Horizontal model of the world in the ideas of the ancient Slavs. The spiritual world of the ancient Slavs

The ancient Slavs went through the same relationship with nature as other tribes and peoples. They worshiped the elements, believed in the kinship of people with various animals, and made sacrifices to the deities that inhabited everything around them. Each Slavic tribe prayed to its own gods. The Slavs never developed a single pantheon for all tribes. This was due to the large area of ​​settlement and the absence of a unified state. Therefore, the Slavic gods are not related.

However, we know the structure of the world quite well according to the ideas of the ancient Slavs. The world was structured in three parts (as in many other cultures). People lived in the Middle World and everything that surrounded them was the earth. In the bowels of the earth, in the lower world, an unquenchable fire (inferno) burns. Heaven (the Upper world) extends over the earth in several vaults. At each tier of heaven there are different luminaries and embodiments of the elements.

Moreover, the Upper World was, as it were, double: it was the upper sky with reserves of water, and at the same time the airy sky with luminaries.

The Earth is surrounded by the World Ocean, in the middle of which rests the “navel of the earth” - a sacred stone. It lies at the roots of the sacred World Tree - the oak on Buyan Island, and this is the center of the universe. The ancient Slavs considered the world tree to be a kind of axis holding the world together. The Sun, the Moon and the stars live in its branches, and the Serpent at its roots. The world tree can be a birch, sycamore, oak, pine, rowan, or apple tree.

The sacred tree is not just a smaller copy of the universe, but also its core, support, without which the world will collapse. In one of the old manuscripts there is a dialogue:

“Question: Tell me what holds the earth?

Answer: The water is high.

What holds the earth?

Four golden whales.

What keeps the golden whales?

River of fire.

What holds that fire?

The iron oak, which is the first to be planted, is rooted in the power of God.”

The Slavic analogue of “paradise”, the island of the blessed was called Iriy or Vyriy. It lay in the south, where birds winter and Spring lives. The ancestors of all birds and animals lived there. When a hunter killed a bird or animal, his soul went to Iriy and told the “elder” how they had treated him. That is why it was impossible to torture an animal or bird and one should thank him for allowing him to take his meat and skin. Otherwise, the “elders” will not allow him to be born again, and people will be left without food.

For the ancient Slavs, two sides of the world were especially important and sacred - the east and the south. The north was associated with cold weather, darkness of night, and harsh winds. In folk legends it seems to be the dwelling of evil spirits.

According to the mythology of the Slavs, in the east there was the abode of the gods, a sacred country, and in the northwest, across the sea, there was the land of winter and death. Beyond the river that outlines the border of the human world (in ancient times, the Don and Danube were considered such rivers by the ancestors of the Slavs), lies another world, the ancestral home of people and the abode of the souls of deceased ancestors. There lies the road through the edge of winter and death, which every person is destined to overcome after death.

The ancient Slavs, like other peoples, deified the nature around them. Everything in the world had its own deities, and if desired and necessary, one could communicate with them or at least beg them for help. The author of “The Virgin Mary’s Walk through the Torment” (works of the 12th–13th centuries) writes: “they all called God: the sun and the month, the earth and the water, the animals and the children.”

In the world of people, the Middle World, every river, every swamp, every forest had its own personified spirit - the owner and protector. The Eastern Slavs worshiped stones, trees, and sacred groves. “The Word of John Chrysostom,” when listing the places where Russians “come to pray” and “make sacrifices,” calls “stones.” It was not for nothing that the combustible stone Alatyr was at the center of the universe.

The veneration of trees is mentioned in the “Life of Konstantin of Murom,” and the prayer “into the firewood” is also written in the “Word of John Chrysostom.” In the northern regions of Rus' there was a cult of birch. According to legend, birch trees used to grow on the site of the city of Belozersk, to which sacrifices were made. The cult of the birch continued later. In 1636, Nizhny Novgorod priests complained in their petition that “wives and girls will gather under the trees, under the birch trees, and offer sacrifices, pies and porridge and scrambled eggs, and bowing to the birch trees, casually sing satanic songs, weaving in their voices and splashing their hands, and go crazy in every way.” .

And in the Dnieper region the cult of oak was widespread. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his essay “On State Administration” (10th century), based on personal impressions, wrote about the Russians that during their campaign “they sacrificed live birds near a very large oak tree.”

It is curious that the preposition “outside,” according to scientists, comes from the Indo-European vanam - “forest”. In the north of the Slavic and Baltic world, among the Finns, “outside the house” is translated as “in the forest”, in the south - as “in the field”. That is, we can make the assumption that Slavic dwellings were surrounded by forests.

In those days when the main occupation of the Slavs was hunting, they believed that their ancestors were wild animals. Each tribe had its own sacred animal (totem). It was so long ago that no clear evidence remains, but all peoples go through this stage, and there is no reason to believe that the Slavs had it any other way. Scientists find echoes of totemism in fairy tales, in the images of werewolf-wolves or the owner of the forest, the bear, whom they feared and sought to appease.

The bear was considered a protector from all evil and a patron of fertility: the ancient Slavs associated the onset of spring with the spring awakening of the bear. Until the 19th century, in some areas there was a tradition of keeping a bear's paw in the house as a talisman-amulet, which was supposed to protect its owner from disease, witchcraft and all kinds of troubles. The Slavs believed that the bear was endowed with great wisdom, almost omniscience: they swore by the name of the beast, and the hunter who broke the oath was doomed to death in the forest. The myth of the Bear has been preserved in Russian fairy tales, where the heroine, getting into his house in a dense forest, becomes his wife. And their son Bear's Ear becomes a mighty hero, a conqueror of monsters.

It is curious that the current name of the beast is not its real name. They tried not to say their real name so as not to meet him. And they called him by the nickname “honey badger” - “bear”. That is why the bear has many other names in fairy tales: Mishka, Toptygin, Mikhail Potapych - they replace his real name, which was forgotten due to such precautions.

Of the herbivores in the hunting era, the most revered was Deer (Moose) - the ancient Slavic goddess of fertility, sky and sunlight. Her antlers were a symbol of the sun's rays, although in nature deer are hornless, and deer (elk) have antlers. Therefore, deer antlers were considered a powerful amulet against all night evil spirits.

