“Records from the Middle Ages show that the ancient
god was known in many parts of the country, but for
Christian authors he became an enemy of the New Religion
and was therefore equated with the Source of Evil by others
words, to the Devil. The concept that another god is
except for what is now revered, must be evil, not
limited to Christianity, or the Middle Ages …
The God of the old religion becomes the Devil of the new"
Promotional video:
(M. Murray. God of Witches. 1933).
Nowadays in Europe, the so-called "Wicca" has become a rather fashionable trend, which is positioned as an ancient European religion that predates Christianity. It developed into an independent concept thanks to such figures as Gerald Gardner, Margaret Murray, Aleister Crowley and others. And, mind you, almost all of them are Englishmen, who cannot be fed with bread, let some secret cult be organized … And each such cult necessarily has a deep history. And now the Internet and store shelves are inundated with books on "Magic" and on studies of the culture of European witches.
It is difficult to argue here, because all this did not arise from scratch, however, in the form in which it is presented to us, we can call the idea of modern Wicca “a prank of bored minds”. Village magic, you know, has always existed. And she, apparently, became the progenitor of many urban "esoteric" teachings, accessible only to the "initiates" … well, that is, the yearning rich …
People who are not in the subject confuse this "Wicca" with Satanism. And you cannot say that they are wrong. The Wiccans themselves are trying in every possible way to save the reputation of their sect, saying that the cult of witches implies unity with nature and worship of it - it is difficult to scold them with such a presentation. However, my speech is not about this pseudo-religion, but about its main character. About the Horned God!
He, no matter how they were against the neo-witches, Satan himself! Which, as you know, has many names …
I will not scold and "expose" him, and it will not work, here the holy men have already done everything they could in their time. On the contrary, I want to deepen its mythology, show its essence, which should clarify why it became possible to worship Him at all. After all, I repeat, "Wicca" arose for a reason, its founders, whether they understood or not, had a certain basis, taken from the village people. Therefore, the earnest request of truly believing Christians, Muslims, and also religiously minded citizens not to read the further text It's really not worth it. This is just my personal opinion based on the study of folklore so beloved by me; it has nothing to do with your faith. And although I'm going to shake some religious foundations, I still won't be able to strongly contradict the usual state of affairs. We're not savages, after all …
The idea of the Horned God is not new; it has always accompanied Christianity where the threshold of the church ended. The most vivid pictures of her we see in ancient culture.
In principle, if someone has read my previous articles, they will be able to easily trace the entire chain, because here I will rely on them, since all these are parts of one picture.
Francisco de Goya El aquelarre (1823).
Symbol of faith
For the first time I had to doubt the established role of Satan about two years ago…. In the church. An amazing paradox, isn't it?
I will give the order of baptism of a person … remember, it will come in handy a little later (so as not to confuse anything, I take excerpts from the book of Archpriest Alexander Schmemann "Water and Spirit. On the Sacrament of Baptism"):
In fact, this is just a rite of passage, slightly larger than the others. But they existed among all the peoples of the world, up to the Australian aborigines, and have remained in the corporate (as well as student and Masonic) environment to this day. This is when a person separates from one group of the population (society, village, status, profession) and joins another, pledging to accept all its rules and customs. Thus, he joins the new community and promises to serve him faithfully. This act of voluntary dedication to a new society guarantees a person that the new society will protect and help him, in contrast to the old one, from which he has renounced. One for all and all for one. - This is one of the main foundations of the life of the ancient society, which puts an end to the concept of "freedom" that the "liberal" community is so imposing on us,and gives a reason to reflect on the fidelity of the status of the "Servant of God", which the Slavs called themselves (which I will do at my leisure, although I already hear curses and mass unrest among readers in my address: "My God did not call me a slave!" God did not call me, people they called themselves that). For a person who does not belong to any community is, one might say, dead.
