Vedic traditions have always been

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

Here I would like to say that I see doubts in the thoughts of many pagans. Not that these were doubts, but the confidence that paganism, like the faith of the Slavs, is being revived only now, after a thousand years of oblivion. Many really believe that paganism was chopped off with the ax of Christian missionaries a thousand years ago, completely and unquestioningly destroyed. As if during this thousand years there was not even a mention of the faith of the ancestors, and it was completely erased from the memory of the Slavs.

In fact, this is far and far from being the case. Modern paganism develops and revives not at all from some archaeological excavations, scraps of historical data, teachings against paganism, etc. Most likely, this is just an addition to help us get the most complete picture of the beliefs of our ancestors. In general, I would like to call this reflection: Paganism was a thousand years ago, paganism was for the last thousand years, paganism remains undefeated even now.

Paganism as it was and remains in Russia, and there are thousands of proofs of this based on historical facts! We will consider some of them below. One has only to say: all this long thousand years, after Christianity settled a new God in the vastness of our Motherland, people live according to pagan traditions. Many of us observe and even strictly observe pagan customs without even knowing it. The church itself fought against paganism not only in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, as is commonly believed. Reliable sources directly say that the clergy acted and fought against the pagans in the 15th and 17th centuries and continue to do so to this day.

These were not some semi-pagan, two-faith manifestations that Christians wanted to eradicate, but real pagan communities, congregations and entire settlements. What can we say about the holidays, which for the most part carry exactly the Old Slavic rituals. Christianity only sprinkled the pagan way of life of the Slavs with its biblical dusting. They replaced the names of the Gods, while preserving, nevertheless, the very images of the pagan Gods, postponed the holidays to other dates, etc. Thus, people were taught that the old is no more and will never return. However, none of this worked for them and, in truth, never did.

During the destruction of the ancient Faith, it was not without deception, with the help of which people wanted to present the foreign religion. In a way, it worked. Over the course of a thousand years, the minds of the masses nevertheless shifted towards the church, but in our souls each of us continued to remain a pagan and live according to the beliefs of our ancestors. It is completely untrue that people in 988 went to be baptized with joy. Many sources conceal the fact that people were driven by force, and part of Novgorod went into the woods altogether, refusing to accept the new fun of Prince Vladimir.

It is a complete lie that people immediately rejected their Gods, demolished the temples themselves and went to the churches of Christians. The pagans for a long and very long time, actively during the first three centuries, and then more quietly, but still without ceasing, fought against the planting of a new one. This struggle was accompanied not by teachings and instructions, as many think, but by executions and reprisals, bloody battles and real revolutions, such as were in Murom, Novgorod, Kiev, Rostov, etc. Churas from the temples carried home and hid. They were found until the 13th century, and the Christian chronicles themselves directly indicate that people continued to believe in their Gods, make sacrifices in barns, and arrange feasts for their deceased ancestors. The people of the last thousand years have done the impossible. They carried the pagan faith in their hands, like an inextinguishable flame in their palms and proudly handed it over to us - to their descendants.

What are the pagan holidays of the solstice? Whatever the Christians did to destroy these holidays, they renamed them, moved them to other dates, set strict fasts on these days, and everything was useless. Apparently, there is a strong pagan vein in each of us, since Maslenitsa, Kupala, Kolyada and others are still celebrated with all their might and power, preserving millennial traditions. In 1505, the abbot of the Eleazarov monastery, Pamphilus, spoke out against the Kupala holidays, which were called demonic. According to the chronicles, the term "Blockhead" (chur or idol) was in circulation in the XII-XIII centuries. In the above descriptions, you can read about the method of making idols of that time. That is, pagan idols are placed on temples not only in our time and were placed in the pre-Christian era, but up to the 13th century and beyond.

In 1165-1185, Vladyka of Novgorod Ilya-John wrote that the Slavs still marry according to pagan laws and do not even think about going to church for weddings and weddings, and this is two hundred years after Christianization! Metropolitan Photius wrote in 1410 that many people still live together without getting married, and some had several wives, just like in the old days. In 1501, Metropolitan Simon said that pagans still live in Chudskaya, Izhora, Korelskaya and other districts. Starting in 1534, missionaries began to be sent there with sermons, people, of course, nodded their heads, but continued to live in their own way. Other chronicles say that pagan beliefs continued to exist in Siberia in the 17th century, and their carriers did not even hear of any such Christianity. In addition, the Christian Stoglava directly says that in the same 16th century the church denounced the remnants of ancient paganism, which, even after more than half a millennium, did not go anywhere, but lived their lives in parallel with Christianity.

In 1534, Archbishop Macarius of Novgorod wrote to Ivan the Terrible that: “in many Russian places until now, the custom is keeping from the ancient ancestors … moon and stars, and lakes and just cut - I bow to all creatures, like God."

And this is the 16th century, which, in theory, should have been completely permeated and saturated with church Christianity! From all this, we can conclude that paganism did not at all revive from the ashes after a millennium, but existed all this time "underground" and had its followers. Russian Christianity, which has the form of dual faith, and half consists of Slavic paganism, very quickly goes to naught, and people, realizing where there is pure and correct faith, and where is a mess and falsehood, willingly go to pagan communities and accept the faith of their ancestors with joy a person who found what he was looking for for a very long time.