How is Christianity different from paganism? Russian tradition: Orthodoxy or paganism

“Many will say to Me on that day: Lord! Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name? And in Your name did we cast out demons? And in Your name did we perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them: I never knew you; depart from Me, the workers of iniquity"

According to statistics, about 40% of people who consider themselves Orthodox do not believe in God. That is, Orthodox atheism is a common phenomenon. Orthodox paganism is also quite common, but it is more difficult to identify using surveys. The term “Orthodoxy” now hides two completely different phenomena: Orthodox Christianity and Orthodox paganism. The latter is no less common than the former. During the times of the USSR, when Orthodoxy was persecuted, such a phenomenon as Orthodox paganism could not be imagined. All pagans unanimously worshiped the Leader of the Revolution. After the collapse of the union, those eager to create an idol for themselves had a large choice. Among the many options was Orthodoxy, perceived and developed in a very special spirit. Here are a few fundamental features of this amazing phenomenon that seemed to me the most egregious.

good must be with fists

This is the holy and firm conviction of Orthodox pagans. We won’t even cite quotations from the Gospel that state the opposite, otherwise we’ll have to rewrite half the Gospel. Let us note something else - in general, this is a very ancient basis of pre-Christian morality and legality. Variations include statements like “the end justifies the means,” “he who wins is right,” and, in fact, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” to which Christ contrasts his “turn your left cheek.” An extreme version of this pagan understanding of goodness can be seen, for example, in the most primitive pagan myths, for example, the myths of the Siberian peoples, where it is deliciously described how a good character, having defeated an evil one, pulls out his intestines and saws off his genitals.

Unlike Christianity, where God clearly says that “my strength is made perfect in weakness,” Orthodox pagans are always happy to help God’s reign with strength. There is no talk about the omnipotence of God here - without the Orthodox, he will not deal with evil! In this regard, Catholicism, of course, has leapfrogged Orthodoxy: what are the Crusades alone worth? Perhaps this is why modern Orthodox Christians so want to be soldiers of Christ. The desire to create an “Orthodox army” on the model of knightly orders gave rise to a fashion for the Orthodox Cossacks.

Hatred of enemies

Closely connected with the acceptance of violence is such a feature of Orthodox paganism as hatred of enemies - the primary virtue for the pagan worldview, but unacceptable according to Christ: “And if you greet only your brothers, what special are you doing? Don’t the pagans do the same?” (Matt. 5:47)
Here, for example, is my revealing dialogue with the head of one of the missionary (!!!) departments of the Russian Orthodox Church.

A: WHAT do you want to hear about?
Daria: Eh... Well, if I start saying that it’s hard for me to believe in the holiness of Alexander Nevsky, it won’t lead to anything good... That’s why I write something there on the back of the Internet and don’t get involved especially to someone else's monastery.
A.: Why can’t you?)))
Daria: No, it’s better not to :) I’m telling you, it won’t lead to anything good :)
A.: Well, do you believe that God, being One in essence, is Trinity in Persons? (from a logical point of view, this is absurd). I think in comparison with this, it is not difficult to believe in the holiness of Alexander Nevsky. What actually confuses you about Alexander Nevsky?
Daria: I believe, of course! This is not a matter of logic. What confuses Alexander is the violation of Christ’s principles. But we already talked about this.
A.: Well, for example - what principles? My memory is bad)))
Daria: Well, he killed people and encouraged them to do it.
A.: Who did he personally kill and when did he call to “Kill people”!
Daria: He was a military commander, although maybe I don’t know what, and he called on his soldiers to hug and kiss their opponents on the battlefield.
A.: He wasn’t crazy! You don’t kiss your enemies either!
Daria: Well then Christ was crazy. In this logic - 100%. This is, as it were, the originality of the teaching.
A.: Don’t blaspheme! You don't kiss your enemies. Are you crazy? Or cruel?
Daria: I try and go in the direction of this madness. The wisdom of the world is foolishness before God. And yes, of course, Christ called for kissing your enemies, I think quotes are not needed. So in this logic he was completely crazy.

To naive calls to return to a Christian understanding of the struggle, I constantly hear accusations of “tolstoyism”, and generally receive the most severe reaction. Which, in general, is natural. After all, the world hates real Christianity, as promised by Christ. Only the border is not between gays and Orthodox, as it seems, but precisely between Orthodox and pseudo-Orthodox: “He (Christ) taught how to purify, how to transform human hearts, how to make them temples of the Holy Spirit, how to make them receptacles of Divine love. For this, the world hated Him, because the world does not want this, it wants something completely different. The world is guided not by the commandments of Christ, but by the law of struggle, the law that the world professes: “In the struggle you will find your right.”

To Caesar - God's

The Orthodox Cossack army is distinguished by the fact that it wants to equally serve God and the state, which is directly prohibited by God’s word. A mixture of Christian and state paraphernalia, Christian and military, radical patriotism of all kinds and shades - all these are direct features of the heresy of Tsardom, "oprichnina mysticism." Why go far, let’s quote the updated “Creed”: “ I believe, Lord, in the Orthodox Royal Self-sacrifice, sworn by the Holy Spirit for eternal times by the consecrated Council and the Russian people for the peace and prosperity of our fatherland and for the salvation of the soul, as all the Russian saints of God of recent centuries taught about the same thing. Amine b". In exchange for the Kingdom of God, Russian sovereignty is proposed, the understanding of which can reach the point that Stalin is a great Orthodox autocrat. Orthodox pagans cannot comprehend that it is necessary to choose who to be - a citizen of earth or a citizen of heaven. Persecuted on earth, as Christ commanded, or vice versa - full-fledged masters on earth.

In this logic, the Church is perceived, in essence, as part of the apparatus of the earthly kingdom, a kind of “morality committee.” And the Tsar is God’s anointed, as in the pagan tradition, where the Tsar’s genealogy was traced back to the gods.

Pride

This is the most beautiful and delicious thing in pagan Orthodoxy: pride is a mortal sin, perceived as valor, also in full accordance with pagan tradition: Orthodox pagans are proud of their homeland, people, and Orthodox faith. If one could not be proud of faith, they would not be Orthodox - but would be, for example, Komsomol members. But circumstances turned out differently.

. “Patriotic National Orthodoxy”: Worship of Tradition and Rituals

Here I will allow myself to quote from an article by Sergei Khudiev:

“There are many Christians in South Korea, and a little less Buddhists, but both of these religions are alien, “imported.” Korean shamanism is local - shamans (or, often, shamans) must attract good spirits and drive away evil ones, incline the spiritual world to promote success in business, health and prosperity, proper operation of mechanisms and happiness in personal life. Despite the fact that South Korea is a highly developed technological society, shamans do not sit idle, performing rituals of blessing houses, cars and offices.
Most Japanese call themselves non-believers - but almost all of them participate in the rituals of Shinto, the worship of spirits of nature, places, or prominent ancestors. The cult has strong nationalist overtones and was a state cult in Imperial Japan. Participation in its rituals is a way to experience and emphasize one’s “Japaneseness,” one’s proud loyalty to the national tradition.
Society's request to the Church is shamanism and a bit of shinto. I have heard bitter complaints from priests that they are perceived precisely as shamans, “white magicians.” People believe that sacred rites should ensure the serviceability of the car, good luck in business and victory for our team. They do not want to hear the word of God, they do not want to understand who Christ is and why He came, they do not want to change their lives - their requests could be more successfully satisfied by a shaman than by a priest. Another request is for national identity. The Church is the only institution that connects us with our ancestors, the core, the foundation of the Russian world. Well, national feeling in itself is not bad. In God's plan we are connected to our families, our fellow citizens, our ancestors and descendants. But the main thing in the Church is not this at all.”

Sergei Khudiev’s article is entitled “Indecently modest requests.” Indeed, the request of the pseudo-Orthodox is a request for Orthodoxy as a type of “native faith” like Japanese Shinto.

What kind of self-improvement and the acquisition of the Kingdom of God is there, and even more so the “second birth” in baptism: in Orthodoxy, instead, support is persistently sought for an already existing worldview, including superstitions and complexes. Christianity is generally a revolutionary teaching; in order to accept the theme of love for enemies, you need to experience a great internal revolution. But Orthodox pagans are looking for something completely different: for them, Orthodox Rodnoverie, with its focus on the past, is the realization of old age towards conservation, a complex of a person in a case. Naturally, for such use, Orthodox Christianity has to be severely stripped down to Orthodox paganism, removing from it all sorts of inconvenient non-pagan things like cosmopolitanism (and “uranopolitanism”) and non-resistance to evil.

A clear separation of the vital and the “sacred”

Since Orthodoxy for an Orthodox pagan is only a tool, and not at all the center of existence, then, accordingly, the faith itself is given a very small ghetto, a kind of “red corner”. The sacred is in the temple, on the altar, at the procession. According to the principle “make a sacrifice and be free.” To follow the Gospel in life - well, no! I have already made a sacrifice, paid off! In the same way, the idea that “the Spirit breathes wherever it wants,” “the Holy Spirit, who is everywhere and fulfills everything,” is unacceptable. The pagans have the holy spirit only on a schedule. How much are you willing to give to Christ - in the Gospel.