I showed this connection with the moral foundations and traditions of society in the article "So the ancestors bequeathed." Let me remind you that a person who is trying to break out of the norms accepted by society was called a "ghoul" … So, yes, rebel after Hollywood characters, against the rules, dear ghouls. After all, it is so fashionable, so celebrated by the current culture!
But at what point did I suddenly realize that something was wrong? - At the moment of pronouncing the cherished "I renounce" …
I spent the rest of the baptism in a sort of brooding trance. Of course, I understand what all this means in the spiritual sense, all these births in sin, life in sin, and so on, but the thought has already started to develop, asking new questions …
Consider the phrase “I renounce Satan” with all of the above in mind. You haven't forgotten what you said two paragraphs earlier, have you? (That in the old world a person always belonged to something ("God's servant")). It turns out that before we consciously commit (or leave this choice on the conscience of our parents) the act of transition to a new patron (here - Christ), we belong to Satan! Yeah, this is exactly our “birth in sin”, which is very important for this topic. After all, we also renounce the Devil … And therefore, we lose his protection and help. In return, we receive protection and help from Christ (the very promised Christian "salvation").
Remember: this is a rite of passage from one to another with the acceptance of responsibility: both for serving the new God, and for breaking the relationship with the old.
If we remove the emotional component, where Christ is good, and Satan is bad, then we see just a change of “home”. And now is the time to scroll in your head the testimonies of the inquisitors that witches had their own devilish "black" masses, where they swore allegiance to Satan … How do they differ from the vow to be in Christ?
Félicien Rops * Messe Noire *.
It's the dog's fault
Later I forgot my questions and got carried away with other topics. And, I must confess, I can now offer such extensive reflections. Then I didn't have so much information in my head. I remembered all this much later, when I read an article in LiveJournal spr-i-ng about Baths, as places where the baptismal ceremony was held. Now I can't even remember half of it, but the thoughts inspired by what was already in my head were enough to get Arnold van Gennep's "dusty" book "Rites of Transition" from the archives and read from cover to crusts are a treasure trove of information on this topic, after reading which you think: “Why haven't you read it before? After all, it has been at your fingertips for years! " This information was combined with Mircea Eliade's long-read works on shamanism and gave some understanding.
Actually, the endless listings in the book of all kinds of rites of passage: weddings, funerals, initiation into adulthood, secret societies, brotherhoods, professional groups, and simply moving to a new place of residence and travel (!!!) - in addition to their own searches, were finally formed during I am convinced that there is nothing humiliating in the phrase "servant of God". The neo-pagans once again proved to be wrong … Alas. You just have to understand that "God" is not a guy on a cloud.
By the way, different groups of the population had their own language. That is, the basis is one, nationwide, but professional slang or deliberate encryption of words is a superstructure (since the space within the community is considered sacred, not accessible to outsiders). - This, probably, is the answer to the question about the appearance of different dialects first, and then, with the support of politicians, and languages …
To make it clear, I will say that the old society is a collection of closed groups, it was possible to get from one to another only through the rite of passage. I repeat: not a stupid "ritual" in the modern frivolous sense, but almost a legal action with all rights and responsibilities, signed in blood …. literally!
Think about the word "rite" at least superficially. Who is there who "dressed-up" whom? And look up to the point "1" of the rite of baptism. I will clarify it with the following reference:
If you have not yet understood what the matter is, it doesn’t matter. Since this part is devoted to just this issue. After all, this is a vivid symbol that we have to trace in myths.
There are a whole slew of legends of the same type that talk about how Adam and Eve fell into sin. Actually, because of what we are all "born in sin." These legends, moreover, belong not only to Christians, but also, one might say, to the "Tartar" peoples. Of course, the characters change, but the plot remains the same.
