title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The origins of Slavic Native Faith have been traced to the Romantic movement of late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe, which was a reaction against rationalism and the Age of Enlightenment. This was accompanied by a growth in nationalism across Europe, as intellectuals began to assert their own national heritage. In 1818, the Polish ethnographer Zorian Dołęga-Chodakowski (Adam Czarnocki; 1784–1825) in the work "O Sławiańszczyźnie przed chrześcijaństwem" ("About the Slavs before Christianity") declared himself a "pagan" and stated that the Christianisation of the Slavic peoples had been a mistake. Therefore, he became a precursor of the return to Slavic religion in Poland and all Slavic countries. Similarly, the Polish philosopher Bronisław Trentowski (1808–1869) saw the historical religion of the Slavs as a true path to understanding the divine creator, arguing that Christianity failed to do so. In Czechia, in 1839, the doctor and teacher Karel Slavoj Amerling (1807–1884) founded the Brotherhood of the Faithful of the New Slavic Religion ("Bratrstvo Věrníků Nového Náboženství Slávského"), identified as pantheism and as a means for the Czech National Revival; the group was, however, banned by the Austrian rulers just one year later, in 1840. Another precursor in Poland was Jan Sas Zubrzycki (1860–1935), who elaborated the doctrine of "God-Knowing" ("Bogoznawstwo"). It was this Romantic rediscovery and revaluing of indigneous pre-Christian religion that prepared the way for the later emergence of Rodnovery.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Whereas calls to re-establish pre-Christian belief systems existed within the German and Austrian far-right nationalist movements during the early twentieth century, in Russia the situation was different. In Russia there was a shared belief among the intellectual circles that Slavic paganism had survived within the "folk Orthodoxy" of the common people (which was regarded as a "dvoeverie", a "double faith"), and the Old Believers' movements. The study of this syncretic popular religion and philosophy was the foremost interest for late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian intellectuals: early revolutionaries (Alexander Herzen, Nikolay Ogarev, Mikhail Bakunin), Narodniks (Populists), and early Bolsheviks were inspired by the radical forms of society practised within folk religious communities, which in many ways were precursors to socialism. Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich was assigned by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party the task of studying folk religious movements, and in 1908–1910 a faction of the Bolsheviks, represented by Anatoly Lunacharsky, Alexander Bogdanov, Maxim Gorky, and Vladimir Bazarov, formulated the "God-Building" movement ("Bogostroitelstvo"), whose aim was to create a new religion for the proletariat through a synthesis of socialism with folk religion.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In Ukraine, the first practitioners of Slavic Native Faith appeared in the 1930s. The Ukrainian literary magazine "Dazhboh", published in 1931–1935, was imbued with Neopagan ideas (Bohdan Ihor Antonych and others). One of the most influential Ukrainian Rodnover ideologues was Volodymyr Shaian (1908–1974), a linguist and philologist who worked at Lviv University. He claimed that in 1934 he underwent a spiritual revelation atop Mount Grekhit in the Carpathian Mountains. Particularly interested in the idea about an ancient Aryan race that were popular at the time, he subsequently began promoting what he called a "pan-Aryan renaissance". He turned to recorded Ukrainian folklore to find what he regarded as the survivals of the ancient Slavic religion. In 1944, he fled the Soviet government and travelled to refugee camps in Germany and Austria. There, he established the Order of the Knights of the Solar God ("Orden Lytsariv Boha Sontsia"), a religio-political group that he hoped would affiliate itself to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the Second World War.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In Poland, Jan Stachniuk (1905–1963) established the "Zadruga" magazine in 1937, which gave rise to the movement of Zadrugism. the term "Zadruga" refers to a South Slavic tribal unit. Continuing on from Dołęga-Chodakowski, Stachniuk's own work criticised Catholicism in Poland, arguing that it had had a negative effect on the country's national character. He did not develop his ideas into a religion, and those who shared his views remained "a very loose and diverse intellectual clique". The magazine and its associated group embraced members with a wide variety of viewpoints, ranging from secularly humanistic to religiously Slavic Native Faith stances. He was nevertheless labelled a "neopoganin" ("Neopagan") by the Polish popular press, a term that he embraced as a self-descriptor in later life. In the same year, Zdzisław Harlender (1898–1939), independently wrote the book "Czciciele Dadźbóg Swarożyca" ("Worshippers of Dadźbóg Swarożyc"), published in 1937, in which he laid out his vision for the revival of the pre-Christian Slavic religion.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Władysław Kołodziej (1897–1978) later claimed to have established, before the Second World War, the Holy Circle of the Worshippers of Svetovid ("Święte Koło Czcicieli Światowida"), although there is no evidence that they conducted regular meetings until many years later. During the war, Stefan Potrzuski led a unit in the Peasant Battalion which battled the Nazi occupation of Poland. His unit had a shrine to the god Svetovid in their secret forest base and held group rites in which they toasted a wooden image of the deity with mead. Also Jan Stachniuk fought against the Nazi occupation during the Warsaw Uprising. Following the end of the war and the incorporation of Poland under the Stalinist regime, both Stachniuk and Kołodziej were arrested, preventing the establishment of a Slavic Native Faith community. In 1954, a student group known as Klan Ausran was established at the University of Łódź; officially dedicated to a study of Indo-European society, its members provided hymns and prayers.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: A key influence on the movement was the circulation of the "Book of Veles" among Russian and Ukrainian emigrees. This text was brought to the public by the Russian Yury Petrovich Mirolyubov (1892–1970), who claimed that it had been discovered by a friend of his, Fodor Arturovich Isenbek, while serving as a White Army officer during the Russian Civil War. Mirolyubov alleged that the Isenbek text had been etched on wooden boards, but that these had been lost during the Second World War, leaving only his own copies. It is probable that the "Book of Veles" was a literary composition produced by Mirolyubov himself. In following decades the work would have caused a sensation, with many emigrees regarding it as a genuine tenth-century text. Another supporter of the book was the Ukrainian entomologist Sergey Paramonov (also known as Sergey Lesnoy; 1898–1968); he was the one who in 1957 coined the name "Book of Veles" for the Isenbek text and also named "velesovitsa" the writing system in which it was allegedly written.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: One of the disciples of Volodymyr Shaian was Lev Sylenko (1921–2008). He subsequently left Europe and moved first to Canada and then the United States. It was in Chicago that he established the earliest groups of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (Sylenkoism) in 1966. Sylenko presented himself as a prophet of Dazhbog who had been sent to the Ukrainian people. In his view, the Ukrainians were the superior manifestation of the European peoples, and Kiev the oldest city of the white race. Sylenko was a charismatic leader, and his followers praised his talents and oratorial skills. In 1979 he published the "Maha Vira" ("Great Faith"), a book which he claimed chronicled the ancient history of the Ukrainian people. Sylenkoism was influenced by deism and Theosophy. A Sylenkoite centre, the Temple of Mother Ukraine, was established in Spring Glen, New York. Native Ukrainian National Faith congregations were established among Ukrainian emigree communities in other parts of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Germany.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: During era of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union (1920s–1950s), research into prehistoric societies was encouraged, with some scholars arguing that pre-Christian society reflected a form of communitarianism that was damaged by Christianity's promotion of entrenched class divisions. In doing so, pre-Christian belief systems underwent a rehabilitation. Joseph Stalin himself was a supporter of the idea of Slavic Vedism, the shared Indo-European origins of Vedic and Slavic cultures. Boris Rybakov (1908–2001), former head of the Institute of Archaeology, provided the first academic studies about ancient Slavic religion. In the 1960s, the renewal of militant atheism under Nikita Khrushchev also presupposed a recovering of pre-Christian and pre-Islamic traditions.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Russian Rodnovery originated in the Soviet dissidents' circles of the 1970s, as intellectuals became concerned for the eradication of traditional Russian culture and identity. An intellectual circle that cultivated themes of Slavic indigenous religion formed as a wing of the predominantly Orthodox Christian samizdat nationalist journal "Veche" (1971–1974). The first manifesto of Russian Rodnovery is considered to be the letter "Critical remarks by a Russian man" ("Kriticheskie zametki russkogo cheloveka") published on such journal, anonymously in 1973, by Valery Yemelianov (1929–1999), who was then close to Khrushchev. The letter criticised Christianity as a product of Judaism serving the interests of Zionism. The journal attracted various personalities, including Anatoly Ivanov, the artist Konstantin Vasilyev (1942–1974), and Nikolay Bogdanov, among others. Vasilyev's art is widely celebrated within the Rodnover community. Ivanov, who declared himself a Zoroastrian and subscribed to "Arism" or "Slavism", published a fervently anti-Christian pamphlet entitled "The Christian Plague" ("Khristianskaya chuma"). Throughout the 1970s, the nationalist dissident movement split into two branches, an Orthodox Christian one and another one that developed National Bolshevism, which eventually continued to harbour Pagan traditionalists. Other influential texts in this period were Valery Yemelianov's "Desionizatsiya" ("De-Sionisation") and later Istarkhov's "Udar russkikh bogov" ("The Strike of Russian Gods").


