#dvoeverie

So a primitive rendering, but that’s what I was going for. I really wanted to carve it, but the stone was just too hard without special tools

Anyway, after finding this hagstone in the gravel at the base of a Marian statue—I could just see Mary in the stone immediately. I felt that the hole was her face, like how motanka dolls have a blank face. I am not an artist, so I had to find something to give me an idea of how to draw the lines. Finally after endless searches I found a line drawing I could use for guidance.

I think to most people she would just appear as an abstract design, and that’s fine. I know what she is.

welcome! my name is carmine (she/they)

for some background, half my family was mormon, half was pentecostal, i was raised going to both churches. but these days i would say i identify the most with dvoeverie or folk orthodoxy, but as an affirming queer person i don’t feel super at home at orthodox services but im hoping one day that’ll change, hence the “eastern orthodox at heart”

most of my posts i get from pinterest, always trying to give credit when i can! i made a tag called #christian cats for all the kitties with religious icons i’ve seen, recommend checking it out :3

besides christian theology i love researching about all faiths (im always on wikipedia, just sifting through hyperlinks) ((im autistic obviously if that wasn’t clear)), i think there’s truth and something we can learn from all paths, so non christian things may pop up on here! i also love anthropology and history, i have a deep reverence for human nature and cultures, i think it’s beautiful how we’ve always found a way, even in times where we’re just fighting for survival, to make meaning out of life and create art.

i didn’t realize i had my asks open until now so i never checked them but if there’s something you asked that you still wanted answer please send again and i’ll respond :)

anyone is free to interact cause i wanna have an open dialogue but that only applies to genuine, good faith discussions! i won’t allow anyone to be cruel for cruelty’s sake.

Polish Folk Witch (on instagram and Patreon) has an excellent article on dual faith practice and syncretism among folk witches: Dual Faith: the elephant in the room of the witchcraft community. The topic of dual faith keeps returning on a regular basis in the broader witchcraft community online, especially on the intersection of folk magic, paganism and christian occultism. Folk witches often…

You may or may not have noticed that after six good years as pagan-stitches I’ve changed my tumblr handle to more accurately reflect the path I’ve wandered down the last few.

The word "dvoeverie" (двоеверие) is a Russian-language term, specifically originating in Old Church Slavonic (or medieval Russian/East Slavic).

It translates to "double faith" or "dual faith" and was used in medieval religious sermons to describe the phenomenon of Christian communities simultaneously retaining elements of their pre-Christian Slavic pagan beliefs and rituals. The term is widely used in Russian cultural and historical studies to refer to this religious syncretism.

Salvador Dali

The association of Elias with mountaintops seems to come from a different pagan tradition: Elias took on the attributes and the locales associated with Zeus, especially his associations with mountains and his powers over rain, thunder, lightning, and wind. When Elias prevailed over the priests of Baal, it was on Mount Carmel which later became known as Mount St. Elias. When he spent forty days in a cave, it was on Mount Horeb. When Elias confronted Ahab, he stopped the rains for three years.

A map of mountain-cults of Zeus shows that most of these sites are now dedicated to Elias, including Mount Olympus, Mount Lykaion, Mount Arachnaion, and Mount Taleton on the mainland, and Mount Kenaion, Mount Oche, and Mount Kynados in the islands. Of these, the only one with a recorded tradition of a Helios cult is Mount Taleton.

Elias is associated with pre-Christian lightning gods in many other European traditions.

Among Albanians, pilgrimages are made to mountaintops to ask for rain during the summer. One such tradition gaining popularity is the 2 August pilgrimage to Ljuboten on the Sharr mountains. Muslims refer to this day as Aligjyn ("Ali Day"), and it is believed that Ali becomes Elias at midday.

This common depiction of the prophet Elijah riding a flaming chariot across the sky resulted in syncretistic folklore among the Slavs incorporating pre-Christian motifs in the beliefs and rites regarding him in Slavic culture.

As Elijah was described as ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot, the Christian missionaries who converted Slavic tribes likely found him an ideal analogy for Perun, the supreme Slavic god of storms, thunder and lightning bolts. In many Slavic countries Elijah is known as "Elijah the Thunderer" (Ilija Gromovnik), who drives the heavens in a chariot and administers rain and snow, thus actually taking the place of Perun in popular beliefs. Perun is also sometimes conflated with the legendary hero Elijah of Murom. The feast of St. Elias is known as Ilinden in South Slavic, and was chosen as the day of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising in 1903; it is now observed as Republic Day in North Macedonia.

In Estonian folklore Elijah is considered to be the successor of Ukko, the lightning spirit.