Dislike for Christ

Christ is generally a dubious person. All sorts of hippies, socialists, downshifters, non-resistanceists, freedom lovers and other personalities of dubious spiritual qualities strive to recognize him as their own. And in general, Christ is a Jew and a parasite. In general, he doesn’t look like a patriotic national ideal, like a blue-eyed, burly hero. Instead of the words of Christ, Christian pagans gladly quote people who are extremely patriotic and national: Orthodox princes and bishops who bless them for battles. It bothers them greatly that the founder of the Christian religion was the homeless Jew Jesus, and not Vladimir the Red Sun, who brought the truth to scattered tribes with fire and sword. Therefore, they push Christ out of their consciousness as best they can, cover it with gold and “symbols” in every possible way, just to once again prevent the thought of the real Christ without the gilding. After all, according to the behest of the Grand Inquisitor, they got along perfectly well without him, and if they suddenly came a second time in the same form, he would clearly disrupt the royal splendor.

Worship of form and attributes

Hatred in other forms. Christians treat heterodoxy with understanding - that is, other forms of worship of Christ, because they are united by the main thing - the personality of Christ. But since the personality of Christ and his principles are not only an insignificant thing for Orthodox pagans, but also unpleasant, other forms of Christianity are much more alien to them than local paganism.

Closeness and sympathy to the actual pagan traditions

Today, the pagan Slavic Rodnoverie is being revived, opposing itself as an original religion to Christianity. But Christian pagans are trying their best to remove this contradiction and sit on two chairs. In its pagan version, Orthodoxy differs so little from the Slavic Rodnoverie that just like that, they will merge into a single stream. Internally, all Orthodox pagans have a strong belief that Orthodoxy differs from paganism only in the form of the cult. Orthodoxy is such Russian paganism. Ultimately, this can lead to the same paradoxical result that I encountered when a pseudo-Orthodox and a pagan declared that they had the same sacred thing. It’s like “I worship Perun, you worship Christ - we’ll be friends.” What's the difference, exactly? To each, as they say, according to his needs.

I would like to end this review with a brilliant excerpt from Dmitry Bykov’s test, because poetry is always more convincing than prose:
Neither stoned nor drunk in the trash, I cannot understand such a God. They bend him to such corners that it’s a lot of honor to climb the hell out of it. For God there is a Nazi, a “nashist”, a Freemason, a specialist in charms and chakras, Mikhailov Stas and radio “Chanson”, all the crime and - it’s scary to say - Chaplin, bearers of such pitch-black blizzards that parishioners die in fear. This kind of God likes the Surgeon. Pussy Riot is being sacrificed to him. He loves fools and is strict with smart people. He is not at all suitable for mercy. I don’t want blasphemy: this is God, but probably Veles or Odin, or maybe Mars, the ancient god of war, or maybe another ancient idol to whom everyone owes since birth, although no one has ever seen him. He wants victims. He loves military formation. He demands to reconcile and shrink. It is exceptionally empty inside, but looks mysteriously terrible. We are all worthless before him, he is a boring god of nomads and khans - a warlike deity with a show-off, which Dugin and Prokhanov serve. He chews his fists with rage, he eats himself up little by little - and since his friends are lucky so far, he is with them, yes. Not with us, by God.
Our God is not so lucky, not so cunning. He prefers, without a doubt, a biker, a volunteer sneaking around Krymsk, who today is equated to a looter. He punishes the blasphemers himself. He comes to those who have not sought God. He does not enter that concrete temple where they pray to the concrete vertical.
The opportunity to observe all this as a person in the bestiary world is, in general, the only grace available to Christians in Russia.

The purely formal answer to the question in the title is known: pagans are polytheists, that is, polytheists. But Christianity, like the other two Abrahamic religions, is monotheistic, it speaks of one God.

In itself, this difference is, in general, insignificant. Well, one God in Judaism and Islam, or three-as-one in modern Christianity, or ten, or a hundred plus demigods, like the Greeks - so what? Well, that is, for some kind of fanatic this is terribly important, even an extra letter in the name of God is important to him, because it is all sacred, period.

But in meaning, it doesn't matter. The universe is arranged in a certain way. And this is not sacredness, but simply a fact. Well, conventionally, what if Christ said to the disciples: I was sent by the Father of our numerous people of heaven, our good forefather, to save your people from slavery to the devil and his people?
What then? You would shout in His face “fu-fu-fu! We don’t want that, we absolutely need the One Superbeing, the All-Powerful Creator of the Universe, otherwise it would be better for us to remain mortal and go together to hell to the devil.” So what?
The situation is simple: a person is short-lived, mortal, poor and wretched, in addition, according to the faith of Christians, eternal hell awaits him in the afterlife, by default. The situation is terrible, you must agree.

And here, imagine, the Savior appears. With a capital S, Savior, because He promises not to abolish the transport tax, but promises salvation from all of the above, promises immortality, paradise, happiness and promises to take people to Himself. SHOULD YOU CHECKS OR GO?

Is it really so important to you whether He is one, or one-in-three-persons, or whether there are several like Him, or many? Will you frown contemptuously, be picky and refuse salvation from your pitiful and terrible fate if He is not alone there?
I think it doesn't suit you to be picky. And I have evidence - Muslims are satisfied with the One Allah, and Christians are satisfied with the Triune God. Although the difference is visible on the fingers, there are still three personalities, or one. It’s just a dogma that they accepted because it’s their hope, and it was described to them like that. If there were a dogma not about the Father, Son and Spirit, but about the Father, Mother and Son, it would be considered sacred.
If a Muslim tells a Christian that the Trinity is wrong, but right when there is only Allah, it doesn’t matter to a Christian what “wrong” means if in his mind the universe is structured differently: God is precisely triune.

From this it may seem that there is no fundamental difference between Christianity and paganism. But this will be wrong. There is a difference and it is not just great, but it is fundamental. And this is not a quantitative difference, but a qualitative one. The difference is not “how it is arranged up there,” but the difference is “what it means for a person.”

The fact is that the picture of the world of a pagan is, in essence, the picture of the world of a slave serving his masters. That is, beings of a service nature, and service creatures at best -
and at worst, it’s simply useless to anyone. Creatures of a low -standing, sort of "eternal Negro on the plantation."

The pagan in the temple SERVES the gods, makes sacrifices to them and worships. He sends not because he has many gods (there could have been only one), but because the gods established this - a person must make sacrifices to them, build temples in their honor, and observe the laws they established. Why did Zeus or Artemis establish precisely such laws for man and demand precisely such a cult? Because they are GODS (do you understand, idiot?), and you are a mortal nonentity and are obliged to do their will. If you do their will, they will reward you, and if you resist, they will punish you.
For the gods are the rulers and beneficiaries of the universe, and people are their subject servants.

In other words, a pagan lives in a world where there are people and there are gods. Dot.

Christianity (if you have read the Gospels) is something else. Christ came and said - yes, I am God. And you are gods too. Yes, yes, you understood correctly - these guys are my brothers, these elderly women are my mothers, these grandfathers are my fathers.
You will live with me. Yes, yes, live forever like immortal gods. You are gods now.
By the way, you should not pay the temple tax, this symbol of submission to God, because tribute to the king is paid by strangers, subjects, unfree, and his sons are free (can you hear the difference with paganism?)
You know how your world works, the world of slaves - rulers rule over slaves and princes rule over nations. But let it not be like that between you.

In other words, Christ declared a world in which there is no longer a division between gods and men, between beneficiaries and servants, between those who lower the law and those who fulfill the law (“the law before John”), between immortals and mortals.

It is impossible to imagine a slave owner dying for a slave. A slave owner can be kind to slaves or evil, he can punish a slave or reward. But he will not die for a slave, the status is incomparable, the slave is a service creature - so he can die for the master, like a faithful slave.
Zeus can sympathize with a mortal and help him, he can reward him, in exceptional cases, with his offspring, he can even take him among the celestials and bestow immortality. But Zeus will not die even for Hercules, because it is absurd, and even more so for the faceless mass of dirty and poor mortal slaves. Serving him because he is their master - but not vice versa, naturally.

Christ did what a soldier does in war, sacrificing his life for his equals, his loved ones. This is necessary and sufficient evidence of equality of status. There are no more slaves and gods. God died for friends, for brother gods.

This is what Christianity is. More precisely, this is what Christianity was. Nowadays, Christianity is classical paganism - temples, priests, SERVICE to God, worship, the Church as a vertical of power (and figuratively headed by God), symbolic naming of statuses is also characteristic: “servants of God” (pure unclouded paganism), “lord” ( return of the idea of ​​power), prostrations (sub-slave-slaves before the king), sacrifices, “the law of God” (!!!).

The very spirit of modern Christianity (RCC, ROC) is a purely pagan spirit. Replace the iconostasis with statues of Zeus and the Olympians, and the sacrificial chickens and lambs with candles and prosphora (and the altar already exists, and there is already an altar there, and it’s called just that), and you will not see the difference with classical paganism.