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In the 1970s, explicitly religious Rodnover groups had still to operate in secret, although a few small groups were known to exist in Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), closely linked to the nationalist intellectual circles. In Moscow, the occult Yuzhinsky Circle had been established by the poet Yevgeny Golovin, the novelist Yury Mamleyev and the philosopher Vladimir Stepanov in the 1960s, while a young Alexander Dugin would have joined the circle in the 1980s; although not explicitly Pagan, they were influenced by occult Pagan thinkers like Guido von List and sought a return to a pre-Christian Aryan world. In the early 1980s, the "Pamyat" movement was established by figures active at the Metropolitan Moscow Palace of Culture, whom similarly looked with fondness on ancient Aryan culture. The "Pamyat" movement attracted personalities interested in Vedism and welcomed the ideas developed among Russian emigrees, also organising a conference on the "Book of Veles" led by Valery Skurlatov (b. 1938). From 1985 onwards, "Pamyat" became affiliated with Orthodox Christianity and the Rodnover component eventually left the movement. Vedism was also explicitly espoused within more official Soviet circles; Apollon Kuzmin (1928–2004), leader of the neo-Slavophile historiography, did so in his 1988 book "The Fall of Perun" ("Padenie Peruna"), in which he supported indigenous Slavic religion while criticising Christianity as the cause of the Mongol yoke (which led to the incorporation of Kievan Rus' in the Golden Horde from 1237 to 1480). In the 1980s, Boris Rybakov published his last books, including "The Paganism of the Ancient Slavs" (1981) and "The Paganism of Ancient Russia" (1988). Meanwhile, literary writings of important figures of village prose ("derevenshchiki") promoted Paganism, including Petr Proskurin (1928–2001) and Yury Kuznetsov (1941–2003). In 1986, Viktor Bezverkhy (1930–2000) established the Saint Petersburg-based Society of the Mages ("Obshchestvo Volkhvov"), an explicitly white supremacist and anti-Semitic organisation; it was followed by the Union of the Veneds, founded in 1990. These organisations gave rise to the stream of Rodnovery known as Peterburgian Vedism.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: After Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet government introduced the policy of "perestroika" in the 1980s, Slavic Native Faith groups established themselves in Ukraine. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its official policy of state atheism resulted in a resurgence of open religious adherence across the region. Many individuals arrived at Rodnovery after exploring a range of different alternative spiritualities, with Asian religious influences being particularly apparent within Rodnovery at that time.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: After the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became an independent republic, with many Ukrainians turning to strongly nationalistic agendas; among those to have done so are pseudo-archaeologists like Yury Shylov, who posits Ukraine as the "cradle of civilisation". It is within this broader milieu of cultural nationalism and interest in alternative spiritualities that Rodnovery re-emerged in Ukraine. The United States-based Native Ukrainian National Faith established itself in Ukraine soon after independence, with the first congregation in Ukraine gaining official recognition in Kiev in 1991. There had been schisms in the international organisation of Native Ukrainian National Faith. A number of senior followers broke with Sylenko during the 1980s, rejecting the idea that he should be the ultimate authority in the religion; they formed the Association of Sons and Daughters of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (OSID RUNVira) and secured legal control of the temple in Spring Glen. A second group, the Association of Sons and Daughters of Ukraine of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (OSIDU RUNVira), maintained links with Sylenko himself, whom it regards as a prophet. Despite the animosity that existed between these rival Ukrainian groups, there was some collaboration between them. In 2003, the First Forum of Rodnovers was held in Ukraine, resulting in two public proclamations: the first urged the country's government to protect what the Rodnovers regarded as sacred sites and objects, and the second called on the government not to go ahead with the proposed privatisation of agricultural land. That same year, a group called Ancestral Fire of the Native Orthodox Faith was established; in contrast to the anti-Russian slant taken by Sylenkoism, it embraced a pan-Slavic perspective.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The social context of Rodnovery's growth in Russia differed from that in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Russian nationalists had welcomed the collapse of the Soviet system but were disappointed with the arrival of capitalism and the dramatic economic downturn that Russia faced in that decade. Many people became unemployed, and many turned to the past, nourishing the study of ethnic roots. In this context, the growth of Rodnovery can be seen as part of the nationalistic drive to regain national pride. Many leaders of early post-Soviet Rodnovery were intellectuals who were already Rodnovers in the late Soviet times; for instance, Grigory Yakutovsky ("volkhv" Vseslav Svyatozar), Aleksey Dobrovolsky ("volkhv" Dobroslav) and Viktor Bezverkhy. Other leaders who emerged in this period were Aleksandr Asov, author of numerous books on Rodnover philosophy which have sold millions of copies, Aleksandr Belov, founder of the Slavic-Hill military type of Rodnovery integrating Rodnover philosophy and martial arts, and Viktor Kandyba, founder of Kandybaism.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Since the 1990s, Russian Rodnovery has expanded and diversified. Rodnovers started to establish numerous organised groups by the mid of the decade; in 1994 the Moscow Slavic Community was the first Rodnover group to be registered by the government. Concerted efforts by the communities of Moscow and Kaluga led to the establishment of the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities in 1997, characterised by nationalist views. In 1999, the communities of Moscow and Obninsk left it as they refuted nationalism, and established another umbrella organisation, the Circle of Veles led by Ilya Cherkasov ("volkhv" Veleslav), which is one of the largest and administers communities also located in the territory of Ukraine. The Ynglist Church too was formally established in the early 1990s, and it is considered one of the most sectarian and authoritarian denominations of Rodnovery. In 2002, groups of Rodnovers that did not share the extreme right-wing views dominant within some of the largest organisations at the time, promulgated the "Bittsa Appeal", which among other things condemned extreme nationalism and was the foundation charter of another umbrella organisation, the Circle of Pagan Tradition headquartered in Moscow. In 2009, the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities and the Circle of Pagan Tradition issued a joint statement against Ynglism (Aleksandr Khinevich and Aleksey Trekhlebov), Levashovism (Nikolay Levashov), as well as Valery Chudinov and Gennady Grinevich, disapproving what they reckoned as Ynglists', Levashovites' and the other authors' "pseudo-Pagan teachings, pseudo-linguistics, pseudo-science and outright fiction".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In Poland, the Wrocław-based publishing house "Toporzeł" reissued Stachniuk's works and those of his disciple Antoni Wacyk. The 1940s Zadrugist movement inspired the establishment in 1996 of the Association of Native Faith ("Zrzeszenie Rodzimej Wiary"; now simply called "Rodzima Wiara", "Native Faith"), whose founder Stanisław Potrzebowski wrote his doctoral thesis on the pre-war Zadrugism in German. Another Polish Rodnover group under the leadership of Lech Emfazy Stefański registered by the state in 1995 is the Native Polish Church ("Rodzimy Kościół Polski"), which represents a tradition that goes back to Władysław Kołodziej's Holy Circle of the Worshippers of Svetovid.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Modern Rodnovery in the Czech Republic emerged in 1995–1996. Two groups were founded in those years, the National Front of the Castists ("Národní Front Castistů", where "Castists" was created as a neologism from Latin "castus", meaning "pure") and the "Radhoŝť" group, founded by the Naples-born anthropologist and professor of Slavic languages Giuseppe Maiello (whose Slavic name is Dervan) among the students of the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University in Prague. The two groups, respectively renamed "Kin of Yarovit" and "Kin of Mokosh", merged in 2000 to form the Commonwealth of Native Faith ("Společenství Rodná Víra"). In 1995, one of the future founders of the organisation, Radek Mikula (Ratko), had established contacts with Vadim Kazakov, leader of the Russian Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities; the relationship continued in the 2000s and led to "Rodná Víra" becoming an official subgroup of the Russian organisation until 2002, while it nurtured ties with Polish and Slovak Rodnovers too. In the mid 2000s "Rodná Víra" was legally registered by the Czech government, but internal disagreements culminated with its unregistration in 2010 and transformation into an informal association. Conflicts emerged around the interpretation of ancient Slavic religion: The Kin of Yarovit focused on Indo-European religion and its social trifunctionalism, the Kin of Mokosh focused on Neolithic Europe's mother goddess worship, while groups which emerged later, such as the "Kin of Veles", had no focus.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Rodnovery spread to the countries of former Yugoslavia in the early twenty-first century. A Serbian Native Faith group known as the Slavic Circle ("Slovenski Krug") existed during the 1990s and 2000s, merging historical Slavic religion with a ritual structure adopted from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In Slovenia, a group called the Svetovid Parish of the Old Belief ("Staroverska Župa Svetovid") was established around 2005 through a union of an older group, "Ajda", with the followers of the military historian Matjaž Vratislav Anžur. As of 2013, it had between ten and fifteen members. In 2011, the Circle of Svarog ("Svaroži Krug") was founded in Bosnia. During the 1990s and 2000s, a number of groups were established in Bulgaria, namely the Dulo Alliance, the Warriors of Tangra, and the Bulgarian Horde 1938. These groups have strong political motivations, being extremely nationalistic, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic. Rodnover personalities and groups played a prominent role in the 2002 establishment of "Ongal", a Bulgarian far-right umbrella organisation.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The 1990s and 2000s also witnessed the development of international contacts between Rodnover groups from all Slavic countries, with the organisation of various All-Slavic Rodnover Councils. The Internet helped the spread of Rodnovery and a uniformisation of ritual practices across the various groups. The first Rodnover website on the Russian Internet (so-called "Runet")—was created by a Moscow-based believer in 1996. Many Rodnovers made use of Russian Wikipedia to promote their religion, although many switched to LiveJournal and mail.ru, through which they could promulgate their ideas more directly. From the mid-2000s, Rodnovers made increasing use of social media to communicate with other members of their community.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Russian Rodnovery also attracted the attention of Russian academics, many of whom focused on the political dimensions of the movement, thus neglecting other aspects of the community. The scholar Kaarina Aitamurto later criticised some of these Russian-language studies for reflecting scholars' own religious biases against Rodnovery, over-reliance on the published texts of prominent figures, or for sensationalising the subject to shock or impress their audience. This attitude generated some mutual hostility between academics and practitioners of Rodnovery, rendering subsequent scholarly fieldwork more difficult. Rodnover themes entered the heavy metal subculture, particularly in bands like "Sokyra Peruna" ("Perun's Axe"), Whites Load, and "Komu Vnyz" ("Who Will Go Down"). In Poland, Rodnovery also influenced various forms of folk and popular music.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The early 2010s saw a strengthening of relations between Rodnover groups. In 2012, in Russia, representatives of the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities, the Circle of Pagan Tradition and the Circle of Veles, signed an "Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Priests" that defined the criteria for the ordination of those wishing to become Slavic priests. On the same occasion, they once again expressed disapproval for some authors and movements, including the large Skhoron ezh Sloven, which is also present in Belarus and Ukraine. In 2014, the Russian government officially registered the Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities as an interregional public organisation for the promotion of Slavic culture.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Rodnovery has a significant role in the War in Donbass, with many Rodnovers joining pro-russian armed forces in Donetsk and Lugansk. In 2014 Donetsk People's Republic adopted a "constitution" which stated that the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate was the official religion of the self-declared state. This was changed with the promulgation of a law "on freedom of conscience and religious organisation", backed by three deputies professing Rodnovery, whose members organised the pro-russian Svarozhich Battalion (of the Vostok Brigade) and the Rusich Company.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Donbas has been documented as being a stronghold of Russian Rodnover groups that are reorganising local villages and society according to traditional Indo-European trifunctionalism (according to which males are born to play one out of three roles in society, whether priests, warriors or farmers).


