Stolen traditions: swimming in the ice hole

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Russian Orthodox Church actively promotes the myth that the Russian people "from time immemorial" went to the Epiphany of the Lord to bathe in the ice-hole: supposedly the water on this holiday becomes holy, and a person who plunged into ice-cold water will not get sick. And today every Orthodox believer considers it his duty to splash in the Epiphany ice-hole.

Curiously, there is no evidence that this phenomenon was widespread. Of course, you can find references to the tradition itself in classical literature (for example, by Kuprin and Shmelev). This allows us to say that people swam in the ice-hole at Epiphany, but there is one caveat.

In Dahl we find: “Who dressed up about Christmastide” - that is, those who participated in mass games on Christmastide, put on masks, went to carols, in a word, sinned as best they could. And swimming in icy water, which, as is commonly believed, becomes holy on Epiphany night, is such a way to cleanse oneself from sins. Others did not need to swim.

Few people think about where such an extreme tradition came from. Meanwhile, it has deep roots, going back to a time when Christianity in Russia did not even smell.

Slavic traditions of swimming in an ice-hole date back to the times of the ancient Scythians, who dipped their babies into ice-cold water, accustoming them to the harsh nature. In Russia, after the bath, they loved to plunge into ice water or jump into a snowdrift.

In general, swimming in an ice-hole is part of the ancient pagan initiatory military rituals.

The centuries-old, if not even millennial, folk customs and traditions have never been exterminated by the churches. An example is the pagan holiday Maslenitsa, which had to be tied to the beginning of Lent.

The Church, being unable to overcome the pagan rites, was forced to give them its canonical explanation - they say, following the Gospel myths, Orthodox people repeat the procedure of “baptism of Christ in Jordan”. Therefore, swimming in the ice-hole on any days other than Epiphany was severely persecuted by the church - as outright blasphemy and paganism. That is why Dahl makes a reservation that "bathing" was performed strictly at a certain time and not by everyone.

Historians know the fact that Ivan the Terrible liked to demonstrate to amazed foreign ambassadors the valor and daring of his boyars: he made them throw off their fur coats and merrily dive into the hole, pretending that it was easy and simple for them. Moreover, he did this not within the framework of Orthodoxy, but precisely in the traditions of military valor.

There is one more curious moment: the very event of dipping into water, which is called baptism, has nothing to do with the Russian word "cross".

According to the biblical myth, John the Baptist, using the ritual of dipping into the Jordan, “wooed” Christ the Holy Spirit, just as he had previously wooed him to his other followers. In Greek, this rite is called ΒάπτισΜα (literally: "immersion"), from this word comes the modern words "baptists" and "baptistery" (place where people are baptized).

The Russian word "baptism" goes back to the ancient Russian word "kres", meaning "fire" (the root, as in the word "kresalo" - flint, flint for cutting fire). That is, the word "baptism" means "burning." Initially, it referred to pagan initiatory rites, called upon at a certain age to "kindle" in a person the "spark of God" that is in him from the Family. Thus, the pagan rite of baptism meant (or consolidated) a person's readiness for the field (military art, craft).

In modern Russian, there are echoes of this rite: "baptism of fire", "baptism of workers". This also includes the expression "to work with a spark."

Of course, the initiation rites themselves differed depending on the nature of the baptism: the rites of initiation into fighters, healers or blacksmiths were different. Therefore, the word "baptism" was always clarified, a word was added, explaining what status it was, in what field.

Christians borrowed this word "baptism", adding their own explanation to it - baptism with water - such a phrase can often be found in Russian translations of Holy Scripture. The absurd meaning of this expression was obvious to our ancestors - “baptism (burning) with water, but we take this phrase for granted.

The sacred meaning of "baptism" with water in childhood as a magical rite consists in flooding with water that very generic spark (that is, in the Christian interpretation - from the old Adam, and in fact - from the Devil, from Nature) and replacing it with the Holy Spirit, which descends directly from above. Those. "Baptized with water" by this rite, as it were, renounces his roots, from his earthly nature - renounces the Family.

The word "cross" in the meaning of several (not necessarily two) mutually crossed crossbeams - comes from the word "cross", meaning a type of fire pit (logs, folded in a certain way). This name of the campfire laying later extended to any intersection of logs, logs, boards or lines. It was originally (and is now) a synonym for the word "kryzh" (the root, as in the word "ridge" - a stump turned out of the ground with intertwined roots). Traces of this word in the modern language remain the name of the city of Kryzhopol (the city of the Cross) and in accounting professional terms "kryzhik" - a cross (check mark) in the statement, the verb "kryzhit" - to check, verify the statements. In other East Slavic languages it is used this way (in Belarusian, for example, "crusader" is "kryzhanosets, kryzhak").

Christians have merged these two dissimilar, albeit similarly rooted, concepts - a cross (on which they crucified) and baptism (a rite of Christian Baptism), reducing them to the word "cross" as the intersection of lines.

Thus, Christians not only borrowed the word for the rite, but also dragged into this rite the tradition of swimming in an ice hole.

See also: Stolen symbols: the cross and Christianity

Viktor Schauberger: the one who solved the mystery of water