Bible and pagan beliefs of ancient Russia. The emergence of paganism in Russia

I. Introduction

The word "culture" comes from the word "cult" - faith, customs and traditions of ancestors. Anyone who forgets this has no right to be considered a cultured person.

Before Christianity and other monotheistic religions, all nations were pagans. The culture of earthlings dates back millennia.

Now not a word is spoken about paganism in schools. Not only students, but also teachers have no idea about paganism. Meanwhile, the school curriculum should begin with a fairy tale, song, myths of their ancestors. Myths are the primary layer of the cultural life of mankind; religion, science, and art draw their origin from them.

Slavic paganism developed along different channels: some tribes believed in the forces of space and nature; others - in Rod and Rozhanits, others - in the souls of dead ancestors and spirits (inspired forces); the fourth - in totem animals - ancestors, etc. Some buried (kept) their dead ancestors in the ground, believing that they then help the living from the Other World, left them something to eat. Others burned the dead in boats (boats), sending their souls on a heavenly voyage, believing that if the body is burned, the soul will quickly rise to heaven and there each will perish in its own star (hence - to perish).

According to the ideas of the ancient Slavs, the highest gods lived in the sky, the spirits of nature lived on the earth, and evil demons lived underground. Probably, such a structure did not appear immediately. In the beginning there was a cult of the spirits of nature, the spirits of the patrons of man, the spirits of ancestors. Then the images of the gods were formed, the list of which was gradually replenished. Man improved, and spirits and gods became more and more humanized.

II. Slavic pagan world

Today it is possible to give only a general idea of ​​the Slavic pagan world. Moreover, if individual gods can be described in more or less detail, then only names have been preserved from others.

The most ancient non-personalized gods of the Slavs are Rod and Rozhanitsy. The genus is sometimes identified with the phallus, sometimes with grain (including solar and rain grain, fertilizing the earth). Women in labor are the female giving birth, giving life to all living things: man, flora and fauna. Later, Rod and Rozhanitsy began to perform more functions, unified into supreme gods and personified in different tribes of the Slavs - they received proper names: Yarovit, Svetovid, Rigevit, Makosh, Golden Baba, Didiliya, Zizya, etc.

The ancient Slavic ones include the worship of ghouls and coastlines.

1. Beregini and spirits

Beregini(like the Greek penates) kept the well-being of different places and types of nature, as well as the house. There were many house spirits: brownie, kutny god, grandfather, ergot and hurry (spirits that contributed to human affairs), drowsiness (home peaceful deity of sleep), bayunok (storyteller, night storyteller, lullaby songwriter), laziness, otet (extreme laziness) , okoyoms, prosecutors, prokudy (rogues, non-rumors, pranksters), bannik (bath spirit), evil spirits, demons, devils, shishigs (devils with hair sticking out a bump), kikimora or shishimora (devil with hair sticking out a bump, deity of restless dreams and night phenomena). The Orthodox "devil" means the damned, who has crossed the line, the border.

There were many beregins; they protected people everywhere: at home, in the forest, in the field, on the water, protected crops, stockyards, children, sang lullabies to them, told fairy tales (tales), evoked dreams. Later they received some proper names, some proper group names, for example, own Did, Baba - progenitors; group - mermaids, goblin, etc.

Here is some of them:

grandfather (did)- progenitor, ancestor For those who believed that they were descended from Perun (Olgovichi and others), this is also a synonym for Perun. Grandfather is the guardian of the family, and, above all, children, of course. The senior man, a representative of the tribal eldership, who pacifies the passions within the clan, keeps the basic principles of the morality of the clan, strictly following their implementation. The forest deity was also called grandfather - the keeper of the Perunov treasure (gold, silver, i.e. Lightning, thunderstorms, silver rain). Grandfather prayed for guidance, the discovery of the treasure. According to legend, where the light shines, there is this treasure (rain with a thunderstorm), which is vital and important for people.

Woman. The most ancient of them is Baba Yaga.

What does Yaga mean? Why is she so scary? And even more so, no one believes that the terrible Baba Yaga is originally a caring coastline.

The word "Yaga" coarsened from "Yashka". Yasha in Slavic songs was called foot-and-mouth disease - once living on earth and the disappeared progenitor of all living things; hence our more understandable - ancestor. Baba Yaga was originally a progenitor, a very ancient positive deity of the Slavic pantheon, the keeper of the clan and traditions, children and the near-home (often forest) space. During the period of Christianity, all pagan gods and deities, spirits, including those who protected people (shorelines), were given evil, demonic features, ugliness of appearance and character, evil intentions. So the pagan strict progenitor was turned into an evil demon, which is used to scare our little children. In different Slavic tribes, there were later other progenitors who received proper names: Golden Baba, Golden Mother, Makosh, etc.

There are especially many coastlines (they were also later given evil features) among the wood spirits: a forester, a woodsman, a leshak, a wild man, Mikola (Nikola) Duplyansky, a companion, a boletus, crafty (bent and twisted, like a bow, and the same internally, which is the main thing) , grandfather, grandfather; as well as demons (Slavic “demon” literally means “without”, and then any positive concept could follow, for example, a person without conscience, God, concept (knowledge), goodness, justice, honor, mind, etc.) devils ; shishigi; mavki forest; ghouls; anchutki (a cross between a devil and a duck); werewolves; werewolves (dlaka - skin); bats; miracle Yudo; forest king; sudichki and hartsuks (small spirits, assistants to Perun); famously one-eyed; bird fear-Rah - this is an incomplete list of forest dwellers who were the embodiment of the forest as a space hostile to man.

Sometimes the goblin did not differ from people, but more often the owner of the forest seemed to be dressed in an animal skin (dlaka); sometimes it was with animal attributes: horns, hooves, etc.

In winter, the usual goblin in the forest was forced out by Perun's helpers, who were even more strict with a person - Kalinniks (from the word "fire"): Morozko, Treskunets, Karachun. Thus, a person, leaving the house in the forest, field, tuned in to a constant struggle with unforeseen circumstances and merciless elements; on the other hand, he could always count on the unexpected help of the forest deity, the forest owner, so he tried to please him; do not harm in the forest, do not beat animals unnecessarily, do not break trees and bushes in vain, do not litter the forest, do not even shout loudly, do not disturb the peace and quiet of nature.

The fact that from the Slavic kikimora (shishimora) - the deities of sleep and night ghosts tried to make an evil spirit, is evidenced by the second part of the word - “mora”. Mora (Mor), Mara is the goddess of death. But still, kikimora is not death. If she gets angry and plays pranks, for example, disturbs babies at night, confuses yarn left for the night, etc. - does not mean that someone will die as a result of her evil tricks. Kikimora is a weak, as it were, mirror image of only the fear of death, or even just fear.

Christianity managed to turn into its opposite and mermaid- the oldest type of coastline that lived in the waters. She was always depicted with a female face and breasts, a fish body and tail. The very word "shore" comes from the concept - to protect, to help the wandering, sailing, in distress to get to the shore. This was done by the Slavs mermaids. However, during the period of criticism and denial of paganism, the idea was gradually introduced that mermaids were drowned women and dead unbaptized children. They became afraid. It was believed that they are more dangerous for people in the Russian week (June 19 - 24), before Ivan Kupala, especially on Thursday (Perun's Day). During the Russian week, they sang mermaid songs, hung yarn, threads, towels on trees and bushes - symbolic clothes for mermaids; either to appease them, or to pity ...

The ancient Semargl also ascended to the shores - a sacred winged dog that guarded seeds and crops. Semargl is, as it were, the personification of armed (warlike) good. Later, Semargl began to be called Pereplut, perhaps because he was more associated with the protection of plant roots (Pluto - greek god underworld). The cult of Pereblut celebrated the Russian week. And the seeds and crops began to protect Yadrey and Obilukh. Mermaids brought news of rain.

Bereginami were the same bird with a woman's face: the sweet-sounding Sirin, the Phoenix bird reborn from the ashes, Stratim - the mother of all birds, the oldest in the big one, the Firebird, swan girls (swans), Nail-bird, etc.

mythical half-animal, half-human also called chimeric or chimeras. The purpose of many coastlines is now lost. For example, the dog name Polkan, many people think that in ancient times there was such a winged dog (confusing it with Semargl), while polkan (half-horse) is literally a half-horse. The half-horse guarded the solar horses of Svetovid, the horses of the sun gods or the gods of thunder.

Among the half-horses are Russian Little Humpbacked Horse, Sivka Burka, etc. By appearance they are half or much smaller than the heroic horses of God, they are nondescript, sometimes even ugly (hump, long ears, etc.). In a metaphorical sense, it is the half-horses-half-people who understand the affairs of people (gods and demons), speak human language, distinguish between good and evil, and are active in affirming good.

There is another extraordinary deity: Chur- the deity of the borders, one of the oldest deities of the coastline. Derived from "shur". Ancestors (ancestors) of any kind. Chur is connected with the world. He consecrates and protects the right to property (cf. “Chur-mine”), divides everything fairly: “Chur-in half!”, “Chur-together!”.

The word “chur” is associated with “damn”, “outline”, “outline”. Proto-Slavic "devil" - cursed, possibly violating boundaries, boundary, geographical, and then - inevitably, moral; replacing good with evil.

2. Pagan gods

Many references to solar space have come down to us. pagan gods.

Svarog- the god of the sky (Svarga - the sky), hence our expression "svara", "cook" - swear, scold, be like the sky in bad weather. Son of Svarog - Dazhdbog

Associated with Svarog Stribog - the god of air currents and elements. It was he who obeyed the winds. The proper names of some of them have been lost, perhaps one of them was called Wind, the other Hurricane, etc. But the names of the two winds have come down to us. This is Weather (Dogoda) - a light, pleasant westerly breeze. It is no coincidence that all the rest of the state of the atmosphere, except for the one named, is called bad weather. Posvist (Pozvist or Pokhvist) is the elder (or lord) wind living in the north. Depicted in a huge fluttering cloak.

Some believe that the sun god of the ancient Slavs was Yarilo, others - Dazhdbog, others call Svetovid. However, the Slavs had their own sun god. Name to him. It is best known among the southeastern Slavs, where, of course, there is a lot of sun.

From the ancient roots "horo" and "kolo", meaning a circle, solar sign sun, the words “round dance”, “mansions” (circular building of the yard), “wheel” are formed.

Hors is dedicated to two very large Slavic pagan holidays in the year - the days of the summer and winter solstices in June (when a cart wheel was rolled down from the mountain to the river - a solar sign of the sun, symbolizing the sun's rollback for the winter) and December (when they honored Kolyada, Yarila and so on. ).

Kolyada- a diminutive of "kolo", the sun-baby (it seemed to be a boy or a girl, because for a small age of a child, gender still does not play any role; the sun itself is of a middle gender). This deity arose from the winter solstice, from the poetic idea of ​​the birth of the young sun, that is, the sun of the next year (This ancient idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe annual baby has not died to this day. It has been transferred to the concept of "new year". On postcards and in New Year's design of festivities it is no coincidence that artists depict the new year in the form of a boy flying in space).

Kolyada was celebrated during winter Christmas time from December 25 (Novel, Christmas Eve) to January 6 (Veles Day). This time coincides with severe frosts (cf. Mora - death), blizzards (cf. Viy) and the most violent abysses of unclean (in the Christian view) spirits and evil witches who hide the moon and the stars. Everything is covered with a frosty veil and seems dead. However, winter Christmas time is the most cheerful revelry of Slavic festivities. The mummers walked around the yards, sang carols - songs glorifying Kolyada, who gives blessings to everyone. They also glorified the well-being of the home and family.

On the nights of winter Christmas time, fortune-telling took place for the future harvest, for offspring, and most of all - for marriage unions. There are countless ways to guess. This custom comes from the desire to communicate with the ancient Slavic goddess, who was represented as a beautiful spinning girl spinning the thread of fate, the thread of life - Srecha (Meetings) - in order to find out her fate. For different tribes, the synonyms “court”, “rock”, “share”, “fate”, “lot”, “kosh”, “verdict”, “decision”, “choice” have the same meaning.

Srecha- goddess of the night No one saw how she was spinning, so fortune-telling took place at night. Most often they guessed at the betrothed (cf. The word “bride” literally means “unknown”). It is assumed that the duties of the goddess of fate among other East Slavic tribes were performed by Makosh who patronized household chores.

If during the winter holidays, fortune-telling took place at night, then during the days - ladins - conspiracies of brides, and then weddings.

The Slavic holiday Kupalo is associated with the summer solstice. The day of the summer solstice is the most important holiday of the Slavs, the time of the highest development of the creative forces of nature.

On the night of June 24, there was a custom not to sleep: to guard the meeting of the month with the sun, in order to see how "the sun is shining." The Slavs went to the ritual hills or glades near the rivers, burned fires, sang, danced round dances, streams. Jumping over bonfires was both a test of dexterity and fate: a high jump symbolized good luck in plans. With jokes, feigned cries and obscene songs, the straw dolls of Yarila, Kupala, Kostrubonka or Kostroma were burned (fire - woody parts of flax, hemp).

At dawn, all those who participated in the holiday bathed in order to remove evil infirmities and illnesses from themselves.

On the Kupala night, according to legend, all sorts of miracles happened: rare mysterious herbs bloomed - gap-grass, fern, etc .; unseen treasures were discovered. Evil spirits - witches and sorcerers - also indulged in all sorts of revelry, hid the stars, the month and so on.

From the merger of the name of the pagan Slavic holiday of Kupala and the Christian Ivanov's day (meaning John the Baptist), a new name for the holiday appeared - Ivan Kupala.

If Khors was the god of the sun, then Svetovid, Dazhdbog, Rugevit, Porevit, Yarovit, Belbog carried in themselves both the masculine tribal principle, and the solar, cosmic one. These gods later Slavic paganism- the supreme (tribal) gods of different tribes, so their functions have a lot in common. Dazhdbog- one of the most famous gods of the East Slavic tribes. This is a giving god, a giver of earthly blessings, as well as a god protecting his family. He gave man everything that is important (by cosmic standards): the sun, heat, light, movement (of nature or calendar - the change of day and night, seasons, years, etc.). Probably, Dazhdbog was more than the god of the sun, although he was very close to this, he denoted what we call "the whole wide world."