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In August 2015, during the 3rd Polish Nationwide Rodnover Congress, the Rodnover Confederation ("Konfederacja Rodzimowiercza") was formally established. Among the members are eleven organisations including the Gontyna Association, the Żertwa Association, the Pomeranian Rodnovers ("Rodzimowiercy Pomorscy"), the Drzewo Przodków Association, the Circle of Radegast ("Krąg Radogost"), the Kałdus Association, the Swarga Group ("Gromada "Swarga""), the WiD Group, ZW Rodzima Wiara and the Watra Rodnover Community ("Wspólnota Rodzimowierców "Watra""). In June 2017, during the celebrations of the nationwide holiday called Stado, a new religious organisation was created: the Religious Organisation of Polish Rodnovers "Kin" ("Związek Wyznaniowy Rodzimowierców Polskich "Ród"").


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: There are many denominations of Rodnovery as it is in general a democratic, free, or "open-source religion", that emphasises the "equality of men in their access to the divine" from different perspectives. Eclecticism and syncretism are accepted by most believers, although there is a "minimal framework in which the idea of national [Slavic] tradition dominates". Because of its "open" nature, Rodnovery also hosts in itself denominations which have developed clear doctrines around an authoritarian charismatic leadership. There are often tensions between nondenominational Rodnovers and followers of well-defined doctrines; it is the case of the doctrine of Ynglism, which is not recognised as true Slavic Native Faith by the major Rodnover organisations of Russia, and of Yagnovery, Ladovery and Sylenkoism, which some Rodnovers opine not to be classifiable as branches of Slavic Native Faith. Other Rodnover movements represent distinct ethnic groups within the broader Slavic family or space (Rodnoveries reconstructing the religions of specific early Slavic or Balto-Slavic tribes, Meryan Rodnovery and Scythian Assianism). There are, otherwise, Rodnover groups that intertwine with forms of religion and spirituality which are not immediately related to the Slavic Native Faith (this is the case of Ivanovism, Roerichism and Anastasianism).