People specifically transferred to Christianity the maximum of “Old Testament” symbolism - the same altar, the priesthood (for a minute, that is, the priesthood), the ritual (that is, cult) robes of the priest, the temple and its objects as sacred elements of the cult (this is all symbolism of the fundamental separation of two worlds , for the gods and their property are sacred to mortals). People turned the essence of early Christian rituals 180 degrees (I wrote about this in a post about baptism, see the top post) so that they began to reflect the pagan dichotomy of gods/people.
All this is very important, and not only as a reflection of the change in the very spirit of Christianity. But also as a purely legal moment, which will be extremely important in the future calculation of consequences.
By the way, the importance of jurisprudence in religions, including the Arabic ones, is well understood and recognized. So, for a Muslim, saying the “shahadah” in front of witnesses is enough for a person to become a Muslim, that is, to “change camp” in the eyes of Allah, and the same in Christianity, invite a Christian to “jokingly” say something like “I’m not a Christian” or “I do not recognize the validity of my baptism” - but a person would rather die than say that. Because he is convinced that such things cannot be said even in jest, because such words carry legal consequences that will be significant in heaven. And he is rightly convinced...
And so a man baptizes a child, and it seems to be a Christian rite, because Christ baptized people in water and John, His prophet, baptized in water. But at the same time, a lock of his child’s hair is cut off - this is a symbolic shaving of the slave’s head. In this case, the child is publicly and in front of witnesses called a servant of God. That is, a rite of initiation into paganism and into pagans is performed.

In other words, the religious world we live in today is a pagan world. Deeply pagan. The situation is very similar to the time of Christ, by the way - the world is divided into pagans and atheists. For the former, man is a mortal and a poor slave, for this is the will of the gods, and for the latter, this is generally the natural norm.

Now do you understand why Christianity blew up the world of that time? “And to them that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death did light shine.”

But Satan did not wait long for revenge...

Paganism

The complex of early beliefs of the Slavs was called “paganism” among Christian preachers, who called unbaptized peoples “tongues,” that is, located outside the Christian ecumene, not enlightened by the light of Christ. Paganism in religious literature is also called polytheism, or polytheism.

Russian paganism perceives reality, the world as a reality, dangerous, hostile to man. There are two categories of invisible beings present here: gods and spirits - forces that are superior in their capabilities to human ones and are potentially hostile. Interaction with them is based on the principles of self-interest, benefit, relationships like “you give me - I give you”, a dangerous game of survival on the part of a person. This is why the ritual, magical side of relationships with this unknown world is so important; the need to appease the gods and spirits is constantly present.

Slavic deities did not have a clearly structured hierarchical system of subordination to each other or a strictly defined range of their “powers.” Sometimes the functions of the deities overlapped, and this did not cause much confusion. This was due to the fact that the circle of deities was replenished from the religious systems of neighbors. Current everyday or military events, the personal preferences of princes, and the geographical conditions of the tribes also led to variability in worship.

Slavic paganism is very closely connected with the cult of natural forces. The change of day and night, cloudy and bright days was perceived as a struggle between darkness and light. The darkness was represented in the form of a faceless Chernobog. Each Slavic tribe prayed to its own light gods, and there were also common Slavic gods, for example Rod (Svarog, Svyatovit, Stri-god) - the supreme deity, the god of the sky, the celestial elements, the creator! creator of all things. According to the Slavs, he reigns in the upper tier of the sky - the “heavenly abyss”. The language still contains unconscious imprints of this ancient cult in words with the root “clan” - people, homeland, nature, harvest, give birth, etc., forming a single semantic complex associated with the concept of fertility, birth, origins. Son of Rod - Dazhdbog, god of the Sun, giver of all blessings, god-light - mythical ancestor of the Russians of people. In “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” the author calls the Russian people “Dazhdbog’s and grandchildren.” He reigns in the lower layer of the sky - under the dome of the “firmament of heaven.” Veles is the god of the earth, the underworld, wealth, abundance. Hore (Khoros) is the god of the solar disk itself. A reflection of these pagan ideas remained the Russian round dance (or otherwise, driving in honor of Khoros), when participants joined hands and closed a circle with a chain, walking “according to the sun,” that is, moving clockwise. The verbal reflection of the cult of Khoros is the word “good” and all the same-root words meaning “sunny”, “light”, “warm”. Russian pagans also worshiped Mokoshi (Mokoshi), also called Mother Raw Earth, the goddess of fertility, harvest, and life's blessings. Lada and Lelya are women in labor, goddesses of love, family hearth, marriages, spring plant vitality. Simargl is another interesting deity, possibly of Iranian origin, depicted in Russia as a winged dog. Among the Slavic analogues are Pereplug, Yarilo, the god of vitality, roots, soil, seeds, he established the connection between heaven and earth.

In the IX-X centuries. The cult of the warlike god Perun also appears among the Eastern Slavs. The deity is not Slavic, a Lithuanian god, the god of thunder and lightning, who over time became the god of war among the Slavs, like Mars among the Romans. The penetration of the cult of Perun is largely due to the numerous military campaigns of princes Svyatoslav and Vladimir. Only bloody sacrifices were offered to him. These were often young roosters, whose blood was sprinkled on the base of the idol. During the pagan period of his life, Vladimir the Red Sun was so radical that he even established human sacrifices for Perun from the Kievites by lot.

Russian paganism, in addition to the world of deities, also knew a fairly numerous world of spirits. The gods in paganism are more powerful, but at the same time more abstract, than spirits. Spirits are beings of a lower order that can be either evil or good. Spirits have power within a certain territory, they rule over it, but a person, invading the sphere of their jurisdiction, must be careful, be able to get along with or appease the spirit of a particular place. Of course, first of all, this is the brownie - the spirit of the house, the water spirit - the spirit of water, the goblin - the spirit of the forest and the goblin's wife - the kikimora. These forces are neutral rather than outright harmful. The main thing for a pagan is not to anger the brownie, otherwise he might drop a torch, burn down the house, the goblin might make him get lost in the forest, etc.

Alexander Khramov

Pseudo-Christians, contrary to the Savior’s prohibition, and, moreover, being unable to call upon heavenly fire, began to make fire themselves, and one can easily understand what kind of spirit they are - satanic, Antichrist, and not Christ’s. The unprecedented rampant satanism and black magic in the Middle Ages, which those who idealize this era so do not want to notice, only testify to the general spirit of that time.

V. Soloviev, in his article “On the Decline of the Medieval World Outlook,” showed that the Middle Ages were not at all a time of the triumph of Christianity, but the dominance of old beliefs and former morals, the dominance of paganism, only stylized as Christianity. This is where the roots of the Inquisition and other medieval atrocities lie - the pagan soul did not want to accept Christ with all its might, and behind the activity of external, pseudo-Christian activity it hid its internal spiritual impotence and godlessness, which was a consequence of this reluctance.

But, of course, this external activity only bore the name of Christian, but in essence proceeded from the non-Christian, pagan principles of the old man, and therefore its results, not counting the thousands of lives lost, were also deplorable - the schism of the Catholic Church, the Reformation.

“Most converts (to Christianity) wanted things to stay the same. They recognized the truth of Christianity as an external fact and entered into some external formal relations with it, but only so that their life would remain pagan, so that the worldly kingdom would remain worldly, and the Kingdom of God, being not of this world, would remain outside the world, without any vital influence on it, i.e. would remain as a useless ornament, as a simple appendage to the worldly kingdom.”

“To preserve pagan life as it was, and only to anoint it on the outside with Christianity - this is essentially what those pseudo-Christians wanted, who did not have to shed their own blood, but who had already begun to shed someone else’s.”

The Middle Ages were a time of distortion of Christianity, when Christian values ​​were turned on their heads. Martyrdom turned into torment. “The apostles cast out demons to heal the possessed, and representatives of pseudo-Christianity began to kill the possessed to drive out demons” (V. Soloviev).

G. Michaud in the “History of the Crusades” is amazed at how the knights, after the capture of some eastern city, sincerely and with tears of joy prayed, then with sincere hatred killed tens of thousands of civilians of this city. But only one conclusion can follow from this. Sincere faith always entails corresponding actions. And if it does not entail any deeds, or entails deeds that are contrary to this faith, then this faith is not sincere. The knights really wanted to consider themselves Christians, they even cried in prayer with emotion, but they were not Christians and they did not want to be Christians.

Both the pseudo-Christian and pseudo-Orthodox Black Hundred, whose members went to the pogrom after the prayer service, must be considered one of the manifestations of the satanic spirit that gripped Russia in the first half of the twentieth century.

2. You cannot judge by the history of mankind dating back to R.H. (as well as earthly organizations, such as) about Christianity, for, despite the fact that there have always been ascetics and true zealots of the faith, Christianity has never been fully embodied in any historical era, and in any organization it is always more human, i.e. e. reflecting the spirit of a given era than the divine. The semi-pagan, semi-Christian era of the Byzantine emperors gave way to the Middle Ages, where paganism was simply covered up with Christian symbolism, then there was the Renaissance with its return to antiquity, then came the era of Enlightenment, which openly rejected Christianity, although some of its values ​​(for example, human rights) were based on Christianity. The bloodiest regimes in human history, the regimes of Hitler and Stalin, were openly anti-Christian. The first was based on Scandinavian neo-paganism, flavored with theosophy and occultism, while the second was based on the ideology of communism, which, despite its general anti-religious orientation, saw Christianity as its main enemy. (We will talk about the closeness of communism and paganism later).

