In our time, it is customary to indiscriminately call the Slavic faith paganism, and in itself “paganism” appears to many, like the childhood of the people, a certain stage in its development, which sooner or later ends, and some of the so-called “world religions - Christianity or Islam.
However, this is not the worst option: according to the church, a “pagan” is a potentially dangerous person who not only got lost in the wilds of “satanic” knowledge, but can lead other people there and therefore must be immediately destroyed or recruited.
This word actually appeared in the church environment, where at first it meant all “unbelievers”, “infidels”: the Great Soviet Encyclopedia says that paganism is “the designation of non-Christian religions in the literature of Christian peoples”.
Over time, the church ceased to be so irreconcilable towards Jews and Muslims and now does not call them pagans, but the relationship with the native religions was strained from the very beginning, so it remained strained, so the Slavic faith, thanks to the efforts of many generations of preachers, was - so the name "paganism" is fixed.
One can come to terms with the fact that this concept gradually migrated into science: the famous scientist Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov in his book "Paganism of the Ancient Slavs" wrote that "with all the imperfection and vagueness of the word" paganism ", devoid of scientific terminological meaning," he considers legal designation by him of that immense range of controversial issues that are included in the concept of primitive religion … You just need to abandon its narrow church understanding and remember its complete convention."
Indeed, in ethnographic science it is not important whether the name of the faith conveys its essence or does not convey, but how some of the modern followers of the Slavic faith managed to try on the title of "pagans" is difficult to understand.
The fact is that the self-designation of faith should at least be clear and understandable, and the concept of "paganism" seems to have completely lost its meaning throughout its centuries-old history.
It is enough to compare the above quote from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia with what the Brockhaus and Efron dictionary means by paganism:
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"Paganism is a general designation of all (italics mine. - A. V.) confessions, except for Christian, Jewish and Mohammedan", and, despite this, refer to paganism Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Confucianism, Lamaism and Brahmanism, as stated in the same vocabulary, "not quite right."
Some dictionaries believe that paganism is everything that is not Christianity, others believe that all religions, except Christianity, Islam and Judaism belong to paganism, but this, according to the opinion of others, does not prevent Buddhism, Taoism and others from being removed from the category of pagan religions. relatively developed religions of the East, while the fourth, in turn, consider all these disputes completely meaningless and call paganism exclusively "primitive" religions.
And, what is most interesting, there are no right and wrong: everyone is happy and happy, only one word "paganism" suffers, which, of course, has received many different interpretations, but, alas, because of them, it has lost its meaning.
How, in this case, should we call the Slavic faith?
On the one hand, our ancestors did not have a need for a specific name for their faith, because until a certain moment it was not necessary to single it out from the whole mass of teachings existing on earth.
If necessary, they simply said "our faith", "native faith", in general - "Slavic faith", which, in fact, may well pass for the name of the original religion of our people.
At first glance, it seems that this name speaks exclusively of the Slavic origin of the faith and cannot say anything about its essence, but this is only at first glance: if you pay attention to the origin of the word "Slavs", then everything will fall into place.
The original meaning of this word is constantly spoken of in Vlesknig:
"… Do not be freeloaders, but glorious Rus who sing glory to the Gods, and that's why they are Slavs";
"… We sing glory to the Gods - and we are called such glory";
"… Became glorious, glorifying our Gods, but never asked or prayed for their good."
One of the basic rules of the Slavic faith is not to ask the Gods for anything and constantly praise Them; accordingly, a Slav is a person who adheres to this rule, honoring the Gods in Slavic.
Of course, now not all Slavs profess their native faith, but, nevertheless, problems with the name "Slavic faith" should not arise.
Moreover, in overseas dictionaries, the original religion of our people is called just that - the Britannica Encyclopedia says: “Slavic Religion (Slavic faith) - the faith and religious practice of the ancient Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, including the Russians, Ukrainians, Polyakov, Chekhov, Slovak, Serbov, Horvat and Sloven."
The Columbia Encyclopedia (Sixth Edition, 2001) thinks the same way: “Slavic Religion (Slavic faith) is the pre-Christian faith of the Slavs”.
It so happened that the Slavic faith was constantly renamed and renamed: the first clergymen called it in Latin "abomination", later "abomination" was replaced by "paganism", and for some reason the modern overly convinced church leaders liked an even more meaningless word - "neopaganism" …
Fortunately, the content does not change behind the form, but it's time to get rid of unnecessary prejudices.