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Many of these movements share the assumption to represent expressions of "Vedism". Marlène Laruelle found that there are Rodnover movements which draw inspiration from Indo-Iranian sources, historical Vedism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism; Rodnover movements inspired to the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky, the Fourth Way of George Gurdjieff and Peter Uspensky, and Roerichism (Nicholas Roerich); Rodnover movements inspired to East Asian religions with their practices of energetic healing and martial arts; Rodnover movements (often the most political ones) inspired to German Ariosophy and the Traditionalist School (studying thinkers such as René Guénon and Julius Evola); Rodnover movements centred on the Russian folk cult of the Mother Earth; and Rodnover movements drawing examples from Siberian shamanism.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: There are branches of Rodnovery striving to reconstruct not a pan-Slavic religion, but the specific religions of the early Balto-Slavic or Slavic tribes. In Belarus and the neighbouring regions of Russia there are groups taking inspiration from the Kriviches, of one of the tribal unions of the early East Slavs, mixing Slavic and Baltic traditions. It is represented by organisations such as the Centre of Ethnocosmology–Kriya (Belarusian: Цэнтр Этнакасмалогіі "Крыўя") by Syargei Sanko and the Tver Ethnocultural Association–Tverzha (Russian: Тверское Этнокультурное Объединение "Твержа") founded in 2010.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Koliada Viatichey (Russian: Коляда Вятичей) is a Rodnover faction that emerged in 1998 through the union of the group named "Viatiches", inspired to the homonymous early East Slavic tribe of the Viatiches, which comprised well-educated Moscow intellectuals and was founded by Nikolay Speransky ("volkhv" Velimir) in 1995, and the community named "Koliada". Koliada Viatichey refutes any non-Slavic influence in their religion, including the label "Vedic" and Vedic literature, influences from Eastern religions, influences from Roerichism and esotericism, and also the "Book of Veles". The movement also rejects extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic ideas. Yet, they espouse Russian nationalism, ancestrality and ecology, and oppose Christianity (but not folk Orthodoxy, which is regarded as a continuation of Russian indigenous religion) and the Western "technocratic civilisation". Koliada Viatichey is theologically dualistic, giving prominence to the complementary principles of Belobog and Chernobog, respectively governing spirit and matter, a polar duality which reflects itself in humanity as the soul and the body. Polytheism is accepted for its ability to "account for the complexity of the world with its multiple good and evil forces", and particularly emphasised is the popular Russian belief in the great goddess of the Earth (Mokosh or Mat Syra Zemlya). Speransky has adopted the concept of "Darna" from Lithuanian Romuva, explaining it as ordered life "in accordance with the Earth and with the ancestors".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Meryan Rodnovery is a movement present in the Russian regions of Ivanovo, Kostroma, Moscow, Vladimir, Vologda, Tver, and Yaroslavl. It consists in the establishment of an ethnoreligious identity among those Russians who have Meryan ancestry; Merya are Volga Finns fully assimilated by East Slavs in the historical process of formation of the Russian ethnicity. It is primarily an urban phenomenon and its adherents are Russian-speakers.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Various organisations have been established in the late 2000s and 2010s, including Merjamaa and Merya Mir (Меря Мир, "Merya World"). In 2012 they presented their official flag. The scholar Pavel A. Skrylnikov notes that a salient feature of the movement is what he defines "ethnofuturism", that is to say, conscious adaptation of Merya heritage to the forms of modernity, in a process of distinction and interaction with Russian Native Faith. He says that Meryan Native Faith is mostly Slavic Native Faith whose concepts, names and iconoraphy are Finnicised. Meryan Rodnovers also rely upon the uninterrupted traditions of the Mari Native Faith; on 27 September 2015, they organised a joint Mari-Merya prayer in the Moscow region. The cult of a Meryan mother goddess is being built upon the festival of the female saint Paraskevi of Iconium, on November 10. Also, Saint Leontius of Rostov is appropriated as a native god.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Scythian Assianism (Russian: Скифское Ассианство) is essentially a type of Scythian Rodnovery which emulates the Ossetian Folk Religion. It is present in Russia and Ukraine, especially, but not exclusively, among Cossacks who claim a Scythian identity to distinguish themselves from Slavs. An organised attempt at a renewal of the Scythian religion by the Cossacks started in the 1980s building upon the folk religion of the Ossetians, who are the modern descendants of the Scythians. The Ossetians endonymously call the religion "Watsdin" (Ossetian Cyrillic: Уацдин, literally "True Faith"), and practice it in large numbers. The North Caucasian Scythian Regional Fire is a Scythian Rodnover organisation in the North Caucasus region of Russia and eastern Ukraine that operates under the aegis of the Ancestral Fire of the Native Orthodox Faith. Another organisation is the "All-Russian Movement of the Scythians".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: There are various Watsdin organisations in North Ossetia–Alania affiliated with Scythian Assianism, including the Atsætæ organisation led by Daurbek Makeyev. Some Russians have embraced Watsdin by virtue of the fact that most of the ancient Scythians were assimilated by the East Slavs, and therefore many Russians wish to reclaim Scythian culture by naturalizing into the Ossetian religion. Such idea that Russians may derive, at least in part, from Scythians is popular in many Rodnover circles. Makeyev himself, in a 2007 publication entitled "Assianism and world culture" ("Assianstvo i mirovaya kul'tura"), presented the religion as a worldwide spiritual heritage. In 2009, on the occasion of a conference specifically dedicated to the subject held at the Moscow State University, the philosopher Alexander Dugin praised the renewal of Scythian culture as an inspiration that will be beneficial to all descendants of Indo-European peoples and to the whole world.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In Ukraine, there are currents of Rodnovery which are peculiar to the Ukrainians. Sylenkoism is the branch of Rodnovery represented by the churches of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (Ukrainian: Рі́дна Украї́нська Націона́льна Ві́ра) founded by Lev Sylenko in 1966 among the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States, and introduced in Ukraine only in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Sylenko was originally a disciple of Volodymyr Shaian, but by the 1970s the two had taken different paths, as Sylenko had begun to elaborate his own reformed systematic doctrine, codified in the holy book titled "Maha Vira" ("Great Faith"). Today, there are at least four Sylenkoite churches: the Association of Sons and Daughters of Ukraine of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (OSIDU RUNVira), the Association of Sons and Daughters of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (OSID RUNVira), Volodymyr Chornyi's western branch of OSIDU RUNVira centred in Lviv, and the more independent Union of the Native Ukrainian Faith (SRUV). According to the definition of Sylenko himself, Sylenkoite theology is a solar "absolute monotheism", in which the single God is identified as Dazhbog.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Sylenko proclaimed himself a prophet, bringing to the Slavs a new understanding of God that, according to him, corresponds to their own and original understanding of God. According to his followers, he acquired such knowledge through the "breath of his ancestors" being united with them "by divine holiness". Halyna Lozko of the Federation of Ukrainian Rodnovers, which directly inherits Volodymyr Shaian's orthodox doctrine, advanced vehement critiques of Sylenkoism, deeming Lev Sylenko a "false prophet" and accusing him of having tried to lead Ukrainians in the Abrahamic religions' "quagmire of cosmopolitan monotheism".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Yagnovery (Ukrainian: Ягновіра), Ladovery (Ладовіра), and Orantism (Орантизм) are other branches of Rodnovery that have their focus in Ukraine. Ladovery is a doctrine articulated by Oleksander Shokalo and other personalities in the magazine "Ukraïns'kyi Svit" ("Ukrainian World"). Orantism is a movement centred around the cult of Berehynia, linked to Ukrainian national identity, non-violence and resistance to global assimilation.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Peterburgian or Russian Vedism (Russian: Петербургский/Русский Ведизм) is one of the earliest Rodnover movements started by the philosopher Viktor Bezverkhy in Saint Petersburg, between the late 1980s and early 1990s, and primarily represented by the Society of the Mages (Общество Волхвов) founded in 1986 and the Union of the Veneds (Союз Венедов) established in 1990, and their various offshoots, including Skhoron ezh Sloven (Схорон еж Словен), established in 1991 by Vladimir Y. Golyakov, which has branches across Russia, and in Belarus and Ukraine. The use of the term "Vedism" to refer to Slavic religion goes back to Yury Mirolyubov, the writer or discoverer of the "Book of Veles".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Anastasianism (Russian: Анастасианство, Анастасийство, Анастасиизм) or the Ringing Cedars (Звенящие Кедры) is a spiritual movement that overlaps with Rodnovery. The Anastasian movement arose starting in 1997 from the writings of Vladimir Megre (Puzakov; born 1950), codified in a series of ten books entitled "The Ringing Cedars of Russia", whose teachings are attributed to a beautiful Siberian woman known as Anastasia, often considered a deity or the incarnation of a deity, whom Megre would have met during one of his trade expeditions. These books teach what the scholar Rasa Pranskevičiūtė has defined as a "cosmological pantheism", in which nature is the manifested "thought of God" and human intelligence has the power to commune with him and to actively participate to the creation of the world.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Anastasians have established networks of ecovillages throughout Russia and in other countries. Their settlements are known as "kinship homesteads" (родовое поместье, "rodovoye pomest'ye"), and are usually grouped in broader "ancestral villages" (родовое поселение, "rodovoye poseleniye"), where an extended faily, a kin, may conduct a harmonious autonomous life in at least one hectare of land of their property. The name "Ringing Cedars" derives from the beliefs held by Anastasians about the spiritual qualities of the Siberian cedar. In his writings, Megre identifies the ideal society which the Anastasians aim at establishing, based on its spiritual ideas, as an ancient Slavic and Russian "Vedism" and "Paganism", and many of his teachings are identical to those of other movements of Rodnovery.