As for the origin of our world, one verse from the “Dove Book” has been preserved, which says that the world originated from one beginning - from the body of the creator. According to other legends, of which several have survived, two forces took part in the creation of the world, light and dark.

The famous Russian collector of folk legends A.N. Afanasyev in his work “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature” cites similar legends about the structure of the world:

“At the beginning of the world, God was pleased to move the earth forward.

He called the devil and ordered him to dive into the abyss of water in order to get a handful of earth from there and bring it to him. - Okay, Satan thinks, I’ll make the same land myself! He dived, took out some earth in his hand and stuffed his mouth with it. He brought it to God and gives it, but he himself does not say a word. Wherever the Lord throws the earth, it suddenly appears so flat that if you stand at one end, you can see at the other what is happening on the earth. Satan is watching. I wanted to say something and choked. God asked: what does he want? The devil coughed and ran in fright. Then thunder and lightning struck the running Satan, and wherever he lay down, hillocks and slides would appear, where he coughed, there a mountain would grow, where he would gallop, a mountain in the sky would stick out. And so, running all over the earth, he dug it up: he made hillocks, hills, mountains and high mountains.” The people in their epic language call such a creation of the earth sowing: “God took a grain of sand and sowed the whole earth with herbs, forests and all kinds of land.”

“In Galicia they say that at the beginning of centuries there was only sky and sea; God was sailing on the sea in a boat and met a large, thick foam in which the devil lay. "Who are you?" - the Lord asked him. - Take me to your boat, then I’ll tell you. “Well, go!” - said the Lord, and then the answer was heard: “I am the devil!” Silently they swam further. The devil began to say: “It would be good if there was solid ground and there would be a place for us to rest.” -Will! - God answered, - go down to the bottom of the sea, pick up a handful of sand there in my name and bring it; I will make earth out of it. The devil sank down, took both handfuls of sand and said: “I take you in my name!” but when he came to the surface of the water, not a grain remained in the handfuls. He plunged in again, picked up sand in the name of God, and when he returned, all he had left was sand behind his fingernails. God took this sand, sprinkled it on the water and created the earth, no more and no less, as needed for them both to lie down. They lay down side by side - God to the east, and the devil to the west. When the devil thought that God had fallen asleep, the evil one began to push him so that he would fall into the sea and drown; but the land immediately expanded far to the east. Seeing this, the devil began to push God to the west, and then to the south and north: in all these directions the earth was distributed widely and far. Then God got up and went to heaven, and the devil followed at his heels; heard that the angels praised God in songs, and wanted to create for himself as many subordinate spirits; To do this, he washed his face and hands with water, sprinkled it back from himself - and created so many devils that there was no longer enough room for angels in heaven. God ordered Ilya the Thunderer to unleash thunder and lightning on them. Ilya thundered and shot lightning, it rained for forty days and nights, and along with the great rain all the devils fell from the sky; even to this day, many of them wander through the sky like bright lights and only now reach the earth.”

These tales clearly carry Christian symbolism, but, as scientists say, they are retellings of ancient, pagan myths. The creators of the world are two elemental forces: light and dark, which were later replaced in retellings by God and the devil.

The Slavs believed that during a spring thunderstorm, God, by shedding moisture on the earth, fertilizes it and at the same time cleanses it. It is the image of a thunderstorm that is found in most folk tales and fairy tales. The fast flight of clouds, lightning and winds were like the flight of a flock of birds. Clouds and clouds floated in the sky like birds on water. Citing in his book a Carpathian carol about the creation of the world,

A.N. Afanasyev interprets it as follows: “on the ocean of air there are two oak trees, that is, cloud trees corresponding to the world ash tree of the Edda. Lightning-fast birds sit on these Perun trees, and they create the world: the earth from fine sand, and the heavenly bodies from blue or gold stone. If we consider that the sun, moon and stars were called metaphorically precious stones and that the epithets “golden” and “blue” served to denote the brilliance of heavenly bodies and fire, then it becomes clear why the luminaries are created from blue or gold stone.”

The so-called Zbruch idol, conventionally called Svyatovit, also helps to confirm the three-part division of the world of the Slavs. This is a tetrahedral pillar 2 m 67 cm high, found back in 1848 near the village of Gusyatin in the Zbruch River (a tributary of the Dniester). The pillar is divided into three tiers, on each of which different images are carved. The lower tier depicts the underground deity from different sides, the middle tier depicts the world of people, and the upper tier shows the gods. It is believed that the pillar was created around the 10th century, when the Zbruch cult center was located on this site. According to archaeological excavations, the idol was installed on the territory of the sanctuary located on Mount Bohit. The sanctuary itself has existed on this site since Skolot (Scythian) times.

Academician B.A. Rybakov suggests that the lower image (underground part) shows a deity holding the earth's plane, and compares it with the god Veles (Volos). On the main front face of the upper part, facing north, towards the entrance to the temple, the goddess of fertility is depicted with a horn of plenty in her hand. This is Makosh - “mother of the harvest”. To the right hand of Mokosh is Lada with a wedding ring in her hand. On the left hand of Mokosh is Perun with a horse and sword. On the back side there is Dazhbog with a solar sign; his face looks, as befits a solar deity, to the south. On the middle part of the idol there are figures of people, they are smaller in size than the gods.

The upper world, the world of the gods, the heavens were understood differently by people. At first, when hunting was the main thing, and there were forests around, people saw stars above and navigated by them. The constellations were named after animals, and two constellations near the axis of the world were named Moose and her daughter. Then they changed their names to Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, but still remained heavenly mistresses.

When peoples switched to agriculture, bears ceased to be important in economic life. The names of the constellations remained, but women in labor Lada and Lelya began to be considered the mistresses of the world. The cult of women in labor survived until the 17th century, when church teachings against them were still known, and songs and round dances in their honor and images in folk embroidery, where they were represented as horsewomen with a plow on both sides of the goddess Mokosh, were created until the end of the 19th century.

The Slavs revered water as the element from which the world was formed. The earth, according to their concepts, floated out of the sea. In pagan times, all Slavs worshiped water deities, called upon them in their oaths in confirmation of this word, a marital vow, and purified themselves with water as a sacred element. They prayed over the water, told fortunes on the water, and received signs about the future. The pagans treated rivers, lakes and wells as living beings, capable of understanding, feeling and expressing themselves in human speech.