Belbog- the keeper (conservative) and the giver of goodness, good luck, justice, happiness, all the best. An ancient sculptor made a statue of Belbog with a piece of iron in his right hand (hence - justice). Since ancient times, the Slavs have known a similar (trial by iron) method of restoring justice. A person suspected of some misconduct was given a red-hot piece of iron in his right hand, ordered to walk ten steps with him; the one whose hand remained intact was recognized as right. The concept of "branded with iron" from ancient times was equivalent to "branded with shame." From here we learn that the supreme Slavic gods carried another function - the Supreme Judge, Conscience, the Zealot of Justice, as well as the punishing god, protecting the family from moral decline.

Svetovid(Svyatovid) - the god of war, the sun, victory among the Western Slavs, was depicted as four-headed. Holidays in his honor began at the end of the harvest, in August. The Slavs brought fruits collected from fields, orchards and orchards as a gift to God. The priest filled Svetovid's horn with young wine, symbolizing the fullness of the next year's harvest. A lot of young animals were sacrificed to Svetovid, which were eaten right there during the feast.

Rugevit- the supreme god of one of the Slavic tribes. Rugevit had seven faces, seven swords with scabbards hung from his belt, and he held one sword in his right hand. Rugevit stood guard over the life of his tribe.

Porevit- one of the tribal supreme gods, more ancient. Pora (spore) is nothing but a seed, and vita is life. That is, this is the god of the male seed, the giver of life and its joy, love, just like the East Slavic Yarovit and the already named Svetovid, Belbog, Dazhdbog, Rugevit.

Something close to all these gods Perun, thunderer, god of the Western Slavs. Perun had a huge retinue of relatives and assistants: Thunder, Lightning, Hail, Rain, mermaids and water, winds, of which there are four, like the four cardinal points. Hence the day of Perun is Thursday (cf. “after rain on Thursday”, “ Maundy Thursday”), sometimes there are seven, ten, twelve or just a lot of winds.

Bogatyrs, oxen serve Perun and other gods, personifying the forces of nature. If they roam, then stones are turned out from the mountains, trees are felled, rivers are dammed up with rubble. There are many such heroes of different strengths in Slavic mythology: Gorynya, Verni-gora, Valigora, Vertigor, Dubynya, Duboder, Vertodub, Vyrvidub, Elinya (spruce), Lesinya (forest), Duginya (arc oppression), Bor, Verni-voda, Zapri - water, Potok-bogatyr, Usynya, Medvedko, Nightingale the robber (hurricane wind), Force-tsarevich, Ivan Popyalov (Popel), Svyatogor, Water, etc.

Forests and rivers were dedicated to Perun, which were considered sacred, for example, the Bug, the Volkhov.

Associated with Perun and snakes. There were several meanings and purposes for snakes (as symbols).

There are two holidays in the calendar of the Slavs, during which snakes are remembered (more often these are harmless snakes), March 25 is the time when cattle are driven out to St. George's dew and snakes crawl out of the ground, the earth becomes warm, agricultural work can begin. September 14 - snakes leave, the agricultural cycle basically ends. Thus, these animals, as it were, symbolized the cyclical nature of rural field work, they were a kind of natural climatic clock. It was believed that they also help to beg for rain.

Images of snakes - snakes - adorned ancient vessels with water. The snakes from the Perunov retinue symbolized the clouds of heaven, thunderstorms, the powerful revelry of the elements. These snakes are multi-headed. You cut off one head - the other grows and shoots fiery tongues (lightning). Serpent-Gorynych - the son of a mountain - heavenly (clouds). These snakes kidnap beauties (the moon, stars and even the sun). The snake can quickly turn into a boy or girl. This is due to the rejuvenation of nature after the rain, after each winter.

Snakes are the keepers of countless treasures, healing herbs, living and dead water. Hence the snake-doctors and symbols of healing.

Snakes from the retinue of the gods of the underworld - Viy, Death, Mary, Chernobog, Kashchei, etc. Guard the underworld. A variant of the snake - the owner of the underworld - Lizard, less often - Fish. The lizard is often found in folk songs of archaic times, sometimes, having lost the ancient meaning of symbolism, it is called Yasha.

Many tribes, especially in hunting, forest regions, believed that their ancestor was a mighty gigantic beast. For example, bear, deer, foot-and-mouth disease, etc. The cult of Veles is associated with such ideas. The ancients believed that the family is descended from a god, who is shown only in the form of a beast, and then again goes to the heavenly chambers (the constellation Ursa Major, etc.).

Veles- one of the oldest East Slavic gods. At first he patronized hunters. Due to the taboo on the deified beast, it was called “hairy”, “hair”, “veles”. It also denoted the spirit of a killed animal, hunting prey. "Vel" is the root of words meaning "dead". To die, to repose means to be attached in spirit, soul to the heavenly ancestors, whose soul flies to heaven, but the body remains on earth. There was a custom to leave on a harvested field “I harvest ears of hair to Hair on a beard”, that is, the Slavs believed that the ancestors resting in the ground also help its fertility. Thus, the cult of the cattle god Veles was somehow associated with the ancestors, with the harvest, with the well-being of the family. Herbs, flowers, bushes, trees were called "hair of the earth."

Since ancient times, cattle has been considered the main wealth of the tribe, family. Therefore, the cattle god Veles was also the god of wealth. The root "volo" and "vlo" became an integral part of the word "volodet" (to own).

The cult of Veles goes back to the cult of Rod and Rozhanitsy. Therefore, together with Yarila, the Slavs paid tribute to the voluptuous cattle gods Tur and Veles on the holiday of Semik, on the oil week and on the winter Christmas holidays, sacrificing round dances, singing, kisses through a wreath of fresh flowers and greenery, all kinds of loving actions.

The concept is also connected with the cult of Veles. Magi, since the root of this word also comes from "hairy", "hairy". Magi during the performance of ritual dances, spells, rituals in ancient times dressed in the skin (dlaka) of a bear or other animal. Magi are a kind of scientists, sages of antiquity, who know their culture, in any case, better than many.

Very revered among the Slavs were female goddesses, dating back to the ancient cult of Rozhanitsy. The most ancient is the goddess of the Western Slavs Triglav(Trigla). She was depicted with three faces, her idols always stood in the open air - on the mountains, hillocks, by the roads. She was identified with the goddess of the Earth.

Makosh- one of the main goddesses of the Eastern Slavs. Her name is made up of two parts: "ma" - mother, and "kosh" - purse, basket, koshara. Makosh is the mother of filled cats, the mother of a good harvest. This is not the goddess of fertility, but the goddess of the results of the agricultural year, the goddess of the harvest, the giver of blessings.

The volume of the harvest with equal labor costs each year is determined by lot, fate, share, a lucky break. Therefore, Makosh was also revered as the goddess of fate. In Russian Orthodoxy, Makosh reincarnated as Praskeva Friday.

Makosh patronized marriage and family happiness.

The Slavs were especially fond of fret- the goddess of love, beauty, charm. With the onset of spring, when nature itself enters into an alliance with Yarila, Ladin's holidays also came. These days they played burners. Burn - love. Love has often been compared to red, fire, heat, fire.

Many words of marital meaning, union and peace are associated with the root “lad”. Lad - conjugal consent based on love; get along - live lovingly; get along - marry; frets - engagement; got along - matchmaker; ladniki - an agreement on dowry; Ladkanya - a wedding song; fine - good, beautiful. And the most common - fret, so they called loved ones.

Her child is associated with Lada, whose name is found in female and male incarnations: Lel(Lelya, Lelio) or Lyalya (Lelia). Lel is a child of Lada, he induces nature to fertilization, and people to marriage unions.

Paulel- the second son of Lada, the god of marriage. He was depicted in a white simple everyday shirt and a wreath of thorns, he gave the same wreath to his wife. He blessed people for everyday life, a family path full of thorns.

Also associated with Lada Znich- fire, heat, ardor, the flame of love, the sacred ardor of love (cf. on the back).

3. Gods of death and the underworld

The gods of the sun, life and love, the earthly kingdom were opposed to the gods of death and the underworld ... Among them - Chernobog , the ruler of the underworld, the representative of darkness. The negative concepts of “black soul” (a person who died for nobility), “rainy day” (day of disaster) are associated with it.

One of the main servants of Chernobog was Viy(Niy). He was considered the judge of the dead. The Slavs could never come to terms with the fact that those who lived lawlessly, not according to conscience, deceiving others, and unfairly used the benefits that did not belong to them, were not punished. They sincerely believed that they would take revenge, that someone else's grief would be cast off, at least not in this one - but in the next world. Like many peoples, the Slavs believed that the place of execution for the lawless was inside the earth. Viy is also associated with the seasonal death of nature during winter. This god was considered the sender of nightmares, visions and ghosts, especially for those who have a guilty conscience.

Associated with the seasonal death of nature during winter Kashchei- deity of the underworld. It symbolizes ossification, numbness from frost in the winter season of all nature. Kashchei is not a real god of death, his power is short-lived.

The real goddess of death was Mara(Mor). Hence, probably, the words “die”, “death”, “die”, “die out”, “dead”. The Slavs also had touching images of female deities of mortal sorrow. karny(cf. okarnat, punishment befell) and jelly ; KruchinyandZhurba(in other tribes) - embodying boundless compassion. It was believed that the mere mention of their names (regret, pity) relieves souls and can save them from many disasters in the future. It is no coincidence that there are so many cries and lamentations in Slavic folklore. The root "three" is associated with the denial of an unfavorable sign - "odd", as a symbol of unhappiness, which is why it is often found in spells.

III. Conclusion

Fusion of paganism and Christianity

Christianity has ruled our land for a thousand years. If it had come to bare ground, it would not have taken root so firmly. It lay down on the prepared spiritual soil, its name is faith in God. Paganism and Christianity, despite the fact that you can find in them the most opposite positions in relation to certain phenomena (for example, to sacrifices, to the concept of sin, enemies), the main thing is in common: both of them are faith in God - the creator and guardian of the entire world we see.

The ancient Slavs did not separate the gods from the forces of nature. They worshiped all the forces of nature: large, medium, small. Every force was for them a manifestation of God, God was everywhere for them. Light, heat, lightning, rain, a spring, a river, wind, an oak that gave them food, fertile land, etc. All this, large and small, which gave and moved life, was a manifestation of God and, at the same time, God Himself.

A person changed, thinking changed, faith became more complicated, and faith changed. Christianity, which came to Russia with the sword of Prince Vladimir and trampled on pagan temples and shrines, could not resist the ethics of the people, their aesthetic predilections, could not but take into account the established rules of life.

So Easter- optimistic holiday of Christian salvation and resurrection - united with pagan rainbow- the day of memory of the ancestors and all the dead. In Christianity, it was not customary to commemorate the dead with food - this is a purely pagan tradition, but it is she who has now taken over. Even seventy years of atheism have not crossed out of the life of an Orthodox Slav the day when he is accustomed to commemorate dead relatives. During the rampant most terrible orgy of the union of militant atheists, during the years of war, famine, the flow of people to the cemetery on Easter days was not interrupted, because this tradition is not a thousand, but several thousand years old.

Thus, not only Christianity influenced paganism, but vice versa. After a millennium of Christianity, a pagan holiday passed safely - buttermilk. This is the farewell to winter and the meeting of spring. The pagans baked a pancake - a symbol of the hot spring sun - and ate it hot, thus filling themselves with the solar energy of life, solar power and health, which should have been enough for the entire agricultural annual cycle. Part of the pechev was given to animals, not forgetting to commemorate the souls of the dead.

Winter and summer Christmas time- games in honor of the god Svetovid during the turning of the sun for summer or winter are also not completely forgotten. Summer Christmas time partly merged with Christian Trinity and winter ones happy christmas holidays .

More examples of the fusion of holidays and individual gods can be given. Thus, both faiths have undergone many changes from their original nature and now already exist together and monolithically, having received, not by chance, the name Russian Orthodoxy .

All the current disputes about which is better - paganism or Christianity? - groundless. Well, let's say paganism is better. So what? After all, it does not exist in its pure form, in the broad faith of the people, in broad knowledge. Ask people who knows the name of the Slavic god of the sun? - no one will say. Also Christianity - it was split into many currents: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Gregorianism, etc.

The only acceptable thing for a modern Russian person is to return to Russian Orthodoxy. But this does not mean that everything pre-Christian should be considered useless and useless. Paganism must be studied as the most ancient period of our culture, the infantile and youthful period of the life of our ancestors, which will strengthen our spirit, give each of us the strength of the spiritual and national soil, which will help us endure in the most difficult moments of life.

Literature

1. A.A. Kononenko, S.A. Kononenko. "Characters of Slavic Mythology". Kyiv, "Corsair", 1993.

• A.I. Bazhenova, V.I. Verdugin "Myths of the ancient Slavs." Saratov, "Hope", 1993.
• G. Glinka. "The Ancient Religion of the Slavs". Saratov, "Hope", 1993.
• A. Kaisarov "Slavic and Russian mythology". Saratov, "Hope", 1993.
• B. Cresen. Veles book. Saratov, "Hope", 1993.

Applications

Characteristics and drawings of some characters of the mythology of the ancient Slavs

(drawings by E.I.Obertynskaya)

Perun - the supreme god of Kievan Rus; a formidable god commanding celestial phenomena; god of War. Tall, broad-shouldered, black-haired, big-headed, golden-bearded (honey flows down his beard). In his right hand is a bow, and in his left hand is a quiver with arrows. The strongest in nature, fights evil forces. August 2 - Perun's day. On this day, all evil spirits, escaping from the fiery arrows of Perun, turn into various animals. In the old days, on August 2, dogs and cats were not allowed into the house, so as not to cause a thunderstorm - the wrath of Perun. Perun's bird is a rooster, Perun's day is Thursday. The statue of Perun the Thunderer stood in the pantheon of the gods of Prince Vladimir.