In Georgian mythology, he replaces Elwa. A Georgian story about Elijah:

Once Jesus, the prophet Elijah, and St. George were going through Georgia. When they became tired and hungry they stopped to dine. They saw a Georgian shepherd and decided to ask him to feed them. First, Elijah went up to the shepherd and asked him for a sheep. After the shepherd asked his identity Elijah said that, he was the one who sent him rain to get him a good profit from farming. The shepherd became angry at him and told him that he was the one who also sent thunderstorms, which destroyed the farms of poor widows. (After Elijah, Jesus and St. George attempt to get help and eventually succeed).

Among other peoples of the Caucasus, including the Ossetians and Kabardians, Elijah is understood as a kind of thunder-divinity named Uac-illa, Ilia, or Yeli, and was traditionally invoked in "choppa" ritual associated with lightning strikes and certain mental illnesses. If a person or animal was struck by lightning, a circle dance was performed immediately around the site, even if the storm was still ongoing, and Elijah's name was invoked alongside a nonsense word "choppa" or "coppay". If the victim had died, their family were forbidden from grieving and were required to bury them where they fell instead of in the village cemetery. If the victim survived, their lives were dedicated to Elijah: human survivors were prophets, while animals were released with a mark so that others would know not to take them home. In other versions of this tradition, the one venerated was not Elijah, but other traditional thunder-divinities like Shyble (Щыблэ), Afy (Афы), or Antswa (Анцуа).

Elias has other pagan associations: a modern legend about Elias mirrors precisely the legend of Odysseus seeking a place where the locals would not recognize an oar—hence the mountaintops.

Polish Folk Witch (on instagram and Patreon) has an excellent article on dual faith practice and syncretism among folk witches: Dual Faith: the elephant in the room of the witchcraft community. The topic of dual faith keeps returning on a regular basis in the broader witchcraft community online, especially on the intersection of folk magic, paganism and christian occultism. Folk witches often…

Having recently received an ask about double-faith and doubts arising around the legitimacy of the idea I thought it prudent to include more sources related to this subject in my collection of resources in English.

1) A new source appeared in the Slavic pantheons section:

Popular Religion in Russia: “Double Belief” and the Making of an Academic Myth by Stella Rock: a publication explaining the critique arising around the term “dvoeverie”, including a comprehensible timeline of the word’s evolution as well as in-depth analysis of medieval sources in which the word first appears and views on the subject of dvoeverie expressed by various scholars since mid 19th century.  2) The article below has been moved from Slavic culture section to Polish magic subsection in the Slavic witchcraft section - I thought it more suitable since the author focuses most of her attention on the intermingling of Christian and pagan elements in magical practices:

Coexistence or Conflict? The Problem of Dual Belief in Polish Folklore by Anna Brzozowska-Krajka

3) Lastly the article below has been included in the Slavic culture section instead:

Christianity and Slavic Folk Culture: The Mechanisms of Their Interaction by Svetlana M. Tolstaya

I have seen the notion of "dual faith" commonly applied to Christianized Slavic people more and more questioned lately (either totally or partly) by scholars and practicioners alike, and I was wondering if you (and other of your Christian and Pagan Slavic followers if they wish to develop on that too) have ever attached credit to this notion or not at all, or had any other position on this topic.

Have a nice day !

Ah, once again a complex question!

I would like to quickly re-examine the doubts about validity of dvoeverie in two contexts — first being the doubts about the word itself and its historicity, second doubts about the character of pre-Christian influences on the practices of Christian Slavs.

Dvoeverie (dual-belief, dual-faith) could be very simply defined as preservation of pagan elements by Orthodox Christian communities. This term is used predominantly to refer to Russian religious practices and carries the implication that, while intermingling of pre-Christian and Christian religious practices can happen in any culture, Russia was particularly susceptible to it and displays this phenomenon to a much greater degree, as a result preserving extraordinary number of pagan practices.

Aforementioned term started being used in this context only in mid 19th century, but many scholars who introduced (re-introduced) it into Slavic studies claimed that it has medieval origins and that even medieval Orthodox writers (who would have a better understanding of Slavic paganism than we do) already bemoaned the prevalence of pagan traditions in Orthodox communities (on the territory of present day Russia). 

This idea has been disproven Stella Rock who in her book "Popular Religion in Russia, ‘Double belief’ and the making of an academic myth” shows that, while the word dvoeverie is indeed of medieval origins, it wasn’t used to denote blending of Orthodox and pagan religious practices. According to Rock’s research ”dvoeverie” referred to Orthodox Christians who sympathize with Roman Catholics or a state of spiritual doubt within an Orthodox Christian, and therefore described ”inability to remain unwaveringly Orthodox”. However the second belief referred to by medieval writers using the term ”dual-belief” was never paganism. On that account the context in which the word started being used since 19th century changed significantly — which results in the term coming under a lot of criticism as confusing and misleading.