Academician B.A. Rybakov found out and described in his work “The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” that, according to the ideas of farmers, there were constant supplies of water in the sky. This heavenly moisture could take the form of a cloud and fall in the form of rain, “fatify” the earth, promote the growth of herbs and harvests.

Such ideas also exist among other peoples. For example, in the Indian Vedas, the sky is divided into two tiers: the upper sky with water reserves (“Svah”) and the air sky with luminaries (“Bhuvah”), below is the earth - “Bhuh”. The Old Testament gives a similar division of heaven.

The sky was given a special status in Slavic paganism. A.N. Afanasyev emphasized that the sky as a receptacle of the bright principle (light and heat) was idolized among all peoples.

In Slavic conspiracies they say: “You, Heaven, hear, you, Heaven, see.”

The Slavs idolized the bright sky, which they distinguished from air. The hard sky is located behind the air - this is the home of light and life-giving rain.

The heavenly bodies in Slavic mythology originated from the supreme god. According to one of the East Slavic legends, once there was no sun and people lived in semi-darkness, but the supreme deity Svarog needed to watch the earth and people and he released the sun from his bosom.

In folklore, the sun could appear in both female and male form.

It was believed that the Sun lives where the earth meets the sky; somewhere far in the east, in the land of eternal summer; in Iria, etc. Every morning it goes to heaven in its chariot drawn by white fire-breathing horses and makes a circular tour across the sky. The horses are led out by his sister Morning Dawn. Evening Dawn, the second sister of the Sun, leads the horses to the stable when the Sun finishes its circuit. In addition to the sisters, the Sun has servants who disperse the clouds and wash the face of the Sun with the help of rains. B.A. Rybakov wrote that the night movement of the luminary was carried out by waterfowl (ducks, swans).

Some legends say that an underground lizard swallows the sun in the evening in the west and releases it in the morning in the east.

The sun has a mother and a wife. In some fairy tales, the Sun kidnaps (or wooes) a wife from people. In Slavic songs and riddles, the Sun was often depicted in a maiden form. In a Ukrainian carol, the owner of the house is compared to the month, his wife to the sun, and the stars to their children.

“... The clear sun is his wife,

A clear month is the owner himself,

As small as the stars are his children,

Like a dark cloud, that is his life.”

The daylight illumination of the world space was attributed by the Russian people of the 12th century not only to the sun, but also to a certain special immaterial light, which in later times was called “white light.” The deity of the sun, sunny day (maybe the “white light”) was Dazhbog, whose name gradually turned into the “giver of blessings.”

The middle world, the earth, was depicted by many peoples as a rounded plane surrounded by water. Water was thought of either as a sea, or in the form of two rivers washing the earth. B.A. Rybakov, based on folklore data, believes that Slavic ideas about the sea did not have a complete form. In Slavic fairy tales, the sea is located somewhere at the edge of the earth. It may be in the north, or it may be in the south. Water can be both sacred and demonic, it can resurrect the dead “living water”, and mythological creatures can live in it: snakes or dragons.

As A. Toporkov found out, the Slavs associated the sky with the supreme and masculine principles, and water bodies and the mythical creatures associated with them with the earth, water, the bottom and the feminine principle.

As for the lower world, the world of the ancestors, then, most likely, it was located either underground, or above the sky, as well as beyond the horizon, beyond the vast expanses of water and inaccessible mountains. In general, it’s a very difficult place to get to. The path there goes through airspace, an impenetrable (enchanted) forest, through caves, abysses, ravines, deep crevices in the ground, through impassable swamps, seas, lakes, rivers, both stormy, fast-flowing, stagnant and even fiery. That is, even if the world of the ancestors is located in the middle world, on the earth (most often at the edge of the earth), it is separated by natural impassable barriers. Stories about heaven in heaven or a high mountain and hell underground date back to later times, the times of dual faith, when pagan and Christian legends were mixed.

According to the most ancient ideas, which among the peasantry survived even until the 19th century, until the Last Judgment (this concept was brought by Christianity), all souls live in one dark place, in a kind of “wasteland”, which is located between heaven and hell. They do not suffer torment there, but they also see neither light nor joy.

And yet, there is another version. It concerns Iria (Vyria) - the Slavic “paradise”.

The Arab diplomat Ibn Fadlan observed the medieval Slavs on the Volga in 922 and left a very detailed description of the funeral ritual, which includes the following words: “... When the flames of a grandiose fire had just flared up, on top of which the Russians had piled a boat with a dead man (the merchant died on the way, during the voyage), the Russian turned to the Arab translator: “You, oh, Arabs, are stupid! Truly, you take the person most beloved to you and the most respected by you and throw him into the ground, and his ashes and vile and worms eat him. And we burn him in the twinkling of an eye, so that he enters heaven immediately and immediately.”

Based on this description, B.A. Rybakov concludes that the paradise of the Slavs, the abode of the souls of the dead, was not underground, but somewhere high. There was a stage in the funeral rite when the girl destined for sacrifice talks about what she “saw” while looking into the kingdom of the dead. To perform this ceremony, large wooden gates were made, and the men lifted the girl in their arms high above the gate, to the height of two human heights. Rising above the gate, the girl said that she saw her dead father and mother, “all her dead relatives.” It is unlikely that with such a look up, the world of the ancestors could be located below.

Also B.A. Rybakov wrote: 4. The soul in folklore materials is often associated with breath and smoke. Perhaps the appearance of corpse burning in pre-Slavic times should be explained in connection with the isolation, the isolation in human consciousness of the image of the soul as a kind of semi-material substance. Flights of the soul, its movements to a distant paradise, from where spring birds fly, are all the result of expanding the horizons of primitive people, a new knowledge of the world and its limits. The sun, the east (in the geographical sense), and the morning dawn play some special, not entirely perceptible role in the new ideas. It becomes common for the dead to be oriented with their heads to the west, that is, facing the rising sun, towards the dawn, which plays such an important role in pagan conspiracies. And paradise itself exists somewhere in warm, sunny eastern or southern countries. Perhaps the underground path of the sun was depicted by the ancients not as an orbit located in one plane, but as sailing through the underground ocean (screened from people by the edge of the earth) along the route west - the southern edge of the flat earth - east. The orbit of the sun seemed to be bent in half, and the sun passed its night path closer to the southern edges. But this is very speculative.”

Cosmogonic myths tell how the universe, celestial objects, and our planet Earth were created.