Veles (Volos) - the god of cattle breeding and wealth, the patron of the animal world. He related man and animal, taught people not to kill animals, but to use them in the economy. Veles - the guardian of the Magi, creators, shepherds, merchants; endows a person with talent, physical data: tall, good voice, hearing. He is the father of giants; ox - mighty, big. Volos is one of the gods of the pantheon of Prince Vladimir, his day is Monday. The ancient Slavs had a reaping custom - "curling a beard." The last ears were not reaped, but woven into a beard, as a gift to the god Veles. Grass and forest are the hairs of the earth.

Yarilo (Yar) - the deity of awakening nature, the patron of the plant world. This is a young handsome man on a white horse and in a white robe with a wreath of spring flowers on his head. In his left hand he holds ears of corn. In the spring, "yarils" were celebrated, which ended with the funeral of Yarila. Where Yarilo passes - there will be a big harvest, whoever he looks at - love flares up in his heart. Yarilo was identified with the Sun. In many songs, sayings, people turn to this deity with requests for a warm summer and a good harvest. June 4 - Yarilin day.

Dazhbog (Dazhdbog) - the god of the sun, harvest, the son of Svarog, the husband of the goddess of love. In myths - one of the first kings and legislators, laid the foundation for the chronology according to the solar calendar. A handsome strong young man, a young prince, a trustee of plowmen and sowers. Gives a person physical strength, health, wisdom, skill. In the annals, he is called the ancestor of the Russians. Dazhbog is also the keeper of earthly keys. The sun god closes the earth for the winter and gives the keys to the birds, which take them to the vyrey - the summer kingdom, the country of departed souls. In spring, the birds return the keys and Dazhbog opens the earth. One of the gods of the pantheon of Prince Vladimir, his day is Wednesday.

Belbog is a god who lives in heaven and controls them. It appears as an old man with a long gray beard, in white clothes and with a staff in his hand. There is an avatar have a bright day. All the time in contradiction with the dark forces of the night, the personification of which is Chernobog. Belbog with his staff collects white clouds, if they were dispersed by the winds, pierces them to make it rain.

Zibog is the god of the earth, endowed with great power. He is the Creator, the Creator. He raised the earth in one place and mountain ranges, ridges, hills stood up; lowered it in another - water poured out, seas and oceans formed; made a furrow with huge fingers - rivers flowed. And where the little finger touched - the small lakes splashed. Zeebog keeps the earth, and people make him angry - the earth shakes, erupts volcanoes, raises huge waves. Zeebog is mighty, shaggy eyebrows, a beard is developing, it’s better not to anger him.

Rod is the god of the universe, living in heaven, who gave life to all living things that only exist in the world. Genus is credited with creative and masculine power (a phallic deity). Clay, wooden and stone images, protective talismans of this god are found during excavations. The genus is the embodiment of the ancient goddess of fertility, the masculine principle. The cult of this god, like most pagan gods, was lost after the introduction of Christianity.

Svarog is the god of heavenly fire, the father of Dazhbog. He threw Kuznetsk pincers to the ground from the sky and since then people have learned to forge iron. Svarog broke the heavenly cover with rays and arrows, opened the sky and the sun, sent heavenly fire to people, without which you can’t make weapons or jewelry: he kindled inspiration with sparks in the hearts and souls of the masters. Svarog is a capricious god, he rarely revealed his secrets to anyone. He presented himself in the form of a young broad-shouldered blacksmith, silent and strict; patronizes blacksmiths, whom they call his grandchildren - svarozhichs.

Khors is the god of the solar disk, the eye of the sky. An affectionate and kind god who gives his warmth to everyone. No one can defeat him, because it is impossible to approach him: he rises above all in heaven. Appears to be a handsome young man. On the idols of the god Khors, solar signs were depicted. Khors is the god of the pantheon of the Kyiv prince Vladimir, his day is Tuesday.

Stribog is the god of the air elements, the ancient supreme deity of the sky and the universe. He breathes evenly and noisily, walks along the expanses of the sea. And if he gets angry, he will buzz, spin, howl, gather clouds, raise a wave, scatter ships, or even sink. It is presented in the form of a harp plucking the strings, with a bow behind his back, and on his belt - a sagaidak with arrows. Stribog - overcoming obstacles, the winds are his grandchildren, his day is Sunday. One of the gods of the pantheon of the Kyiv prince Vladimir.

Beregini - air maidens that protect people from ghouls. The Slavs believed that beregini live near the house and protect the house and its inhabitants from evil spirits. Cheerful, playful and attractive creatures, singing enchanting songs with delightful voices. In early summer, under the moonlight, they circle in round dances on the banks of reservoirs. Where the coast ran and frolicked, there the grass grows thicker and greener, and in the field bread will be born more abundantly.

Numerogog is the goddess of the moon. She holds in her hand the moon, according to which time was calculated in ancient times, she is characterized by calmness, measuredness, impassivity. Her period is from early twilight to dawn, but despite this, she is indifferent to the dark forces of evil. Contemplating reality, calmly counts both seconds and centuries. He likes to walk in the snowy expanses on long winter nights, and to swim in warm water on short summer nights.

Nemiza is the god of air, the lord of the winds. His head is crowned with rays and wings, and a flying bird is depicted on his torso. Light as a feather, and sometimes he turns into a feather and sways in the air, resting from worries. When, in the very heat, a slight coolness suddenly touches the brow, it is Nemiza who favors, lazily flapping her wing. Nemiza is not grumpy and allows the winds to frolic without interfering in their affairs. But if they really quarrel and spin a crazy carousel, he will intervene and put things in order.

Alive (Zhivana, Siva) - "giving life", the goddess of life, she embodies the life force and opposes the mythological incarnations of death. He holds an apple in his right hand and a grape in his left. Alive is in the form of a cuckoo. In early May, sacrifices are made to her. The girls honor the cuckoo - the spring messenger: they baptize in the forest, fumble among themselves and curl wreaths on a birch.

Frost (Frost) - the god of winter, cold weather. Dressed in a warm fur coat, walks through the forests and covers the trees with snow. In winter, he is a complete master, in his submission are snowfalls, blizzards and blizzards. Always at war with the spring, resisting its coming, attacking at night, but always retreating in the end. Not all travelers are happy in their possessions. Depending on the behavior of a person, and sometimes on his own mood, he can reward a person or punish him. If he gets angry, he will sprinkle with snow, zavyuzit, knock him off the road, climb under his clothes. It can freeze your ears or hands, or even completely freeze.

Lada is the goddess of love, the patroness of marriages, the hearth, the goddess of youth, beauty, fertility. Femininity itself, tender, melodious, fair-haired; in white clothes - she will bring a guy to a sweetheart on Kupala night in a round dance, and hide her stepdaughter from her evil stepmother under the branches when she gathers to meet her friend. In young families, the hearth supports: it’s about to go out, and Lada will throw a twig, wave her clothes - the hearth will flare up, touch the hearts of the unreasonable with warmth, and again the harmony in the family.

Makosha (Mokosh, Makesha) - Slavic deity, patroness of women's work, spinning and weaving. Also agricultural deity, mother of the harvest, goddess of abundance. The flower is a poppy, intoxicating like love. From the name of this bright flower, which the girls embroidered on wedding towels, is the name of the goddess. Makosha is the deity of female vitality. The only female deity whose idol stood on a hilltop in the pantheon of Prince Vladimir. For some northern tribes, Mokosh is a cold, unkind goddess.

Lel is the young god of love. Due to his youthful years, Lel is sometimes simply amused by love, although he does it out of good intentions - for him this is a fun game. A handsome young man with curly hair makes girls fall in love with him by playing the flute and singing to them. When he doesn’t have a pass from another chosen one, Lel finds a boyfriend for her and convinces both that they were looking for each other. Lel appears in the spring, lives with his brother Polel in the forest. Together they go out in the morning to meet Yarilo. Lelya's pipe can be heard on the Kupala night.

Weather is the god of clear days, the herald of spring, the husband of the goddess Zimtserla. Light-faced, clear-eyed, beardless, cheerful in disposition. And sometimes he quarrels with his wife and walks gloomy. That's why the days are cloudy, and even rainy: Zimtserla pours tears. And when bad weather - a serious quarrel. Anger and anger pass, the weather is reconciled with his wife, again the days are clear and beautiful. We ask: “What will the weather be like?”, but we should be: “What will the weather be like?”

Karna (Karina) - the goddess of sorrow, the weeping goddess of the ancient Slavs, the sister of Zhelya. If a warrior dies far from home, Karna is the first to mourn him. According to the legends, weeping and sobbing can be heard over the dead battlefield at night. This is the goddess Karna in black long clothes performs a difficult women's duty for all wives and mothers.

The Magi (magician, wizards) are the chosen ones of the gods, mediators between heaven and people, executors of the will of the gods. Every popular faith presupposes rituals, the fulfillment of which is entrusted chosen people respected for virtue and wisdom, real or imaginary. The Magi were the guardians of the faith, lived as hermits, ate gifts and sacrifices that were intended for the deities. They had the exclusive right to grow a long white beard, to sit during the sacrifice, to enter the sanctuaries. After the introduction of Christianity, they were persecuted, as they worshiped pagan deities and defended the old faith and rituals.

Bes is one of the names of Chernobog. Later - a generalized name for evil spirits. Ugly, with pig snouts, long ears and tails, horned and shaggy. Able to move quickly in space. Especially zealous in bad weather in autumn and winter. They grunt, champ, howl, squeal, spit, spinning in a frenzied dance. They lead a lone traveler astray, lead him into an impassable thicket or into a quagmire, push him into an ice-hole; they frighten the horses and, clinging to the mane, drive them to death. They can transform into inanimate objects.

Brownie is the patron of the house. They also call him for obvious and proven merits with the name “master” and for the antiquity of the years of his life - “grandfather”. Appears in the form of an old man, a shaggy little man, a cat or other small animal, but it is not given to see him. He is the guardian not only of the whole house, but mainly of all who live in it. Naughty: making noise, rocking the bed, throwing off the blanket, scattering flour. But it also helps: washing dishes, chopping wood. Rocks a child. On February 7, on Efim Sirin, the brownie is fed porridge so that he does not sneer. On April 12, at John of the Ladder, the brownie rages until the first roosters.

Bannik (baennik, laznik baynik) - an evil spirit that lives in a bathhouse, appears in the form of a small naked man with iridescent eyes. He always lives in an unheated bath, the steam drives him out for a short time. Can kill a person washing at an inopportune time (after midnight). First, it puts you to sleep, then with long and thick lips it envelops your mouth and drives hot air into your chest. He especially dislikes drunkards. Skillful people kick him out with a bath broom. The bannik washes along with the devils, goblin, ovinniks in the fourth place, whoever gets caught by them at this time will be steamed. If it happened, you need to run backwards.

Vodyanoy (vodyannik, vodyadnik) - the spirit of rivers and lakes, like all spirits from evil spirits - is not only a "grandfather", as he is usually called, but also a genuine "ancestor". Always naked, in black scales, wrapped and girded with mud, with long green hair and a beard, in a hat made of kugi. Instead of hands - paws with membranes, a fish tail, eyes burning with red-hot coals. He sits on a snag and loudly claps on the water. He gets angry - he breaks dams, washes away mills, drags animals and people into the water. Fishermen, millers, beekeepers sacrifice to him.

Chur (Tzur) - the ancient god of the hearth, protecting the boundaries of land holdings. A hearth and a warm hut are Chur's habitat. He is called upon during divination, games, etc. (“Church me!”). Chur sanctifies the right of ownership (“Chur is mine!”). He also determines the quantity and quality of the necessary work (“Too much!”). Churka is a wooden image of Chur.

Witch - according to ancient legends, a woman who sold her soul to the devil. In the south, this is a more attractive woman, often a young widow; in the north - an old woman, fat as a tub, with gray hair, bony hands and a huge blue nose. It differs from other women in that it has a small tail and has the ability to fly through the air on a broomstick, a poker, in a mortar. He goes to his dark deeds without fail through the chimney, can turn into different animals, most often a magpie, a pig, a dog and a yellow cat. It gets older and younger with the month. On Sila August 12, witches die after drinking milk. A well-known gathering place of witches for the Sabbath on Kupala Night is in Kyiv on Bald Mountain.

Baba Yaga is a forest old sorceress, witch, sorceress. The character of the fairy tales of the Eastern and Western Slavs. She lives in the forest, in a "hut on chicken legs", she has one bone leg, she does not see well, she flies around the world on a mortar. You can trace parallels with other characters: with a witch - a way to move, the ability to transform (turn into animals); with the goddess of animals and the forest - life in the forest, the complete subordination of animals to her; with the mistress of the world of the dead - a fence of human bones around the hut, skulls on stakes, a deadbolt - a human leg, constipation - a hand, a lock - teeth. In most fairy tales, she is the opponent of the hero, but sometimes his assistant and giver.

who had great importance in those days, were fetishism, magic and totemism. The last direction stood in a separate place. The most revered were the rooster, the eagle and the falcon among the birds, the bear and the horse among the animals.

paganism in Ancient Russia, according to modern researchers, has gone 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 to nature. According to them, it was inhabited by many spirits. The paganism of Ancient Russia at the initial stage was expressed in the worship of the Slavs of Mother Earth. Its symbol was a square, divided into four squares, in the center of which are dots. Water cults were also highly 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 of our era, the deities of the ancient Slavs begin to take on an anthropomorphic appearance. From that moment on, the human traits in the deities gradually replace the animal ones.

Paganism in Russia 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, was considered the ancestor of all deities. For several centuries, the most revered was Dazhbog - the god of sunlight, ripening crops, warmth. Its 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 Khors was expressed by a spring dance in a round dance, the custom of baking pancakes on Maslenitsa, rolling lighted wheels, symbolizing the sun.

Paganism in Russia at the second stage of its development is characterized by the cult of Rozhanitsy and Rod - the goddesses of fertility and the creator of the universe. This direction of religion was closely connected with the veneration of ancestors, hearth, family.

