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Slavic paganism
Slavic mythology or Slavic religion is the religious beliefs,
myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation,
which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th
century.[1] The South Slavs, who likely settled in the Balkan
Peninsula during the 6th–7th centuries AD,[2] bordering with
the Byzantine Empire to the south, came under the sphere of
influence of Eastern Christianity, beginning with the creation
of writing systems for Slavic languages (first Glagolitic, and
then Cyrillic script) in 855 by the brothers Saints Cyril and
Methodius and the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 863.
The East Slavs followed with the official adoption in 988 by
Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus'.[3]

The West Slavs' process of Christianization was more gradual

and complicated. The Moravians accepted Christianity as early
as 831, the Bohemian dukes followed in 845, Slovaks accepted
Christianity somewhere between the years 828 and 863,[4] but
the Poles accepted it much later, in 966, around the same time
as the Sorbs, and the Polabian Slavs only came under the A priest of Svantevit depicted on a
significant influence of the Catholic Church from the 12th stone from Arkona, now in the
century onwards. For the Polabian Slavs and the Sorbs, church of Altenkirchen, Rügen.
Christianisation went hand in hand with full or partial
Germanisation.[5]

The Christianisation of the Slavic peoples was, however, a slow and—in many cases—superficial
phenomenon, especially in what is today Russia. Christianisation was vigorous in western and
central parts of what is today Ukraine, since they were closer to the capital, Kyiv. Even there,
however, popular resistance led by volkhvs, pagan priests or shamans, recurred periodically for
centuries.[3]

The West Slavs of the Baltic tenaciously withstood Christianity until it was violently imposed on
them through the Northern Crusades.[5] Among Poles and East Slavs, rebellions broke out
throughout the 11th century.[1] Christian chroniclers reported that the Slavs regularly re-embraced
their original religion (relapsi sunt denuo ad paganismus).[6]

Many elements of the Slavic indigenous religion were officially incorporated into Slavic
Christianity (which manifested itself in the architecture of the Russian Church, icon painting,
etc.),[3] and, besides this, the worship of Slavic gods has persisted in unofficial folk religion until
modern times.[7] The Slavs' resistance to Christianity gave rise to a "whimsical syncretism" which
in Old Church Slavonic vocabulary was defined as dvoeverie, "double faith".[1] Since the early 20th
century, Slavic folk religion has undergone an organised reinvention and reincorporation in the
movement of Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery).

Contents
Sources
Foreign sources
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Slavic sources
Modern sources
Overview and common features
Origins and other influences
God and spirits
Cosmology, iconography, temples and rites
History
Kievan Rus' official religion and popular cults
Christianisation of the East Slavs
Vladimir's baptism, popular resistance and syncretism
Continuity of Slavic religion in Russia up to the 15th century
Sunwise Slavic religion, withershins Christianity, and Old Belief
Christianization of the West Slavs
Slavic folk religion
Modern Rodnovery
Reconstructed calendar of celebrations
Influence on Christian Art and Architecture
See also
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links

Sources

Foreign sources

One of the first written sources on the religion of the ancient Slavs is the description of the
Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (6th century), who mentioned sacrifices to the supreme
god-the thunderer of the Slavs, river spirits ("nymphs") and others:

These tribes, the Slavs and the Antes, are not ruled by one person, but since ancient
times they have lived in the people's rule (democracy), and therefore their happiness
and unhappiness in life is considered a common cause. And in all other respects, both
of these barbarian tribes have the same life and laws. They believe that one of the gods,
the creator of lightning, is the lord over all, and bulls are sacrificed to him and other
sacred rites are performed. They do not know fate and generally do not recognize that it
has any power in relation to people, and when they are about to face death, whether
they are seized by illness or in a dangerous situation in the war, they promise, if they
are saved, to immediately sacrifice to God for their soul; having escaped death, they
sacrifice what they promised, and they think that their salvation has been bought at the
price of this sacrifice. They worship rivers, and nymphs, and all sorts of other deities,
offer sacrifices to all of them and with the help of these sacrifices they also produce
divination.
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— Procopius of Caesarea. The war with the Goths. Book VII (Book III of the War
with the Goths)

Al-Masudi, an Arab historian, geographer and traveler, equates the paganism of the Slavs and rus'
with reason:

There was a decree of the capital of the Khazar khaganate, and there are seven judges
in it, two of them from Muslims, two from the Khazars, who judge according to the law
of Taura, two from the Christians there, who judge according to the law of Injil, one of
them from the Slavs, Russ and other pagans, he judges according to the law of
paganism, that is, according to the law of reason.

— Al-Masudi. Gold mines or placers of gems

Western European authors of the 11th and 12th centuries gave detailed descriptions of the
sanctuaries and cults of Redigost (Radegast, Svarozhich) in Rethra, Svyatovit (Svetovid) in Arkon
(Jaromarsburg), Triglav in Szczecin, Chernobog, the sanctuary in Volyně, etc. The identification of
a number of Eastern European monuments with Slavic sanctuaries is a matter of dispute (Peryn, a
complex near the site of the Zbruch idol).[8]

Slavic sources

The main idea of paganism and mythology of the Slavs is given primarily by historical and
documentary sources (letopises and chronicles). The Tale of Bygone Years under the year 980
contains a story about the sanctuary in Kiev, built by Vladimir Svyatoslavich, and the idols of
pagan gods installed there are mentioned:

And Vladimir began to reign alone in Kiev. And he placed idols on the hill outside the
palace: a Perun in wood with a silver head and a gold moustache, and Khors, Dazhdbog
and Stribog and Simargl and Mokosh. And they offered sacrifices and called them gods,
and they took their sons and daughters to them and sacrificed them to the devils. And
they profaned the earth with their sacrifices, and Rus’ and that hill were profaned by
blood. But God the merciful, who does not wish the death of sinners, on that hill stands
today the church of Saint Vasilij, as we will relate later.