The creation of the world usually begins with a state called Chaos; in Slavic mythology, water (the primordial ocean), which includes the other elements, earth, fire and air, is associated with primeval Chaos. Chaos is perceived as a state infinite in time and space. It is also characterized by a mixture of elements, that is, elements in an undivided state, and a lack of form and order.

The process of creation of the world is a series of successive stages.

First, there is a division of the primary elements - water, earth, fire and air - the building material for the construction of the cosmos. Then the space begins to be filled with created objects: landscape, plants, animals, people. Anthropogonic myths, which are part of cosmogonic ones, tell about the origin of man.

The result of creation is Cosmos. Unlike Chaos, Cosmos is characterized by such qualities as organization, orderliness, and temporality. Space has a beginning and an end, which is narrated by myths about the “end of the world,” “the end of the world.” Most often it is a flood or fire in which everything dies.

The Russians have practically no cosmogonic myths preserved. Most of the surviving myths are about the creation of the Earth and all life on it.
In different mythologies we can find different models of the creation of the world.

One of these models is the birth of the world from parts of the Creator’s body. This model is also reflected in the Russian “Pigeon Book”.

Our white free light was conceived from the judgment of God,
The sun is red from the face of God,
Christ Himself, the King of Heaven;
The month is young and bright from his breasts,
The stars are frequent from the garments of God,
The nights are dark from the thoughts of the Lord,
The morning dawns from the eyes of the Lord,
Stormy winds from the Holy Spirit,
The rain is falling from the tears of Christ,
Christ Himself, the King of Heaven.
We have the mind-mind of Christ himself.

Another model is the creation of the world from primordial waters by the will of the Creator or in response to someone’s request.

The Creator sometimes appears here in the form of an animal or bird. This model sometimes has a dualistic version. The creators turn out to be two opposing and even warring principles: God and Satan. This dualism can be observed in some religions, for example, in the teachings of the Bogomilovs, which arose on the territory of Bulgaria and penetrated into the territory of Rus'. In accordance with this teaching, the world was created through the joint efforts of both, which was contrary to official Christianity.

Myths about the creation of the world of a dualistic nature were widespread among the Russian people; in them we see the motive for joint creativity in creating the Earth by God and his opponent Sataniel. In the Kyiv legend, however, God first creates Sataniel himself, and therefore, in this case, their equality is excluded. In the legends of the Arkhangelsk and Olonets provinces, Sataniel appears in the guise of a duck or loon, which takes a pinch of earth from the primordial waters to create the Earth.

In many mythologies, the creation of the world appears as development from the world egg. This egg is often depicted as golden. The egg was laid by a space bird. In the "Dove Book" her name is Nagai the Bird or Strefil the Bird in various variations of this book. In the middle of the universe in Slavic mythology, like the yolk of an egg, is the Earth. The upper shell of the yolk is the world in which humans, animals, and plants live in the entire landscape environment. The lower part of the yolk is the underworld, the lower world, the world of the dead. There are nine heavens around the yolk of the egg. Each of the nine heavens has its own purpose. You can get to any of the heavens by climbing the world tree.

This tree is the axis of the world. It connects the lower world, the central world in which man lives and all nine heavens. The structure of the tree also has a three-part structure. The lower part of the tree (roots), middle (trunk) and upper part (crown) are distinguished. They correspond to the main zones of the universe: the heavenly kingdom, the earthly world and the underworld.

Each part of the tree and, accordingly, the zone of the universe has its own animals associated with it. Birds are associated with the heavenly kingdom, usually ungulates are associated with the earthly world, and snakes, frogs, mice, fish and fantastic chthonic animals are associated with the lower world. In relation to time, parts of the tree are associated with the past, present and future, and in a genealogical context - with ancestors, the present generation and descendants.

Slavic mythology has three levels: highest, middle and lowest.

At the highest are the Gods, whose functions are the most important for the Slavs. This is Svarog (Stribog, Heaven), the Earth and their children (Svarozhichi) - Perun, Dazhdbog and Fire.

The middle level includes gods associated with economic cycles, as well as gods personifying the integrity of any groups. These are Rod, Chur and others.

The lowest level includes creatures such as brownies, goblins, banniks, mermaids, kikimoras and many others. Each of them is assigned a specific function and a special location.

More information for those interested...

How did the pagan Slavs imagine their world? Scientists write that it seemed to them like a large egg. And among related and neighboring peoples there are even legends about how this egg was laid by a “cosmic” bird. The Slavs have preserved echoes of the legends about the Great Mother - the parent of Earth and Heaven, the foremother of Gods and people. Scientists believe that the name of the Great Mother was Zhiva, or Zhivana.

In the middle of the Slavic Universe, like a yolk, is the Earth itself. The upper part of the “yolk” is our living world, the world of people. The lower, “underside” side is the Lower World, the World of the Dead, the Night Country. When it's day there, it's night here.
To get there, you need to cross the Ocean-Sea that surrounds the Earth. Or dig a well right through, and the stone will fall into this well for twelve days and nights.

Around the Earth, like eggshells and shells, there are nine different heavens (nine - three times three - a sacred number among a variety of peoples; but this is a topic for another conversation). This is why we still say not only “heaven” but also “heaven”. Perhaps it would be useful to recall here the troposphere, stratosphere and other layers into which scientists divide the air cover of our planet?..

Each of the nine heavens of Slavic mythology has its own purpose: one for the Sun and stars, another for the Moon, another for clouds and winds. Our ancestors considered the seventh to be the “firmament,” the transparent bottom of the heavenly Ocean. There are stored reserves of living water, an inexhaustible source of rain. Let us remember how they say about a heavy downpour: the abysses of heaven have opened up! To what do we owe this saying? The biblical legend of the Flood, pagan beliefs, or both? One way or another, “abyss”, “abyss” is an expanse of water, an abyss of the sea. We still remember a lot, but we ourselves don’t know where this memory comes from and what it relates to.