3. Well, what about the notorious pagan tolerance? If Christianity did not come true in history, and religious wars were caused by the distortion of Christianity, then perhaps pagans are more tolerant than failed Christians? Maybe Christianity is really inferior to paganism in tolerance?

“Paganism is tolerant of various forms of the Primordial Tradition, does not persecute “heretics” (that is, free-thinking people) and does not wage religious wars (like the “crusades” of others, shedding rivers of human blood for the sake of widespread inculcation of their “only correct” Faith)” . (“Native Gods”, 2001)

Pagan religious tolerance extends exactly as long as any faith is built into the system of pagan views, as long as it is pagan (= “Primordial Tradition”). The appearance of tolerance arises because this system is elastic, that the pagan pantheon contains within itself the possibility of unlimited expansion, modification and interpretation. Pagan mythology is very flexible.

A pagan has nothing against it if, in addition to Jupiter, Minerva, etc., whom he worships, someone also worships Isis, Mithra, Adonis, etc., because he knows that there are many gods. But if it suddenly turns out that someone does not want to consider that his God, whom he worships, Yahweh or Christ, is one of the gods, i.e. does not want to see Him in the pagan pantheon - here tolerance immediately ends, and in its place comes, at a minimum, bewilderment. The pagans are perplexed why images of other gods cannot be placed in the temple of the One God.

So, pagan “tolerance” is not at all due to the fact that pagans somehow respect other people’s opinions more than others and recognize the right of other people to it, but only because paganism makes it easy to integrate other people’s beliefs into the system of one’s own, to make other people’s gods part of his pantheon, even without worshiping them. Their tolerance is not due to the fact that they respect the opinion of another person, but because they easily digest it and adapt it to their own. And if they cannot digest and adjust, it causes them to be rejected.

That is why Christians, who, contrary to representatives of other Eastern cults, did not want to consider Christ one of many, i.e. to be pagans, the pagan people of the Roman Empire were treated with suspicion and mockery, as atheists and libertines:

Is it necessary to explain with patience the absurd rumors spread about Christians that at their secret meetings they indulge in debauchery and devour babies? Is it necessary to explain with patience that the people joyfully accepted the persecution of Christians and even participated in them themselves?

No, these are just manifestations of evil intolerance. (Many modern neo-pagan authors breathe the same intolerance. Such, for example, is the author of the absolutely disgusting book “The Strike of the Russian Gods.” An evil book in which the author literally chokes on the foam of baseless accusations and blasphemous curses, if it in fact represents a strike from the Russian gods , only testifies to their squalor and, to put it mildly, a low level of intellectual development.)

4. It must be understood that the burning of heretics and other atrocities that occurred under the pretext of religious, dogmatic disputes does not at all mean that they need to be stopped, quite the contrary, it indicates the need to deeply feel the essence of the dogmatic dispute, and not perceive it externally and formally. The importance of dogmas is determined not by the dogmas themselves, but by their content. So if a person is indifferent to Christ, then he is indifferent to the dogmas about Christ. But if dogmatic disputes are accompanied by malice, violence and slander that are alien to Christianity, then this is a betrayal of Christ and, consequently, a betrayal of these dogmas themselves, making dogmatic disputes meaningless. So if dogmas are taken seriously, and not as reasons for starting hostility, then this also excludes mutual hatred in dogmatic disputes.

As has already been said, truth is intolerant. But this intolerance cannot be malicious. If someone is confident in the truth, he will not defend it by slandering teachings that contradict it. Anger always covers up inner powerlessness and uncertainty about the truth.

The need to listen to someone else's opinion and objectively evaluate it from the standpoint of truth and Christian truths is the only consequence of Christian intolerance.

The Christian religion is always militant in nature. Both conciliation and hatred of one’s opponents, resulting in their physical destruction, follow from one source - from fear of other people’s opinions and uncertainty in one’s own faith, from fear of argument.

Another note about tolerance

1. Pagans often try to draw a parallel between the tolerance of pagans and the intolerance of Christians, and, accordingly, between the tolerance of pagan gods and the intolerance of the Christian God. They cannot use the New Testament for their own purposes, because it speaks specifically about God , who has undergone suffering and reproach from people, about God, who died not for the righteous, but for sinners, robbers, blasphemers. Here God appears not only as a patient, but also as a lover, who loves and suffers precisely not for those people who should be loved - the righteous, but accepts death for sinners who, it seems, are not worthy of love. God is above the tolerance, or rather indifference, that the pagans want from Him. He accepts death for those whom, according to the reasoning of the pious Pharisees, he should have punished. (In general, the idea of ​​a God who loves and endures suffering in the name of man is alien to paganism). For the reasons listed above, pagans are forced to turn to the Old Testament, and, specifically, to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, ignoring, of course, the book of the prophet Jonah, where God has mercy on Nineveh. Well, if you read it vulgarly, you can indeed find traces of the idea of ​​​​a punishing God.

But aren’t there enough stories about how pagan gods and spirits take revenge on those who did not show them due respect and attention? But in Hesiod, does Zeus appear to be so tolerant? –

Yourselves, kings, think about this retribution.

Close, everywhere among us, are the immortal gods

And they watch those people who, with their crooked judgement,

Kara, having despised the gods, brings ruin to each other. (...)

There is also the great maiden Dike, born of Zeus,

Glorious, revered by all the gods, the inhabitants of Olympus.

If she is insulted and offended by a wrongful act,

The goddess immediately sits down next to her parent Zeus

And he tells him about human untruths. And suffers

An entire people for the dishonesty of kings, maliciously telling the truth

By their injustice they have deviated from the straight path.

2. In paganism, in signs and superstitions that are pagan in origin, there is a strict system of prohibitions. Don't put on a clean shirt then - you'll go hungry, don't get pregnant - the baby will get tangled in the umbilical cord, etc. etc. Hesiod goes as far as to say:

Standing and facing the sun is not good for urinating.

Even then, don’t urinate while walking, as soon as the sun has set,

Until the morning, you still walk along the road, or without a road;

Do not be naked at the same time: the gods reign over the night.

A god-honoring, prudent husband urinates either while sitting,

Or - by approaching the wall in a firmly fenced yard.

And after this, the pagans reproach Christians; they are bound by commandments and regulations, and the pagan religion does not contain commandments and prohibitions.

With their usual pathological Judeophobia, pagans do not want to notice the similarities between their religion and the Old Testament law. And he, as well as pagan superstitions, omens and fortune-telling, are rejected by Christianity. If a person believes in omens, if he is superstitious, then he does not believe in God, but only trembles before “mysterious and enigmatic forces,” fearing for his earthly well-being.

Ancestral faith, folk religion

1. “What we call Paganism is the Native Faith (Veda), which is closest to the Soul of the Russian People.” “Thanks to the appeal to the archetypes of the Russian Soul, our Native Faith will live - despite all persecution - as long as at least one Russian Man lives on Earth.” (“Native Gods”, 2001. Spelling preserved.)

So, one of the main arguments in favor of paganism, which modern Russian neo-pagans especially insist on, is that paganism (“Rodnoverie”, etc.) is characteristic of the Russian people, while Christianity is forced upon them. Paganism is respect for one's ancestors, the continuation of their traditions.

Let's look at this statement from several perspectives. First of all, what are the Russian people? Further, how does it turn out that paganism is characteristic of the Russian soul? And finally, can nationality serve as an argument in favor of a particular faith?

2. Before the baptism of Rus', many tribes lived on the territory of European Russia - the Drevlyans, Krivichi, etc.

The Russian people as a single whole, i.e. as a group of people with an identical national identity, where everyone perceives himself primarily as a representative Russian people, and not just the Drevlyans, Krivichi, etc. - began to take shape precisely with the adoption of a single, obligatory for all and, most importantly, uniform faith - Orthodoxy. So if we are to discuss what faith may be “inherent” to the Russian people, then it is natural to assume that this faith, thanks to which they arose as a people, is Orthodoxy.

3. Okay, what if paganism really is characteristic, if not of the “Russian soul,” then of the “Slavic soul,” that “soul” that formed the basis of the Russian people?

It seems to me that there is no need to talk about any special religious inclination of the Russian people (or the Slavs in general). The majority of the population perceives religion as part of the cultural heritage - previously they were brought up in a pagan environment and were pagans, then they were brought up in Orthodoxy - and were Orthodox. Exceptions can be named in both directions. Yes, there were also in the Orthodox world those who secretly professed paganism and performed the corresponding rituals; there were also among the pagans who converted to Christianity (remember the same Prince Olga).

So, although it is possible to talk about individual religious preferences (“there is no arguing about tastes”, if only one considers the inclination towards some religion to be an involuntarily arising predilection, taste), it is incorrect to talk about the religious preferences of the people as a whole (“to the taste and color of a comrade No").

Positive judgments in this matter (it is characteristic of the Russian people...) seem to be unfounded, as well as negative judgments (it is not characteristic of the Russian people...).

Why is Orthodoxy and Christianity not characteristic of the Russian people at all? There were great ascetics of Christianity in Russia, representatives of the simple Russian people - saints, martyrs (this includes the Old Believers who burned themselves for the purity of their faith), ascetics. Many Slavs, not only Russians, were sincere zealots of Christianity. We can say that some of the people went to church, because... it was a tradition, one might say that the population was converted to Christianity by force and kept in it by force too - but what to do with these numerous ascetics, saints? You can’t force anyone to burn themselves for their faith, you can’t force anyone to go into the forests for many years all alone, you can’t force anyone to fast for years...