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Roerichism (Russian: Рерихиа́нство, Рерихи́зм) and Ivanovism (Ивановизм) are spiritual movements linked with Russian cosmism, a holistic philosophy emphasising the centrality of the human being within a living environment, in turn related to the God-Building movement. It originated in the early twentieth century and experienced a revival after the collapse of the Soviet Union, relying upon the Russian philosophical tradition, especially that represented by Vladimir Vernadsky and Pavel Florensky.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The Roerichian movement originated from the teachings of Helena and Nicholas Roerich, it inherits elements of Theosophy, and revolves around the practice of Agni Yoga, the union with Agni, the fire enliving the universe. Ivakhiv classifies Roerichians and others movements of Theosophical imprint, such as the Ukrainian Spiritual Republic founded by Oles Berdnyk, together within the broader "Vedic" movement.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Ivanovism is a spiritual discipline based on the teachings of the mystic Porfiry Ivanov, based on the "Detka" healing system and religious hymns. The movement has its headquarters in eastern Ukraine, the region of origin of Ivanov himself, and it is widespread in Russia. Ivanovite teachings are incorporated by Peterburgian Vedism. Shnirelman reported in 2008 that Ivanovism was estimated to have "a few dozen thousand followers".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Bazhovism (Бажовство) originated as a branch of the Roerichian movement and is centred in the Ural region of Russia, where Arkaim, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, is regarded by the Bazhovites as the world's spiritual centre. The Bazhovites retain most of the Roerichian practices, and worship, as their major deities, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain and the Great Snake.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Authentism (Russian: Аутентизм), incorporated as the Tezaurus Spiritual Union (Духовный Союз "Тезаурус"), is a Rodnover spiritual philosophy and psychological order created by the psychologist Sergey Petrovich Semenov in 1984, in Saint Petersburg. The movement is based on the teachings of the "Russian Veda", considered an expression of Slavic paganism, Russian cosmism and psychoanalysis. The aim of the Authentist philosophical practice is to reveal one's own true spiritual essence, which is identical with God, Rod—which is viewed as the complementary unity of Belobog/Sventovid and Chernobog/Veles—and therefore the unity of mankind and God, which characterises Russia's special mission opposed to Western individualism.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The Way of Troyan (Тропа Троянова, "Tropa Troyanova"; where "Troyan" is another name of the god Triglav, regarded as the patron god of Russia), incorporated as the Academy of Self-Knowledge (Академия Самопознания) and the All-Russian Association of Russian Folk Culture (Всероссийское Общество Русской Народной Культуры), is a Rodnover psychological movement founded in 1991 by the historian and psychologist Aleksey Andreev (pseudonym of Aleksandr Shevtsov) relying upon a thorough ethnographic fieldwork, especially focused on the Ofeni tribe of Vladimir Oblast. Tropa Troyanova does not identify itself as a "religion", but rather as a "traditional worldview". The movement promotes traditional Russian healing methods, psychoanalysis and martial arts.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Ynglism (Russian: Инглии́зм), institutionally known as the Ancient Russian Ynglist Church of the Orthodox Old Believers–Ynglings, was established in the early 1990s by the charismatic leader Aleksandr Khinevich from Omsk, in Siberia. According to the movement, which presents itself as the true, orthodox, olden religion of the Russians, the Slavs and the white Europeans, Yngly is the fiery order of reality through which the supreme God—called by the name "Ramha" in Ynglist theology—ongoingly generates the universe. They believe that "Yngling", a name that identifies the earliest royal kins of Scandinavia, means "offspring of Yngly", and that the historical Ynglings migrated to Scandinavia from the region of Omsk, which they claim was a spiritual centre of the early Indo-Europeans. They hold that the "Saga ob Ynglingakh", their Russian version of the Germanic "Ynglinga saga" (itself composed by Snorri Sturluson on the basis of an older "Ynglingatal"), proves their ideas about the origins of the Ynglings in Omsk, and that the Germanic "Eddas" are ultimately a more recent, western European and Latinised version of their own sacred books, the "Slavo-Aryan Vedas".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Besides their Vedas, the Ynglists instruct their disciples about "Aryan mathematics" and grammar, and techniques for a "healthy way of life", including forms of eugenics. The Church is known for its intensive proselytism, carried out through a "massive selling" of books, journals and other media. Ynglists organise yearly gatherings ("veche") in summer.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The Ynglist Church was prosecuted in the early 2000s for ethnic hatred according to Russian laws, and its headquarters in Omsk were dissolved. Despite this, Ynglism continues to operate as an unregistered religious phenomenon represented by a multiplicity of communities. Ynglism meets widespread disapproval within mainstream Rodnovery, and an international "veche" of important Rodnover organisations has declared it a false religion. Nevertheless, according to Aitamurto, on the basis of the amount of literature that Ynglists publish and the presence of their representatives at various Rodnover conferences, is clear that Ynglism has a "substantial number of followers". The scholar Elena Golovneva described Ynglist ideas as "far from being marginal" within Russian Rodnovery.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Many Rodnovers are influenced by Siberian shamanism, which has become widespread in easternmost regions of Russia, as well as Tengrism. One of the earliest exponents of Russian Rodnovery, Moscow State University-graduated psychologist Grigory Yakutovsky (1955–, known as a shaman by the name Vseslav Svyatozar), asserted that ancient Slavic religion was fundamentally shamanic, and Siberian shamanism plays a central role in his doctrines. In Yakutovsky's Rodnovery, male gods are secondary in importance compared to goddesses, and he claims that this was typical of ancient Slavic religion, which according to him was matriarchal. Yakutovsky's form of Rodnovery has been defined as tolerant, pluralistic and pacifistic, and his teachings are popular among Rodnovers who identify as communists. Yakutovsky is critical of the Soviet type of communism, and rather proposes "social communism" as the ideal form of government. He also espouses a form of elitism, by recognising shamans (poets and mystics) as people characterised by greater intelligence and power devoted to the realisation of a better future for mankind. Tengrist-influenced Rodnovery is practised by Bulgarian groups who identify as descendants of the ancient Turkic Bulgars.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Slavic-Hill Rodnovery (Russian: Славяно-Горицкое Родноверие) is one of the earliest branches of the Slavic Native Faith that emerged in Russia in the 1980s, and one of the largest in terms of number of practitioners, counted in the many tens of thousands. The movement is characterised by a military orientation, combining Rodnover worldview with the practice of a martial arts style known as Slavic-hill wrestling (Славяно-горицкая борьба, "Slavyano-goritskaya bor'ba"). The locution "Slavic hill" refers to the "kurgan", warrior mound burials of the Pontic–Caspian steppe.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The founder Aleksandr Belov (Selidor) was originally a Karate master, and in the 1970s and 1980s he began researching and reviving ancient Slavic martial techniques mixing them with elements of English catch wrestling and other styles, codifying the practice in the book "Slavic-Hill Wrestling" and popularising it by founding, in 1986, the group of the Descendants of Svarog (Сварожичей-Триверов, "Svarozhychey-Tryverov"), which in 1989 took part in the creation of the Moscow Slavic Pagan Community; in 1995 Belov left the group and the following year he established the Russian Federation of Slavic-Hill Wrestling, which was officially registered by the state in 2015 as the Association of Slavic-Hill Wrestling Fighters (Ассоциация Бойцов Славяно-Горицкой Борьбы). The original federation of Belov splintered many times over the years giving rise to other distinct groups of military Rodnovery; Belov, however, continued to remain a central figure for the movement as a whole. Outside of Russia, the movement has communities in Belarus, Bulgaria and Ukraine, and as a sport it is practised in other countries too. Together with a narrow circle of believers, Belov also experiments with an "inner energy" style of fighting based on folk magic.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Rather than as a "religion", Belov characterises the movement as a man's "assimilation to the law of the universe", expressed in images and worship practices. The theology of Slavic-Hill Rodnovery is pantheistic and polytheistic, and the movement's military orientation is reflected in its pantheon, which gives prominence to military deities headed by Perun, identified as the ruler of the universe. Ritual is extremely simplified and the god of warriors, the thunderer, is worshipped through war totems (falcon, kite, bear, wolf and lynx). The adherents believe that the class of the warriors should have the superior and leading role in society (espousing the idea of a military state and rejecting communism and democracy), and should be always ready to sacrifice themselves for the community. The movement abhors moral decay, while emphasising discipline and conservative values, and even though Belov's early works do not have a radical right-wing posture, many adherents espouse such position.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The Way of Great Perfection (Russian: Путь Великого Совершенства) is an esoteric doctrine of Rodnovery elaborated by Ilya Cherkasov ("volkhv" Veleslav), offering a perspective which according to him never existed in Slavic religion, a Slavic left-hand path. The Way of Great Perfection is actually conceptualised as an overcoming of both the right-hand and the left-hand paths. He borrows from various Eastern traditions, including Hinduism (Tantrism), Buddhism and Taoism, but also Western Neoplatonism, Hermeticism and alchemy, as well as the medieval German mysticism of the Friends of God (Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler). The goal of this esoteric system goes beyond that of other left-hand path traditions which stop at the deification of the individual; the goal of Veleslav's way is to strip the individual of any identity constructions through images and dreams of death and destruction, to reveal the individual's true essence, ultimately sacrifying its individual divinity, its names and forms, into the utmost spring of all divinity, the transcendent, primordial, unborn, unthinkable supreme source. Veleslav's left-hand path has been criticised by other Rodnover groups and leaders including Speransky and Irina Volkova (Krada Veles).