Old East Slavic original text

И нача къняжити Володимиръ въ Кыевѣ единъ, и постави кумиры на хълму, вънѣ
двора теремьнаго: Перуна древяна, а главу его сьребряну, а усъ златъ, и Хърса,
Дажьбога и Стрибога и Сѣмарьгла и Мокошь. И жьряху имъ, наричюще я богы, и
привожаху сыны своя и дъщери, и жьряху бѣсомъ. И осквьрняху землю требами
своими; и осквьрни ся кръвьми земля Русьская и хълмъ тъ. Нъ преблагыи Богъ не
хотя съмьрти грѣшьникомъ, на томь хълмѣ нынѣ цьркы есть святаго Василия, якоже
послѣди съкажемъ.
— Primary Chronicle

The text mentions the deities Svarog, Yarilo and Veles. It is known that the idol of Veles stood in
Kiev "under the mountain", probably on the Kiev Podol, in the lower part of the city, that is, in the
trade and craft part of Kiev at the pier on the Pochain River. In the "Life of Vladimir" it is said that
this idol was overthrown during the baptism of Kievan Rus in 988: "And Veles idol ... ordered to
throw off the river in Pochaina".[9]

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Ancient Russian teachings against paganism can also serve as sources. In this genre, three of the
most famous monuments are known: The Word of St. Gregory about idols, The word of a certain
Christ-lover and the punishment of the spiritual father (about submission and obedience) and
The Walking of the Virgin in torment.[10]

Modern sources

In the absence of original mythological texts, it is possible to judge the paganism of the Slavs as a
historical stage of the general Slavic culture only by secondary data-archaeological and book-
written sources, by comparing them and reconstructing what historians Evgeny Anichkov, Dmitry
Zelenin, Lubor Niederle, Henryk Łowmiański, Aleksander Gieysztor, Stanisław Urbańczyk and
many others did.

It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that reconstruction became widespread by
comparing Slavic data with data from other Indo-European (Baltic, Iranian, German, etc.) cultural
traditions (first of all, the works of Vechaslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov are distinguished).

The richest sources for the study of Slavic paganism as a cultural model and the reconstruction of
Ancient Slavic ideas remain modern (dating back to the 19th—20th centuries) linguistic,
ethnographic and folklore evidence of Slavic traditions.[11] Many traces of slavic paganism are left
in Western European toponymy, including the names of settlements, rivers, mountains, and
villages.

Overview and common features

Twentieth-century scholars who pursued the study of ancient
Slavic religion include Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov,
Marija Gimbutas, Boris Rybakov,[13] and Roman Jakobson,
among others. Rybakov is noted for his effort to re-examine
medieval ecclesiastical texts, synthesizing his findings with
archaeological data, comparative mythology, ethnography, and
nineteenth-century folk practices. He also elaborated one of
the most coherent pictures of ancient Slavic religion in his
Paganism of the Ancient Slavs and other works.[14] Among "The Celebration of Svantovit in
earlier, nineteenth-century scholars there was Bernhard Rujana: When Gods Are at War, Art
Severin Ingemann, known for his study of Fundamentals of a is the Salvation" (Slavnost
North Slavic and Wendish mythology. Svantovítova: Když jsou bohové ve
válce, pak je umění spásou)—
Historical documents about Slavic religion include the Alphonse Mucha, 1912. Pagan-
Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kyiv around 1111, and the themed painting part of The Slav
Novgorod First Chronicle compiled in the Novgorod Republic. Epic.[note 1]
They contain detailed reports of the annihilation of the official
Slavic religion of Kyiv and Novgorod, and the subsequent
"double faith". The Primary Chronicle also contains the authentic text of Rus-Greek treatises
(dated 945 and 971) with native pre-Christian oaths. From the eleventh century onwards, various
Rus writings were produced against the survival of Slavic religion, and Slavic gods were
interpolated in the translations of foreign literary works, such as the Malalas Chronicle and the
Alexandreis.[1]

The West Slavs who dwelt in the area between the Vistula and the Elbe stubbornly resisted the
Northern Crusades, and the history of their resistance is written down in the Latin Chronicles of
three German clergymen—Thietmar of Merseburg and Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century,
and Helmold in the twelfth—, in the twelfth-century biographies of Otto of Bamberg, and in Saxo
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Grammaticus' thirteenth-century Gesta Danorum. These documents, together with minor German
documents and the Icelandic Knýtlinga saga, provide an accurate description of northwestern
Slavic religion.[1]

The religions of other Slavic populations are less documented, because writings about the theme
were produced late in time after Christianisation, such as the fifteenth-century Polish Chronicle,
and contain a lot of sheer inventions. In the times preceding Christianisation, some Greek and
Roman chroniclers, such as Procopius and Jordanes in the sixth century, sparsely documented
some Slavic concepts and practices. Slavic paganism survived, in more or less pure forms, among
the Slovenes along the Soča river up to the 1330s.[15]

Origins and other influences

The linguistic unity, and negligible dialectal differentiation, of the Slavs until the end of the first
millennium CE, and the lexical uniformity of religious vocabulary, witness a uniformity of early
Slavic religion.[15] It has been argued that the essence of early Slavdom was ethnoreligious before
being ethnonational; that is to say, belonging to the Slavs was chiefly determined by conforming to
certain beliefs and practices rather than by having a certain racial ancestry or being born in a
certain place.[16] Ivanov and Toporov identified Slavic religion as an outgrowth of a purported
common Proto-Indo-European religion, sharing strong similarities with other neighbouring belief
systems such as those of Balts, Thracians and Phrygians.[17]

Although, especially in places like Russia, the local development of the ancient Slavic religion
likely also included several influences from neighbouring Finnic peoples, which contributed to the
local ethnogenesis. Slavic (and Baltic) religion and mythology is considered more conservative and
closer to the purported original Proto-Indo-European religion—and thus precious for the latter's
understanding—than other Indo-European derived traditions, due to the fact that, throughout the
history of the Slavs, it remained a popular religion rather than being reworked and sophisticated
by intellectual elites as happened to other Indo-European derived religious cultures.[18]