So the assertions that Christianity is not characteristic of the Russian people can safely be called complete nonsense.

However, the words that the Russian people are Orthodox by nature (“God-bearing people”) must also be discarded. If the people are Orthodox, then why during the years of the revolution did no one defend the churches desecrated by the Bolsheviks? How many uprisings have there been over the surplus appropriation system, and how many of them have there been because of desecrated shrines? Why did many people renounce Orthodoxy?

And it is completely alien to Christianity to say that some people are more Orthodox (or chosen) than others. Everyone is equally given the freedom to believe. What kind of faith and merit of faith is this if I was born Russian and by some subconscious instinct I am “dragged” to church? Instincts and natural inclinations control physiological functions, and not the life of the spirit.

4. Here we come close to the third question - should nationality play any role in the matter of faith?

Let's discard what was said above. Let's say I learned that the Russian people are truly pagan by nature. I am Russian. So what? Why should my nationality determine my beliefs? Why should I focus on it at all? If I am free, that means I am free from the nationality of the mother who gave birth to me.

It is hypocritical to accuse Christians of limiting a person to scriptures and commandments, while they themselves limit a person’s choice of nationality.

5. In conclusion, let us note the dubiousness of another argument in favor of paganism - they say, we should accept it if we respect our ancestors. Firstly, among our ancestors there were both pagans and Orthodox. Why should we respect some and not others? Based on the principle - who is older? But then you have to become an atheist altogether. The monkey, our most ancient ancestor, had no religion at all.

In addition, you can respect a person, but why is it necessary to share his faith?

Close to nature

1. Another argument put forward in favor of paganism is the assertion that pagans are close to nature, and Christians, they say, have moved away from it *.

If we understand closeness to nature as the ossification of a person, the transformation of a person into a beast, then Christianity is really far from such “closeness”. A person, developing “natural” feelings in himself - sexual gluttony, greed, hatred, does not become closer to nature. On the contrary, he, having rejected everything human and acting by virtue of the natural law “who is stronger is right,” is fully involved in the struggle that reigns in nature; he, like a ferret caught in a chicken coop, strives to strangle everyone there, to use everything, everything turn to satisfying your growing animal needs.

If a person begins to live according to the laws of nature, this does not mean at all that he becomes closer to it. Natural laws are the laws of alienation, discord, and enmity. Starting from bacteria that synthesize a cell wall, and ending with higher vertebrates that build shelters for themselves, all living things strive to isolate themselves from nature, unity with which the neo-pagans living in the city so want, and all communication with nature is limited to meditation in the clearing. Becoming like a beast, a person only more fully shares the enmity and mutual distance that reigns in nature.

Only by developing human qualities - shame, pity, moderation - can you become closer to nature.

By deifying nature, pagans thereby normalize its current situation, when the development and maintenance of the lives of some requires the constant death of others. They deify competition and merciless struggle, while Christians, although they do not pray to trees and animals, wish for a different, better state for the natural world. “The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion, like the ox, will eat straw, and for the serpent dust will be food: they will not cause evil or harm” () The Prophet, describing the coming Kingdom of God, desires peace not only for people, but and for animals. S. Bulgakov speaks about the resurrection and transfiguration of the suffering and dying creature today: “Why do they think that the transfigured Mother Earth will forget about these dumb children of hers and will not bring them to life? It is difficult to reconcile the thought of glorifying man in a desert world not inhabited by the transfigured creature that now inhabits the land of damnation. (...) After all, even now children, who still retain a reflection of Eden, have their best friends in animals. And then, perhaps, it will turn out that some of them, now especially hated and disgusting with their evilness or their ugliness, were only slandered by the slanderer-devil ... "

All this testifies to the love of Christianity for nature; a reverent, compassionate attitude towards her is a Christian attitude.

2. Whether Christianity presupposes alienation, the separation of man from nature, can be understood from numerous stories about saints and hermits, whose lives constitute the ideal of Christian righteousness. Birds fly to the saint in his cave and bring him food, wild animals, which always avoid man, come to lick his hands. This is the highest intimacy with nature, which, according to Christianity, is the norm of human existence. And if ordinary people are far from it, then this also indicates that they are far from God. The saints are close to God and therefore close to His Creation.

Animals come to the saint, who shows miracles of humility and abstinence, and feel with amazement that he is absolutely non-maligned, non-aggressive, benevolent towards everything that exists, that he does not contain their own emotions, which are also present in people, determining their relationship with nature. Animals come to the saint, and from the wild orgies of bacchantes, dressed in animal skins and running through the forest with frantic screams, having lost their human appearance, the animals try to stay away.

And in conclusion, I will cite a story from “The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi” that struck me, which can illustrate the Christian attitude towards nature.

At the time when Saint Francis lived in the city of Agobbio, a wolf appeared in the vicinity of Agobbio, a huge, terrible and ferocious wolf, devouring not only animals, but even people. So all the townspeople were in great fear, for he approached the city many times, and everyone went out armed into the field, as if to war. But they could not protect themselves from him if they met him one on one. In their fear of the wolf, they reached the point that no one dared to go out into the field.

In view of this, Saint Francis, taking pity on the townspeople, decided to go out to this wolf, although the townspeople did not advise him to do this under any pretext, but he, making the sign of the cross, left the city with his comrades, placing all his trust in God. And since they hesitated to go further, Saint Francis goes to the place where the wolf was. And so, the said wolf, when he sees many townspeople who have come to look at this miracle, he rushes at Saint Francis with his mouth open and approaches him, and Saint Francis (what do you think, he calls on thunder and lightning and incinerates the wolf? -No , he) in the same way makes the sign of the cross over him, calls him to him and says this: “I command you in the name of Christ not to harm me or anyone else.” Wonderful thing to say! As soon as Saint Francis made the sign of the cross, the terrible wolf closes its mouth, stops running and, in accordance with the command, approaches meekly, like a lamb, and, falling at the feet of Saint Francis, lies down. Then Saint Francis speaks to him as follows: “Brother Wolf, you do a lot of harm in these places, you committed the greatest crime, offending and killing God’s creation without His permission, and you not only killed and devoured animals, but even had the audacity to kill and cause harm to people created in the image of God, for this you are worthy of hellish torment, like a robber and the worst of murderers. The whole people grumbles and shouts at you, this whole country is at enmity with you. But I want, brother wolf, to establish peace between you and those people, so that you no longer offend them, and they would forgive you any past offense, and so that neither people nor dogs will pursue you anymore.” When he said these words, the wolf, by movements of his body, tail, ears and tilt of his head, showed that he agreed with what Saint Francis said and wanted to abide by it. Then Saint Francis says: “Brother Wolf, from the time it pleases you to make and observe this peace, I promise you that you will constantly receive food from the people of this country as long as you live, so that you will not suffer hunger. After all, I know very well that you commit all the evil because of hunger. But, for this mercy, I want, brother wolf, for you to promise me that you will not harm either man or animal. Do you promise me this? And the wolf, by shaking his head, clearly makes it clear that he promises. And Saint Francis says: “Brother Wolf, I want you to assure me of this promise, so that I can completely rely on you.” And as soon as Saint Francis extends his hand for reassurance, the wolf lifts his front paw and places it on Saint Francis's hand, assuring him as best he can. (...)

And after that, the said wolf, having lived in Agobbio for two years, like a tame one, went from house to house from door to door, not causing harm to anyone and not receiving it from anyone. And people kindly fed him, and when he walked through the city past houses, not a single dog ever barked at him. Finally, two years later, Brother Wolf died of old age, and the townspeople greatly mourned this, because seeing him so tame in their city, they immediately remembered the virtue and holiness of St. Francis. For the glory of Christ.

* -We will not consider its development: they say that pagans use nature moderately, and Christians exploit it with all their might, and the current environmental problems are connected with this. The increased exploitation of nature is not at all connected with Christianity, but with a change in the nature of production and population growth. And in connection with the moderation of pagan nature management, we must remember the Roman pagan patricians, who were served a dish of nightingale tongues, which required the killing of thousands of innocent birds.

Freedom and personality

1. The closeness of the ideologies of paganism and communism will be discussed a little further, but we will note one of their similarities now.

The main pathos, the main idea of ​​the communist movement is freedom. We are not slaves, slaves are not us. The transition from capitalism to socialism is the transition from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom, etc. Communist ideals are attractive not because they promise universal happiness, but because they promise universal freedom. But theoretically, the philosophy of communism denies freedom. What kind of freedom can we talk about if the human personality is completely dependent on bodily processes (on reflex activity) and on the social situation, and all its activities are determined by the nature of extra-personal economic relations? It is impossible to deny this dependence, but to absolutize it - by denying the spirit (immortal soul) in a person, something that does not depend on either society or the material world, plugging every crack through which freedom could break through into the world of causes and effects - is absolutely not Necessarily. “Materialism is an extreme form of determinism, the determination of the human personality by the external environment; it does not see any principle within the human personality that it could oppose to the action of the environment from the outside. Such a beginning can only be a spiritual beginning, the internal support of human freedom, a beginning that cannot be derived from the outside, from nature and society.” (N. Berdyaev) The philosophy of communism is materialism. So what kind of hypocrisy is it to call people to die for freedom and at the same time actually deny this freedom? Or is this just another “dialectical contradiction”? V. Ern aptly put it: the machine gun will still remain a machine gun, they screwed it up to sing “La Marseillaise” or “God Save the Tsar.” What kind of liberation can we talk about if, under any economic system, a person is entirely determined by the external environment, if he is not able to break the chain of causes and consequences? He can only become happier, but he will not become freer.