Rod was considered a thunderstorm, the sky. The Slavs said that he rides on a cloud and throws rain on the ground. From this children are born. The genus was Rozhanitsy were the nameless goddesses of well-being, abundance and fertility. The Slavs revered them as protectors of small children and young mothers.

In the same period, paganism in Russia comes to a tripartite 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.

Sacrifices and worship took place in special sanctuaries-temples. 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 the 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, the pagan religion exalted the cult of the god Perun. Vladimir, Prince of Kyiv, in 980 tried to reform the religion, seeking to elevate popular worship to the state level.

It should be noted that among the common Slavic deities of fertility, a special role and importance was assigned to warlike gods. The Slavs made 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 a god of thunder, the rise of his cult begins with the first campaigns of the people of Kiev.

Despite the adoption of Christianity in 988, paganism in Russia existed for quite a long time.

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 a bizarre fiction, but in the old days in Russia they firmly believed that Baba Yaga’s hut was in the middle of the forest, a snake abducting beauties lives in the harsh stone mountains, they believed that a girl could marry a bear, and a horse could speak in a human voice .

Such a faith was called paganism, i.e. "folk faith".

The pagan Slavs worshiped the elements, believed in the relationship of people with various animals, and made sacrifices to the deities inhabiting everything around. Each Slavic tribe prayed to their gods. One for everything Slavic world ideas about the gods never existed: 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 by kinship, 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 been preserved: the religious and mythological integrity of paganism was destroyed during the 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 (the mythology of Polish and Czech tribes), teachings against paganism ("Words") and chronicles. Valuable information is contained in the writings of Byzantine writers and geographical descriptions of medieval Arab and European authors.

All these data refer mainly to the eras that followed the Proto-Slavic, and contain only separate fragments of common Slavic mythology. Chronologically, archeological data on rituals, sanctuaries, individual images (Zbruch idol, etc.) coincide with the Proto-Slavic period.

Funeral ritual.

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 region laid "sacred paths" to the Greek cities and placed stone idols with a cornucopia along these paths. Somewhere on the Dnieper there should have been the main sanctuary of all the skolots - farmers, in which the sacred heavenly plow was kept. Much will be explained in the religious history of Kievan Rus through an appeal to the ancestors of Rus.

The evolution of funeral rites and different forms of funeral rite mark significant changes in the understanding of the world.

The turning point in the views of the ancient Slav occurred back in the Proto-Slavic time, when the burial of crouched 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 the embryo in the mother's womb; crouching was achieved by artificially binding the corpse. Relatives prepared the deceased for a second birth on earth, for his reincarnation into one of the living beings. The idea of ​​reincarnation was based on the notion of a special vitality, existing separately from a person: the same physical appearance belongs to a living person and a dead one.

The crouching of corpses persists until the turn of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Crouching is being replaced by a new form of burial: the dead are buried in an extended position. But the most striking change in the funeral rite is associated with the appearance of cremation, the complete burning of corpses.

In real archaeological traces of the funeral rite, the coexistence of both forms is constantly observed - ancient inhumation, burial of the dead in the ground.

During the cremation, a new idea of ​​the souls of the ancestors appears quite clearly, 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. Having carried out the burning, sending the soul of the deceased to the host of other souls of the ancestors, ancient slav after that, he 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 advantages that were inherent in simple inhumation.

Among the elements of the funeral rite, one should name: mounds, a burial 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 of food are the most common things in Slavic pagan burial mounds. The pot for preparing food from the first fruits was often considered a sacred object. The pot, as a symbol of goodness, satiety, goes back, in all likelihood, to very ancient times, approximately to the agricultural Neolithic, when agriculture and pottery first appeared.

The closest to the relationship of the sacred pot for the first fruits with the urn for the burial of ashes are anthropomorphic stove-vessels. Vessels-stoves are a small pot of a simplified form, to which a cylindrical or truncated-conical oven tray with several round smoke holes and a large arched opening at the bottom for burning with torches or coals is attached.

The connecting link between the god of the sky, the god of fruitful clouds and the cremated ancestors, whose souls are no longer incarnated into living beings on earth, but reside in the sky, was the pot in which for many hundreds of years the primitive farmers cooked the first fruits and thanked the god of heaven with a special celebration .

The rite of cremation appears almost simultaneously with the separation of the Proto-Slavs from the common Indo-European array in the 15th century. BC. and exists among the Slavs for 27 centuries until the era of Vladimir Monomakh. The process of burial is imagined as follows: a funeral pyre was laid, a dead man was “laid up” on it, and this funeral business was accompanied by a religious and decorative structure - a geometrically exact circle was drawn around the steal, 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 significant amount of straw was applied. When the fire was lit, the flaming fence with its flame and smoke closed the process of burning the corpse inside the fence from the participants in the ceremony. It is possible that it was precisely this combination of the funeral "heap of firewood" with the regular circumference of the ritual fence that separated the world of the living from the world of the dead ancestors, and was called "steal".

Among the Eastern Slavs, from the point of view of pagan beliefs, the burning of animals, both domestic and wild, along with the dead, is of great interest.

The custom of burying in dominoes, or rather erecting dominoes 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, and not agriculture, they believed that wild animals were their ancestors. The Slavs considered them powerful deities to be worshiped. Each tribe had its own totem, i.e. a sacred animal worshiped by the tribe. Several tribes considered the Wolf as their ancestor and revered him as a deity. The name of this beast was sacred, it was forbidden to pronounce it aloud.

The owner of the pagan forest was a bear - the most powerful beast. He was considered the protector from all evil and the patron of fertility - it was with the spring awakening of the bear that the ancient Slavs associated the onset of spring. Up to the twentieth century. many peasants kept a bear's paw in their homes as a talisman-amulet, which should protect its owner from diseases, 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 violated the oath was doomed to death in the forest .

Of the herbivores in the hunting era, the Olenikha (Moose Elk) was the most revered - the most 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 sun rays. Therefore, deer antlers were considered a powerful amulet against all evil spirits at night and were attached either above the entrance to the hut or inside the dwelling.

Heavenly goddesses - Deer - sent newborn deer to the earth, pouring like rain from the clouds.

Among domestic animals, the Slavs revered the Horse most of all, because once the ancestors of most of the peoples of Eurasia led a nomadic lifestyle, and in the guise of a golden horse running across the sky, they imagined the sun. Later, a myth arose about the sun god riding a chariot across the sky.

domestic deities.

Spirits inhabited not only forests and waters. There are many household deities known - well-wishers and well-wishers, at the head of which is a brownie table, which lived either in the oven, or in a bast shoes 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 treated cattle with special attention: at night he combed the manes and tails of horses (and if he was angry, then on the contrary he tangled animal hair into tangles), he could take milk from cows, or he could make milk yield plentiful, he had power over life and health of newborn pets. Because the brownie tried to appease. When moving to a new house on the eve of the move, they took 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 carried it to a new house. They baked bread from this dough. If the bread is good, then life is good; if the bread is bad, then soon move. On the 3rd day, guests were called and dinner was served and an extra appliance was placed for the brownie. They poured wine and clinked glasses with the brownie. They cut the bread, treated everyone. One humpback was wrapped in a cloth and kept forever. The second was salted 3 times, a silver money was stuck in an edge and placed under the stove. This stove was tilted 3 times from 3 sides. They took a cat and brought it to the stove as a gift for a brownie: “I give you a brownie-father, a furry beast for a rich yard. After 3 days, they looked - whether the wine was drunk, if it was drunk, then it was topped up again. If the wine is not drunk, then they asked 9 days 9 times to taste the treat. A treat for the brownie was set every 1st day of the month.

Faith in the brownie was closely intertwined with the belief that dead relatives help the living. In the minds of people, 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 the newborn entered 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 figurines were called churami and at the same time symbolized the dead ancestors.

In some northern Russian villages, there were beliefs that, in addition to the brownie, the housekeeper, the cattleman and the kutny god also take care of the household (these well-wishers lived in the barn and looked after the cattle, they were left some bread and cottage cheese in the corner of the barn), as well as the ovinnik - the keeper stocks of grain and hay.

Completely different deities lived in the bathhouse, which pagan times considered an unclean place. Bannik was evil spirit that frightened people. To appease the bannik, after washing, people left him a broom, soap and water, and a black chicken was sacrificed to the bannik.

The cult of "small" deities did not disappear with the advent of Christianity. Beliefs persisted for two reasons. Firstly, the veneration of "small" deities was less obvious than the cult of the gods of heaven, earth and thunder. Sanctuaries were not built for “small” deities; rituals in their honor were performed at home, in the family circle. Secondly, people believed that small deities live nearby and a person communicates with them daily, therefore, despite church prohibitions, they continued to revere good and evil spirits, thereby ensuring their well-being and safety.

Deities are monsters.

The most formidable was considered the lord of the underworld and underwater world - the Serpent. The serpent - a powerful and hostile monster - is found in the mythology of almost any nation. The ancient ideas of the Slavs about the Serpent have been preserved in fairy tales.

Northern Slavs worshiped the Serpent - the lord of underground waters - and called him the Lizard. The sanctuary of the Lizard was located on the swamps, the banks of lakes and rivers. The coastal shrines of the Lizard had a perfectly round shape - as a symbol of perfection, order, it was opposed to the destructive power of this god. As victims, the Lizard was thrown into the swamp of black chickens, as well as young girls, which was reflected in many beliefs.

All Slavic tribes that worshiped the Lizard considered him to be 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 rites was softened: the sacrifice of a person was replaced by the sacrifice of a horse, and later a stuffed animal. The Slavic gods of the agricultural era are brighter and kinder to man.

Ancient shrines.

The complex system of pagan beliefs of the Slavs corresponded to an equally complex system of cults. "Small" deities had neither priests nor sanctuaries, they were prayed either one by one, or by a family, or by a village or tribe. To honor 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”, i.e. mountains, have been a place of tribal prayers. with a bare top. At the top of the hill there was a "temple" - a place where a drop - an idol stood. Around the temple there was a horseshoe-shaped bulk shaft, on top of which the thieves were burning - sacred bonfires. The second rampart was the outer boundary of the sanctuary. The space between the two ramparts was called the treasury - they “consumed” there, i.e. ate sacrificial food. At ritual feasts, people became, as it were, companions of the gods. The feast could take place in the open air and in special buildings standing on that trek - 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 faith in magical power tree - an idol, thus, combined the sacred power of a tree, and a deity.

Priests.

Pagan priests - sorcerers - 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 the wolves-clouders, who turned into wolves, in this guise rose to the sky and called for rain or dispersed the clouds. Another magical effect on the weather was - "enchantment" - incantations with a chara (cup) filled with water. Water from these vessels was sprinkled on crops to increase the yield.

The Magi also made amulets - women's and men's jewelry, covered with spell symbols.

gods of the era.

With the transition of the Slavs to agriculture, the solar (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 Russia was Dazh-bog (Dazhdbog) - the god of sunlight, heat, harvest time, fertility, the God of summer and happiness. Also known as - Generous God. The symbol is the 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 Moon. A beautiful young girl 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 virgins of exceptional beauty. Zorya Morning opens the palace gates in the morning. Zorya Vechernyaya closes them in the evening. Evening Star and Star Dennitsa, Morning Star, guarding the wonderful horses of Dazhdbog.

Dazhbog was the god of sunlight, but by no means the luminary himself. Khors was the sun god. Khors, whose name means "sun", "circle", embodied the luminary moving across the sky. This is a very ancient deity, who did not have a human appearance and was represented simply by a golden disk. A ritual spring dance was associated with the cult of Khors - a round dance (moving in a circle), the custom of baking pancakes on Maslenitsa, resembling a solar disk in shape, and rolling lighted wheels, which also symbolized the luminary.

The companion of the gods of the sun and fertility was Semargl (Simorg) - a winged dog, the guardian of crops, the god of roots, seeds, sprouts. The symbol is the 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 the fields from wild roe deer and goats.

Khors and Semargl are deities of Scythian origin, their cult came from eastern nomads, therefore both of these gods were widely revered only in Southern Russia, bordering on the Steppe.

Lada and Lelya were female deities of fertility, well-being, spring flowering of life.

Lada is the goddess of marriage, abundance, harvest time. 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. Prayers were addressed to the goddess in late spring and during the summer, a white rooster was sacrificed (white color symbolized good).

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 appeal to a girl; "cradle"; "leleko" - a stork that brings children; "to cherish" - to take care of a small child. Lelya was especially revered by young girls, celebrating the spring holiday Lyalnik in her honor: they chose the most beautiful of their friends, put a wreath on her head, seated her on a turf bench (a symbol of sprouting young greenery), danced around her and sang songs glorifying Lelya, then the girl - "Lelya" presented her friends with wreaths prepared in advance.

The all-Slavic veneration of Makosha (Moksha) - the goddess of the earth, harvest, female fate, the great mother of all living things - goes back to the most 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 - Makosh was worshiped at springs, as a sacrifice, the girls threw yarn into the wells.

The male deity of fertility associated with the lower world was Veles (Volos). God of trade and beasts. Also known as - Keeper of the herds. Symbol - 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 contracts are sworn in his name. When Perun became the greatest god war, he recognized that, unlike Svarozhich, he needed a cool head to advise. In this regard, he attracted Volos to be his right hand and advisor.

The hair also has a different 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 warlike gods, to whom bloody sacrifices were made - Yarilo and Perun. Despite the deep antiquity and, consequently, the 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, 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 thief of cattle, waters, sometimes luminaries and the wife of the Thunderer.

Perun - a snake fighter, the owner of a lightning-hammer, is 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 "princely god", since he was the patron of princes, symbolizing their power.

Svantovit - the god of prosperity and war, also known as - Strong. The symbol is a cornucopia. Svantovit is worshiped in richly decorated temples guarded by warriors. It contains the priest's white horse, always ready to race into battle.

Svarozhich is the god of strength and honor. Also known as - scorching. Symbol: Black bison head or double-sided axe.

Svarozhich is the son of Svarog, and the fact that he manages the pantheon together with Dazhdbog is the intention of Svarozhich's father. The gift of Svarog - 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. Symbol - 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 heaven, earth and lower regions, and in wrestling he rides a black horse.