The affinity with Proto-Indo-Iranian religion is evident in shared developments, including the
elimination of the term for the supreme God of Heaven, *Dyeus, and its substitution by the term
for "sky" (Slavic Nebo),[15] the shift of the Indo-European descriptor of heavenly deities (Avestan
daeva, Old Church Slavonic div; Proto-Indo-European *deiwos, "celestial", similar to Dyeus) to
the designation of evil entities, and the parallel designation of gods by the term meaning both
"wealth" and its "giver" (Avestan baga, Slavic bog).[19] Much of the religious vocabulary of the
Slavs, including vera (loosely translated as "faith", meaning "radiation of knowledge"), svet
("light"), mir ("peace", "agreement of parts", also meaning "world") and rai ("paradise"), is shared
with Iranian.[20]

According to Adrian Ivakhiv, the Indo-European element of Slavic religion may have included
what Georges Dumézil studied as the "trifunctional hypothesis", that is to say a threefold
conception of the social order, represented by the three castes of priests, warriors and farmers.
According to Gimbutas, Slavic religion represented an unmistakable overlapping of any purported
Indo-European originated themes with ancient religious themes dating back to time immemorial.
The latter were particularly hardwearing in Slavic religion, represented by the widespread
devotion to Mat Syra Zemlya, the "Damp Mother Earth". Rybakov said the continuity and gradual
complexification of Slavic religion started from devotion to life-giving forces (bereginy), ancestors
and the supreme God, Rod ("Generation" itself), and developed into the "high mythology" of the
official religion of the early Kievan Rus'.[21]

God and spirits

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As attested by Helmold (c. 1120–1177) in his Chronica Slavorum, the Slavs believed in a single
heavenly God begetting all the lesser spirits governing nature, and worshipped it by their
means.[22] According to Helmold, "obeying the duties assigned to them, [the deities] have sprung
from his [the supreme God's] blood and enjoy distinction in proportion to their nearness to the
god of the gods".[20] According to Rybakov's studies, wheel symbols such as the "thunder marks"
(gromovoi znak) and the "six-petaled rose inside a circle" (e.g. ), which are so common in
Slavic folk crafts, and which were still carved on edges and peaks of roofs in northern Russia in the
nineteenth century, were symbols of the supreme life-giver Rod.[23] Before its conceptualisation as
Rod as studied by Rybakov, this supreme God was known as Deivos (cognate with Sanskrit Deva,
Latin Deus, Old High German Ziu and Lithuanian Dievas).[22] The Slavs believed that from this
God proceeded a cosmic duality, represented by Belobog ("White God") and Chernobog ("Black
God", also named Tiarnoglofi, "Black Head/Mind"),[22] representing the root of all the heavenly-
masculine and the earthly-feminine deities, or the waxing light and waning light gods,
respectively.[24] In both categories, deities might be either Razi, "rede-givers", or Zirnitra,
"wizards".[25]

The Slavs perceived the world as enlivened by a variety of spirits, which they represented as
persons and worshipped. These spirits included those of waters (mavka and rusalka), forests
(lisovyk), fields (polyovyk), those of households (domovoy), those of illnesses, luck and human
ancestors.[26] For instance, Leshy is an important woodland spirit, believed to distribute food
assigning preys to hunters, later regarded as a god of flocks and herds, and still worshipped in this
function in early twentieth-century Russia. Many gods were regarded by kins (rod or pleme) as
their ancestors, and the idea of ancestrality was so important that Slavic religion may be
epitomised as a "manism" (i.e. worship of ancestors), though the Slavs did not keep genealogical
records.[22]

The Slavs also worshipped star-gods, including the moon (Russian: Mesyats) and the sun
(Solntse), the former regarded as male and the latter as female. The moon-god was particularly
important, regarded as the dispenser of abundance and health, worshipped through round dances,
and in some traditions considered the progenitor of humanity. The belief in the moon-god was still
very much alive in the nineteenth century, and peasants in the Ukrainian Carpathians openly
affirm that the moon is their god.[22]

Some Slavic deities are related to Baltic mythology: Perun/Perkūnas, Veles/Velnias, Rod/Dievas,
Yarilo/Saulė.[27] There was an evident continuity between the beliefs of the East Slavs, West Slavs
and South Slavs. They shared the same traditional deities, as attested, for instance, by the worship
of Zuarasiz among the West Slavs, corresponding to Svarožič among the East Slavs.[28] All the
bright male deities were regarded as the hypostases, forms or phases in the year, of the active,
masculine divine force personified by Perun ("Thunder").[29]

His name, from the Indo-European root *per or *perkw ("to strike", "splinter"), signified both the
splintering thunder and the splintered tree (especially the oak; the Latin name of this tree,
quercus, comes from the same root), regarded as symbols of the irradiation of the force. This root
also gave rise to the Vedic Parjanya, the Baltic Perkūnas, the Albanian Perëndi (now denoting
"God" and "sky"), the Germanic Fjörgynn and the Greek Keraunós ("thunderbolt", rhymic form of
*Peraunós, used as an epithet of Zeus).[29]

From this root comes the name of the Finnish deity Ukko, which has a Balto-Slavic origin.[30]
Prĕgyni or peregyni, in modern Russian folklore rendered bregynja or beregynja (from breg,
bereg, meaning "shore") and reinterpreted as female water spirits, were rather—as attested by
chronicles and highlighted by the root *per—spirits of trees and rivers related to Perun.[31]

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Slavic traditions preserved very ancient elements and intermingled with those of neighbouring
European peoples. An exemplary case are the South Slavic still-living rain rituals of the couple
Perun–Perperuna, Lord and Lady Thunder, shared with the neighbouring Albanians, Greeks and
Arumanians, corresponding to the Germanic Fjörgynn–Fjörgyn, the Lithuanian Perkūnas–
Perkūna, and finding similarities in the Vedic hymns to Parjanya.[32]