I don’t really have any strong stances on whether the term should still be used or should be abandoned in the context of pagan beliefs — whatever most scholars will settle on I will follow. I’m of the opinion that as long as everyone involved knows what phenomenon is being discussed the name assigned to it is of secondary importance.

Now onto the problem of pagan influences.

Scholars supproting the existence of dvoeverie usually tend to belong to one of the two main ”camps":

those believing that the Orthodox Christianity was forced to adapt to resistant, prevalent paganism;

those believing that the Orthodox Christianity assimilated Slavic paganism and created a syncretic blend of old and new traditions that was Christian enough to be acceptable to the Church.

Camp 1 tends to support theories of active resistence of the rural pagan peoples to conversion and conscious attempts to preserve pagan beliefs hidden under a thin veneer of Christianity. To many Soviet scholars dual-faith was a symptom of class struggle, although considering the circumstances in which their work was conducted and published this narrative may have been overplayed.

Camp 2 tends to support theories of unconscious preservation of pagan traditions by the people, poor education of Orthodox clergy and neophytes leading to lack of understanding of what is Christian and pagan and creative syncretism of the two faiths.

Onto my personal feelings: I do not believe that ”double-faith” was a form of deliberate resistence of Christianity or a form of conscious class struggle, although I accept that in early days of Slavic Christianization Christianity may have been more common among the elites and that the way different social classes practice the same religion could vary greatly.

Another really interesting interpretation of dvoeverie that I’ve encountered describes it as ”spiritual bilingualism". The believers are "fluent” in two different belief systems and may choose to use the vocabulary of one or the other depending on the circumstances. Occasionally they may also code-switch, code-mix or use borrowings, consciously or unconsciously.

You can still encounter elements with pre-Christian roots in Slavic religious practice as well as many other aspects of Slavic culture. This much is undeniable no matter what name we slap on the phenomenon. Now all that is left is for us to argue about how prominent those elements are and which, and to what degree pre-Christian can be synonymous with pagan.

I imagine that, yes, it could be pretty difficult for early Christians to discern which aspects of their old way of life were specifically ”pagan” — and even the Christian preachers probably struggled with that. It’s worth remembering not everything that is ”unchristian” must be pagan — we can for example see many instances of priests forbidding the newly Christian Slavs revelry, dancing and music but there are doubts as to whether those prohibitions were targetting specific pagan practices or merely marking certain behviors are inappropriate for a devout Christian. At the end of the day what constitutes paganism isn’t all that clear to us.

I will not hide that I personally enjoy including Slavic traditions with strong pre-Christian undercurrent in my Slavic paganism tag — but I am aware that most of the people practicing them don’t see them as ”pagan”. As a Slavic pagan I have quite limited resources when it comes to reliable sources on pre-Christian religious practices and so nevertheless tend to analyse a lot of folk practices looking for elements that are part of local cultural heritage rather than solely Christian cultural heritage, trying to figure out how that could be included to enrich and nuance my personal religious practice which is based on (or perhaps inspired by) pre-Christian Slavic faith though marked with appreciation and inclusion of later Slavic culture. Simultaneously I’m acutely aware that I am likely to come up wrong about things more than a few times. And at the same time I believe we should avoid replicating mistake of romanticizm by uncritically believing that the ”folk” managed to preserve pure and unchanging cultural and religious traditions of the pagan Slavs.

I think it’s perfectly normal for a religion to take on a new ”local flavor” through the influences brought in by the practitioners. Both the culture of the practitioners and the proximity of other faiths will make their marks on the religion in question. It happened to the many forms of Christianity and it happens now, to reconstructed pagan religions. For example in some discussions I observed on Tumblr recently the differences in practices of modern American and Scandinavian heathens were highlighted - a result of the way the practitioners and their culture shape the religion. I find it unavoidable. It’s only natural that earlier pre-Christian and, yes, pagan elements found their way into later practices of Christian Slavs. It’s only natural that Slavic culture of Christianized Slavs finds its way into reconstructive attempts of modern Slavic pagans. Still, I think if you strive for reconstruction or even revival of a pagan religion and not merely an aesthetic repackaging of your local dominant belief you should know what are the core ideas of both religions and where the concepts that form the pillars of your practice came from.

Obviously your knowledge and understanding of your practices will be improved and revised over time. There is nothing wrong with changing your opinions and practices to accomodate new information and new insights. You don’t need a phd before you begin, although some research is anvoidable. In electing to follow the path of revival/reconstruction you implicitly accept the difficulties it introduces into your life and religious practice — and the difficulty will vary depending on both the religion elected and the individual electing.

I warn you — I reserve the right to change my mind once I have more information about the subject in question. I welcome all my followers to add their own thoughts, although please do so politely, acknowledging that a) most people participating in the discussion are laymen with no systematized education on the subject b) this is a tumblr discussion and not anybody’s doctoral dissertation.