The Slavs believed that you can get to any sky by climbing the World Tree, which connects the Lower World, the Earth and all nine heavens. Echoes of this myth have reached us, for example, in fairy tales about the wonderful pea that grew to the moon itself. According to the ancient Slavs, the World Tree most closely resembles a huge spreading oak tree. However, not only acorns ripen on this oak tree, but also the seeds of all other trees and herbs. And where the top of the World Tree rises above the seventh heaven, in the “heavenly abyss” there is an island, and on that island live the ancestors of all birds and animals: the “elder” deer, the “elder” wolf, and so on. They were also called “old”: in former times the word “old” did not necessarily mean “decrepit” and “advanced in years”, as it is now; its main meaning was “strong”, “mature”, “seasoned”. In epics the expression is constantly found: “old Cossack Ilya Muromets.” This refers to his bodily strength, and not at all old age, as we sometimes think.

The Slavs believed that migratory birds fly to the heavenly island in the fall. The souls of animals caught by hunters ascend there and answer to the “elders” - they tell how people treated them. Accordingly, the hunter had to thank the animal for allowing him to take his skin and meat, and in no case mock him or cause unnecessary suffering. Then the “elders” will soon release the beast back to Earth, allow it to be born again, so that fish and game will not be transferred. If a person is guilty, there will be no trouble...

The pagans did not at all consider themselves “kings” of nature, who were allowed to plunder it as they pleased. They lived in nature and together with nature and believed that every living creature has no less right to life than a person... If only we, today, had such wisdom!

The Slavs called the wonderful island in seventh heaven “irium” or “virium”. Some scientists believe that the current word “paradise”, which is so firmly associated in our concept with Christianity, comes from it. Iriy was also called Buyan Island. This island is known to us from numerous fairy tales and conspiracies as a kind of “generator of life,” an abode of goodness, light and beauty. This folk tradition was continued by A.S. Pushkin in his “The Tale of Tsar Saltan.” Buyan Island is not in it by chance!…

The formation of the pagan picture of the world among the ancestors of the Slavs was completed by the end of the 1st millennium BC. e. The ideas of the ancient Slavs about the world were characterized by vagueness and instability of forms.

Slavic mythology is clearly based on ideas that reflect the very beginning of world knowledge. Plays an exceptional role in the cosmogonic ideas of the Slavs principle of analogy (all-similarity).

The attitude of the ancient Slavs to nature characterized by features that are generally characteristic of the archaic worldview. Since archaic man did not separate himself from nature, he animated it (that is, endowed it with human qualities), the Slavs worshiped the sun, sky, water, earth, wind, trees, birds, stones.

The existence of tree worship among the ancient Slavs is evidenced by archaeological finds of oak trunks, raised twice from the bottom of the river. Dnieper and once in the lower reaches of the river. Gums. 9 and 4 boar tusks, respectively, were stuck into the trunks with the points outward. In this case, the connection between the oak tree and the cult of Perun, the god of thunder and lightning, is obvious.

Mountains occupied a special place among objects of veneration (a mountain is the symbolic center of the world). According to the Novgorod version of the cosmogonic myth, the earth is created from the body of the mythical Snake-Hair, ruling over the life-giving forces of Chaos and Waters. The role of the first god in Slavic mythology belonged to Svarog- the deity of the sky.

In archaic consciousness, space and time are not a priori concepts that exist outside and before experience; they are given only in experience itself and form an integral part of it, therefore space and time are not so much realized as directly experienced.

Space in the minds of the ancient Slavs it was perceived as qualitatively heterogeneous(ordered - disordered; sacred, i.e. sacred - profane, i.e. ordinary; pure - unclean), having many breaks and faults.

In ancient Russian literature there was no uniformity in views on the structure of the universe - in written monuments one can find provisions from various cosmologies (the structure of the world according to the model of an egg, a dwelling, the body of a deity or ancestor, various versions of the geocentric concept), some of which were a reflection of the ideas of antiquity, others - the early philosophy of the East, while others were rooted in the archaic layers of mythology, and it was they that were rudimentarily preserved in folk culture and were probably closest to the bulk of the ancient Russian population.

For example , the ancient Slavs imagined the Universe in the form of a large egg, in the middle of which, like a yolk, the Earth was located. There were 9 heavens around the Earth (the first - for the Sun and stars, the second - for the Moon, the third - for clouds and winds, etc.). The ancient Slavs thought that above the seventh heaven, which was considered the “firmament”, the transparent bottom of the Ocean, there was an island where the progenitors of all birds and animals lived; This is where migratory birds fly in the fall.

World space was represented as a series of circles or spheres having a common center. This center is the place of creation of the world, its most sacred point. Around the center, one inside the other (like a nesting doll), less and less sacred circles were located. In the East Slavic model of space, preserved in folklore, the outer region of the world turns out to be the sea (ocean), on which stands Buyan Island, in the center of which there is a stone, pillar or tree ( World tree).

According to many scientists, the “era of the World Tree” (a clearly expressed vertical, three-tiered division of the world at its core) begins mainly in the Bronze Age, although the beginning of the formation of this archetype could have occurred much earlier (perhaps already in the Upper Paleolithic). This archetype undoubtedly reflects a fairly high level of development of abstract thinking. Since the Cosmos (Universe) was considered a living organism, the World Tree symbolized the ability of the Cosmos to endlessly regenerate (Fig. 20).

The image of the World Tree embodied space-time coordinates. The horizontal model of space was quaternary (4 cardinal directions), the vertical model was ternary (crown - heavenly; trunk - earthly world; roots - underground, chthonic world). The image of a three-tiered universe was largely reflected in the ancient Russian women's costume. B.A. Rybakov believed that in her festive costume the peasant woman of the 19th century. was likened to a universal goddess.

According to many scientists, the distant ancestors of the Eastern Slavs also once had a tree in the center of their home. This shows a parallel between the macro- and microcosm: the house was perceived as a small analogue of the Universe, the roof of the house is the “roof” of the Universe (the sky), which is supported by the World Tree.

In Cre In the Styansky house in the East Slavic tradition, the undoubted rudiment of the central pillar, and in the prototype, probably, of the tree in the center of the dwelling, is the stove pillar. In the old northern huts, the stove pillar was located almost in the center of the hut.

In the traditional culture of the Eastern Slavs, a large number of rituals and beliefs were associated with the stove pillar (young people were blessed near the stove pillar; the umbilical cord of a newborn was hidden in the recess of the stove pillar, etc.). Often the stove pillar was identified with an ancestor (it is no coincidence that some stove pillars in the houses of the Eastern Slavs have anthropomorphic features).