The reproaches of pagans against Jews and Christians also sound hypocritical: “With their (i.e., Jews - A.Kh.) easy approach, the feeling of being a “servant of God” in some regions of the globe has become a fact of virtue, and the feeling of being a free individual has become a fact pride, which was considered “the gravest sin.” Free thinking has become a terrible sin: after all, you can only think as someone wrote in the Holy Scriptures, without deviating from the “general line” by more than the permitted tolerance. This anti-evolutionary thinking came with Christianity to Russia (...) All monotheistic religions are destructive for freedom (...).” (P.A. Gross, Secrets of Voodoo Magic, M.: “Ripol Classic”, 2001.) We will not comment on the validity of these accusations, in which the author clearly confuses humility with servility, and “the feeling of being a free individual” with conceit, but let’s consider whether a neopagan has the right to put forward them; Can pagans, without prevarication, blame Christians for the lack of freedom?

Isn't this a pagan idea of ​​fate - which has power over the gods and over people? Greek and pagan tragedies are built on the insurmountability of fate and fate. In Greek mythology, the idea of ​​fate was embodied in the image of Moira. Let's say that this image was not present in other pagan mythologies (although its analogues, I think, can be found everywhere). But the entire pagan worldview is built on the fact that there is a certain once and for all determined (or, better to say, established or emerged) order of things, which even the gods, not to mention people, cannot transgress (change). Everything is subordinate to it, everything is its active parts.

You can look for similarities between the dying and resurrecting gods of pagan mythology and Jesus Christ; if you wish, you can find similarities between anything. But the main and fundamental difference between some Osiris and Christ, a difference that devalues ​​all the superficial similarities that one can think of, is that Osiris, having been resurrected, will still die next year, he is unable to overcome the situation in which he is forced to die, and as soon as the annual wheel spins one more revolution, he will still be forced to die, and with his death and resurrection nothing changes in the order of things, but this order is only maintained. Christ rose once, and not only will He not die again, but those who believe in Him will have eternal life. The whole meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ is precisely that the existing order was abolished - the order of death and the law of sin, and was not at all confirmed once again. Death must be followed by life, and life must be followed by death, and the resurrecting gods only confirm this order, but Christ abolished it, “trampling down death by death,” establishing eternal life and the future general Resurrection.

Christianity says that with Christ the believer conquers the world, but paganism claims that you can only submit to the world (by achieving “harmony”), or it will subjugate you, crushing you under the wheel of the “order of things.” And who actually denies freedom, and who affirms it?

If God is transcendental to the world and free from its laws, then He can free us from them, and if the gods express the world’s forces, if they themselves are immersed in the world, then what kind of freedom can come from them?

P. Gross, already quoted, argues his statement about the slave nature of Christianity (and in general of all monotheistic religions) and the free spirit of paganism - they say the Jews (from whom monotheism came) were always in slavery, and therefore their religion was slave, but the Russians They were free, and their religion (i.e. paganism) was freedom-loving.

But the most important thing about human freedom is that it does not depend on anything except the human will itself. What kind of freedom is this if even in it a person depends on external circumstances? A slave by social status can be more free and freedom-loving than some “free Russian”. You put him in an open field - go wherever you want - and he will run to the tavern. The fact that P. Gross believes in the decisive role of the dependence of human freedom and religion on historical conditions once again proves that he does not believe in freedom*.

How can you even accuse someone of lack of freedom, denying freedom with your entire worldview or, at best, pushing it to the margins, leaving behind a person only the freedom to choose the forms of expression of his dependence and the restaurant to which he will go tonight?..

2. Alien to paganism, of course, is not only the experience of freedom, but also the experience of the individual, in whom and for whom alone freedom can be conceived.

Paganism has subordinated man to the life of the clan; it thinks of man exclusively within the framework of clan relations, as a subordinate part of some faceless whole; the idea of ​​self-sufficiency of the individual is alien to it. A person appears to paganism as a descendant of some ancient ancestors, then, when he dies, he himself becomes an ancestor. The self-worth of an individual person outside of his role in relation to the family is unthinkable. You can throw a sick baby off a cliff and kill elderly parents, and there is nothing wrong with that. They are not needed by the family.

Christianity forces a person to be lonely, to break away from his home, from his roots. It frees a person from the power of the clan. The main thing in a person is not that he is born and gives birth, the main thing in a person is his own will and self-determination. “Hate your father and mother and follow Me” - these words of the Savior are directed against the dominance of the tribal principle in man. A person must learn to be independent, must break out of the unstable ocean of generations.

“Christianity is a way out of the life of the human race and from the natural order into another life, the life of God-manhood, and into another order.” N. Berdyaev

The race, and not the individual person, the individual, is a microcosm for paganism. It is not for nothing that the pagan dwelling, this center of the clan, in its layout symbolically repeats the views of the pagans on the cosmos. Much has been written about the cosmic symbolism of the Russian hut.

If a person is a part of the life of the genus, and not the genus is only a part, just one of the aspects of his life, if not a person is a microcosm, but only a subordinate part of the microcosm - the genus, then he is also a subordinate part of the macrocosm - the cosmos. For the pagan worldview, man is inseparable from his cosmic and natural functions. He is part of nature and natural life. He is subject to her cycle. For paganism, he is just a part, but a person, by definition, is always a whole. Therefore, paganism does not see personality in a person.

The main thing in the pagan worldview is harmony. Living well means living in harmony with the whole, with nature. What does it mean to live in harmony with the whole? - means to obey its laws in your life. And therefore it is in vain to look for some kind of freedom in paganism. She's not there, yeah she's not needed there, for to live well means to obey. You don't need freedom for this.

Paganism does not know the personality of either man or the gods. As banal as it may sound, pagan gods are animate forces of nature. Here is the power of destruction, here is the god of death, here is the power of life, here is the god of life, here is the god of the sun, the god of the wind, the god of wisdom, the god of the arts, the god of cattle breeding. Each function of the world as a whole and the human economy that reflects it has its own god.

The unity of everything here is impersonal, unconscious and inanimate (the single beginning of the universe is dissolved in the world, scattered into many parts), but only its parts are animate. In a personalistic worldview, unity is rooted primarily in the individual, comes from the individual, is based on personal relationships, on love. Personality is never exhausted by any one force, which it is called upon to express; all the originality of forces is inherent in personality. The personality does not express anything at all except itself; it, as such, is not determined by its role in some whole, while the pagan gods are completely subordinate to this role.

The uniqueness and uniqueness of the personality of each person, according to Christianity, is based on the uniqueness of the personal God. A pagan can appear before the “divine collective” only as a member of the “earthly collective,” clan, community. Paganism is therefore a purely national religion, it exists only as the faith of the Slavs, Egyptians, Greeks, it is inseparable from nationality and, at an earlier stage of development, from the tribe, from the family.

If there is one God, then man can stand before Him only alone, and not on behalf of a clan or another community, and he alone will be responsible for his actions. He and only he is responsible for them, and not the group of people in whose name and with whom he committed them. Man is free in his relationship with the Divine. In Christ there is neither Greek, nor Jew, nor free, nor slave, nor woman, nor man, says the Apostle Paul. In Christ there is only man as he is, as a person with one inherent will, and not as a representative of any gender, people, social group.** Therefore, Christianity is international, it can be preached to all peoples, but preaching “tribal faith” is pointless, Why does family A need faith from family B?

Christian prayer is a person’s turning to God as an individual to a Personality, one might even say - a conversation with God, and prayer should not be confused with meditation, which is everything - immersion, relaxation, concentration, contemplation, but not a polar divine-human personal action , act of will, smart doing.

Pagan “prayer” is not an appeal, although it contains the name of the deity to which it refers, its essence is spell, in influencing the deity. Pagan “prayer” is magical in its essence. What is important here is not the deity who is addressed, but his action in relation to man, It is not the relationship with the deity that is important, but his relationship with man is important.

I heard a statement from the leader of one pagan group: that some kind of Christ is to me, so what if He died about 2000 years ago. Why should I care about this historical character? The wind and the sun are closer to me, they always surround me, I feel them constantly.

Here is another evidence of pagan insensitivity to the individual, pagan being thrown outside. The essence of Christian truths, Christian dogmas is that they must internally to survive, to be crucified with Christ and to be resurrected with Him, as the apostle demands. Paul. The pagans cannot understand this. What is given to them from the outside, what surrounds them, is the most important thing. This comes from a weakened sense of personality, without which intelligibility to external facts is impossible, i.e. freedom in relation to the outside world. It is not what always surrounds us and not what is most important for maintaining our life that is the most important thing in life. The experience of personal experience, personal faith, faith that exists not only despite the silence of the outside world and bodily senses, but sometimes even despite their testimony, is alien to pagans.