Chernobog is the god of Evil. Also known as the Black God. Symbol: Black figurine. It brings bad luck 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 of the XI-XIII 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 great-grandfathers and everyday superstitions.

Paganism was reproached for polytheism, and Christianity was credited with the invention of monotheism. Among the Slavs, the creator of the world and all living nature was Rod - Svyatovit.

Russian people singled out Jesus Christ from the trinity and built the Church of the Savior, which replaced the pagan Dazhbog.

Christianity also reflected primitive dualism. The head of all the forces of evil was Satanail, undefeated by the god, with his numerous and branched army, against which the 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” by the righteousness of his life and magical actions.

Such an important section primitive religion, how magical effect to higher powers by a ritual action, a spell, a prayer song, was at one time absorbed by Christianity and remained an integral part of church rituals. Religious support for statehood at the time of the progressive development of feudalism, the prohibition of bloody sacrifices, a wide stream of literature that went to Russia from Byzantium and Bulgaria - these consequences of the baptism of Russia had a progressive significance.

An outbreak of sympathy for great-grandfather paganism occurs in the second half of the 12th century. and, perhaps, it is connected both with the disappointment of the social elites in the behavior of the Orthodox clergy, and with the new political form, which brought closer in the XII century. local princely dynasties to the land, to the zemstvo boyars, and partly to the population of their principalities in general. It can be thought that the priestly class improved their ideas about the magical connection of the macrocosm with the microcosm of personal attire, about the possibility of influencing life phenomena through incantational symbols and pagan apotropaea. Dual faith was not just a mechanical combination of old habits and beliefs with new Greek ones; in a number of cases it was a well-thought-out system in which ancient ideas were quite consciously preserved. An excellent example of Christian-pagan dual faith are the well-known amulets - coils, 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, developed new subtle methods of rivalry with religion imposed from outside.

Pagan rites and festivities in the 11th-13th centuries

The annual cycle of ancient Russian festivities was composed 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 poorly marked in ethnographic records.

The second element was a cycle of prayers for rain and for the impact of the vegetative force on the harvest. The third element was the cycle of harvest festivals. The fourth element was the days of commemoration of the ancestors (radunitsa). The fifth could be carols, holidays in the first days of each month. The sixth element was Christian holidays, some of which also marked the solar phases, and some were associated with the agrarian cycle of the southern regions of the Mediterranean, which had different calendar dates than the agrarian 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 Christmastide rites was dressing up in animal-like clothes and dancing in "mashkers". Ritual masks were depicted on silver bracelets.

Masquerades continued throughout the winter Christmas time, 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 of the ancient pagan holidays with the new, church-state, mandatory for the ruling elites. In a number of cases, Christian holidays, which arose, like Slavic ones, on a primitive astronomical basis, on solar phases, coincided in time (Christmas, the Annunciation), often they diverged.

Rusal spell rites and dances were the initial stage of the pagan festival, culminating in an obligatory ritual feast with the obligatory consumption of sacrificial meat meat: pork, beef, chickens and eggs.

Since many pagan holidays coincided or corresponded in calendar with the Orthodox ones, outwardly decency was almost observed: the feast was arranged, for example, not on the occasion of the holiday of women in childbirth, but on the occasion of the Nativity of the Virgin, but continued the next day already as a “lawless second meal” .

The historical development of Slavic-Russian paganism.

"Paganism" is an extremely vague term that arose in the church environment to refer to everything non-Christian, pre-Christian.

The Slavic-Russian part of the vast pagan massif should by no means be understood as a separate, independent, and inherent only to the Slavs, variant of primitive religious ideas.

The main defining material for the study of paganism is ethnographic: rituals, round dances, songs, children's games into which archaic rituals have degenerated, fairy tales that have preserved fragments of ancient mythology and epic.

As primitive society developed, to a greater and greater extent, a complication of its social structure developed on religious ideas: the allocation of leaders and priests, the consolidation of tribes and tribal cults, external relations, and wars.

Speaking about evolution, it should be noted that the deities that have arisen under certain conditions can acquire new functions over time, their place in the pantheon can change.

The world of the then pagans consisted of four parts: the earth, two heavens and the underground-water zone. This was not the specifics of Slavic paganism, but was the result of a universal stadial-convergent development of ideas that varied in details, but were mainly determined by this scheme. The most difficult thing is to unravel the ancient ideas about the earth, about a large land area 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 a 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 streams, limiting his nearest land space.

Medieval people, regardless of whether they were baptized or not, continued to believe in the great-grandfather dualistic scheme of the forces that rule the world, and by all archaic measures tried to protect themselves, their homes and property from the action of vampires and "Navii" (alien and hostile dead).

Under the princes Igor, Svyatoslav and Vladimir, paganism became the state religion of Russia, the religion of princes and combatants. Paganism was strengthened and revived the ancient rituals that began to die out. The commitment of the young state to ancestral paganism was a form and means of preserving state political independence. Renewed paganism in the 10th century It was formed in the conditions of rivalry 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 opposition of Russian pagan theology to 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 cremations. According to a number of secondary signs, one can think that the Christian doctrine of a blessed afterlife “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 a foreign yoke. Pagan beliefs, rituals, conspiracies, formed over thousands of years, could not disappear without a trace immediately after the adoption of a new faith.

The fall of the authority of the church reduced the power of church teachings against paganism, and it was in the XI - XIII centuries. did not fade away in all strata of Russian society, but moved to a semi-legal position, since the church and secular authorities applied harsh measures to the pagan Magi, up to a public auto-da-fe.

In the second half of the XII century. there is a revival of paganism in the cities and in the princely-boyar circles. The explanation for the revival of paganism can be the crystallization of a dozen large principalities-kingdoms with their stable dynasties, which took shape since the 1130s, with the increased role of the local boyars and the more subordinate position of the episcopate, which turned out to be dependent on the prince. The renewal of paganism was reflected in the emergence of a new doctrine of an inscrutable light other than the sun, in the cult of a female deity, in the appearance of sculptural images of the deity of light.

As a result of a number of complex phenomena in Russia, by the beginning of the 13th century. a kind of dual faith was created both in the village and in the city, in which the village simply continued its religious great-grandfather life, being baptized, and the city and the princely-boyar circles, having adopted a lot from the church sphere and widely using the social side of Christianity, not only did not forget their paganism with its rich mythology, rooted rituals and cheerful carnivals with their dances, but also raised their ancient, church-persecuted religion to a higher level, corresponding to the heyday of Russian lands in the 12th century.

Conclusion

Despite the millennial domination of the state Orthodox Church, pagan beliefs were popular faith and up to the XX century. manifested in rituals, dance games, songs, fairy tales and folk art.

The religious essence of the rites-games has long since disappeared, 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 vivid component of the later peasant culture, and secondly, as an invaluable treasury of information about the many thousands of years of knowledge of the world by our distant ancestors.

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Introduction

1. Paganism in Russia

2. Rites and ritual actions

3. Old Russian sanctuaries

4. Sacred Trees

5. Hostile and malevolent deities

6. Priests and their role

Conclusion

Bibliographic list

ATconducting

The Slavic people are considered relatively young in history. Under their own name, they were first mentioned in written sources only from the 6th century. For the first time we meet the name of the Slavs in the form oxhabnvos at Pseudo-Caesarius around 525. At present, the area extending north of the Carpathians is recognized as the homeland of the Slavs. But with a closer definition of its boundaries, scientists differ very significantly among themselves. For example, one of the founders of Slavic studies, the Czech scientist Shofarik, drew the border of the Slavic ancestral home at the plant from the mouth of the Vistula to the Neman, in the north - from Novgorod to the sources of the Volga and Dnieper, in the east - to the Don. Further, she, in his opinion, went through the lower Dnieper and Dniester along the Carpathians to the Vistula and along the watershed of the Oder and Vistula to the Baltic Sea. The problem of the origin and settlement of the Slavs is still debatable, but numerous studies by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnographers and linguists make it possible to draw up a general picture of the early history of the Eastern Slavic peoples. In the middle of the 1st millennium AD. on the general territory of Eastern Europe, from Lake Ilmen to the Black Sea steppes and from the Eastern Carpathians to the Volga, East Slavic tribes developed. Historians number about 15 such tribes. Each tribe was a collection of clans and then occupied a relatively small isolated area. According to The Tale of Bygone Years, a map of the settlement of the Eastern Slavs in the 8th-9th centuries. looked like this: the Slovenes (Ilyinsky Slavs) lived on the shores of Lake Ilmenskoye and Volkhva; Krivichi with Polochans - in the upper reaches of the Western Dvina, Volga and Dnieper; Dregovichi - between Pripyat and Berezina; Vyatichi - on the Oka and the Moscow River; radimichi - on the Sozh and Desnezh; northerners - on the Desna, the Seimas, the Sula and the Northern Donets; Drevlyans - in Pripyat and in the Middle Dnieper; clearing - along the middle course of the Dnieper; Buzhans, Volynians, Dulebs - in Volyn, along the Bug; tiverci, streets - in the very south, by the Black Sea and the Danube. The group of Eastern Slavs includes: Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The Slavs bred cattle and pigs, as well as horses, were engaged in hunting and fishing. In everyday life, the Slavs widely used the so-called ritual calendar associated with agricultural magic. It celebrated the days of the spring-summer agricultural season from seed germination to harvest, and highlighted the days of pagan prayers for rain in four different periods. These four periods of rain were considered optimal for the Kiev region and in the agronomic manuals of the late 19th century. , which testified to the presence of the Slavs of the 4th c. reliable agrotechnical observations.

1. Paganism in Russia

The pagans looked at the life of a person from a purely material side: under the dominance of physical strength, a weak person was the most unfortunate creature, and again the life of such a person was considered a feat of compassion. The religion of the Eastern Slavs is strikingly similar to the original religion of the Aryan tribes: it consisted in the worship of physical deities, natural phenomena and the souls of the dead, tribal household geniuses. But we do not notice traces of the heroic element, which develops anthropomorphism so strongly, among the Slavs, and this may mean that conquering squads under the command of leaders - heroes did not form between them and that their resettlement was carried out in a tribal, and not in a squad form. East Slavic paganism on the eve of the creation of Kievan Rus and in its further coexistence with Christianity is reflected in a large number of materials that are sources for its study. First of all, these are authentic and accurately dated archaeological materials that reveal the very essence of the pagan cult: idols of the gods, sanctuaries, cemeteries without external ground signs (“fields of burials”, “fields of burial urns”), as well as with preserved mounds of ancient mounds. In addition, these are diverse products of applied art found in mounds, in treasures and simply in the cultural layers of cities, saturated with archival pagan symbols. Of these, women's adornments are of the greatest value, often being wedding sets in burial complexes and, because of this, are especially saturated with magical incantatory plots and amulets - amulets. A peculiar, but very poorly studied remnant of the pagan side are the numerous names of tracts: "Holy Mountain", "Bald Mountain" (the location of witches), "Holy Lake", "Holy Grove", "Peryn", "Volosovo", etc. A very important source is the testimonies of contemporaries, recorded in the annals, or in specially recorded teachings against paganism. For about a century and a half, Kievan Rus was a state with a pagan system, often opposed to the penetration of Christianity. In Kievan Rus IX - X centuries. an influential class of priests (“Magi”) was formed, who led the rites, preserved the ancient mythology and developed thoughtful agrarian spell symbolism. In the era of Svyatoslav, in connection with the warriors with Byzantium, Christianity became a persecuted religion, and paganism was reformed and opposed to the penetration of Christianity into Russia: the so-called "Vladimir Pantheon" was, on the one hand, a response to Christianity, and on the other hand, the assertion of princely power and domination of the warrior class - the feudal lords. The performance of tribal ritual actions (“cathedrals”, “events”), the organization of ritual actions, sanctuaries and grandiose princely mounds, the observance of the calendar terms of the annual ritual cycle, the storage, execution and creative replenishment of the fund of mythological and ethical tales required a special priestly class (“Magi” , "sorcerer", "cloud-devourers", "witches", "indulgences", etc.). A century after the baptism of Russia, the Magi could, in some cases, attract an entire city to their side to oppose the prince or bishop (Novgorod). In the 980s, Greek Christianity found in Russia not a simple village quackery, but a significantly developed pagan culture with its mythology, a pantheon of the main deities, priests, in all likelihood, with their own pagan chronicle of 912-980. The strength of pagan ideas in the Russian feudal cities of the Middle Ages is evident, firstly, from numerous church teachings. Directed against pagan beliefs and pagan rites and festivities held in cities, and secondly, from the pagan symbolism of applied art, which generally desired not only ordinary people of the urban settlement, but also higher, princely circles (treasures of the 1230s). In the second half of the twelfth century, the pagan element was still fully expressed.

2. Rites and ritual actions

And so, we already know that the ancient Slavs are pagans who deified the forces of nature. Their main gods were: God mouth - the god of heaven and earth; Perun - the god of thunder and lightning, as well as war and weapons; hair or

Veles - the god of wealth and cattle breeding; Dazh god (or Yarilo) - the solar deity of light, warmth and blossoming nature. The deities associated with those forces of nature that affect agriculture were very important.

Also, the ancient Slavs greatly revered the souls of their ancestors, thinking that they are somewhere in the middle sky "aer" - "Irya" and obviously contribute to all celestial operations (rain, fog, snow) for the benefit of the remaining descendants. When on the days of commemoration of their ancestors they were invited to a festive meal, the "grandfathers" seemed to be flying through the air.

Ready-made products - porridge and bread from time immemorial have been ritual food and an obligatory part of the sacrifice to such fertility deities as women in childbirth. There were special types of porridge that had only a ritual purpose: "kutya", "kolivo" (from wheat grains). Kutya was cooked in a pot and served in a pot or in a bowl. festive table or referred to the cemetery in the "domovina" when commemorating the dead. There were houses of the dead, as a place of communication with benevolent ancestors. In many ceremonies, the inhabitants of the village left their family mansions and participated in the general rural ritual action. Some of these ceremonies were held inside the village, but most of them, in all likelihood, were arranged outside the outskirts on the hills, near the "treasures" of many honors or between several villages ("games between villages"). It is impossible to exclude the long existence of the ancient common tribal sanctuaries on the sacred mountains that arose back in the Scythian-Skolot time.