The West Slavs, especially those of the Baltic, worshipped prominently Svetovid ("Lord of Power"),
while the East Slavs worshipped prominently Perun himself, especially after Volodymyr's 970s–
980s reforms.[23] The various spirits were believed to manifest in certain places, which were
revered as numinous and holy; they included springs, rivers, groves, rounded tops of hills and flat
cliffs overlooking rivers. Calendrical rituals were attuned with the spirits, which were believed to
have periods of waxing and waning throughout the year, determining the agrarian fertility
cycle.[26]

Cosmology, iconography, temples and rites

The cosmology of ancient Slavic religion, which is preserved in

contemporary Slavic folk religion, is visualised as a three-tiered
vertical structure, or "world tree", as common in other
religions. At the top there is the heavenly plane, symbolised by
birds, the sun and the moon; the middle plane is that of earthly
humanity, symbolised by bees and men; at the bottom of the
structure there is the netherworld, symbolised by snakes and
beavers, and by the chthonic god Veles. The Zbruch Idol
(which was identified at first as a representation of
Svetovid[33]), found in western Ukraine, represents this theo-
cosmology: the three-layered effigy of the four major deities—
Perun, Dazhbog, Mokosh and Lada—is constituted by a top
level with four figures representing them, facing the four
cardinal directions; a middle level with representations of a
human ritual community (khorovod); and a bottom level with
the representation of a three-headed chthonic god, Veles, who
sustains the entire structure.[34]
The Zbruch Idol on display at the
The scholar Jiří Dynda studied the figure of Triglav (literally Krakow Archaeological Museum
the "Three-Headed One") and Svetovid, which are widely
attested in archaeological testimonies, as the respectively
three-headed and four-headed representations of the same
axis mundi, of the same supreme God.[35] Triglav itself was
connected to the symbols of the tree and the mountain, which
are other common symbols of the axis mundi, and in this
quality he was a summus deus (a sum of all things), as
recorded by Ebbo (c. 775–851).[36]

Triglav represents the vertical interconnection of the three

worlds, reflected by the three social functions studied by Slavs serving their Gods, a 19th-
Dumézil: sacerdotal, martial and economic.[37] Ebbo himself century woodcut
documented that the Triglav was seen as embodying the
connection and mediation between Heaven, Earth and the
underworld.[38] Adam of Bremen (c. 1040s–1080s) described the Triglav of Wolin as Neptunus
triplicis naturae (that is to say, "Neptune of the three natures/generations") attesting the colours
that were associated to the three worlds, also studied by Karel Jaromír Erben (1811–1870): white
for Heaven, green for Earth and black for the underworld.[37]

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It also represents the three dimensions of time, mythologically rendered in the figure of a three-
threaded rope. Triglav is Perun in the heavenly plane, Svetovid in the centre from which the
horizontal four directions unfold, and Veles the psychopomp in the underworld.[39] Svetovid is
interpreted by Dynda as the incarnation of the axis mundi in the four dimensions of space.[40]
Helmold defined Svetovid as deus deorum ("god of all gods").[41]

Besides Triglav and Svetovid, other deities were represented with many heads. This is attested by
chroniclers who wrote about West Slavs, including Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1160–1220). According
to him, Rugievit in Charenza was represented with seven faces, which converged at the top in a
single crown.[42] These three-, four- or many-headed images, wooden or carved in stone,[34] some
covered in metal,[22] which held drinking horns and were decorated with solar symbols and
horses, were kept in temples, of which numerous archaeological remains have been found.

They were built on upraised platforms, frequently on hills,[34] but also at the confluences of
rivers.[22] The biographers of Otto of Bamberg (1060/1061–1139) inform that these temples were
known as continae, "dwellings", among West Slavs, testifying that they were regarded as the
houses of the gods.[42] They were wooden buildings with an inner cell with the god's statue,
located in wider walled enclosures or fortifications; such fortifications might contain up to four
continae.[22]

Different continae were owned by different kins, and used for the ritual banquets in honour of
their own ancestor-gods. These ritual banquets are known variously, across Slavic countries, as
bratchina (from brat, "brother"), mol'ba ("entreaty", "supplication") and kanun (short religious
service) in Russia; slava ("glorification") in Serbia; sobor ("assembly") and kurban ("sacrifice") in
Bulgaria. With Christianisation, the ancestor-gods were replaced with Christian patron saints.[22]

There were also holy places with no buildings, where the deity was believed to manifest in nature
itself. Such locations were characterised by the combined presence of trees and springs, according
to the description of one such sites in Szczecin by Otto of Bamberg. A shrine of the same type in
Kobarid, contemporary Slovenia, was stamped out in a "crusade" as recently as 1331.[43]

Usually, common people were not allowed into the presence of the images of their gods, the sight
of which was a privilege of the priests. Many of these images were seen and described only in the
moment of their violent destruction at the hands of the Christian missionaries.[5] The priests
(volkhvs), who kept the temples and led rituals and festivals, enjoyed a great degree of prestige;
they received tributes and shares of military booties by the kins' chiefs.[22]

The stone idols of the northeastern Slavs in some cases looked like mushrooms, without a face,
with a clearly distinguished hat. Moreover, such idols were made by hand by turning a boulder and
giving it the shape of a mushroom. The medieval manuscript of the 11th-14th centuries "The Word
of St. Gregory, Invented in Toltsekh" contains a direct indication that the Slavs worshiped such
phallic idols. According to some researchers, such idols were dedicated to the god Rod or the god
Veles (according to local old folklore, stone mushrooms are dedicated to Veles).[44][45][46]

Due to the fact that these idols had no face, they were not destroyed. According to the beliefs of the
local population, such stone idols were healing, so they were regularly visited. On certain days,
people brought gifts to them, and in order to receive healing from an illness, they had to sit on an
idol. The stone mushroom was respected and protected. Disrespectful attitude towards this idol
was not allowed. The keepers of traditions and rituals performed around the idol were very old
women; the tradition was passed down through generations.[47][48][49]