I will cite some of them as edited by A. N. Veselovsky, who collected many cosmogonic legends in his article on the concept of the Bogomils about dualistic beliefs about the universe ("Research in the field of Russian spiritual verse. Vol. XI" as part of the collection of the Russian language and literature department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Vol. XLVL, No. 6, 1889). Many researchers of the 19th and 20th centuries preferred not to focus on them, considering them sectarian. However, comparing them with other myths of humanity, I came to the conclusion that they have what we need.
Lucas van Leyden * The Expulsion from Paradise * (1529).
In this part, we are interested in the second half of the myths about the creation of the world, and in the next part, we will deal with their beginning.
Of course, there is a parallel here to the fall of Adam and Eve. And some believe that these myths among the peoples of Siberia arose under the influence of schismatic Christians. In principle, the common motives are indeed visible. But here you still need to think about why this is so? Is this just a one-sided influence of Christians on others? Or is it mutual influence? Or was it that the schismatics did not support Nikon's reform because it was directed against their dualistic view? After all, those reasons for the split in the Church and the Golden Fleece: the distinctive features of the Old Believers that are named in the textbooks, by and large, are not so serious to fight for them. But their addiction to the apocrypha is already a moment of ideology, for which one can fight.
I will cite an excerpt from the Pigeon Book from Kirsha Danilov, which I already considered in the article about the Golden Fleece:
Only the dog is not enough … The story of the "kumyshka" and the curious wife who opened the vessel with her, from the Votyaks' tale, very much resembles the legend of Pandora and is like a bridge between her and the Christian myth of the eaten fruit, which hints at the existence of some common source of all these versions.
But I brought all these passages not for that, but for the sake of the dog. Everywhere it is said that she was bald, but became hairy. On the contrary, man has lost his wool. And although here you can think about a certain historicity of the legend, since the exact time of these events is indicated - a terrible sharp cold snap (ice age? Catastrophe?), I also saw in this a symbol that is directly connected with those places of baptism that I asked to remember.
So, during baptism, as a rite of entry into a new community, you must take off all your clothes. This is part of the ritual of separating from the old, throwing off the old and simultaneously opening yourself to the new. Clothing here symbolizes the veil as the aforementioned patronage: a person leaves with an old patron and opens up to a new one (showing his readiness to be covered by him) - in order to perform “dressing”, “ritual” (but this is not the whole meaning of this word).
What we see in the story with Adam and Eve is that they, having tasted the forbidden fruit, turn out to be naked (they realize themselves as such). In theory, the story of the expulsion from the garden of the Lord is already an unnecessary element in symbolism, an expansion of the image, since the discovery of nakedness already speaks for itself - Adam and Eve lose the protection of God, remain without veils … Although there is an interesting moment: the Bible does not have their symbol paradise veil, while in the "Tartar" versions of the Fall it is clearly stated that the first people were with wool - a symbol of the veil. When they lose their hair, they lose the protection of a heavenly deity.
And as an excellent poetic parallel to this motive, we are shown the story of a dog that was bald, but became "woolen". After all, the dog was domesticated by people, "covered" it, that is, it found its patron. In the above legend of the Tatars it is said explicitly and unequivocally: "The dog is punished by the fact that a person can do whatever he wants with it, beat it and kill it without any restrictions …"
Do you think the person is in a better position? The legends hint that the Lord created people for himself. Erlik (the devil) asks the Lord: “What can I do alone without subjects?”, To which he receives the answer: “Do what you want, you can create people for yourself” …
Where there is no symbol of wool, it is simply said about the desecration of the body of the future person with the saliva of the Devil. The exchange of food, blood, saliva, gifts is bonding, binding to each other (a little about this - in the article about Ivan), after that people no longer belong to God (after all, saliva becomes inside their bodies, it becomes part of them, one might say, a covenant between the Devil and man).
In the story of the fruit, the Devil also tempts people. That is, it is he who makes a person renounce the Lord, which corresponds to all church canons. But what does it mean? And is everything as simple as it seems? After all, it turns out that Satan "took" a person from the "divine laboratory" at the dawn of human times … Answers - in the next part …