It is often said that paganism is literally imbued with a love of life. But pagans understand life only through death. The birth beginning is the beginning of death. A clan is impossible without a change of generations; it involves not only birth, but also death. Pagan love of life is associated with the oblivion of everything personal, individual, which is thought of only as a manifestation of certain impersonal forces.

One day I was walking from school in the spring and saw two dry leaves from last year, which, driven by the wind, were rolling along the asphalt. I suddenly realized that for the sake of these crushed, trampled, useless maple leaves, I could curse this whole spring with its self-intoxicated riot of life. How can one live on graves, how can death be the guarantee of life? The pagans declare this unbearable, abnormal state normal. They have a god of death.

Paganism does not know the Resurrection, it knows only rebirth, restoration. But it is not we who are being reborn, it is that faceless force of which we previously served as manifestations, and now new manifestations are being reborn. It is not the dead individuals who are restored at all; it is only the action of a faceless force that is restored to its previous extent, which, in general, never died.

They like to repeat that the time of paganism is cyclical, while the time of Judaism and Christianity is linear; but usually they don’t think about what it’s connected with. The sense of history, the linear aspiration of time is inextricably linked with the sense of personality, while cyclical time is based on its oblivion.

Yes, everything comes back, everything repeats itself - after this summer the next one will come, generation will replace generation, children will again play where we played, and they will also become old people, like we became. So what? If an individual person is not just a manifestation of some non-human something that constitutes the essence of all phenomena, all people, in relation to which all individuals are indifferent, then a beloved, dear person can no longer be found among countless generations.

These are the same children as we were, but they are not us, and summer is not like summer, and the leaf that grew on this branch this spring is not the same one that grew on it last year, it will never grow again.

It is in vain that the pagans are proud of their realism, that they perceive life “as it is,” not wrapped in “exorbitant fantasies.” You cannot love life or at least have a realistic attitude towards it, focusing only on general forces and tendencies, ignoring the importance and specificity of the individual in it. What is important to a pagan is not this tree, this person, the state of the year; they are important to him only insofar as they serve as a manifestation of certain faceless forces, “hypostases” of the mother goddess, the Russian people, etc., or personifications of some mythological situations. They are important, and therefore the time of the world is limited by their time. “All Nature is a manifestation of deity, or creative forces, everything in nature is endowed with spirit... Nature develops in the cycle of seasons, which means that we are born in order to die and be reborn again.” (Pauline Campanelli. The return of pagan traditions, M.: Kron-press, 2000).

If we truly perceive and love what surrounds us, in its uniqueness, concreteness, individuality, if it is important for us in itself, then we no longer see a return in time, but a constant loss. What is gone will not return. Those who left will not come. Cyclic time turns into linear time, rushing towards the end. We remember losses that for us are no longer compensated by rebirth, and time becomes historical.

* – His words about freedom look wonderful after he talks on many pages about how to bewitch, make successful, etc., as if the possibility of magical interventions in a person’s inner world is very consistent with human freedom.

**- This is a purely pagan trait that a person in communism is considered primarily as a representative of one or another social group, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. For paganism, the main thing in a person is his belonging to one or another clan, nation; for communism, his belonging to one or another class. Even creativity, even philosophy, even morality - everything has a class nature. Communism is focused on the masses, not the individual.

Paganism and communism

1. You can often hear claims from neo-pagans that communism is the brother of Christianity, etc. However, behind some formal similarities they fundamentally do not want to notice the pagan, i.e. anti-Christian essence of communist ideas. No matter how communists position themselves in relation to Christianity, this essence will always remain with communism, as long as communism remains communism, i.e. a total creed, a holistic worldview, and not just a separate social program.

Paganism and communism are fundamentally similar in that they see it as possible to change a person’s life without changing him. By magical intervention (spell, love spell) you can change a person’s feelings, you can improve his life, or at least turn it for the better. This does not require any action on the part of a person, no conscious effort, no volitional decision. It is possible to influence the inner world of a person exclusively by external means, for this inner world, according to paganism, entirely tied to the external, dependent on the influence of “cosmic energies, stars, gods and otherworldly forces. If anything depends on his freedom, it is not himself.

The same goes for communism. He only uses other means, another technology - not magical, but economic, revolutionary. He wants to correct and save man through economics, because man for Marxism is determined by external class relations, his character and personality are determined by the type of production. If the society is bad and the system is capitalist, then the person is immoral or unhappy, and if the society is good and the system is socialist, then the person is good and happy. Change the economy and the person will change. Nothing depends on a person and his will. This is a humiliation of human dignity and a denial of human freedom - to claim that he is evil, immoral only because the economic system and bad society made him so - as if an individual is a weak-willed beast, where he is dragged - that is where he goes. If you drive him into communism with an “iron hand,” he will be happy.

Communism wants to make people happy through harmony in society, paganism through harmony with nature. If he correctly organized the economy or correctly made sacrifices to the gods, then his life will go smoothly and in general he has achieved the highest in his life.

The psychology of the inquisitors was pagan - you can save a person against his will. If he is forcibly converted to his faith, baptized, given communion, then his only road is to heaven. They did not expect free will from a person.

2. Both paganism and communismThey see a person primarily as an economic entity. Paganism is entirely dependent on the agricultural production cycle and is designed to facilitate it. It is focused on sowing, harvesting and, through certain rituals, should optimize human economic activity. Communist teaching sees its task as optimizing factory production, designed to satisfy the needs of the entire population, and above all the working people. Production and industrial relations are the focus of communism.

The economic subject of paganism is a man of the village, a peasant*; the economic subject of communism is a man of the city, a worker. Communism – industrial paganism.

We can talk for a long time about the similarities between pagan rituals and many Christian rites. But this similarity is only formal, it is caused only by the fact that the rituals were formed not without the influence of the pagan environment; Christians used pagan symbols for their needs. There is nothing fundamentally significant about this.

The fundamental difference between pagan rituals and Christian rites is that the former have mainly a practical meaning, while the latter do not carry a practical load. Not in all pagan rituals this practical meaning can be discerned; perhaps, with changes in the economic system, they lost it, and are only preserved “by inertia”; in some Christian rituals it can be found, because the practical consciousness of the peasant could not help but give them such a meaning.

We must start from the opposite.

What will happen if we don’t meet the “spring sun” in the right way? Something won't work this year. What will happen if we pass through the sacred grove and do not make a sacrifice to its spirits? Some trouble will happen on the road.

What will happen if we don’t come to church on Sunday? If we don’t make a “bloodless sacrifice,” will we not receive communion? But nothing will happen. The harvest will remain the same as it would have been if we had come to church.

It's funny to think that if you didn't pray to God before the road, you fell into a puddle. Such logic is absolutely alien to the Christian consciousness. But for the pagan consciousness it is quite natural - you didn’t honor the spirits - that’s how they took revenge on you.

The focus of Christian worship and all rituals, the liturgy, is mystical. For “practical reason” it makes no sense. The main holidays of paganism are of a practical nature. If modern pagans do not want to notice it, it is only because the majority of them are city dwellers, they do not run their own households. What does it do to them that the cattle will be born better? They will buy sausage in the supermarket anyway.

3. It is often said that communism is non-religious chiliasm, non-religious messianism, faith in the Kingdom of God on earth modified in an atheistic way. The Messiah of communism is the proletariat, they await its coming appearance and triumph - revolution and communism. Communism is that blissful state of society where everyone (every worker) will be satisfied in all their needs: they will be fed, clothed, satisfied with life.

Communism undoubtedly absorbed the features of chiliastic messianism. But does this prove his closeness to Christianity? One must ask the question whether the chiliastic teachings in Christianity are of pagan origin, which, moreover, were anathematized at the Ecumenical Councils.

Isn’t it a concession to paganism to teach that one hundred years before the final establishment of the Kingdom of the Lord there will be a special thousand-year kingdom for the righteous with all the pleasures? Contrary to the words of the Apostle (), “The Kingdom of God is neither food nor drink,” chiliasts believe that the righteous will feast for a thousand years, and this feast is conceived in a completely naturalistic way: as we eat now, so the righteous will eat. They say that the saints suffered hardships and limited themselves in food, but before the end of the world they will take their toll. As if you have to fast for 70 years in order to then fill your belly unhindered for 1000 years. Is this not the penetration of pagan carnalism into Christianity?

And it was precisely the pagan nature of this teaching that contributed to the fact that communism, of course, in a modified form, adopted it from Christianity. Here is a figurative understanding of communism as feast for the chosen ones, which is very similar to chiliastic aspirations. Only the proletarians act here as saints:

The world will emerge from the ruins, from the fires

A new world redeemed with our blood.

Whoever is a worker, come to our table! Here, comrade!

Who's the boss, get out of here! Leave our feast!

N. Minsky, “Hymn of the Workers”

Of course, since the Messiah of the proletariat develops in stages, the time of communism is historical, and therefore communists expect their earthly paradise at the end of time, at the end of the capitalist era, in the future.

