Our distant ancestors - the ancient Slavs - in the second millennium BC had mythological beliefs and ideas that were characteristic of other European peoples during the period of decay of the primitive tribal system: they honored their ancestors and worshiped them.
In their opinion, for example, chur (grandfather) after death defended his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. "Chur me!", That is, "Grandfather, protect me!" the Slav spoke when he was in danger. Eastern Slavs organized holidays in honor of their ancestors, solemnly commemorated the dead. In order to appease the souls of the deceased ancestors, they brought edible gifts to their graves: pancakes, eggs, fish, honey, kvass. The thought of the ancient Slav turned to the ancestors - "grandfathers", who were lying in the ground, during plowing, sowing of spring crops and "vegetation" of grain in the ground.
In ancient times, East Slavic cemeteries were like settlements of the dead - over the ashes of each deceased, his relatives installed a wooden domina (a pillar-like hut, a fabulous hut on chicken legs). It was to these miniature houses that the Slavs-Rusichs brought treats to their ancestors in spring and autumn. Later, high earthen mounds began to be poured over the graves of compatriots. The custom of "bringing" and "parental" days persisted in Russia until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, until the eve of imperialism, and in some places it has even survived to this day. Hunters and fishermen of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic (Late Stone Age and Middle Stone Age) of Eastern Europe believed in bereginas - kind, helping people, female spirits, affectionate sorceresses, whose very name comes from the verbs "to protect",believed in ghouls or vampires known from folk tales - evil werewolf spirits. The cult of Rod, the supreme god of the Earth and Heavens, who intelligently disposes of all the vital elements and heavenly bodies - the sun, rain and water - was associated with agriculture and reflected the later and higher stages of development of the society of the indigenous inhabitants of the Russian Plain - the Neolithic (New Stone Age), Eneolithic (Copper-Stone Age) and Bronze Age (VI-III millennium BC). Eneolithic (Copper-Stone Age) and Bronze Age (VI-III millennium BC). Eneolithic (Copper-Stone Age) and Bronze Age (VI-III millennium BC).
Belief in a single supreme god was the basis of late pagan and Christian monotheism, or, as they usually say, monotheism. The cult of Svarog - the god of heaven and fire, the supreme patron saint of blacksmiths, iron grandfathers of craftsmen, armors and armourers - arose and was consolidated in the era of the Iron Age of the Eastern Slavs - in the II and I millennia BC. e., when East Slavic steel weapons and steel armor were already the best in the world.
Outstanding Russian historian Academician Vasily Grigorievich Vasilyevsky (1838-1899) and Russian Soviet writer Alexei Kuzmich Yugov established and proved that the glorious hero of Homer's Iliad Achilles (Achilles) was a Russian, an ancient Russian, and the reason for his long-term invulnerability was precisely Russian steel armor, similar to which no other people of the Earth had in the era of the siege of Troy.
The main works of V. G. Vasilievsky were published after his death in four voluminous volumes in St. Petersburg-Leningrad in 1908-1930, A. K. Yugov's book "Duma on the Russian Word" was also reprinted (by the Sovremennik publishing house in Moscow) …
In the period of transition from military democracy to early feudal social relations in the Russian Land developed in the 1st millennium BC. e. the cult of Perun - the god of thunder, thunder and lightning, war, squads and weapons. In the 5th-10th centuries A. D. e. Perun was the patron god of Russian princes and knights. Its main attribute was considered to be a fiery heavenly sword - lightning. In the minds of ancient and early medieval Russians, the mighty and formidable Perun peacefully coexisted with the peace-loving god Beles - the patron saint of shepherds, singers, poets and artists. Our ancestors also had other important gods - the sun god Yarilo, the wind god Stribog, the fertility god Ovsen. Slavic-Russian pre-Christian mythology was no less majestic than Greco-Roman, and at the same time incomparably more human.
The Russian gods, according to the ideas of our ancestors, were not at enmity with each other, did not commit any cruelties and injustices, and demanded complete tolerance in relation to other people's religious beliefs. All Russians, according to ancient Slavic myths, were svarozichs - direct descendants of Svarog, and by no means slaves or products of God. From all Slavs without exception, the Russian pre-Christian religion (popular faith), inextricably linked with folk mythology, Russian folk philosophy, demanded strict observance of the rules of honor and the principles of justice. Generally they were called Pravya (from this word such modern Russian words as "right" and "truth" originated).
