Ancestral Wisdom and Ethnic Nationalism

Abstract

The ideology of contemporary Russian Paganism is analysed as a version of nationalism, 'nation' being understood as a primordial ethnic community.

Grupė – aktyvi visuomenės ląstelė: lietuvių pagonys

“…Įvairių šalių tyrimuose pagonių pasaulėžiūra siejama su vietos kultūra. Antai Vidurio ir Rytų Europos pagonių tapatybė siejama su istorine rekonstrukcija [58]; diskutuojama Rusijos pagonybės sąsaja su nacionalizmu [1]; tiriamos sovietinės ideologijos ir folkloro sąveikos Rusijos pagonių pasaulėžiūroje [49]; šiuolaikinių Kanados pagonių subkultūrinis identitetas siejamas su etniškumu [10]; Anglijos pagonis tyrėjai įvardija kaip "naująsias gentis" (neo-tribes), jų identiteto konstravimas sie jamas su šventvietėmis [7,253]; ieškoma santykio tarp Australijos pagonių subkultūros kūrėjų vartotojiško gyvenimo stiliaus ir autentiškos tapatybės [13]; pagonys analizuojami popkultūros vartotojų kontekste [45] arba jų vertybės priešinamos popkultūros vertybėms (Mika Lassander Anglijos pagonių tyrimai) [35,[83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93]. Analizuojamos įvairių pagonybės kryp čių sąsajos su okultinėmis srovėmis, pvz., Norvegijos Ásatrú sąsajos su Aleister Crow ley Thelemos religine filosofija ir Anton LaVey satanizmu, išreiškiamu juo dojo metalo muzika ir kt.…”

Pagan places

“…In post-Soviet Lithuania and Latvia, the resurgence of pre-Christian practice (Romuva and Dievturiba, respectively) is supportive of other forms of national revival (Tupešu, 1987), and practitioners can plausibly claim an unbroken line of pagan ‘cultural forms’ associated with the pre-Christian period (see Strmiska, 2005b). East Slavic native faiths have seen a similar level of growth in the post-Communist period (Ivakhiv, 2005a, 2005b; Laruelle, 2008; Lesiv, 2009a, 2009b; Shnirelman, 2002, 2007). Closely linked to ethnic identity, Russian neopaganism and Ukrainian Ridnovira are increasingly attractive to those seeking to embrace lost cultural traditions and build links of community in societies that have been rent asunder by the iniquities of Soviet rule (Aitamurto, 2011).…”

“…In the minds of the society’s members, Thule served as the fountainhead of the Aryan ‘root race’ and, though concealed, continued to serve as a gateway to a world of supermen, the Hidden Masters (Levenda, 2002). Such strains of thought, while generally rejected by most contemporary Odin worshipers, have been retooled by Russian and other Slavic neopagans since the 1930s; according to Shnirelman (2007: 51), ‘While the Creation and Jesus Christ’s birthday serve as points of departure for the Christian chronology, many Slavic Pagans start from a legendary date when the hypothetical Homeland, be it Atlantis or Arctida, submerged beneath the ocean’. Assuming that this polar continent disappeared sometime between the Pleistocene and Holocene periods, the ‘true Aryans’, i.e.…”

“…the proto-Slavs, were forced to resettle throughout Eurasia. Consequently, Russians are sanctified as the ‘primordial Messianic people’ and the Russian state is entitled to unchecked expansion (Shnirelman, 2007: 56). While outlandish, the centrality of geography to this creation myth meshes nicely with the neopagan historical imaginary, the last category of poetic space.…”

Neo-Paganism, Native Faith and indigenous religion: a case study of Malta within the European context

“…Pagan scholarship, which has grown steadily in the last 30 and more years, has tended to concentrate on particular Pagan communities, traditions and themes, such as nature and ecology, feminism, festivals, ritual, identity, teen Witchcraft, Pagans and the media, magical epistemologies and religious ecstasy . Much (not all) of the ethnographic work in the 20th century focused on Anglo‐American Pagans and Paganisms, but more recently research has expanded to consider the diverse and increasingly visible Pagan and Native Faith communities present throughout Europe (Bourdeaux ; Simpson ; Shnirelman , , ; Ferlat ; Strmiska , ; Aitamurto ; Ivakhiv ; Lindquist , ; Aitamurto and Simpson ) . Much of this deals with eastern Europe, where religion has only relatively lately received attention from anthropologists after the demise of socialism (Ališauskienė and Schröder : 1).…”