There are also beliefs that such stone mushrooms provided fertility for the soil and people.
Therefore, in some places, the worship of these idols persisted for centuries until the end of the
20th century (and even after being transferred to a museum, elements of the rituals are still
performed). The dating of stone mushrooms is approximate; they date back to about 1000 AD.
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These stone mushroom idols are very similar to two Slavic stone idols from northeast lands:
Sheksna idol (in Novgorod museum, Novgorod region, Russia) and Sebej idol (Sebej museum,
Pskov region, Russia). These Slavic idols have a face and a phallic shape. Their characteristic
feature is a hat.[50]
[51]
[52]

An ancient Slavic stone idol was discovered on the territory of the Nikolo-Babaevsky monastery
(Nekrasovsky district) in 2020. An ancient pagan place that existed before the monastery and
churches is mentioned in the ethnographic materials of Bogdanovich. In that place, on Babayki,
the idol of the supreme heavenly god was worshiped. The discovered Babaevsky idol has a clear
shape of a large mushroom, completely carved from a boulder. It is very similar to mushroom idols
from the local cities of Ples and Myshkin. Based on morphological details, the multifaceted cult
function of this idol is assumed—fertility not only for the land and forest, but also fertility for
humans.[53]

History

Kievan Rus' official religion and popular cults

In 980 CE,[54] in Kievan Rus', led by the Great Prince Vladimir,

there was an attempt to unify the various beliefs and priestly
practices of Slavic religion in order to bind together the Slavic
peoples in the growing centralised state. Volodymyr canonised
a number of deities, to whom he erected a temple on the hills
of the capital Kyiv.[55] These deities, recorded in the Primary
Chronicle, were five: Perun, Xors Dazhbog,[56] Stribog,
Simargl and Mokosh.[57] Various other deities were
worshipped by the common people, notably Veles who had a
temple in the merchant's district of Podil of the capital
itself.[58] According to scholars, Volodymyr's project consisted
of a number of reforms that he had already started by the 970s,
and which were aimed at preserving the traditions of the kins
and making Kyiv the spiritual centre of East Slavdom.[59]

Perun was the god of thunder, law and war, symbolised by the A painting from 1900 depicting
oak and the mallet (or throwing stones), and identified with Veles
the Baltic Perkunas, the Germanic Thor and the Vedic Indra
among others; his cult was practised not so much by
commoners but mainly by the aristocracy. Veles was the god of horned livestock (Skotibog), of
wealth and of the underworld. Perun and Veles symbolised an oppositional and yet
complementary duality similar to that of the Vedic Mitra and Varuna, an eternal struggle between
heavenly and chthonic forces. Roman Jakobson himself identified Veles as the Vedic Varuna, god
of oaths and of the world order. This belief in a cosmic duality was likely the reason that led to the
exclusion of Veles from Volodymyr's official temple in Kyiv.[60] Xors Dazhbog ("Radiant Giving-
God") was the god of the life-bringing power of the sun. Stribog was identified by E. G. Kagarov as
the god of wind, storm and dissension.[57] Mokosh, the only female deity in Volodymyr's pantheon,
is interpreted as meaning the "Wet" or "Moist" by Jakobson, identifying her with the Mat Syra
Zemlya ("Damp Mother Earth") of later folk religion.[61]

According to Ivanits, written sources from the Middle Ages "leave no doubt whatsoever" that the
common Slavic peoples continued to worship their indigenous deities and hold their rituals for
centuries after Kievan Rus' official baptism into Christianity, and the lower clergy of the newly
formed Orthodox Christian church often joined the celebrations.[57] The high clergy repeatedly

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condemned, through official admonitions, the worship of Rod and the Rozhanitsy ("God and the
Goddesses", or "Generation and the generatrixes") with offerings of bread, porridge, cheese and
mead. Scholars of Russian religion define Rod as the "general power of birth and reproduction"
and the Rozhanitsy as the "mistresses of individual destiny". Kagarov identified the later
Domovoi, the god of the household and kinship ancestry, as a specific manifestation of Rod. Other
gods attested in medieval documents remain largely mysterious, for instance Lada and her sons
Lel and Polel, who are often identified by scholars with the Greek gods Leda or Leto and her twin
sons Castor and Pollux. Other figures who in medieval documents are often presented as deities,
such as Kupala and Koliada, were rather the personifications of the spirits of agrarian holidays.[61]

Christianisation of the East Slavs

Vladimir's baptism, popular resistance and syncretism

In 988, Vladimir of Kyivan Rus' rejected Slavic religion and he

and his subjects were officially baptised into the Eastern
Orthodox Church, then the state religion of the Byzantine
Empire. According to legend, Vladimir sent delegates to
foreign states to determine what was the most convincing
religion to be adopted by Kyiv.[3] Joyfulness and beauty were
the primary characteristics of pre-Christian Slavic ceremonies,
and the delegates sought something capable of matching these
qualities. They were crestfallen by the Islamic religion of Volga
Bulgaria, where they found "no joy ... but sorrow and great
stench", and by Western Christianity (then the Catholic
The Fiery Chariot of the Word—
Church) where they found "many worship services, but 19th-century Russian icon of the
nowhere ... beauty".[64] Those who visited Constantinople were Theotokos as Ognyena Maria
instead impressed by the arts and rituals of Byzantine ("Fiery Mary"), fire goddess sister of
Christianity.[3] According to the Primary Chronicle, after the Perun, and a glaring example of
choice was made Vladimir commanded that the Slavic temple Slavic religious themes in
on the Kyivan hills be destroyed and the effigies of the gods be Christianised fashion.[62] Belief in a
burned or thrown into the Dnieper. Slavic temples were mother goddess as receptacle of
destroyed throughout the lands of Kievan Rus' and Christian life, Mat Syra Zemlya ("Damp
churches were built in their places.[3] Mother Earth"), was preserved in
Russian folk religion up to the 20th
According to Ivakhiv, Christianisation was stronger in what is century, often disguised as the
today western and central Ukraine, lands close to the capital Virgin Mary of Christianity.[63] The
Kyiv. Slavic religion persisted, however, especially in fiery "six-petaled roses" that
northernmost regions of Slavic settlement, in what is today the surround the Ognyena are one of
central part of European Russia, such as the areas of the variants of the whirling symbol of
Novgorod, Suzdal and Belozersk. In the core regions of the supreme God (Rod).[23]
Christianisation themselves the common population remained
attached to the volkhvs, the priests, who periodically, over
centuries, led popular rebellions against the central power and the Christian church.
Christianisation was a very slow process among the Slavs, and the official Christian church
adopted a policy of co-opting pre-Christian elements into Slavic Christianity. Christian saints were
identified with Slavic gods—for instance, the figure of Perun was overlapped with that of Saint
Elias, Veles was identified with Saint Blasius, and Yarilo became Saint George—and Christian
festivals were set on the same dates as pagan ones.[3]