An example of a Zarubenets cult place inside the village can be a settlement (breast) near Pochep in the basin of the Middle Desna, where for the first century AD Slavic colonization from the Middle Dnieper region headed in the middle of the excavated space, among a large number of rectangular dwellings with traces of powerful stove pillars, a building round in plan was found . Interesting utensils with magical signs “Pots for illuminated brew” were found there; a bowl with a sign of fertility and a pot with four signs were found there, which indicate a variety of signs of fertility, ideograms of a plowed or sown field. An ornament of drop-shaped round impressions goes around the neck of the vessel from the girdle of these drops, triangles of three drops descend down. In general, the ornament on this pot is very eloquent: “heavenly moisture irrigates the fields”, i.e. contains main idea agrarian magic spells. In this small house, in all likelihood, only sacred dishes were kept, and the ceremony of boiling the first fruits was carried out, judging by the excavation data, in a neighboring round room, in the middle of which there was a large hearth - an altar. At the altar, closer to the entrance, there are traces of pillars and massive remains of burnt wood, which can naturally be regarded as the remains of the main idol, which occupied the main position in the entire sanctuary. In the depths of the rotunda, to the left and right of the altar-hearth and the central idol, two large niches were arranged, near which, on the circumference of the building, there were pillars, obviously, idols of lesser significance. It is natural to assume that with the round construction of the temple and with the central position of the hearth-altar, a wide smoke hole in the center of the conical roof. It gave an outlet for flame and smoke to the sky and at the same time illuminated the entire temple from above with natural daylight. In Slavic embroideries, the motif of the goddess in the temple is very common, but the temple is presented in three forms: firstly, in the form of a house with a gable roof (in this case, the goddess in childbirth) and secondly. Like a building in the form of a barn with a suspended middle part and a magnificently decorated closed roof. On such embroideries in the middle, to the full height of the building shown as if in a section, a huge idol of Mokosh was depicted with his hands down to the ground; calendar, this pose of the goddess can be timed to the Kupala ritual (June 23 - 29), by the time of the initial ripening of the ears and the appearance of the first fruits of this year (peas, beans) Makosh points to the ground that has already grown the plant, while in embroideries associated with spring rites , Makosh raises his hands to the sky, to the supreme deity with a prayer for the sun and rain for the newly sown seeds.

The large central idol of Mokosh is accompanied by two idols of women in labor - Lada and Lely, standing on the sides of the "Mother of the Harvest" - Mokosh. The coincidence with the Pochep temple is complete - one idol in the middle and two on the sides. Embroidery gives something that archeology can rarely give - all three idols are female. But there is a third type of temple buildings in Russian embroideries, inside which the idol of Makosh is also placed, but the roof over the head of the goddess is not closed and leaves a significant opening. Mokosh's idol is placed in the middle under the roof opening. On the sides of the huge Mokosh there are not idols of women in childbirth, but images of horsemen (or horsewomen?). The upper part of the building on the embroidery is usually occupied by images of birds and star-shaped signs (it will not be a stretch to recognize these embroideries as the image of the firmament). However, another assumption is also possible, that the embroidered temple of Mokosh with a cut off roof is, as it were, a section of the Pochep-type sanctuary. The heavenly signs do not contradict this, since the sky was clearly visible from the koliba. The presence of horsemen on the sides of the main idol contradicts this assumption, but, given the season (“crown of summer”), it can be assumed that the sanctuary was not an enclosed space, but was a canopy with pillars that walked in a circle (traces of nine pillars were preserved) inside which were three idols and an altar. In this case, all the internal elements of the temple were visible to the entire village from the outside. It is possible that horsemen should not be taken too realistically - the spring goddesses Lada and Lelya on ritual towels intended for the festivities of meeting spring were depicted on horseback, with plows behind the saddle, the presence of horseback riders around Mokosh could be just an image of a familiar symbol, and not confirmation of real horsewomen in the inside of the temple. The perimeter of such a dugout could serve as a circular earthen bench, a kind of “syntron” around the main idol and the hearth, on which a sacred brew from the first fruits was brewed in a pot with signs of fertility. Approximately 30 - 35 people could sit on the "syntron" with a circumference of 15 m. P. Bessonov recorded an interesting cycle of Kupala ritual songs. Songs for Kupala (the night of June 23-24, solstice) constitute a special, clearly distinguishing and very archaic cycle; they are accompanied by the refrain “so-and-so!” or “tu-tu-tu” (typical only for Kupala songs) and obligatory stomping and knocking at this time. Obviously, these are the remains of a ritual dance. The Kupala Festival, writes Bessonov, “is the highest summer point of the most ancient sacred rites, legends and songs. .. As if exhausted in the revelry of Kupala, songwriting here for a long time falls silent ... ".

Kupala is called "sobotka" i.e. "co-existence", a joint collection. The plots of Kupala songs are associated with traditional erotica at games (No. 62 according to Bessonov), with obligatory bathing and with echoes of girls sacrificing to the deity of the river, “Danube” (No. 68, 72), with the collection of healing potions (No. 79), etc. One of songs (No. 94) tells about the preparation of a ritual potion (angelica) in a pot; in some way it is connected with the death of a woman (“I’m talking about a pot, an uncle at a piss”). Ritual food at the festival is vegetable and dairy. The main thing in the Kupala ritual was, as you know, a fire, through which they jumped in pairs. An echo of ritualism is the game of burners (“burn, burn clearly so that it does not go out ...”). the construction of the fire was entrusted to a woman (“young is young, lay out the bathing suit”; No. 87). The basis of the future bonfire was a pillar or a stake driven into the ground: “just as Kupala catfish was depicted as a pillar, and her head is in gold or all of it is green, so in her image a stake is made in the rite, stuck into the ground, wrapped around with straw, threshed ears, hemp, and at the top is a bundle of straw, which is called Kupala and which is lit on the Kupala night. People come running to this sign, the famous Kupala bonfire flares up. An important role in the songs is played by the oak; oak branches go to the fire. The connection of the Kupala rites with the agrarian magic of the “crown of summer” is undoubted. An analysis of Russian embroidery showed that ritual towels with the image of Makoshi-Kupala belong to this season, where the goddess is surrounded by solar signs and is always shown with her hands lowered to the fruit-bearing earth; head

Kupala is often entwined with ears of corn; ears of corn were also depicted at the feet of the goddess. If in the spring cycle, women were depicted on the sides of the goddess - riders with plows behind their backs, then riders - men were embroidered on the towels of the Kupala cycle. Makosh, the goddess of earthly fertility, was the mediator between heaven and earth (in the spring cycle, she was always depicted with her hands raised to the sky). This duality can be compared with a curious detail of women's Kupala clothing: "In the decoration of those celebrating, the main attention is paid to the female head and shoes." Girls, in addition to wreaths and greenery, put on their heads a “warrior” made of fabric, always blue, heavenly, in color; stockings and garters were decorated on the legs. On the face of attention to the symbolism of the sky (blue warrior) and earth (shoes, stockings), the ritual archaic song about the unclean Kupala - Mokosh is very fully correlated with the excavation data. Both here and there the sanctuary is located “syared sala”; and here and there the cult place was like a small building with a canopy. Säröd Syala Vouchkovsky

That's it! (chorus with tapping and stomping) Tu-tu was an oak lantern (canopied canopy, open chapel) Tu-tu-tu! And the kids (guys, well done) went to pray to God: That's it! Stoub was hugged, the stove was kissed Tu-tu-tu! Pereryad Sopukha (Kupala) lay with a roof That's it! Yana thought - hidden, Tu-tu-tu! And the knife of Sopukha (Kupala) is not clean! That's it! According to folklore data, the main object of worship was the pillar, which the worshipers hugged, and the stove, which they kissed. Both the stove and the pillar in the center of the building were discovered during excavations. The embroideries convey to us the image of Mokosh as the center of a three-figured composition with three upcoming deities. Excavations also allow us to speak of three figured compositions: in the center there is a pillar near the stove (Makosh - Kupalo), and on the sides - forthcoming in the side niches. In combination with dishes marked with magical signs of fertility, found in a house adjacent to the sanctuary, the entire ritual complex of the Zarubinets village "Grudka" (Pochepskoye settlement) can be interpreted as the temple of Makoshi, called Kupala on June 23-29, which is common in folklore personification of the holiday. So from winter carols the god of carols took shape by the 17th century, and from summer holiday Kupala there was a deity of Kupala.

A rural sanctuary was also found, intended for winter New Year fortune-telling about the fate of the coming year. In it were found places for sacrifices and general rural feasts - bratchins, again three stone idols. Of particular interest is the first four-sided idol; it is decorated in the upper part in the form of a round head with four faces in each face, respectively. In this respect, he resembles the Zbruch Svyatovit-Rod. Faces looking "on all four sides" - an apotropaic, protecting from evil. Front and back, right and left. No wonder the expression “from all four sides” has taken root in the Russian language. “Everything” is the four indicated directions, which sometimes could also indicate geographical coordinates: from the north and south, from the west and from the east. Since the "evil winds" were considered the bearers of evil, the geographical concept is quite appropriate in the idea of ​​ubiquity. The outcome of evil was regarded not only in relation to the individual (behind, on the left), but also in relation to nature as a whole, according to the cardinal points or, in modern terms, according to geographical coordinates. Such idols, more than once found in excavations, were supposed to guard the village from all four sides. Of the diverse annual cycle of pagan rites recorded by ethnographers, only a small part was held inside the village and in houses. These are winter Christmas time with their carols, New Year and Veles Day. But already Shrovetide with its rolling fiery wheel. Riding with bells, burning an effigy of winter, mummers, a spell of spring, fisticuffs, etc. went beyond the boundaries of the village and turned into "games between the village." The entire spring cycle and summer, Kupala, are connected with nature, with fields, with “red hills”, river banks, birch groves.

The calendar timing of rituals, preserved both by the wooden carved calendars of the Russian village, and agricultural signs, later dated to the calendar, arose long before the baptism of Russia, as evidenced by the most interesting calendars of our era.

The overwhelming majority of ancient Slavic pagan festivals and prayers were held publicly, were an "event", a joint spell of nature and were held not in a house or in a village, but outside the everyday household circle. The ancient farmer needed, first of all, to influence nature, to appeal to its vegetative power, to turn to various "groves", sacred trees, to water sources - springs, wells of students, to the fields in the process of plowing, sowing and in time for the ripening of the precious harvest. In addition to these very specific sections of nature, where seven-mile magic is very easy to see, there was also the veneration of mountains and hills, associated with the generalization of nature, with those rozhanitsari and Rod, who controlled nature as a whole, controlled it from the sky on which they were. Universal is the veneration of the mountains and holding special prayers on them, addressed to one or another supreme deity. Sacrifice to the forces of nature and the religious prayerful attitude to the forces of nature are recorded by many ancient Russian sources, which the clergy in their teachings very much condemned, explaining either by not knowing the truth of the faith or by the machinations of the devil, who “you are deceived into believing in creatures and in the sun and fire and in the sources of the same and in the tree and in the other things are different ... ". And so, a more accurately recorded place of annual prayers were high hills, mountains, elevating the worshipers above the level of ordinary life and, as it were, bringing them closer to the heavenly guardians of the world, women in childbirth or the Family.

“Red Hills”, “Red Hills”, where Shrovetide burnings of winter effigies were held, the rite of conjuration of spring, the meeting of Lada and Lelya, rolling eggs on Thomas's week (which was called the “Red Hill”) were probably near each village. In the plains, where there were no noticeable hills, the peasants marked the first spring thaws in the meadows, where the snow began to melt first of all, and there they held the ceremony of welcoming spring. Sacred mountains often bear the name "Bald" or "Maiden". there is an assumption that the first name could be associated with one or another male deity, with a goddess - a virgin who was a distant predecessor of the Christian Mother of God, the Virgin Mary. Often, idols of a naked male deity were found on bald mountains. There were often rumors about such mountains that witches lived on them.

The Maiden Mountains in some cases confirm their name. On one of the maiden mountains, a kind of altar oven was found, which is a composition of nine hemispherical recesses. The number nine, combined with the maiden name of this huge and very imposing mountain, suggests (as with the fortune-telling bowl with nine months marks) that the creators of the altar with nine components primarily associated this central structure of the Maiden Mountain with nine months of pregnancy. The goddess - the virgin, as a stable idea of ​​​​a female agrarian deity, was obviously thought, like the Christian Mother of God, not just a girl, but one who had already “suffered in her womb” and she had to prepare the birth of a new life for nine months. The number nine is included in the category of common Slavic sacred numbers (“for three to nine lands”, “to the three to ninth kingdom, three to tenth state”, etc.). Also in the Pogan settlement, the nine-hole complex is located near the wall of the pagan temple, which preceded the construction of the church. There were also Babina Mountains dedicated to a female deity, but, obviously, of a different type than the virgin goddess; it could be a mother goddess like Ma-kosha, the goddess of harvest and fate, the personification of all earthly nature (mother-earth). Near some Babin mountains, burial grounds with cremations and corpses were discovered. Their peculiarity was in the preservation of infant skulls without ritual inventory. Based on these findings, one can recall the words of medieval writers about ancient pagan sacrifices. Kiril Turovsky in his sermon for Fomin's week ("Red Hill") wrote: "from the village (from now on) do not accept hell, slaughtered fathers baby, not death of honor - stop idolatry and pernicious demonic violence." Another author, somewhat earlier, wrote: “Tavera child-cutting with an idol from the first-born.” Ethnography knows many beliefs about werewolves - ghouls (Vovkodlaks), confined mainly to the territory of Belarus and Ukraine, i.e. to those places where the Milograd culture is known. It was believed that once a year they became wolves for a few days and then returned to their previous state again.