The center of the earth (axis, “navel”, etc.) meant a break in the homogeneity of space, a kind of “hole” through which you can move from heaven to earth, and from earth to the underground (afterlife).

According to many scientists, human ideas about the afterlife arose no earlier than the 3rd millennium BC. e. It was believed that in order to get to the afterlife, you need to cross the Ocean (sea) that surrounded the Earth, or dig a well through and through, and the stone will fall into this well for 12 days and nights. The afterlife in the minds of the ancient Slavs (as well as ancient people in general) is an “inverted”, “wrong side” world, a mirror image of the here world, everything is the other way around. Accordingly, human behavior in the “wrong side” world should be “inverted”, “wrong”, in other words, it should be anti behavior. Anti-behavior was especially pronounced in funeral rituals. So, for example, the clothes on the deceased could be fastened in the opposite way, compared to the usual one - “on the left side” or turned inside out; clothes for the deceased were sewn not with a needle towards oneself, but from oneself, and, moreover, with the left hand, etc. In East Slavic funeral rituals, poor workmanship was emphasized (for example, clothes sewn with live thread, deliberately carelessly unwoven bast shoes, an untied collar, a poorly planed coffin , half-baked funeral bread, sometimes even a torn shirt on the deceased). The “wrong side” principle also manifested itself in the direction of movement. In contrast to the movement from left to right, in calendar rituals, in the funeral round dance and at funerals, counterclockwise movement was characteristic. As described by the Arab traveler and writer Ibn Fadlan in the 9th century. In the funeral rite of the Rus, the ritual participants walked backwards.

Often in Russian funeral rites there was a combination of laughter and crying. At first glance, this seems paradoxical, because “in the kingdom of the dead you cannot laugh. Laughter is an exclusive property of life; death and laughter are incompatible. If the hero who had entered the kingdom of the dead had laughed, he would have been recognized as alive and destroyed.” Since in archaic culture death was perceived as a future return to a new life and a new incarnation, in funeral rituals laughter was supposed to ensure the return of a dead person to life.

There are many riddles about death preserved in East Slavic folklore. As a rule, death in riddles is represented in the images of a mountain, a tree and a bird on it: On Mount Gorenskaya stands the Veretenskaya oak tree. Neither the king, nor the queen, nor the good fellow can pass by the oak tree; On Volynskaya Mountain there is an Ordynskaya oak tree, a spindle bird sits on it, sits and says: “I am not afraid of anyone: neither the Tsar in Moscow, nor the King in Lithuania.” etc. The metaphor “spindle” (Vereteno bird, Vereteno oak) is apparently explained by the fact that spinning, weaving, weaving are ancient symbols of the creation of the world and human destiny: the thread of life will break, the spindle on which life is wound will stop - life itself will end.

The four cardinal directions were of great importance in the picture of the world of the ancient Slavs: “in conspiracies it was prescribed to turn to all “four directions”; in fairy tales, enemies could threaten the hero “from all four sides”, etc.” .

It is no coincidence that, among the numerous idols of the ancient Slavs, stone and wooden, there is a whole group of images with four faces (heads, faces) facing the four cardinal points. So, it was oriented according to the countries of the world Zbruch idol (Fig. 21), found in 1848 in the river basin. Zbruch – a tributary of the Dniester and stored in Krakow. The vertical division of the monument into three levels reflects three worlds - the lower underground world of the ancestors, the middle earthly world of the living and the upper heavenly world of the gods. The upper part of the idol represents four faces facing four directions. According to B.A. Rybakov, on the front side there is a goddess of fertility - Mokosh (Fig. 22), on her right hand is the goddess of love with a ring Lada, on the left is the god of war Perun, and on the back side is a god with the sign of the sun - Dazhdbog. According to L.P. Slupetskogo, the Zbruch idol represents one god, most likely Perun.

The four-sided image of pagan Slavic gods was, apparently, not an isolated phenomenon. The idol of the Slavic god had four heads Sventovita/Svyatovita. Tetrahedral and four-faced idols were also found on the Dniester near the villages of Ivankovtsy, Rzhavintsy and the town of Gusyatin.

The countries of the world were identified in the minds of the ancient Slavs with certain seasons: east (spring), west (autumn), south (summer), north (winter). Thus, one of the archaic riddles says: “In the royal garden grows the tree of paradise; on one side the flowers bloom, on the other the leaves fall, on the third the fruits ripen, on the fourth the branches dry out.”

The preferred side for the ancient Slavs was the east in its opposition to the west. The solar nature of the names of these two cardinal directions demonstrates their meaning, derived from the movement of the sun (sunrise - east and sunset - west). The East as a happy, gracious side (in the Christian interpretation - heaven) and the West as the kingdom of eternal darkness (hell in Christianity) are depicted in numerous examples of Slavic folklore - in songs, laments, sayings, proverbs, riddles, fairy tales and conspiracies.

In the case of an evil slander against another person, all spatial sacred relationships turn out to be inverted:

I'll go... without blessing...

Not through the gate - through the garden hole.

I won’t go out to the sub-eastern side,

I’ll look towards the sunset...

A conspiracy aimed at a good deed retains the usual solar orientation:

I will get up, blessing myself, and cross myself,

From doors to doors, from gates to gates

I’ll go out into the open field and look towards the east.

The morning dawn rises from the east side.

The red sun is rolling out...[Cit. to 16, p. 135].

Opposition South North almost isomorphic to the east-west opposition, with the first (positive) member of the opposition associated with the sun, day, summer, heat, and the second with the month, night, winter, cold. There is also some connection between the north and the “kingdom of the dead.” Thus, the hero of Russian folklore, setting off on an adventure, goes from south to north, discovering at the end of his journey Baba Yaga in a hut on chicken legs. “Shade the light, at the very end” is the kingdom of Koshchei with its crystal palace.

The dwellings of the Eastern Slavs also had a certain spatial orientation. Always rectangular in plan, they usually faced the four cardinal directions with their four sides; in this case, the entrance was most often located on the south side, and adjacent to the northern (north-eastern or north-western) wall of the dugout was a heater stove (later made of clay), which also performed the sacred functions of the hearth.