Another feature of early Slavic Christianity was the strong influence of apocryphal literature, which
became evident by the thirteenth century with the rise of Bogomilism among the South Slavs.
South Slavic Bogomilism produced a large amount of apocryphal texts and their teachings later
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penetrated into Russia, and would have influenced later Slavic folk religion. Bernshtam tells of a
"flood" of apocryphal literature in eleventh- to fifteenth-century Russia, which might not have
been controlled by the still-weak Russian Orthodox Church.[65]

Continuity of Slavic religion in Russia up to the 15th century

Some scholars have highlighted how the "conversion of Rus" took place no more than eight years
after Volodymyr's reform of Slavic religion in 980; according to them, Christianity in general did
not have "any deep influence ... in the formation of the ideology, culture and social psychology of
archaic societies" and the introduction of Christianity in Kyiv "did not bring about a radical change
in the consciousness of the society during the entire course of early Russian history". It was
portrayed as a mass and conscious conversion only by half a century later, by the scribes of the
Christian establishment.[54] According to some scholars, the replacement of Slavic temples with
Christian churches and the "baptism of Rus" has to be understood in continuity with the foregoing
chain of reforms of Slavic religion launched by Volodymyr, rather than as a breaking point.[66]

V. G. Vlasov quotes the respected scholar of Slavic religion E. V. Anichkov, who, regarding Russia's
Christianisation, said:[67]

Christianization of the countryside was the work, not of the eleventh and twelfth, but of
the fifteenth and sixteenth or even seventeenth century.

According to Vlasov the ritual of baptism and mass conversion undergone by Volodymyr in 988
was never repeated in the centuries to follow, and mastery of Christian teachings was never
accomplished on the popular level even by the start of the twentieth century. According to him, a
nominal, superficial identification with Christianity was possible with the superimposition of a
Christianised agrarian calendar ("Christian–Easter–Whitsunday") over the indigenous complex of
festivals, "Koliada–Yarilo–Kupala". The analysis of the Christianised agrarian and ritual calendar,
combined with data from popular astronomy, leads to determine that the Julian calendar
associated with the Orthodox Church was adopted by Russian peasants between the sixteenth and
seventeenth century. It was by this period that much of the Russian population became officially
part of the Orthodox Church and therefore nominally Christians.[68] This occurred as an effect of a
broader complex of phenomena which Russia underwent by the fifteenth century, that is to say
radical changes towards a centralisation of state power, which involved urbanisation,
bureaucratisation and the consolidation of serfdom of the peasantry.[69]

That the vast majority of the Russian population was not Christian back in the fifteenth century
may possibly be evidenced by archaeology: according to Vlasov, mound (kurgan) burials, which do
not reflect Christian norms, were "a universal phenomenon in Russia up to the fifteenth century",
and persisted into the 1530s.[70] Moreover, chronicles from that period, such as the Pskov
Chronicle, and archaeological data collected by N. M. Nikolsky, testify that back in the fifteenth
century there were still "no rural churches for the general use of the populace; churches existed
only at the courts of boyars and princes".[71] It was only by the sixteenth century that the Russian
Orthodox Church grew as a powerful, centralising institution taking the Catholic Church of Rome
as a model, and the distinctiveness of a Slavic folk religion became evident. The church
condemned "heresies" and tried to eradicate the "false half-pagan" folk religion of the common
people, but these measures coming from the centres of church power were largely ineffective, and
on the local level creative syntheses of folk religious rituals and holidays continued to thrive.[72]

Sunwise Slavic religion, withershins Christianity, and Old Belief

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When the incorporation of the Russian population into

Christianity became substantial in the middle of the sixteenth
century, the Russian Orthodox Church absorbed further
elements of pre-Christian and popular tradition and
underwent a transformation of its architecture, with the
adoption of the hipped roof which was traditionally associated
with pre-Christian Slavic temples. The most significant change,
however, was the adoption of the sunwise—or clockwise—
direction in Christian ritual procession.[73] Reconstructed hipped-roofed Slavic
temple at Groß Raden Museum
Christianity is characterised by withershins ritual movement,
that is to say, movement against the course of the sun. This was
also the case in Slavic Christianity before the sixteenth century. Sunwise movements are instead
characteristic of Slavic religion, evident in the khorovod, ritual circle-dance, which magically
favours the development of things. Withershins movement was employed in popular rituals, too,
though only in those occasions when it was considered worthwhile to act against the course of
nature, in order to alter the state of affairs.[74]

When Patriarch Nikon of Moscow launched his reform of the Orthodox Church in 1656, he
restored the withershins ritual movement. This was among the changes that led to a schism
(raskol) within Russian Orthodoxy, between those who accepted the reforms and the Old
Believers, who preserved instead the "ancient piety" derived from indigenous Slavic religion.[74] A
large number of Russians and ethnic minorities converted to the movement of the Old Believers, in
the broadest meaning of the term—including a variety of folk religions—pointed out by Bernshtam,
and these Old Believers were a significant part of the settlers of broader European Russia and
Siberia throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, which saw the expansion of the
Russian state in these regions. Old Believers were distinguished by their cohesion, literacy and
initiative, and constantly emerging new religious sects tended to identify themselves with the
movement. This posed a great hitch to the Russian Orthodox Church's project of thorough
Christianisation of the masses.[75] Veletskaya highlighted how the Old Believers have preserved
early Slavic pagan ideas and practices such as the veneration of fire as a channel to the divine
world, the symbolism of the colour red, the search for a "glorious death", and more in general the
holistic vision of a divine cosmos.[76]