The marsh settlements and the pagan essence of this cult are still mysterious and unsolved for us. Of course, there is no doubt a connection with the cult of water and the underwater-underground "lower world", best of all hostile to the swamp itself with its unknown and inaccessible depths, marsh lights, the deceit of marsh greenery and bogs, the malignity of swamp fevers. The sanctuary in the swamp was given a perfectly round shape. It is possible that here, as in the creation of the barrow, a model of the visible earth was conceived, a regular circle of the horizon-horizon, as an antithesis to the semi-hostile element of water. There is an assumption that the swamp settlements (sometimes heaped, artificially made by people) could be dedicated to the owner of this lower world, in the role of which the lizard often acts. In the cosmological composition of the mountain or Samogil shamanic plaques, the lower world was always depicted as a lizard with a wolf's ear and open mouth - the lizard swallows the evening setting sun. The absence on the settlement of real traces of consumption of the victims by the ritual participants may indicate a special form of sacrifice, different from the usual laying of sacrificial meat on the fire and then eating it. Two forms of sacrifice are reported by one of the main teachings against paganism:

1. And they (pagan gods) cut chickens, and then the bluffers also eat themselves ...

2. O wretched smoke, but I cut myself with an idol for sacrifice, and we drown the essence in the waters. And the monks pray to the wells that bring and throw into the water, offering sacrifice to Velear. This relatively late teaching deals with the sacrifice of chickens. And how was the situation among the peoples - werewolves (Neurs) who lived in a "bestial way" one and a half - two thousand years before this teaching, who then were "thrown into the water"? we see some hint of this in the children's game "Lizard": children lead a round dance; in the center of the circle sits a boy imitating a lizard, the choir sings: Sit the Lizard under the fire

On a walnut bush, Where a walnut lusna ... (I want to zhanitisya) - Take yourself a girl, Which you want ... In some versions, the beginning of the song contains the words: I'll give you, lizard, a red girl. In other versions, there is a funeral motif: digging a hole and commemorating a lizard. The lizard game is widely known in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

Judging by the fact that the lizard plucks nuts from the bush, the rite refers to the second half of summer, when the nuts ripen. Many children's games are a transformation of ancient pagan rites and a transformation, of course, softened. Let us compare with this the belief that watermen marry drowned women. The same cycle of rites of propitiation of water or underwater underground forces should include numerous widespread rites (also turned into games) of the “Kostroma funeral”, “Morena’s funeral”, “Kupala’s funeral”, when a doll dressed in girl’s clothes is drowned in water. All fragments and echoes of Slavic rituals are brought together into a single complex: the ancient Slavs, like the ancient Greeks, had a rite of propitiation for the deities of the underworld, which affects fertility by making sacrifices thrown into the water. Rituals associated with “throwing into the water” of sacrifices to the deity of the underwater world, directly related to the fertility of the soil, and, consequently, to the harvest, were held in the middle of summer on the semik, on Kupala, when the grain began to sprout and the final result of the season was not yet clear. In these rituals, the masculine, fertilizing principle and the feminine, bearing and giving birth, were intertwined. Among the ancient Greeks, in the middle of summer, two victims were drowned in the sea from a chip - a man and a woman. AT Slavic rites we know both the funeral of Yarila (Ivan) as the personification of the masculine principle, which has already given a new life and therefore has become useless, and the funeral of Kostroma, Kupala, whose images, dressed in women's clothes, were escorted by funeral crying, and then drowned in water.

The duality of masculine and feminine was reflected in the fact that the doll-effigy of Kostroma was sometimes dressed like a man. The drowning of Kostroma in water remains unknown. Etymologically, the word "kostroma" is associated with words denoting "shaggy top of grass", "broom", "beard of ears". Based on this, perhaps the word Kostro-ma should be considered as a compound: Mother of ears? Then the drowning of Kostroma should topologically correspond to the departure of Persephone-Proserpina to the underworld, and the Slavic Lizard, who married the drowned girl, should correspond to Hades, the god of the underworld, the spouse of Persephone.

The seeming illogicality of the sacrificed image of Yarila, the god of ardent spring vegetative power, and Kostroma, the Mother of ears, is eliminated by calendar terms: the personification of these natural forces was drowned or burned only when spring sprouts appeared instead of old grain, when ears were already formed. In the temporal transformations of the rite, the dolls of Kostroma or Kupala replaced not the deity Kostroma or Kupala (the researchers who deny the existence of the idea of ​​such goddesses are right), but a sacrifice, a human sacrifice, brought in gratitude to these forces of seasonal action, but to the constantly existing ruler of all underground and underwater forces that promote fertility, i.e. Lizard, Hades, Poseidon. This ceremony was performed among the Greeks in the month of targelion in the middle of summer, and among the Slavs on Kupala (June 23) or on Peter's Day (June 29). Through the softened form of later theatricalization and game convention, one can discern the cruel primary form of the primitive rite. A. A. Potebnya, in his study of the Kupala festival, cites the tragic cry of a mother for a drowned (in ancient times - drowned) girl: people, do not take water, do not fish, do not mow grass on the bends of the river - this is the beauty of my daughter, this is her body, her braid... This song was sung when the ceremony of drowning Kupala was performed. Widest distribution the rites of drowning dolls (mainly female) on the days of the “crown of summer” (end of June), coinciding with the summer solstice, are quite consistent with the abundance of swamp settlements in the forest zone that arose in the Scythian time and existed until Kievan Rus. As a warning that requires archaeological and folklore verification, one can suggest that the swamp settlements of the zone of the Milograd and Zarubinets culture (and, for a later time, even wider) are part of ritual places of the ancient Slavs (along with revered mountains), dedicated to the archaic cult of the underground-underwater deity Lizard, whose victims were drowned in the water of the swamp surrounding the sanctuary. In Russian folklore, as we see above, a gloomy2 image of the rite of sacrificing a goat has been preserved.

This, as V. Ya. Propp established, is a song version of the tale about brother Ivanushka and sister Alyonushka, drowned by an evil sorceress. Ivanushka wants to return the drowned sister. Alyonushka, my sister! Swim out to the shore: Fires are burning flammable, Cauldrons are seething, They want to kill me ... The drowned girl replies: (I would be glad) to jump out - Combustible stone pulls to the bottom, Yellow sands sucked my heart out. The name of brother Ivanushka may indicate a rite on the night of Ivan Kupala; then sister Alyonushka - - Kupala herself, a victim doomed to become "sinkable in water." On the Kupala night and "great fires burn" and rituals are performed near the water, imitating the drowning of the victim: bathing a girl dressed up as Kupala, or dipping a stuffed doll depicting Kupala into the water.

3. Old Russian sanctuaries

Outwardly, the sanctuary looked like a real fortress on the high bank of the Desna: a deep ditch, a high horseshoe-shaped shaft and wooden walls (fence?) along the upper edge of the site. The diameter of the rounded (now triangular) area was approximately 60 m, i.e., equal to the diameter of medium-sized swamp settlements. The internal structure of the courtyard of the sanctuary-fortress was as follows: along the entire rampart, close to it, in the western part of the site, a long structure 6 m wide, curved in the shape of a rampart, was built. Its length (including the collapsed part) should have been about 60 m. 5 - 6 meters from the long house, vertical pillars were dug into the mainland to a depth of more than a meter, located, like the house, in a semicircle. These are idols. At the eastern end of the site, opposite from the house and idols, there was a certain structure, from which (or from which, if one was replaced by another) there were vertical pillars, coals, ash, calcined earth. At the southern wall of the site - ash, coals, animal bones and an abundance of so-called "horned bricks" - stands for skewers. The middle of the yard, free from structures, was about 20-25 meters in diameter. The entrance to the settlement was from the side of the plateau. The fortification is an impressive sight, but it was purely symbolic, since the ditch was blocked by an earthen "rowing", and the rampart was cut in the middle. The only real defense here could only be the gate, from which only one massive pillar survived, giving us the mentioned line of symmetry. The building on the eastern edge of the settlement, located at the opposite end from the entrance, could be a scaffold-altar, on which a fire burned often and in large quantities and cutting of sacrificial carcasses took place. Abundant traces of fires near the southern wall testify to the roasting of meat on numerous skewers. All this took place in front of a semicircle of idols that bordered the empty center of the sanctuary courtyard. The idols were probably tall, as their bases were dug very deep into pits carefully dug into the dense material. In the surviving part of the settlement, pit-nests of only 5 idols have been preserved; there could have been 10 - 12 in total. Near the idols, at the very foot, small clay vessels were found, and at the idols located in the center, at the entrance, bronze torcs were found, cast, but not cleaned, with foundry burrs. A living woman could not physically wear such a hryvnia. Obviously, they either decorated wooden idols or were offered to them ex voto. Near these female idols, near the entrance, the most remarkable find of the Annunciation Mountain was made - the neck of a huge thick-walled vessel in the form of a bear's head with a wide-open mouth. The middle position of the vessel on the settlement on the line of the entrance - the altar, at one of the central idols of the goddess with a bronze torc around her neck, reveals to us the contents of the entire sanctuary. The goddess with a bear is well known to us from ancient mythology - this is Artemis, or Diana, the sister of the solar giver of blessings Apollo, the daughter of the goddess Leto, known since Crete-Mycenaean times. In honor of Artemis Brauronia, the priestesses of the goddess performed sacred dances, dressed in bear skins. Artemis is associated with the creation of the constellation Ursa Major. Artemis was dedicated to the month of Artemision - March, the time when the bears woke up from hibernation. According to the solar phases, this coincided with the spring equinox around March 25. The bear holidays were called by the Greeks comoedia, which served as the basis for later comedy. Bear holidays with exactly the same name, which has preserved the ancient Indo-European form of "komeditsa" - are known among the Slavs. In Belarus, komoyeditsy was held on March 24, on the eve of the Orthodox Annunciation. Housewives baked special "comas" from pea flour; dances were arranged in clothes turned inside out with fur in honor of the spring awakening of the bear. The ancient Shrovetide turned out to be shifted from its calendar period by the Christian Great Lent, incompatible with Shrovetide revelry. And since the post was subject to a movable Easter calendar, the pagan Maslenitsa, although it survived after the baptism of Russia and has survived to this day (at least in the form of pancakes), but its timing is changeable. The initial term of the undisturbed Maslenitsa is the spring equinox. The indispensable mask at the Maslenitsa carnival was the “bear”, a man dressed up in a bear coat or a turned-out sheepskin coat. Inside, a longitudinal, flat-bottomed recess was dug in the entire length of each half of the "house" and on both sides of it solid benches-beds were made in the mainland, also in full length. On the flat floor in three places (in the surviving half) bonfires were laid without special hearths. In total, 200 - 250 people could sit on four earthen benches in both halves of the building. This premise was built, obviously, for those feasts and brotherhoods that were an integral part of the pagan ritual. Having made a sacrifice, stabbed the victim on a distant platform, bestowed and praised the semicircle of idols, cooked sacrificial meat on horned bricks, the participants of the ceremony completed it with a “conversation”, “table, honorable feast” indoors, sitting on benches near small (obviously, lighting) bonfires. The entire clothing material of the Blagoveshchensk Mountain differs sharply from the material of ordinary Yukhnov settlements. There are no ordinary dwellings, no hearths, no fishing sinkers, no spindles for spindles. Everything found here is intended specifically for feasts: large vessels (for beer?), small goblets, knives, animal bones, stands for skewers. The entrance to the sanctuary was arranged in such a way that at first the person entering the bridge passed through the ditch (“rowing”), then he got into the narrow space of the gate, which was in the middle of the rampart and in the middle of the long house. It is possible that some kind of ceremony of “groaning” with the contents of the bear-vessel took place here. From this middle room, two gentle descents led to the left, to the northern half of the building, and to the right, to the southern half. Directly from the entrance was the entire courtyard of the sanctuary. It is possible that a clear division of the premises into two halves is associated with the phratral division of the tribe. The presence of an enclosed space, which compares favorably with open-air tebisches, confirms the assumption about Lada as the main mistress of this unique temple: songs in honor of Lada were sung on New Year's Eve and then in the spring, from March 9 to June 29, - half of the holidays associated with in the name of Lada (including the annunciation) falls on the cold winter and early spring season, when it is preferable to celebrate not in the cold. However, it cannot be excluded that the most massive actions could take place on the entire plateau of the high bank of the Desna and outside the actual sanctuary. Fibulae The ancient Slavs had magical figures, or amulets, consider one of them. A. Sky: ruler with swans. This is where rain and sunshine come from. B. The earth receives rays and jets of rain. The living principle of the earth is represented only by waterfowl and snake-snakes. All attention is paid to the theme of water. B. The underworld. Birds and snakes connect him with the upper worlds. The Lord of the lower world is the Lizard (or the Lizard?). The lower world is not opposed to the middle one, but merged with it. Six birds represent the daily course of the Sun. The Kiev Historical Museum has two paired complex-compositional brooches, according to the general pattern of the base, very close to the fibula from Blazhkov disassembled above, but in its content identical to the pastoral fibula No. There is no lizard on such brooches (pastoral and Kyiv ones) either - it has been replaced by a woman, obviously Makosh. If we continue the thought of the ritual purpose of such brooches, then the composition with horses and a female figure in the center should be compared with a similar plot in embroidery and attributed to another category of festivities - not to prayers for rain, but, for example, to the Kupala holiday, when rain was not asked for. ; the goddess Makosh lowered her hands to the ground. Both varieties of complex compositional brooches reveal to us different forms of showing the macrocosm, attracted in one form or another to the magical designs of the ancient plowmen of the Dnieper region, and, in all likelihood, are associated with the specific ritual function of one or another category of brooches. Each of them contained a reflection of a complex picture of the world, but different elements of the macrocosm were put forward for different sacred purposes. For prayers for rain, they turned to the heavenly Dazhdbog and saturated the jewelry with figures of waterfowl, snakes and pangolins. For the festivities of spring sowing or the “crown of summer” - Kupala, a female deity - Makosh - was displayed and surrounded (as in later Russian embroidery) by horses, which were necessary as a real force during a flash, and were symbolically associated with the sun (Phoebus's chariot ) and with the water element - horses were sacrificed to the water; ancient Poseidon is also firmly connected with horses.