Among the pagan Slavs until the 5th century. There were no temples and images of gods; they were replaced by places of worship in the open air. Such cult sites (temples, temples), on which idols of pagan deities were placed, are known in many places where the Slavs settled since the end of the first half of the 1st millennium AD. e. In 1984, not far from the place where the Zbruch idol was found, a sanctuary was excavated, which, apparently, was the location of the idol. The temple is a circle with a diameter of 9 m, lined with cobblestones and surrounded by round recesses in the form of eight petals up to 3 m deep. In the center of the temple there is a square pit, which apparently is the base of the Zbruch idol. According to B.A. Rybakov, the image of Mokosha as the front side of the idol was facing north, and the image of the solar deity Dazhdbog on the back side of the idol was supposed to look south (west - Perun, east - Lada).

The ancient Slavs associated right and left with good and evil principles. For this reason, the word “right” acquired the meaning of good, moral (right, rule, government, fair, correct).

The motif of choosing between right and left is often found in Russian folklore: “they come to a crossroads, and there are two pillars there. On one pillar it is written: “Whoever goes to the right will be king”; on another pillar it is written: “Whoever goes to the left will be killed.”

In Slavic folklore material, the connection between right and masculine and left with feminine can also be traced. “The forehead itches - hit with the forehead: on the right side - for a man, on the left - for a woman.” At the wedding of the Eastern Slavs, men sat to the right of the groom, women, including the bride, to the left.

In ancient Slavic folklore and rituals, the sacred direction of the movement of the sun is recorded. In the Old Russian language there was even a special word meaning movement after the sun - “posolon”, V.I. Dahl notes in his dictionary: “Posolon - nar. according to the sun, but with the flow of the sun, from east to west, from the right hand (up) to the left. She went to the salting ceremony and got married. Spray the sun (salted), the horse will not get dizzy. Twist the rope until it's salty."

The rituals of the Eastern Slavs associated with the first driving of livestock to pasture, with protection from epidemics and funerals also included walking around the livestock (or village) in a circle according to the movement of the sun.

The idea of ​​space was conceptualized through time(travel time). On the other hand, ideas about time often found their expression through space (“living life is not a field to cross”). Like space time in the picture of the world of the ancient Slavs heterogeneous(for example, sacred - profane) and continuously. Sacred (sacred) time is reversible, it can be returned and repeated countless times. Myths about the so-called “second creation” (file 9), which includes the East Slavic myth about the duel between the thunderer Perun and his serpentine enemy Veles, coincided with the celebration of the New Year. Time was viewed as a sequence of stages, each of which has its own significance. The ancient Slavs believed that there are “good” and “bad” times in the day and year. Thus, the critical points of the daily cycle were dawn, noon, sunset and midnight, and the critical points of the annual cycle were the days of the winter and summer solstices and the two equinoxes: it was believed that at this time communication with the chthonic, afterlife world was possible. Pagan holiday Kolyada(from “kolo” - wheel, circle - solar sign, symbol of the sun) was celebrated on winter holidays from December 25 (Christmas Eve) to January 6 (Veles Day). A pagan holiday was celebrated on the summer solstice Kupalo(“solstice”), it was believed that on this day “the sun in a smart chariot leaves its heavenly palace to meet its husband - the month.”

The Byzantine historian wrote about the Slavs’ ideas about fate Procopius of Caesarea:“They do not know predestination and generally do not recognize that it has any significance, at least in relation to people, but when death is already at their feet, whether they are seized by illness or go to war, they make a vow if they will avoid it, and immediately make a sacrifice to God for their lives; and having avoided [death], they sacrifice what they promised, and think that with this sacrifice they bought their salvation” [Cit. to 7, p. 82].

Despite the statement of P. of Caesarea, the Slavs had a number of characters who were in charge of human destiny. Pairing (binary) of many mythological characters ( Share - Nedolya, Truth - Falsehood, Happiness - Woe-Misfortune, Belobog - Chernobog) presupposed a struggle between alternative trends in human life - the polar forces of good and evil. The Slavs believed in fate, but unlike the ancient Greeks, they believed that fate could be changed by making a sacrifice to the deity who endowed a person with one or another “share”. Man, as the Eastern Slavs believed, depends not only on Fate, on Chance, but also on his own activity (this feature was noted by A. Afanasyev and other researchers of the mythology of the Eastern Slavs). The Eastern Slavs absolutized the role of chance in their lives, elevating it to the rank of a civilizational factor. The originality of the Eastern Slavs' ideas about fate was largely predetermined by the factor of chance and unpredictability rooted in Russian self-awareness (Russian “maybe yes, I suppose”; the special ideological role of riddles in ancient Russian folklore and fortune-telling in everyday life; the tendency to make fateful decisions by casting lots).

Despite the fact that Slavic writing begins historically late - from the 9th century, “a Slavic word or name is also a record without writing, a memorization.” “A reliable reconstruction of words and meanings is the path to the reconstruction of culture in all its manifestations.”

Slavic languages ​​are part of the linguistic family of Indo-European languages, uniting Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Italic, Celtic, Germanic and other language groups. The Proto-Slavic language is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages; it was formed on the basis of one of the Indo-European dialects.

In the 2nd millennium BC. e., when the Proto-Slavic tribes first consolidated, separating themselves from the general Indo-European massif, they already had a large vocabulary (according to F.P. Filin, over 20 thousand words!), Reflecting different aspects of their life.

Identifying the keywords of a culture helps reveal the spirit of the culture. The key word of Proto-Slavic and Slavic culture, according to O.N. Trubachev, is the word “own” (i.e. “ancestral”, “native”, “good”). On the one hand, the word “own” characterizes the archaic consciousness of the Slavs; and, on the other hand, the word “own” retains its fundamental meaning in modern Slavic languages. For example, in the modern Russian vocabulary of the language, the word “your” is included in the first three dozen most common words.

So, we should emphasize the high importance of the idea of ​​clan among the Slavs, the priority of collectivity. (It is no coincidence that the most ancient gods of the Slavs were the progenitor god Genus And women in labor). The ancient Slav thought of himself only in connection with his family and saw everything around him in the light of only the dichotomy “his own” - “not his own.” The life of an individual person was interpreted as part of a common destiny (the word “happiness” comes from “part”, i.e. part of the whole). The spiritual ideal of the ancient Slavs was the collective, clan, family.

Not long ago, scientists discovered an ancient Slavic legend that spoke of the creation of the world. Having translated it into modern language, historians realized that they were on the verge of a real sensation.