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Since ancient times, the Eastern Slavs had a precisely developed agricultural calendar that showed an excellent knowledge of all growing seasons of spring wheat and barley. The very word "calendar" comes from the original Slavic word "kolo" - a circle (originally - okoy, heavenly circle). The prayers of the Eastern Slavs - pagans to their gods were strictly scheduled for the seasons and the most important periods of field work. The year is divided into 12 months, bearing original Russian-Slavic names (they are partially preserved in Ukraine and Belarus) and was determined by the solar phases - after all, the Sun played a special, determining role in the worldview and beliefs of the Proto-Slavs - the most ancient farmers of Europe.
The year began among the Slavs-Rus, as we do now, on January 1. New Year's festivities - Christmastide - lasted 12 days, capturing the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. These days the youth carolled cheerfully and solemnly saw off the outgoing year and welcomed the coming one. It was these carols that Nikolai Gogol described in The Night Before Christmas. Later, the church began to use cheerful and cheerful pagan Christmastide and carols, timed to coincide with the Christian holidays of Christmas and baptism (December 25 and January 7) according to Art. style).
The next all-Slavic calendar holiday was Maslenitsa - a joyful holiday of seeing off the Russian winter, the spring equinox, meeting the Sun and the spell of nature, on the eve of spring plowing. The Christian Church fought this holiday for a long time, but could not defeat it and only achieved his expulsion during the calendar terms of Lent before Easter. The first spring holiday was celebrated on May 1-2, when the first shoots of spring crops appeared, on June 4, the Eastern Slavs celebrated the day of Yarila - the god of the Sun and the life-giving forces of nature. On this day, houses were decorated with birch branches, and young birches were decorated with ribbons.
The third all-Slavic holiday of the spring-summer cycle celebrated the summer solstice on June 24 - the day of Ivan Kupala, when the girls sang ritual songs and sacred hymns in round dances. The day of Kupala was preceded by the so-called Rusal Week (mermaids - nymphs, brides of water and fields, creatures on which, according to the mythological ideas of the Eastern Slavs, rain depended).
The holiday of Ivan Kupala was the most solemn of all the festivities of the spring-summer calendar cycle. The Rusichi worshiped water - girls threw wreaths of flowers into rivers and lakes and fed white swans, who were revered for beauty and purity, proud dignity and marital fidelity. Fire was also worshiped - on the Kupala night, huge bonfires were made on the high hills, and young men and women jumped over them in pairs.
The cheerful playful part of these pagan prayers persisted for a very long time, turning from a ritual into a cheerful play of youth. Even at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Orthodox Russians in Galicia and Transcarpathia and Catholicized Slovaks in Slovakia observed Kupala Day in a pagan manner. As numerous historians, writers and ethnographers testify, Kupala bonfires burned on the peaks of the Carpathians and Tatras for many tens of kilometers, and no force could force the Russians and Slovaks to refuse to observe at least the playful part of the primordial forefather rites.
Rod-Perun Day (July 20) was the darkest and most tragic in the entire annual cycle of Slavic prayers. On this day, they did not lead bright and cheerful round dances, did not sing free songs and ritual hymns, but brought bloodless sacrifices to a formidable and demanding deity, reminded him of the laws of rule. After all, the excessive summer heat before the harvest could dry out cereals, ripe ears; prolonged heavy rain - to knock the ripened grain onto the wet ground, lightning - to burn uncompressed and unmilled bread, and hail - to empty the fields.
It is by no means accidental that in the 1st millennium A. D. e. the eastern Slavs-Rusich, if not identified, then brought Rod and Perun closer together: without reliable military protection in the conditions of a barbarian nomadic semi-environment, highly developed Slavic agriculture could not successfully develop, and the functional duties of Rod (the supreme god of the Earth and Heaven) and Perun (the god of thunder and lightning, squads and weapons) largely coincided, and this coincidence was directly reflected in the calendar ritual practice.
Connoisseurs of rituals and exact calendar dates were the priests-sorcerers and witch-doctors, “prophetic wives”, who appeared in a distant primitive era. Writing among the Slavs-Rus was not the property of only a narrow circle of wise men and witches, princes and boyars: the urban population of pre-Christian Russia was distinguished by almost universal literacy. The overwhelming majority of literate people in the 1st-10th centuries were among the smerds and kmetey - arable people (ordinary farmers). Pre-Christian Russia exerted the strongest cultural influence on all its neighbors. Suffice it to say that her sworn enemies, the Khazars, according to the medieval Arabic-speaking oriental historian Fakhrad-din Mubarekshah Merverrudi, borrowed the Slavic-Russian script and the East Slavic alphabet: “The Khazars also have a letter that comes from Russian,” he wrote. So in other cultural and historical formations abroad, a certain influence of the religious and mythological worldview of the ancient Slavs can be traced. 1992
Nesterov Andrey Nikolaevich