Toponymic accounting of tracts at its present level gives, unfortunately, an extremely fragmentary and incomplete picture, since there was no systematic study and it is extremely difficult to carry out. Such prayers. As if "who prays under a barn or in the rye under the grove or near the water," they did not even leave toponymic traces.

4. sacred trees

Sacred trees and sacred groves, “trees” and “groves” in the terminology of medieval scribes, which were not sufficiently mentioned in historical sources, were a kind of category of places of worship.

One of the revered trees was the birch, which is associated with a number of spring rituals and round dance songs. It is possible that the birch was dedicated to coastlines, the spirits of goodness and fertility. Ethnographers have collected a lot of information about the "curling" of young birches, about spring ritual processions under the bound branches of birches. A felled birch tree in Semik (ancient date - June 4) served as the personification of some female deity and was the center of all Semitsky rituals. The trees involved in the pagan ritual were lavishly decorated with ribbons and embroidered towels. The embroidery on the ribs contained the image of those goddesses who prayed and sacrificed during these periods: the figures of Mokosh and two women in labor (mother and daughter) Lada and Lelya, prayers in “groves”, in “trees” can be functionally likened to a later church deity, where the temple corresponded to a grove or clearing in the forest, fresco images of deities - individual revered trees (or idol trees), and icons - images of Mokosh and Lada on the timbers.

Trees located near springs, springs, springs, enjoyed special reverence, since here it was possible to simultaneously turn to the vegetative power of "growing" and to the living water of a key gushing from the earth. The meaning of turning to spring water and the emergence of the fabulous concept of “living water” is explained by the thought often carried out in anti-pagan literature: “Recoste: we create evil, so that good things will come upon us - we will devour students and rivers and this, so that we will improve our petitions.”

"Ov demanded to create on the student, waiting for lawsuits from him." From the cult of birch and trees growing among students, the cult of oak differs significantly. Oak - the tree of Zeus and Perun, the strongest and most durable tree of our latitudes - has firmly entered the system of Slavic pagan rituals. The Slavic ancestral home was located in the zone of oak growth, and the beliefs associated with it must go back to ancient times. Until the XVII - XIX centuries. oak and oak forests retained their leading place in rituals. The village wedding train, after the wedding, circled the lone oak tree three times; Feofan Prokopovich in his "Regulations of the Spiritual" forbids "singing prayers in front of an oak." Live roosters were sacrificed to the oak tree, arrows were stuck around, and others brought pieces of bread, meat and what each had, as their custom demanded.

5. Hostile and malevolent deities

Altars dedicated to some special, exceptional occasion were also found: natural disaster, drought, epidemic.

The epidemic, pestilence, fully explains the combination of a stuffed altar with a cemetery and stealing near it. Such altars had a female outline. The female deity, absorbing her gifts, could be Makosh (in case of a threat to the harvest), and in the case of pestilence and a threat to people's lives, this could be the personification of that hostile and evil deity like Mara, Morena, (from "pestilence", "to starve"), which subsequently took on a well-known form fabulous Baba Yaga. Fairy tales often emphasize the immensity of this creature: Baba Yaga lies in the hut from corner to corner: “in one corner of her legs, in the other her head, her lips on the lintel, her nose stuck to the ceiling”; “Baba Yaga, the bone leg is a clay muzzle, she plugs the stove with her chest” (sometimes - “her boobs hang in the garden”). Baba Yaga's counterpart is Likho One-Eyed: "Likho is personified in our legends as a giant woman, greedily devouring people." Ukrainian fairy tales. In which the main opponent of the hero is Likho, they equate Likho with Baba Yaga: this giantess lives in the forest, barely fits in her hut, fries the people she slaughtered in the oven. The blacksmith, who has fallen into the power of Likh, only by cunning gets rid of the monster giantess. The blacksmith opposing the personification of evil is a character from the ancient epic of the beginning of the Iron Age. The one-eyed Likho "was taller than the tallest oak." As for the one-eyedness of the Drevlyan ritual figure that interests us, it should be said that in the entire semicircle of its head (“northern ledge”) only one point is marked in the place of the first eye - four large stones are laid there. Such altars were a public sacrifice to the evil deity of death and evil in some special frightening circumstances.

Likha was brought, seeing from the excavations, animals and people, judging by the abundant folklore material, the heads of the sacrificed were separated and exhibited around the dwelling of Baba Yaga or Likha on stakes - “stamens”. In many fairy tales, Baba Yaga's hut is furnished with such poles with skulls on them; Likha's one-eyed guest is treated with severed heads; palace of Baba Yaga, the leader of the cavalry. “Fenced with a tyne, on each stamen there is a head and only one head is missing” (it is intended for the head of the hero of a fairy tale). Present in fairy tales is the motif of making a “cup” from a skull, known from the annals.

6. Priests and their role

In order to recreate the general picture of primitive Slavic paganism, it is not enough for us to have only village magi. After all, we know that even in the I millennium BC. e. there were "events", "cathedrals", "crowds" - crowded tribal gatherings with a complex scenario of a pagan ritual, with a developed set of rites, accompanied by pre-made props. The tribal nobility should have included people who developed a system of rituals, who knew (or created again) the texts of prayers and chants, melodies of tunes, and formulas for addressing the gods. The age-old tradition inevitably had to be intertwined with creativity and the expansion of the repertoire. Priests were an integral part of any primitive society, and the more complicated its social structure was, the closer it was to the upper limit of pre-class primitiveness, the clearer and more diverse was the role of common tribal priests, priestesses and princes who performed some of the priestly functions.

In order to reproduce the composition of the priestly class of the ancient Slavs, in addition to the universal sorcerers - "cloakers", leaders of pagan rites and sacrifices, we must also include blacksmiths in the general list of wizards, who made not only tools and weapons (which already gave them considerable weight), but also “female forge”, “forge of great value”, showing “cunning” and “blacksmithing art”. From the ancient verb “to forge”, to make something out of metal, the word “deceit” comes, which we use only in a figurative sense, and at one time meant: wisdom, skill, intricacy. "The root of wisdom, to whom it was revealed, and deceit (wisdom), who understand." These "insidious" goldsmiths knew pagan symbols perfectly and widely used their knowledge both for making village amulets and jewelry with amulets, and for the "mane utensils" of the most noble women of the country up to the Grand Duchesses. From the information of the XI - XIV centuries. we have data on the following category of people involved in a pagan cult: Men, Women

Magi Haranniki Magi (Sorcerer) Wizards Adherents Witches Cloud-Breakers Blasphemers Enchantresses Priests Bayans Enchantresses Sorcerers Sorcerers Enchantress Enchantress Cobniki Nauznitsa Enchantress Patvors, pathworkers Direct information about the Magi and their role in public life the young state of Russia in the 9th - 10th centuries. we have little. Records about the actions of the Magi in the bearish corners of the northeastern outskirts - in Suzdal and Poshekhonye - date back only to the 11th century. Perhaps that is why such a historically interesting topic as the priestly class has not even been posed in our literature as a problem to be considered. It is not uncommon to look at the Magi, only as village sorcerers, healers of a small scale. Such were the distant descendants of the ancient Magi in the 16th - 17th centuries, who, according to tradition, were still called Magi. But even fragmentary information about the Magi of the 11th century, acting on the very edge of the earth subject to Russia, draws them to us as powerful figures who raised their hands both to the local nobility (“old child”) and to the noble Kyiv boyar, who arrived with a whole retinue. At the time of the introduction of Christianity, the Magi led the people and openly fought with government troops.

A century later, in the same Novgorod, “the Vlhv stood under Gleb (Svyatoslav, the grandson of Yaroslav the Wise) ... To speak to people, acting like a god and a lot of deception - not a whole city is enough ... And bast a rebellion in the city and give him faith and want to beat the bishop ... And they split in two: prince Gleb and his squad stayed with the bishop, and the people all went around zavlhva ... ".

This well-known episode testifies to the power of influence of pagan priests not only in the wilderness, but also in the city, where the episcopal see was established long ago and the majestic St. Sophia Cathedral was built. Among the Slavs, Hilferding writes, “priests had the meaning of a special estate, strictly distant from the people ... they performed popular prayers in sanctuaries and those divinations by which the will of the gods was recognized. They prophesied and spoke to the people on behalf of the gods... They enjoyed special honor and wealth, disposed of the income from the estates that belonged to the temples and the abundant offerings of worshipers.

The most famous among the Baltic Slavs was the famous temple of Svyatovit (corresponding to the Russian Family) in Arkona on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Managing religious life was not easy, even at the level of a single village; it was complex at the level of a tribe with a common tribal sanctuary, and it became very complicated and diverse at the level of a state united by about fifty tribes. A simple rural sorcerer had to know and remember all rituals, incantations, ritual songs, be able to calculate the calendar dates of all magical actions, and know the healing properties of herbs. In terms of the sum of his knowledge, he should have approached a modern professor of ethnography, with the only difference being that the ethnographer has to search for half-forgotten remnants for a long time. And an ancient sorcerer, probably. He received a lot from his teachers-predecessors. Without continuous succession of generations, it is impossible to imagine the thousand-year tradition of all varieties of East Slavic folklore.

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Features of the pagan religion of the Eastern Slavs, their inherent worldview. Historical periods of development of Slavic beliefs, rituals and traditions. Pantheon of supreme gods, their influence on nature and people's lives. The revival of paganism in modern Russia.

Paganism is a religion based on belief in several gods at the same time, and not in one creator God, as, for example, in Christianity.

The concept of paganism

The term "paganism" itself is not entirely accurate, as it includes several concepts. Today, paganism is understood not so much as a religion, but as a set of religious and cultural beliefs, and belief in several gods is referred to as "totemism", "polytheism" or "ethnic religion".

The paganism of the ancient Slavs is a term that is used to refer to a complex of religious and cultural views on the life of the ancient Slavic tribes before they converted to Christianity and converted to a new faith. There is an opinion that the term itself in relation to the ancient religious and ritual culture of the Slavs did not originate from the concept of polytheism (many deities), but from the fact that the ancient tribes, although they lived separately, were based on one language. So, Nestor the chronicler in his notes speaks of these tribes as pagans, that is, having one language, common roots. Later, this term gradually began to be attributed to Slavic religious beliefs and used to refer to religion.

The emergence and development of paganism in Russia

Slavic paganism began to take shape around the 2nd-1st millennium BC. under the influence of Indo-European culture, when the Slavs began to stand out from it into independent tribes. Moving and occupying new territories, the Slavs got acquainted with the culture of their neighbors and adopted certain features from them. So, it was the Indo-European culture that brought into Slavic mythology the images of the god of thunder, the god of cattle and the image of mother earth. The Celts also had a considerable influence on the Slavic tribes, who also enriched Slavic pantheon and, in addition, they brought the very concept of "god" to the Slavs, which had not been used before. Slavic paganism has a lot in common with the German-Scandinavian culture, from there the Slavs took the image of the world tree, dragons and many other deities, which later transformed depending on the living conditions and the characteristics of the Slavic culture.

After the Slavic tribes formed and began to actively populate new territories, move away from each other and separate, paganism was also transformed, each tribe had its own special rituals, its own names for the gods and the deities themselves. So, by the 6th-7th centuries. the religion of the Eastern Slavs was quite noticeably different from the religion of the Western Slavs.

It should be noted that often the beliefs of the top of society were very different from the beliefs of the lower strata, and what was believed in large cities and settlements did not always coincide with the beliefs of small villages.

From the moment the Slavic tribes began to unite, began to form, external relations of the Slavs with Byzantium began to develop, gradually paganism began to be persecuted, old beliefs began to be doubted, even teachings against paganism appeared. As a result, after the Baptism of Russia in 988, when Christianity became the official religion, the Slavs began to gradually move away from the old traditions, although the relationship between paganism and Christianity was not easy. According to some information, in many territories paganism is still preserved, and in Russia it existed for quite a long time, until the 12th century.

The essence of Slavic paganism

Although there are a sufficient number of sources by which one can judge the beliefs of the Slavs, it is difficult to form a unified picture of the world of the East Slavic pagans. It is generally accepted that the essence of Slavic paganism was faith in the forces of nature, which determined human life, controlled it and decided fate. From this follow the gods - the lords of the elements and natural phenomena, mother earth. In addition to the higher pantheon of gods, the Slavs also had smaller deities - brownies, mermaids, etc. Minor deities and demons did not have a serious impact on human life, but actively participated in it. The Slavs believed in the existence of a human soul, in the heavenly and underworld kingdoms, in life after death.

Slavic paganism has many rituals that are associated with the interaction of gods and people. They worshiped the gods, they asked for protection, patronage, they made sacrifices - most often it was cattle. There is no exact information about the presence of human sacrifices among the pagan Slavs.

List of Slavic gods

Common Slavic gods:

• Mother - Cheese Earth - the main female image, the goddess of fertility, she was worshiped and asked for a good harvest, a good offspring;
• Perun - god of thunder chief god pantheon.

Other gods of the Eastern Slavs (also called the pantheon of Vladimir):

• Veles is the patron of storytellers and poetry;
• Hair is the patron saint of cattle;
• Dazhdbog - a solar deity, is considered the ancestor of all Russian people;
• Mokosh is the patroness of spinning and weaving;
• Rod and women in labor - deities personifying fate;
• Svarog - the blacksmith god;
• Svarozhich - the personification of fire;
• Simargl - a messenger between heaven and earth;
• Stribog - a deity associated with the winds;
• Khors is the personification of the sun.

The Slavic pagans also had various images who personified certain natural phenomena, but were not deities. These include Maslenitsa, Kolyada, Kupala, etc. Effigies of these images were burned during holidays and rituals.

The persecution of the pagans and the end of paganism

The more Rus united, the more it increased its political power and expanded contacts with other, more developed states, the more the pagans were persecuted by the adherents of Christianity. After the Baptism of Russia took place, Christianity became not just a new religion, but a new way of thinking, began to play a huge political and social role. Pagans who did not want to accept a new religion (and there were a lot of them) entered into open confrontation with Christians, but the latter did everything to reason with the "barbarians". Paganism persisted until the 12th century, but then it gradually began to fade away.