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: According to Laruelle, the most politicised current of Rodnovery has given rise to organisations in Russia including the Church of the Nav (Це́рковь На́ви), founded by Ilya Lazarenko and inspired by German Ariosophy; the Dead Water movement and its parties which participated to the State Duma elections in 2003; Aleksandr Sevastianov's National Party of the Russian Great Power, which has had links with politicians close to the former mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov (1936–2019); and the Party of Aryan Socialism led by Vladimir Danilov. The ideas of these Rodnover political groups span from extreme right-wing nationalism and racism, to Stalinism, seen by some of them as the most successful political expression of Paganism.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Writing in 2000, Shnirelman noted that Rodnovery was growing rapidly within the Russian Federation. In 2003, the Russian Ministry of Justice had forty registered Rodnover organisations, while there were "probably several hundred of them in existence". In 2016, Aitamurto noted that there was no reliable information on the number of Rodnovers in Russia, but that it was plausible that there were several tens of thousands of practitioners active in the country. This was partly because there were several Rodnover groups active on the social network VK which had over 10,000 members. The 2012 Sreda "Arena Atlas" complement to the 2010 census of Russia, found 1.7 million people (1.2% of the total population of the country) identifying themselves as "Pagans" or followers of "traditional religions, worship of gods and ancestors". In 2019, Anna A. Konopleva and Igor O. Kakhuta stated that "the popularity of Neopaganism in Russia is obvious".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Aitamurto observed that a substantial number of adherents—and in particular those who had been among the earliest—belonged to the "technical intelligentsia". Similarly, Shnirelman noted that the founders of Russian Rodnovery were "well-educated urbanised intellectuals" who had become frustrated with "cosmopolitan urban culture". Physicists were particularly well represented; in this Aitamurto drew comparisons to the high number of computer professionals who were present in the Pagan communities of Western countries. The movement also involved a significant number of people who had a background in the Soviet or Russian Army, or in policing and security. The vast majority of Russian Rodnovers were young and there were a greater proportion of men than women. A questionnaire distributed at the Kupala festival in Maloyaroslavets suggested that Rodnovers typically had above-average levels of education, with a substantial portion working as business owners or managers. A high proportion were also involved in specialist professions such as engineering, academia, or information technology, and the majority lived in cities.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Marlène Laruelle similarly noted that Rodnovery in Russia has spread mostly among the young people and the cultivated middle classes, that portion of Russian society interested in the post-Soviet revival of faith but turned off by Orthodox Christianity, "which is very institutionalized" and "out of tune with the modern world", and "is not appealing [to these people] because it expects its faithful to comply with normative beliefs without room for interpretation". Rodnovery is attractive because of its "paradoxical conjunction" of tradition and modernity, recovery of the past through innovative syntheses, and its values calling for a rediscovery of the true relationship between mankind, nature and the ancestors. Rodnovery has also contributed to the diffusion of "historical themes"—particularly regarding an ancient Aryan race—to the general population, including many who were Orthodox or non-religious.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Some strains of Rodnovery have become close supporters and components of Eurasianism, the dominant ideology of the Russian central state under Vladimir Putin, whose most prominent contemporary theorist is the philosopher Alexander Dugin. A number of youth subcultures have been identified as introducing people to Rodnovery, among them heavy metal, historical re-enactment, and the admirers of J. R. R. Tolkien. Rodnovery is also spread through a variety of newspapers and journals. Also popular with Russian Rodnovers has been the martial arts movement of "Slavyano-goritskaya bor'ba". A number of popular celebrities, including the singer Maria Arkhipova, the professional boxer Aleksandr Povetkin, and the comedian Mikhail Nikolayevich Zadornov (1948–2017), have publicly embraced Rodnovery.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Slavic Native Faith underwent dramatic growth in Ukraine during the early and mid 1990s. In 2005, Ivakhiv noted that there were likely between 5000 and 10,000 practitioners in Ukraine. Three years later he reported sociological researches suggesting Ukrainian Rodnovers to be 90,000 or 0.2% of the population. The religion's "main base" consisted of ethnic Ukrainians who were "nationally oriented" and who displayed higher than average levels of education. There is overlap between Slavic Native Faith followers and other sectors of Ukrainian society, such as the folk and traditional music revival groups, Cossack associations, traditional martial arts groups, and nationalist and ultra-nationalist organisations.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Ivakhiv noted that Rodnovery remains "a relatively small niche in Ukrainian religious culture", and that it faces a mixed reception in the country. Established Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholic groups have viewed it with alarm and hostility, while the country's educated and intellectual classes tend to view it as a fringe part of the ultra-conservative movement which was tinged with anti-Semitism and xenophobia.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In the global Ukrainian diaspora, there has been a "great decline" in the numbers practising the Native Ukrainian National Faith branch of Rodnovery. This has been due to branch's inability to attract sufficient numbers of youth in this community. Alternately, the Ukrainian organisation Ancestral Fire of the Native Orthodox Faith has expanded in both Moldova and Germany.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: Rodnover groups are also active in Belarus, though the movement emerged in the country only in the 1990s, much later than in Russia and Ukraine. In 2015, the movement was observed to be small but well connected with romantic intellectuals and nationalist political circles, and with the debate about the ethnic identity of the Belarusians. It is popular among some intellectuals of the pro-Russian cultural factions (for instance, Uladzimir Sacevič), that is to say those who consider the Belarusians as a branch of the Russians, while other Rodnovers are pan-Slavist, considering the Belarusians a branch of the Slavs on par with the Russians. There are groups which focus on the traditions of the Kriviches, an early East Slavic tribe, and mix Slavic and Baltic practices. Other groups consider the Belarusians to be Slavicised Balts, especially related to the Old Prussians, and have elaborated a religion leaning towards the Baltic Native Faith, called "Druva", whose spiritual centre should be established in the Chernyakhovsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, in Russia, where the ancient "Romuva" sanctuary of the Prussians was located. The political scientist O. Kravtsov has called for making "Druva" the national religion of Belarus. The largest organisations are the Commonwealth of Rodoviches, which represents Rodnovers fully aligned with Slavic traditions, and the groups Radzimas and Centre of Ethnocosmology–Kriya, which represents Krivich Rodnovery. The worship of Svyatogor is central to the religion of many Belarusian Rodnovers.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: As of 2013, Rodnover groups in Bulgaria were described as having few members and little influence. Some Bulgarian Rodnovers identify themselves as the descendants of the Turkic Bulgars and therefore lean towards the Central Asian shamanic type of Rodnovery, influenced by the ancient Turko-Mongolian religion; they are incorporated as the Tangra Warriors Movement (). In Serbia, there is the Association of Rodnovers of Serbia "Staroslavci" (). In Bosnia and Herzegovina there is a Slavic Native Faith group called Circle of Svarog ("Svaroži Krug"), founded in 2011. The group is associated with the movement of "Praskozorje".