One can also recall the pagan ideas about the afterlife. They also think of it in a completely naturalistic way: as a hunting ground or simply as a huge feast (Scandinavian Valhalla). The only difference between the paradise of the pagans and the paradise of the communists (and the thousand-year kingdom of the chiliasts) is that the first is otherworldly, while the second is this-worldly, and is the final phase of historical development. To reach the paradise of the pagans, a gap in time is needed - death, a leap into the world of spirits, while communism will come as a result of development in time, as continuation of earthly history. The millennial kingdom in its chiliastic understanding is also a stage of history, the last stage, before the second coming of Christ, with which the history of the world ends. But, despite all the differences, in all three cases they expect one thing: to continue to satisfy their earthly needs.

4. The main motive of communism and paganism, if we consider them from the standpoint of Christianity, is to isolate man from God, to arrange him on earth without God. Communism fences off man from God with materialistic and atheistic mythology, immersing him in class struggle; paganism fences off man from God with gods, space, and the world. Christianity, contrary to common misconceptions, does not deny the reality of the pagan gods: “for although there are so-called gods, either in heaven or on earth, since there are many gods and many lords, we have one God the Father, from whom are all things” (); “But then, not knowing God, you served gods who are not gods in essence. Now, having come to know God, or, better yet, having received knowledge from God, why do you return again to the poor and weak material principles and want to enslave yourself to them again?” (). Christianity only denies the original power of the natural gods over man. They have power over him only if the person himself voluntarily submitted to them. For Christianity, pagan gods are demons, i.e. principles thirsting for power over the human personality, wanting to enslave it. Demons want to close a person from God. The pagan sky stands between God and man.

- Or, at earlier stages, simply a person who is in direct contact with nature and lives in its conditions - a hunter, gatherer.

About harmony

“Religion interferes with communism” (E. Yaroslavsky), and Christianity especially interferes with it. In fact, it is what a true Leninist fights for - earthly paradise and earthly pleasures for the working people - that he calls vanity of vanities and vexation of the spirit.

Christianity is the enemy of communism mainly because it is the enemy of hedonism, the enemy of all teachings that recognize pleasure (bodily, intellectual) as the highest value. Well, if satisfying one’s needs and receiving pleasure is not the highest value and even contradicts the highest values, then the communist utopia (“to each according to his needs”) is not the highest value, and then such a goal does not at all justify the means required to achieve it. Christianity is the worst enemy of the revolutionary masses, striving for happiness, for communism.

It weakens the class struggle, as well as any struggle whose goal is to satisfy one’s needs. Therefore, Christianity is now not popular in the modern world, but paganism is popular. People who survive in the modern world and make a career in it understand that Christianity does not contribute to this, that they cannot find spiritual support in it. Although this is not the main reason for the growth of neo-paganism in the world. The main thing is the dominant orientation in society towards consumption and pleasure. There is no need to associate consumption with excessive consumption of hamburgers. There is also refined consumption and enjoyment of art. Someone is trying to adapt Christianity to this cult of consumerism. I once saw a Baptist brochure that had the title: “Ten Reasons Why Jesus Is Better Than Chocolate.” That is, they are trying to prove to you that consuming the religion of Jesus can bring you more satisfaction than chocolate will bring you.

People feel the wretchedness of such Christianity, but they also feel that they also cannot live with the real religion of Jesus Christ, they are uncomfortable with it, it not only does not justify their life values, their focus on pleasure, but directly contradicts them. “Democratic morality” cannot get along with Christianity. And here paganism comes to the rescue.

People always have a need to justify their lives. They not only want to live well, they also want to think that they are living correctly.

What is the main goal of a pagan? – “Lad”, life in harmony with oneself and with the forces of the cosmos, nature (=gods). People are already trying to live in harmony with society, i.e. fit: to satisfy fashion, to satisfy the demands that modern society puts forward to a person. (Fashion can be both protest and non-conformism). And so they are told that harmony is good, this is right, and they are also offered to satisfy their craving for the mysterious with a variety of rituals.

Harmony has become a desirable commodity. It’s not for nothing that feng shui and so on are so popular now. Harmony is spiritual satiety, self-satisfaction, not only good, but also correct. This is the highest limit of satisfaction. And there is nothing more alien to Christianity than this “spiritual harmony.” “He did not bring peace, but a sword” - these words refer, first of all, to the inadmissibility of a person’s agreement with his desires, the inadmissibility of “spiritual balance”, the inadmissibility of the reconciliation of Christ and Belial, God and mammon, which is required for a successful person in the modern world. What is needed is constant internal struggle, not harmony.

Khrushchev correctly outlined the goals of socialism: to provide for everyone the same benefits that only a few enjoy in the West.

“We, the working people, do not need such immortality. We can create a life on earth that is full of joy.” (E. Yaroslavsky)

“Korolenko was deeply right when he expressed his amazing aphorism: “Man is born for happiness, like a bird is born for flight.” This needs to be deepened - both the bird and the fish are created for happiness, because flying is happiness, because the correct functioning of the wing, arm, heart, brain is happiness. When the whole organism lives a full life, when we feel happy, then the question does not come to mind, what is this for and what is the meaning of it, because happiness is the ultimate meaning, it gives a feeling of bliss of self-affirming existence" (A. Lunacharsky)

This is what determines the similarity between communism and paganism*, which we described above. They have one goal - the harmonious functioning of man on earth. God is not needed here, freedom is not needed here, personality as an eternal source of contradictions, which itself is a contradiction, is even less needed. There is no need for sources of anxiety and doubt. A healthy animal is better than a sick person. Cattle are generally better - they are more natural, they are more harmonious. Harmony comes first.

“By actively participating in the cycle of nature through ritual, we can achieve harmony with the streams of creative forces flowing through us, and thereby live happy, creative and productive lives for our own benefit and for the benefit of the whole earth.” (P. Campanelli)

– This is not the place to talk about it, but Soviet society and consumer society, with all their differences, are very similar, because their goal is common – heaven on earth. And they were equally supportive of paganism.

In world history, the transition from paganism to monotheistic religions, which for the most part were Christianity, was natural. The first ceased to satisfy the level of development, ceased to correspond to the needs and newly emerging questions of people. Therefore, some peoples and young states gradually began to be baptized. And subsequently this wave captured the whole of Europe and the territory of the modern Russian Federation.

The transition from paganism to Christianity, of course, was not easy. The people did not want to give up their worldview. We can say that Christianity was imposed on people.

In Rus', after the adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir in the tenth century, the period of so-called dual faith continued for a long time. The pagans defended themselves and escaped from the cross as best they could, but the church was stronger, if only because it had the power of the prince on its side.

It is known that during this period of binary religion, the church tried to fight the pagans with all methods. The temples of the latter, their idols were simply destroyed. There were both oral and written prohibitions on sacrifices and worship of gods. But what will stop the pagan? And then the rituals and ceremonies that had existed in Rus' from time immemorial simply became secret. But essentially they haven’t gone anywhere. Even if people stopped praising their gods, they would still remain pagans in their souls.

However, the pagans were not averse to fighting with the church. Cases of assassination attempts and even murders of priests by representatives of the pagan faith were repeatedly described.

As for the connection and mutual influence of the two religions, oddly enough, there was one. The fact is that many features of paganism were embodied in the Christian tradition. That is, the version of Christianity, which was taken from Byzantium and should have taken root in its original version in Rus', was modified. And this happened precisely under the influence of paganism. For example, many holidays, traditions, and rituals have retained their existence. To be honest, it was not only difficult for ordinary people to adapt, but it was also not easy for the ruling elite.

Paganism and the Russian Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Church)

Today, adherents of paganism say that there was and is no conflict between them and the Russian Orthodox Church. They say that paganism is self-sufficient and serves the interests of its followers without interfering with people of other religions. But the Russian Orthodox Church is negatively disposed towards him. How does she explain this?

• The pagans preach a “dead” religion that has been gone for a long time.
• Pagans worship idols.
• Paganism is not a religion in the modern sense. It does not have a clear idea of ​​the world, a clear organization, worship services, etc.

There is an opinion that the struggle of the Russian Orthodox Church against paganism, which has a centuries-old history, can never end in victory for the former. Only a small advantage is possible only thanks to the support of the state apparatus.

Even in the twenty-first century, the Russian Orthodox Church continues to oppose paganism. This is due to the fact that today there are many movements, communities, unions whose goal is the revival of paganism (sometimes they are called neo-pagans). Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church are outraged by the fact that many of them use the word “Orthodoxy” in their programs and titles. For example, in the Rodnoverie union there is a group of people who consider themselves Orthodox Rodnovers. They say that paganism is Orthodoxy. Like, this word first appeared among the pagans, and not among Christians. And it came from the words “Rule to glorify” (Rule in paganism - the upper world, the world of the gods).

Metropolitans and hieromonks condemn paganism for the fact that it worships not the Creator, but creatures. After all, paganism deifies nature with all its components. They are also unhappy with the mass celebrations during Maslenitsa.

In general, the Russian Orthodox Church simply does not consider paganism to be something that really exists, calling it separate beliefs. Orthodoxy speaks of paganism only in a negative way, condemning it and considering it evil and dangerous.

Paganism or Christianity?

It is probably not entirely correct to pose such a question. After all, there is no religion better or worse. Each person is free to choose what is closest to his spirit. In general, every religion has concepts of tolerance, tolerance towards people of other faiths and religions. That's how it should be.

Today there is a tendency to return to the pagan faith. Many people take off their crosses and leave Christianity for the faith of their ancestors. And this is their right, their choice.