simple experiment, try querying for words with the same root name...
In some sources there is such a term as the “Perunov Brothers”, judging by the name, they were either the highest caste of warriors who had reached the pinnacle of art in military affairs, or, by analogy with the Japanese kamikazes, they were former people who dedicated themselves to war and went into battle without thinking about what will be their fate.
Also, the highest gods of the Slavs should be considered Veles, who over time became not only and not so much the god of cattle breeders, he became a black god, the lord of wisdom, magic and the dead. God Semargl is the god of death, the image of sacred heavenly fire. And the god Stribog is the god of the wind.
These were gods who, in their meaning, contained the entire life cycle of a person of those times; everything, as was believed then, depended on their favor. Birth, how life will go, death...
In addition to the higher ones, there were also lower gods, whom it would be more appropriate to call nature spirits. Among them the most mentioned are the Bird Gamayun, Bannik, Kikimora, Leshy, and so on.
This review includes only the names of gods in Rus' generally accepted at that time. Each tribe, and often nationality, in addition to the generally revered ones, also had their own tribal gods. If you set out to list them, the list will exceed a hundred names, often duplicating each other in functions, but differing in names.
Adoption of Christianity in Rus'
Representatives of the Christian church who came to Rus' at the turn of the 12th century had in their arsenal a powerful set of tools to influence the psyche and views of the masses of people, developed over centuries of practice during the formation of their church in Europe and Byzantium. This, coupled with the experience of struggle and political intrigue against the related Catholic branch, determined their successful introduction into the structure of the Russian state, and their continuously growing influence and authority.
However, paganism was not forgotten overnight. At the initial stage, many princes resisted the adoption of Christianity, which caused a series of civil strife. The pagan priests, whose most common name was the Magi, had enormous authority among the masses, since they were the guardians of the “wisdom of the people” and personified the old belief. One sorcerer, under certain conditions, could raise the support of an entire city against the ruling prince! As happened in Novgorod.
Over time, the Christian Church managed to turn the situation in its favor, instilling its values primarily among princes and the highest boyars, often simply by buying or blackmailing representatives of noble families. After the full official adoption of Christianity in Rus', the eradication of pagan traditions among the people began. It was a difficult process for the church and it cannot be said even today that it ended in complete success; throughout the process of bringing the Russian people to the Christian faith, the process became mutual.
The church eradicated the basic beliefs in pagan gods among the people, and the people modified many of the postulates of the church. Ultimately, the Russian version of Christianity appeared to the world - Orthodoxy. But pagan traditions continue to live in our time, for example, caroling is popular in the age of digital technology!.. remember the name of one of the incarnations of the Family. And the small gods of pagan Rus' migrated to folklore, Russian fairy tales familiar to all of us from childhood.