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In 2013, Simpson noted that Slavic Native Faith remains a "very small religion" in Poland, which is otherwise dominated by Roman Catholicism. He reported that there were under 900 regularly active members of the main four registered Polish Native Faith organisations, and around as many adherents belonging to smaller, unregistered groups. In 2017, he stated that between 2000 and 2500 "actively engaged and regular participants" were likely active in the country. In 2020, Konrad Kośnik and Elżbieta Hornowska estimated between 7000 and 10,000 Polish Rodnovers. Simpson observed that in the country, Rodnovers were "still relatively young", and saw an overlap with the community of historical re-enactors. Kosnik and Hornowska observed that despite being young, Polish Rodnovers were spiritually mature and had joined the religion as it satisfied deep personal needs. They also observed that males constituted the majority of the community. In Poland, the Slavic Native Faith outnumbers other Pagan religions, although both are represented in the Pagan Federation International's Polish branch.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The scholar Anna-Marie Dostálová documented in 2013 that the entire Pagan community in the Czech Republic, including Slavic Rodnovers as well as other Pagan religions, was small. The first Pagan groups to emerge in the Czech Republic in the 1990s were oriented towards Germanic Heathenry and Celtic Druidry, while modern Slavic Rodnovery began to develop around 1995–1996 with the foundation of two groups, the National Front of the Castists and "Radhoŝť", which in 2000 were merged to form the Commonwealth of Native Faith ("Společenství Rodná Víra"). This organisation was a government-recognised entity until 2010, when it was unregistered and became an informal association due to disagreements between the Castists and other subgroups about whether Slavic religion was Indo-European hierarchic worship (supported by the Castists), Neolithic mother goddess worship, or neither.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: The leader since 2007 is Richard Bigl (Khotebud), and the organisation is today devoted to the celebration of annual holidays and individual rites of passage, to the restoration of sacred sites associated with Slavic deities, and to the dissemination of knowledge about Slavic spirituality in Czech society. While the contemporary association is completely adogmatic and apolitical, and refuses to "introduce a solid religious or organisational order" because of the past internal conflicts, between 2000 and 2010 it had a complex structure, and redacted a "Code of Native Faith" defining a precise doctrine for Czech Rodnovery (which firmly rejected the "Book of Veles"). Though "Rodná Víra" no longer maintains structured territorial groups, it is supported by individual adherents scattered throughout the Czech Republic.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: There are also practising Rodnovers among Lithuania's and Estonia's ethnically Russian minorities. Russians in Estonia have established their own religious organisation, the Fellowship of the Russian People's Faith in Estonia registered in Tartu in 2010. In Lithuania there are also homesteads of the Anastasian movement.


