It is known that until the 10th century paganism reigned in Russia. Magi and magicians, who had great authority both among the tribal nobility and among the common people, were considered mediators between man and gods, of whom there were a great many in the pagan pantheon
After the official baptism of Rus in 988 by Prince Vladimir, a struggle began between the followers of pagan beliefs and Christians, which continued for more than one century. 8 of the famous epic about Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the robber, according to legend, describes the battle of a Russian hero with a fugitive pagan sorcerer who was hiding in the Murom forests from the oppression of Christians.
Flight to the East The
Magi, who wanted to preserve the ancient faith and secret knowledge, climbed into the deep forests of the Central Russian plain, fled far to the east. Preserved information about that. that already in the X111-X1 / / centuries some of the pagans reached the Stone Belt (the old name
Middle Urals - approx. ed.) and even settled in the vast and free of Christian beliefs territory of the Trans-Urals. According to one of the legends, the famous Golden Idol, which until the 10th century stood on the high bank of the Dnieper, was secretly taken there. On the territory of modern Bashkiria and Tatarstan, in the Northern Urals, along the banks of the Tobol and Irtysh, Russian explorers and settlers of the XY1-XU11 centuries found secret temples on which pagan masses with bloody sacrifices were performed.
Mysterious hut
In the memoirs of the explorer of Siberia at the beginning of the 19th century, Semyon Andreevich Beketov, there is a description of a pagan temple he discovered in the north of the Tomsk province. According to Beketov, the place of worship of the pagan gods was in a vast clearing, hidden from prying eyes by the age-old taiga on the left bank of the Ob. The huge scorched space was surrounded by granite boulders with some mysterious signs inscribed on them and facing the sunrise. In the center of the clearing, on high piles, stood a windowless log cabin with a low door, which was surrounded by a palisade of wooden idols facing the log structure. On the wooden idols, in great numbers, multicolored ribbons were tied, fluttering like flags in the wind.
In the hut S. A. Beketov came across a pile of bones lying in a large, smoked metal bowl, some of which, no doubt, belonged to a person.
Bloody sacrifice
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the authorities of tsarist Russia fought relentlessly against the pagan sorcerers and sorcerers, as well as against their bloody rituals, in which human sacrifice played an important role. So, in 1905 the Irkutsk governor ordered to conduct a thorough investigation of the "case of sorcery." Then a resident of the small village of Zhzhenovka asked for help in treating her seriously ill daughter to a magician who lived as a hermit a hundred miles from Irkutsk. To heal the girl, the sorcerer demanded that the unfortunate woman steal a girl of the same age from her neighbors and bring the baby to him. In his skete, the sorcerer killed the girl he had brought, and the daughter of the kidnapping woman regained her health …
He was engaged in antisocial religious activity
Strange as it may seem, however, even in the 20th century, the servants of the ancient Slavic pagan cults did not stop their activities. Thus, it is known from the archives of the Sverdlovsk NKVD Directorate of the USSR that in 1952 a man was detained in the working village of Gagarskiy, Sverdlovsk Region, who, as the case says, “was engaged in antisocial religious activity, illegally provided medical services, charging workers a fee.” From the materials of the case, it appears that the detainee did not have a passport, never worked anywhere, but lived in a dugout thirty kilometers from the village.
The investigation established a circle of persons who used the services of the detainee at one time. The interrogated residents of Gagarsky and a number of other villages showed that they turned to a man to solve their health problems, love relationships, for predictions …
In particular, a resident of the village of Zaprudny, Ekaterina M., told the investigation that the detained man predicted to her that she had disappeared without lead husband back in two years safe and sound.
Svetlana T. from Sverdlovsk had her husband under investigation for several months on charges of embezzlement of state funds. The man she turned to made the court acquit her husband. It is also known from the archives that a similar case was tried in 1965 in Blagoveshchensk. Only there, among other charges, was arson by the detainees of an Orthodox church.n
Horned deity Lutobor
The stories of a resident of Krasnoyarsk Irina Matveevna Sorina (surname has been changed) seem to be very curious. For almost ten years, this woman, who was in a happy marriage, could not give birth to a child. Despite all the efforts of the doctors, miscarriages followed one after another. Somehow in the early nineties, one of her friends advised her to seek help from an old wizard who lived far in the taiga.
For almost a day Irina was getting to the place on the checkpoints. Despite the woman's fears, the sorcerer received her in his very poor dwelling. In the evening of the same day, he performed a certain ceremony with Irina, which she could not see: she fell asleep after that. like drinking the old man's potion. And in a dream she dreamed of a terrible-looking horned creature with whom she entered into a relationship. Waking up, Irina told the old man about a strange dream, and he explained to the woman that the ancient Slavic deity Lutobor had visited her, and now she should wait for the addition to the family.
Nine months later, Irina had a son. But the first-born did not bring joy to the woman - he was diagnosed with a severe pathology of the brain. The baby was sent to the Baby House, where he did not live for half a year. Irina Matveevna never had more children.
The birth of Yaropolk
At the end of the turbulent XX century, the fashion for pagan beliefs, black books and sorcery began to spread in Russia. The bookshelves were filled with literature of the appropriate content, and the newspapers were full of advertisements for the provision of services by newly-minted magicians. However, true pagans, possessing truly ancient and secret knowledge, try not to advertise their existence especially. These wise men include a sixty-year-old resident of the Tyumen region, who calls himself Yaropolk. According to Yaropolk, his parents were deeply believing Orthodox Christians and tried to instill this faith in their son.
At first, Dmitry - that was the name of Yaropolk in childhood and adolescence - went to church and observed the fasts. But at the age of thirteen, picking berries in the forest, he met an old man who brought him to his secluded hut, told the boy about the ancient Slavic gods … Dmitry began to visit the old man almost every week, and having matured, he left home altogether and settled with him in a hut lost in the woods on the border with Ugra …
By the age of sixteen, Dmitry learned everything about kikimors and igoshes, goblin and water, shishigs, brownies and other mysterious creatures that, in the opinion of uninitiated people, are only in fairy tales. Dmitry learned to heal almost all known diseases, manage forest and river creatures, summon nature spirits and communicate with deceased ancestors. When Dmitry was sixteen years old, the old man shaved his head, leaving only one strand of hair in front, and called the young man Yaropolk.
Soon Yaropolk's teacher died. The young man burned his body and from that time on completely devoted himself to serving the pagan gods. According to Yaropolk, paganism in Russia will never disappear, since its faithful followers - the Magi and sorcerers - will not disappear. Their secret knowledge today, as well as centuries ago, is needed by people, because the ancient gods are still powerful and able to manifest their power even in our age of high technologies.