Of course, I do not want to offend believers in the least, but personally I believe that Orthodoxy is closer to paganism than to Christianity. More precisely, one can even say a dual faith that has grown into one religion. Here are some of my reasons.
To begin with, let's figure out what kind of word is Orthodoxy. There are many options here. On one of them, we fall completely into paganism. Here we will analyze it first. The ancient Slavs believed that there are three worlds - the world of the dead, the world of the living and the world of the gods. Reality, Nav and Rule.
The structure of the world according to the mythology of the Slavs.
The entire mythology of the Slavs was built on stories about the gods and the praise of their world. And the religion of the ancient Slavs was called Orthodoxy, that is, the glorification of the world of the gods. And what does Christianity have to do with it? Or do you want to tell me that after the baptism of Rus, when idols were destroyed with might and main, and there was a struggle with the pagans, Christians believed in the Rule?
The Church offers another translation - the correct glorification, but I have not found written evidence of this, all records about the meaning of Orthodoxy begin from the 17th century, roughly speaking, with the reform of Nikon.
Let's continue. Now let's move on to the emergence of Orthodoxy. The official version says that it was founded by Christ himself, and then spread from Palestine and Byzantium to Europe. In this case, if Orthodoxy comes from Christ, why did a "schism" take place in the middle of the 17th century, which divided the Orthodox into Old and New Believers? Or was there an attempt to separate Orthodoxy from paganism that has grown together with it? Think nonsense? But look at the items made by medieval craftsmen.
Serpentine icon Baptism of Christ. XII century.
Crossed lunar. XII-XIII century.
Promotional video:
Cross-included lunar XI-XII century.
Lunnitsa with the image of the Mother of God * Orant *. XI-XII century.
* Trefoil * cross-included pendant. Christian cross with pagan crin. XIII-XIV century.
And there are thousands of similar items !!! And the official history does not deny the existence of dual faith in medieval Russia. However, in the official version, there was dual faith until the XIV century. And then what? Disappeared abruptly? Yes, this cannot be !!! For three centuries a hybrid of Christianity with paganism existed, and then it abruptly disappeared! Why is this so frightened?
Let's continue. All over the world, church books are written in Latin. Even where no one understands Latin. Latin is considered the language of Christ. And only here in Orthodoxy everything is in Old Church Slavonic. And what is it called? Or is it so that uneducated Russian men would at least understand something? Or all the same, according to the ancient Russian religion, everything is written in the native language? That is, Christianity is distorted in a Russian way, edited by paganism.
Orthodox holidays? Search for information for fun. All polls, such as the Trinity, that Easter, that the Spas are different, are borrowed from paganism, only the name has changed. And the meaning of these holidays for the most part remained the same.
Now let's look at one of the main shrines of Orthodox Christianity - the cross. We will not touch the image of the cross itself, this symbol is much older than Christianity and in what religions it was not used, so you can write anything here. We now see the symbols that are traditionally depicted on the cross. Monograms such as IC XC, T, K, HIKA, and others will not touch, with their decoding, and so everything is clear. Do you know that some of them were used by the Slavs? And some of them haven't even changed the meaning !!! Here are some examples, both old and modern. And there are many similar ones …
The pagan symbol * mother of cheese earth * on the lower crossbar of the 16th century cross.
Symbol * sown field * on a cross from the 18th century.
Kreens on the modern cross.
A plowed field and a swastika on the Paraskev icon Friday of the 19th century.