Transcript of 20st episode of Witia’s podcast Searching for the Slavic Soul.

Petting shapeshifting demons - how and how I practice Slavic Native Faith

Transcript of 21st episode of Witia’s podcast Searching for the Slavic Soul.

The Wars of Slavs - why do Slavs fight?

Transcript of 14th episode of Witia’s podcast Searching for the Slavic Soul.

The Magic of Słowo - Lessons in Slavic magic

How wrong can things go, if you try to run before you learn to walk - detailed explanation how not to teach Slavic magic and who not to learn it from.

Being an (recently more and more passive) user of pagan social media, I could not help but notice a growing trend among (mostly freshly converted) Rodnovers to describe early medieval societies of our pagan ancestors as communistic societies. I am old enough to remember living under communism, but also young enough to remember history lessons, therefore it is really hard for me to comprehend how anyone can find a XIX century ideology among early medieval pagan tribes. Nevertheless, I am also a person who by nature questions everything, including my own opinions, therefore I decided to look closer in order to once more answer myself the question: Am I losing my marbles, or is the world going crazy?

One of the goals of Witia project is to propagate the Slavic culture. Which is why, with great joy I look at ever growing popularity of Slavic traditions and beliefs, also among non-Slavic speaking people. Unfortunately, as it always happens, every stick has two ends, and in the case of ever growing popularity of everything Slavic, the other end is ever growing number of misunderstandings, myths and plain hogwash, which more and more often are being packed up and sold as Slavic. Over the last few years, with increasing amazement, I’ve been watching how these misunderstanding, myths and hogwash spread among budding Rodnovers, who seem to believe it like it was a divine revelation. I’ve tried to correct and explain it, one at a time, but to be perfectly honest, I am fed up with typing individual comments under individual posts. Therefore I decided to deal with the spread of fakelore (do not confuse with folklore), and put today’s post against the false Slavic “wisdom” pushed (mainly) in posts on social media.

Non-normativity of sexual orientation, gender or sex (biological gender) has been present in the history of human kind since the time immemorial. Wherever we look, in pretty much every culture created by human race, next to the dominant “norm” (unequivocal anatomical sex, auto-identification with own anatomical sex and heterosexual orientation) non-normative (with regards to anatomical sex, gender or sexual orientation) individuals have always existed. So, one can say, the existence on non-normative individuals is in a way a norm in the history of human kind. What is not a norm (and never has been) is the way the society sees and interacts with non-normative individuals. And this is exactly what we are going to be discussing in this post. Not: were there LGBT people among the pre-Christian Slavs (because it is certain they were), but: how did our ancestors see and interacted with these people?

In the previous post we discussed the position of pre-Christian Slavic women, so it is only fitting that today, in order to keep a balance between the sexes, we look into the roles and responsibilities of our male ancestors. And because we will be contemplating our ancestors, who, obviously, were fathers, we will not avoid the topic of patriarchy, so, generally speaking, the rule of fathers.

According to “The Tale of Bygone Years” in the year of 983 a few boyars knocked to the door of one of the Kievan estates. The estate belonged to a Varangian, who lived there with his son. Both the Varangian and his son arrived to Kiev from Byzantium and they both were Christians.

“The Tale of Bygone Years” does not specify if the boyars visited the Varangian in the morning or in the evening. It is not known if the wind tangled their robes, or if the rich embroidery of their clothes shimmered in the sunlight. We don’t know if the Christians were surprised by the visit, or if it they saw it coming. There is many unknowns in this story, but one thing is known for sure: the boyars knocked on the Varangian’s door to demand, in the name of the Slavic Gods, the blood of his son. Literally. On that day, in the year of 983, the Slavic Gods requested human blood and, through a divination They indicated the Varangian’s son as the appropriate sacrifice.

Being a Christian, the Varangian not only refused to give up his son, but also renounced the very existence of the Slavic Gods. This angered boyars and other citizens of Kiev. Furious Kievans wrecked the Varangian’s estate leaving standing only a gallery, where the Varangian and his son stood. Then the boyars once more asked the Christian if he will give up his son. After the Varangian refused again the angered people demolished the gallery from below, thus killing both men.

What does this story have to do with women? Well, as it turns out – a lot.

It has been a rough year. For some “only” rough, for some also painful and for others – completely catastrophic. It has been a year full of change, mostly for bad and worse. A year, when the power of God’s anger became almost palpable. A year, when Mother Earth decided to finally show us – the humans – how utterly insignificant we are in the face of Her powers.

Mother Earth is a strict mother, but sometimes She does show mercy. She lets life survive even most catastrophic fire, She feeds Her children through the most sever winters and sometimes she even brings sleep to ease up the harsh waiting for better times.