Christianization of the West Slavs

In the opinion of Norman Davies,[77] the Christianization of Poland through the Czech–Polish
alliance represented a conscious choice on the part of Polish rulers to ally themselves with the
Czech state rather than the German one. The Moravian cultural influence played a significant role
in the spread of Christianity onto the Polish lands and the subsequent adoption of that religion.
Christianity arrived around the late 9th century, most likely around the time when the Vistulan
tribe encountered the Christian rite in dealings with their neighbours, the Great Moravia
(Bohemian) state. The "Baptism of Poland" refers to the ceremony when the first ruler of the
Polish state, Mieszko I and much of his court, converted to Christianity on the Holy Saturday of 14
April 966.[78]

In the eleventh century, Slavic pagan culture was "still in full working order" among the West
Slavs. Christianity faced popular opposition, including an uprising in the 1030s (particularly
intense in the years of 1035–1037).[79] By the twelfth century, however, under the pressure of
Germanisation, Catholicism was forcefully imposed through the Northern Crusades, and temples
and images of Slavic religion were violently destroyed. West Slavic populations held out vigorously
against Christianisation.[5] One of the most famous instances of popular resistance occurred at the
temple-stronghold of Svetovid at Cape Arkona, in Rugia.[3] The temple at Arkona had a squared

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groundplan, with an inner hall sustained by four pillars which contained Svetovid's statue.[80] The
latter had four heads, shown beardless and cleanshaven after the Rugian fashion. In its right hand
the statue held a horn of precious metal, which was used for divination during the yearly great
festival of the god.[81] In 1168, Arkona surrendered to the Danish troops of King Valdemar I, and
the bishop Absalon led the destruction of the temple of Svetovid.[5]

Slavic folk religion

Ethnography in late-nineteenth-century Ukraine documented

a "thorough synthesis of pagan and Christian elements" in
Slavic folk religion, a system often called "double belief"
(Russian: dvoeverie, Ukrainian: dvovirya).[26] According to
Bernshtam, dvoeverie is still used to this day in scholarly
works to define Slavic folk religion, which is seen by certain
scholars as having preserved much of pre-Christian Slavic
religion, "poorly and transparently" covered by a Christianity Burning the straw effigy of
that may be easily "stripped away" to reveal more or less "pure" Marzanna, on Maslenitsa holiday, in
patterns of the original faith.[82] Since the collapse of the Belgorod
Soviet Union there has been a new wave of scholarly debate on
the subjects of Slavic folk religion and dvoeverie. A. E. Musin,
an academic and deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, published an article about the "problem
of double belief" as recently as 1991. In this article he divides scholars between those who say that
Russian Orthodoxy adapted to entrenched indigenous faith, continuing the Soviet idea of an
"undefeated paganism", and those who say that Russian Orthodoxy is an out-and-out syncretic
religion.[83] Bernshtam challenges dualistic notions of dvoeverie and proposes interpreting
broader Slavic religiosity as a mnogoverie ("multifaith") continuum, in which a higher layer of
Orthodox Christian officialdom is alternated with a variety of "Old Beliefs" among the various
strata of the population.[84]

According to Ivanits, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Slavic folk religion's central concern was
fertility, propitiated with rites celebrating death and resurrection. Scholars of Slavic religion who
focused on nineteenth-century folk religion were often led to mistakes such as the interpretation of
Rod and Rozhanitsy as figures of a merely ancestral cult; however, in medieval documents Rod is
equated with the ancient Egyptian god Osiris, representing a broader concept of natural
generativity.[85] Belief in the holiness of Mat Syra Zemlya ("Damp Mother Earth") is another
feature that has persisted into modern Slavic folk religion; up to the twentieth century, Russian
peasants practiced a variety of rituals devoted to her and confessed their sins to her in the absence
of a priest. Ivanits also reports that in the region of Volodymyr old people practiced a ritual asking
Earth's forgiveness before their death. A number of scholars attributed the Russians' particular
devotion to the Theotokos, the "Mother of God", to this still powerful pre-Christian substratum of
devotion to a great mother goddess.[85]

Ivanits attributes the tenacity of synthetic Slavic folk religion to an exceptionality of Slavs and of
Russia in particular, compared to other European countries; "the Russian case is extreme", she
says, because Russia—especially the vastness of rural Russia—neither lived the intellectual
upheavals of the Renaissance, nor the Reformation, nor the Age of Enlightenment, which severely
weakened folk spirituality in the rest of Europe.[86]

Slavic folk religious festivals and rites reflect the times of the ancient pagan calendar. For instance,
the Christmas period is marked by the rites of Koliada, characterised by the element of fire,
processions and ritual drama, offerings of food and drink to the ancestors. Spring and summer
rites are characterised by fire- and water-related imagery spinning around the figures of the gods
Yarilo, Kupala and Marzanna. The switching of seasonal spirits is celebrated through the

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interaction of effigies of these spirits and the elements which symbolise the coming season, such as
by burning, drowning or setting the effigies onto water, and the "rolling of burning wheels of straw
down into rivers".[26]

Modern Rodnovery

Since the early twentieth century there has been a reinvention and reinstitutionalisation of "Slavic
religion" in the so-called movement of "Rodnovery", literally "Slavic Native Faith". The movement
draws from ancient Slavic folk religion, often combining it with philosophical underpinnings taken
from other religions, mainly Hinduism.[87]: 26  Some Rodnover groups focus almost exclusively on
folk religions and the worship of gods at the right times of the year, while others have developed a
scriptural core, represented by writings purported to be centuries-old documents such as the Book
of Veles; writings which elaborate powerful national mythologemes such as the Maha Vira of
Sylenkoism;[88] and esoteric writings such as the Slavo-Aryan Vedas of Ynglism.[87]: 50 

