I accidentally learned from the encyclopedia that in the very center of Minsk there are remnants of a pagan temple, analogs of which can hardly be found not only in our country, but in Europe in general. The address was also indicated there: on the bank of the Svisloch, opposite the Teacher's House (the current lyceum of BSU). Imagine my surprise when, having come to the address, I did not find anything. There was no trace of the ancient sanctuary on the banks of the Svisloch. At first it was thought that the stone "Dzed", or "Starats" - the main object of worship - just fell into the river. It turned out that the stone remained intact - and now, together with its other brothers who have been revered by our ancestors for centuries, lies in the Museum of Boulders in the Uruchye microdistrict: a lonely old man, thrown out by people from their modern life. But once everyone needed him …
Back in the early 90s, enthusiasts proposed to restore the sanctuary. It was a noble idea: not only to return the altar to the ancient gods, but also to recreate another corner of old Minsk. And the argument was convincing: no European capital can boast of a pagan temple that existed until the beginning of the twentieth century!
And although the place where the unique religious building was located is now in the very center of the modern metropolis, at the beginning of the last century it was just the outskirts, and, according to local residents, “before Russia”, two hundred years ago, there was a dense forest, and impassable swamp. Here, near the side of civilization, an eternal flame burned, and its keeper Elder Sevastey lived. The people revered him as a sorcerer, a medicine man. The pagans of Minsk even had their own cemetery - where the plant named after S. M. Kirov is now.
Khristina Savelina, a witness of those times, told the ethnographer Mikhail Katser, who discovered the Minsk temple in 1940: “Charaunikou geta only tsyaper lichts for good people, for the campaigner antikhrystau. Tady ikh our dziady lichyly yak for the saints i um heard, maliili i m, borne i m ahvyaras. INTO ni zdarytsa drennae: pazhar, kradzezh, pamorak on skatsinu, hvaroba, mustache ishli and charaunika pa dapamogu. En varazhyu pa sotsy, pa zorkah, pa vantrob kazy tsi avechki, bring charauniku, i tlumachyu, hell chago greeted nyashchasse i yak ad yago pazbavitsa."
Then the priests decided to demolish the temple. The witch doctor was driven out, and an Orthodox priest, Father Euthymius, appeared here. Subsequently it turned out: it was not a priest, but a horse thief Aukhim Skardovich, who escaped from prison.
The temple functioned before the Russian-Japanese war, recalled the residents of Minsk, interviewed by M. Katser. The stone was also revered under Soviet rule: they hung it with "ruchnikami i hvartuhami". Besides the stone, there was a sacred oak of five girths "Volat" with a large hollow. Nearby was the “altar,” which people simply called “agon” or “zhyzha,” where food was burned. Honey, milk, wine were poured onto the stone. Published on ruslife.org.ua
The existence of such an unusual object in Minsk is amazing: in the provincial city of the Orthodox Russian Empire there are pagan "remnants"! But, on the other hand, the phenomenon is not so "wild" for our regions. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was considered a pagan state until the end of the 14th - beginning of the 15th century, the fight against "heresy", to which witchcraft was counted, began late. It was only in the third edition of the Lithuanian Statute of 1588 that witchcraft was tried as a criminal offense. And if in the west of the continent thousands of witches were burned, witchcraft was a common occurrence in our country, especially in the countryside. But the Minsk temple within the city was found only with the laying of a railway next to it at the end of the 19th century.
But while in the countryside witchcraft lived its own life, in cities, especially since the 16th century, when the country was swept by the influences of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, who fought both among themselves and against the unredeemed popular paganism, they began to fight against sorcerers. How were those who possessed extraordinary power recognized among the "people of the rich"?
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It was believed that the "witch" can be identified by a special sign. Thus, the court recognized Lucius Vaitsyulikha as "opanovan" by the devil, as evidenced by "devilish spots, hands from the shoulders and legs from the knees blue, bloodshot, exhausted." In fact, the spots remained on the unfortunate victim of torture.
They believed that witches fly, gathering in certain places. One of these places in the Grand Duchy was Mount Shatriya in Central Lithuania. Marianna Kostsyukova, accused of sorcery, admitted that she flew to Shatria with Shimonova, Savkova, Goncharova and the elder Sugavdziova between them. They met many people on the mountain. Kostsyukova confessed that she saw there "Pan" (the devil) in German clothes, in a hat, walking with a stick. They danced there, and the "horned one" played the violin. The fun, however, did not last long, because they were afraid that the crowing of the roosters would not catch them. Published on ruslife.org.ua
Such fantastic stories were often born under torture. But the fact that the sorcerers gathered on Shatriya, as well as on other “bald” mountains, is by no means fiction. Let's not forget that these are former pagan priests. And although their rituals lost their former greatness over time, the power of the spell did not weaken.
Probably, some ancient tradition was continued by the Minsk elder Sevastey. His son was also called by this name, which, as noted by the researcher of the traditional culture of Belarusians Sergei Sanko, is consonant with the name of the legendary Sovi, the founder of the tradition of burning the dead among the Yatvingians, ancestors of the inhabitants of Grodno region, and Lithuanians, known from ancient Russian sources. Published on ruslife.org.ua
Sorcerers prolonged life, cured insomnia, bewitched. Could bring death. An example is known when a certain sorcerer Kuzma handed a piece of meat into the hands of the wife of a man who had complained to him, which made her withered and died. It was said about the already mentioned Sugavdziova that one gentleman did not give her a horse for the journey, so she said: "You will not ride it for long", after which on the third day the horse died.
They conjured in different ways: with potion, drinking, whispering. One sorceress spoke to the cattle with "glance and caress." The sorceress Girniova washed her feet in a bucket, after which four horses died, drinking from the same bucket. Dry oak leaves were stuck in the corners of the house to keep everything dry. Another witch spent a week drying an illegitimate child in the smoke, which she then buried; after a while, she dug it up and scattered the bones in the neighbor's garden, after which his whole family began to fall ill and every year their cattle disappeared. In addition to the dried corpse of a child, a porridge of beetles, a horseshoe of a horse, on which the one who wants to be enchanted rides, bones, earth, a dead pig went to the charm. The sorceress taught one maid, spinning wool, to say: "As this spindle whirls, let the cattle and sheep get out of my master's house so that it becomes empty."
Today, you cannot distinguish the keeper of ancient magical knowledge from a pseudo medicine man. But, as we can see, not only gypsies, as is commonly thought, have long known with miraculous power, but we also had our own, Belarusian, tradition.