This year has also been rough for us – the creators of the Witia project. With exeption of loosing a member of a family – for which we are grateful to the Gods – we have not bee spared any hardship, trials, struggles, worries and disappointments, that were brought on humanity by the pandemic. Although we are not defeated, we are, as many, if not most of you – really tired. This is why we decided to follow the wisdom of Mother Earth and go into winter sleep, or rather – while waiting for the spring - put the English and Polish version of Witia’s blog in winter hibernation.

The period of winter break is going to allow us to regain our strength, catch up with the overdue not-Witia related projects, continue building up the Russian version of our blog as well as Witia’s podcast – “Searching for the Slavic Soul”. We are very grateful to readers of the English and Polish version of Witia’s blog for their attention and support so far and we promise – and look forward to – meeting again in the spring of 2021

Slava!

Christian or Judaeo-Christian apostasy (official renunciation of religion) becomes more and more popular, particularly in Poland. The decision to commit apostasy causes unease in the Judaeo-Christian part (or – in case of Poland – majority) of the society, worried that abandoning the “guidance” of Bible, the 10 commandments and the priest, living without the fear of God, hell and eternal damnation will cause the apostates to fall into ethical and moral chaos.

The concerns of Judaeo-Christians are not difficult to understand. After all many pagan religions – including Slavic Native Faith – do not recognise the concept of universal good and evil, the concept of sin, hell or the last judgement. However there can also be no doubt that our ancestors – the original, pre-Christian followers of Slavic Native Faith – despite not professing the Christian religion, not knowing about sins and not being guided by the Bible and the 10 commandments, somehow still managed not to fall into chaos, which the modern pagans are co commonly accused of nowadays.

One of the most common topic of discussion of the modern Rodnovers (just next after discussing the altars’ decorations and the wording of religious incantations) are various ways of recognising which God is most “accurate” for a given person or situation and how to “make” this God “cooperate”. Truly possessed by theological pondering the Slavic pagans of the XXI century seem to be forgetting that our ancestors sought the Gods’ help only in the most serious issues, issues of life and death of an individual (in individual prayers and bargaining with Gods for surviving a battle or a disease) or the community (fertility or divination rituals considering the future harvest, the severity and length of winter etc). In every-day, less, lets call it, serious, matter, our pre-Christian ancestors did not bother their Gods, but asked for help the more “earthly” supernatural powers: the ancestors (of whom, I promise, we will talk about very soon) and the Slavic demons, which inhabits every nook and cranny of the pre-Christian Slavs’ world, and which accompanied the Slavs on every step.

As the pagan system of believes increase in popularity, more and more priests and priestess of those religion speak out, attempting to explain the pagan ideas to the “less spiritual” followers. Among those priests and priestesses are also żercas – the priests of Slavic Native Faith. Unfortunately, the voices of żercas (who are, no surprise here, in vast majority male) seldom carry any pagan ideas, and more often preach concept taken straight out of Catholic sermons. This is why today I will be analyzing an interview Dawid Zbigniew Walkowiak, a Polish żerca, in the usual Witia’s way trying to separate a truly Pagan elements from the Judeo-Christian contaminants.

Most of the modern historians and scholars researching social relations among the pre-Christian Slavs, claim that women had a low(ish) status in our ancestors’ communities. Apparently pre-Chrisitan Slavs – men, the elders of clans/families, did not regard the opinion of the women and cared so little about their daughters, that they didn’t even give them the right of inheritance.

The historical sources were written by men and, let’s be honest, were concerned with affairs of men, thus, the sources don’t mention much about women. One of the early medieval chronicler wrote about a wife, who helped a missionary, another one recounted a woman called Wiosna, who was the leader of a group of Slavic warriors, and… well, as far as I know, that’s about it. This is why in this post, to figure out the importance and status of women in the pre-christian Slavis society, instead of analysing historical sources, as Witia’s team usually do, we will analyse the elements of celebration of Kupala – one of the oldest, most known and still alive Slavic pagan tradition.

The morality of pre-Christian Slavs is perhaps not the most popular topic of research, nevertheless many are keen to preach about Slavic ethics, typically from the high horse of zhrets’s (priest’s) authority, highlighted with the whiteness of a ritual, linen robe. Modern Rodnovers are lectured about honour and righteousness, are told to build stable, traditional families and heterosexual marriages (because, apparently, our ancestors knew only that). On top of it we are taught that the only goal of those marriages is to have children, so we can bring them up to be righteous Slavic men and women, who will pass the Slavic traditions on the next generations. Generations, obviously, of appropriate ethnicity. After all, as zhrets are telling us, Rodnovery is the religion of Slavs and Slavs only.