Reconstructed calendar of celebrations

Linda J. Ivanits reconstructed a basic calendar of the celebrations of the most important Slavic
gods among East Slavs, based on Boris Rybakov's studies on ancient agricultural calendars,
especially a fourth-century one from an area around Kyiv.[23]

Date (Julian or Deity

Festival Overlapped Christian festival or figure
Gregorian) celebrated
Rod – first half

Yuletide
Winter solstice Veles – Christmas, Baptism of the Lord, Epiphany
(Koliada)
second half
Komoeditsa Spring equinox Veles Shrovetide
Day of Young
May 2 — Saints Boris and Gleb
Shoots
Semik June 4 Yarilo Green week
Rusalnaya
June 17–23 Simargl Trinity Sunday
Week
Kupala Night /
June 24 — Saint John the Baptist
Kupalo
Festival of
July 20 Rod—Perun Saint Elijah
Perun
Harvest July 24 / Rodzanica— Feast of the Transfiguration (August 6) / Birthday of the
festivals September 9 Rodzanicy Mother of God (September 8)
Festival of
October 28 Mokosh Saint Paraskeva's Friday
Mokosh

Influence on Christian Art and Architecture

The Old Russian architecture of churches originates from the pre-Christian Slavic "zodching"
(Russian: Зодчество - construction). This pagan style had a great influence on the entire
architecture of ancient Russia, including the structure and decoration of churches and the art of
icon painting.

On this occasion, the researcher Boris Grekov wrote:

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Neither in Byzantium nor in the West can

you find temples with a large number of
domes. This is a purely old Russian
phenomenon, a legacy of wooden
architecture.

— Boris Grekov[89]

The peculiarity of ancient Russian architecture was also

manifested in the appearance of the domes themselves,
the most famous of which is the onion dome.[89]

The historian Alexander Zamaleev suggests that the

orientation of ancient Russian architects on pagan
foundations is explained primarily by the difference in
building materials: in Byzantium, the construction of
temples was carried out from stone and marble, while in
ancient Russia wooden architecture prevailed.[90] This
choice of material also led to the emergence of many
architectural trends, including the so-called "tent
Vasily Vereshchagin. "Interior view of the
architecture". The earliest wooden churches in shape
wooden church of Peter and Paul in
and plan were a square or oblong quadrangle with a Puchug". 1894
tower-shaped dome planted on it, similar to those that
were placed in ancient Russian fortresses. Above the
dome, under the cross, another chapter was being built,
resembling an onion.[91]

Outside and inside the temples were decorated with

various carvings, often in the traditions of the pagan
style. Later, this tradition was transferred to the stone
church architecture.[91]

A distinctive feature of the Old Russian architectural

thinking was the attraction to high-rise composition.
This was manifested not only in the creation of tower-
Henry Charles Brewer. "Assumption
like churches (moreover, the "polydoming" and
Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin"
pyramidal composition, which was absent in the
Byzantine culture, was highly appreciated), but also in
the choice of a high place for religious buildings.[90]

Most often, the vaults in the Old Russian churches are represented in the form of "kokoshniks"
(semicircular vaults with a protruding sharp middle) and "zakomara" (semicircular protruding end
of the outer section of the wall).

Meanwhile, Christianity had an impact on the Old Russian funeral rites: corpse-burning was
replaced with burial. However, among the common population, there is a memory of triangular
mounds piled up over the burned body of the deceased. Later, this custom developed into the
construction of a "roof" over the cross, the so-called "golubets".

This style gained immense popularity in the Russian Empire, thereby reviving in the form of Neo-
Russian architecture.[92][93]

See also

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Ancestor worship
Proto-Indo-European religion
Proto-Indo-Iranian religion
Historical Vedic religion
Finnish paganism
Zagovory
Rodnovery
Outline of Slavic history and culture

Notes
1. Anna Dvořák, in the upper right section of The Celebration of Svantovit, identifies a group of
priests. The figure of a priest with his arms stretched out prays for the future of the Slavs, both
in times of peace (represented by the young man to his left) and in times of war (the man with
a sword to the priest's right).[12]

References

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2. Fine 1991, pp. 26–41.
3. Ivakhiv 2005, p. 214.
4. "Saints Cyril and Methodius Patrons of Europe. The Earliest Evidence of Christianity in
Slovakia" (https://www.snm.sk/?current-exhibitions-4&clanok=saints-cyril-and-methodius-patro
ns-of-europe-the-earliest-evidence-of-christianity-in-slovakia).
5. Pettazzoni 1967, p. 154.
6. Radovanovič, Bojana (2013). "The Typology of Slavic Settlements in Central Europe in the
Middle Ages". In Rudić, Srđan (ed.). The World of the Slavs: Studies of the East, West and
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Further reading
Gimbutas, Marija (1971). The Slavs. New York: Preager Publishers.
Ingemann, B. S. (1824). Grundtræk til En Nord-Slavisk og Vendisk Gudelære. Copenhagen.
Rybakov, Boris (1981). Iazychestvo drevnykh slavian [Paganism of the Ancient Slavs].
Moscow.
Rybakov, Boris (1987). Iazychestvo drevnei Rusi [Paganism of Ancient Rus]. Moscow.
Patrice Lajoye (ed.), New researches on the religion and mythology of the Pagan Slavs,
Lisieux, Lingva, 2019

External links
Media related to Slavic folk religion at Wikimedia Commons
Studia Mythologica Slavica (http://sms.zrc-sazu.si/), journal of the Institute of Slovenian
Ethnology.
(in Slovak) a book about old Slavic mythology - HOSTINSKÝ, Peter Záboj. Stará vieronauka
slovenská : Vek 1:kniha 1 (http://digitalna.kniznica.info/s/sXWaR3lJkG). [1. vyd.] Pešť:
Minerva, 1871. 122 p. - available online at ULB's Digital Library

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