In the text, the ancient authors said that for the Slavic civilization the world began with a Universal Explosion, after which stars and planets appeared. Oceans and mountains formed on the desolate Earth, and life finally began. But how could our ancient ancestors know about the facts that official science discovered only in the last century?

Astronomers of the Ancient Worlds

This discovery marked the beginning of a series of historical sensations. Studying ancient Slavic manuscripts, researchers noticed that the Slavs’ understanding of the world, time and space is deeper than even the knowledge of modern scientists.

According to one of the ancient Slavic manuscripts, the year 604389 has now arrived. This means that, according to the beliefs of our ancestors, time appeared much earlier than it was created by God according to the Bible.

The handwritten text says that the Slavs calculate chronology from the beginning of time itself, which arose with the appearance of the three suns, i.e. from a real cosmic phenomenon. But when did this happen? And why did our ancestors consider this the beginning of time?

To answer these questions, the researchers turned to recent discoveries in astrophysics. The world of the ancient Slavs is covered in many secrets, but scientists do not give up and try to get to the bottom of it.

They calculated that our ancestors could observe three suns at once only in one case - if there was a rapprochement between our galaxy and the neighboring one, which could have two Solar Systems at once. As a result of this, our sun and two giant suns from another galaxy could be visible in the sky.

Slavic legends about the creation of the world

Today, such an astronomical phenomenon seems like the plot of a science fiction film, and many scientists agree with this statement and classify this event as mythical, if not for one “But.” More recently, researchers have discovered real evidence that the Slavic timekeeping arose as a result of real astronomical observations.

Ancient documents about the Slavs

The ancient world of the Slavs, their way of life, culture, faith and traditions are described in the “Veles Book”. “The Book of Veles” is a unique ancient document. Researchers suggest that it was written by Slavic Magi about a hundred years before the baptism of Rus'.

It contains knowledge about the structure of the universe, about the past and future of the earth and all living beings that have ever inhabited our planet. And our distant ancestors left all this boundless knowledge to us - their descendants.

However, this is far from the only historical document that contains indications that the Slavs had completely unique knowledge about the structure of the world.

Recently, historians were attracted by the fact that in the Russian fairy tale “The Little Humpbacked Horse,” which depicts the life and beliefs of our ancestors, it literally says the following: “... and on the first week of week he went to the Capital City.” “...The eighth year has already passed, and the week has come...” - this phrase is from another fairy tale called “The Stone Bowl.” "Seven" and "oct" are actually the seventh and eighth days of the week.

Few people know that our ancestors had not seven, but nine days in a week. An even month had forty days, and an odd month had forty-one days. And there were only nine months in the year, and not twelve, like ours.

This is due to the fact that the speed of rotation of the Earth around the Sun and around its own axis was previously slower, and time itself was different and our ancestors knew about it. But who endowed our distant ancestors with such knowledge? And what unique artifacts did they leave for us, their descendants?

Sacred occult places

Researchers believe that in the places where the Karelian petroglyphs were discovered, there are energetically active zones. It has been observed that people there often begin to feel much better, as if these places have a beneficial effect on their health.

Perhaps the ancient people, who had not yet become estranged from nature, had a particularly keen sense of such zones, and it was no coincidence that they chose them for the construction of sanctuaries. There they performed their rituals and paid tribute to the ancient gods who once descended from heaven.

If you compare, for example, the White Sea and Onega petroglyphs, they will turn out to be completely different things. For example, Lake Onega is filled with a continuous mystical aura (power). The images of swans predominate there, and these are very strange swans, at the same time very beautiful with long necks. One swan was depicted with a neck up to two meters high.

The riddle of the swan

Few people know that among the ancient Slavs, swans were considered sacred birds that could not be destroyed. Killing a swan was punishable by death.

Researchers believed that such reverence for these graceful birds with a long neck was preserved among the Slavic peoples from their ancient ancestors, and as evidence of their special relationship with swans, scientists cite numerous rock carvings of these birds, including in Karelia.

However, there is another opinion. A long neck, a relatively small head and a massive body - some scientists believe that these are not swans at all, but dinosaurs. Otherwise, why are they so large compared to the deer and other animals killed nearby? And if you imagine a primitive image of a dinosaur of the herbivore order, it would look exactly like this.

Perhaps some individuals of the “giant lizards” survived until the appearance of humans. Or did man appear much earlier than modern science believes?

Tales for posterity

More recently, Russian researchers have put forward a sensational hypothesis. After conducting fundamental research, they came to the conclusion that Russian folk tales are in fact not fiction, but a reflection of real events, ceremonies and sacred rituals that our distant ancestors practiced hundreds of years ago.

At first glance, this seems impossible. Did Kashchei and Baba Yaga, the Serpent Gorynych and the Gray Wolf really exist? This is very difficult to believe.

However, the research of Russian scientists was so impeccable, logical and consistent that conservative Soviet science did not find a single, even the most conventional, basis to protest its results and declare them profanation. Instead, the relevant ministries kept silent about the sensational development, and until now only a narrow circle of specialists knows about its existence.

The underground world of the Slavs and the path to it

One of the most important characters in Russian fairy tales is Baba Yaga. If we take fairy tales literally, then she is an evil witch who lives in the forest. But is it? What secret meaning did our distant ancestors give to this character?

Scientists are convinced that the meeting with Baba Yaga is in fact a complex description of initiation into sorcerers. And every detail associated with it is of great importance, including the place of residence of the mysterious Slavic witch.

The hero of the fairy tale, during his travels, always enters a dark forest, where he meets the Hut on Chicken Legs. It turns out that the hero of the fairy tale leaves his world for some special space, and there he encounters a dwelling, which in itself is magical.

It can move, it can turn around, but you can’t just pick it up and go into it. And then he asks the hut to turn around. Why can't you just bypass it? Researchers believe this is another important symbol. The hut is the gate behind which the magical space of Navi is located, and only an initiate can enter there.

But what kind of world was this? According to the beliefs of the ancient Slavs, the entire Universe was created according to clear rules. And it remained indestructible as long as the main law of balance between Good and Evil was observed. To prevent this law from being broken, the gods created three realities: Reality, Rule and Nav.

The upper world of the Slavs, the material world in which all people live, is called Yav. Rule is a world of laws established by the main god Svarog, to whom everything obeys. Nav is the dark side, the false part of existence, the territory of the dead.

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