title: Slavic Native Faith

text: In Australia there is Southern Cross Rodnovery, a Rodnover organisation that caters to Australians of Slavic ethnicity. It is officially registered as a charity by the government of Australia. In Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, within the Ukrainian diaspora, there are various congregations of the Native Ukrainian National Faith (RUNVira).


title: Christian Longo

text: Christian Michael Longo (born January 23, 1974) is a convicted murderer who killed his wife and three children in Oregon.


title: Christian Longo

text: Originating from Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, Longo married Mary Jane Baker at age 19 and had three children with her. Longo and his family often encountered financial difficulties due to his reckless spending habits.


title: Christian Longo

text: The Longos were a seemingly average, middle-class family and resided in Waldport, Oregon. Christian was employed at a local Starbucks, while Mary Jane was a full-time mother. Mary Jane was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and was an active member of her church. By all accounts, the two devoted their time to raising their three young children. The Longos were married in 1993; at the time of the murders, the couple had been married for eight years and enjoyed sailing and jigsaw puzzles in their spare time.


title: Christian Longo

text: On December 17, 2001, a coworker recognized an artist's sketch of a boy discovered in Lint Slough. A neighbor reported seeing her 1999 Dodge Grand Caravan parked in the driveway outside the Longos' home. Once neighbors and friends realized that all five Longos were missing, a frantic search began.


title: Christian Longo

text: The body of four-year-old Zachary Longo was found on December 19, 2001, in Lint Slough. Divers located the body of three-year-old Sadie on December 22, less than a mile offshore in the Pacific Ocean. 27-year-old Mary Jane and their two-year-old daughter Madison were found five days later. Mary Jane had been stuffed nude in suitcases found in the water near a ramp at Embarcadero Marina on December 27, 2001. Madison was found inside a different suitcase the same day, dropped off on the same dock. An autopsy revealed that Sadie and Zachary were killed by asphyxiation while Mary Jane Longo and Madison had been strangled. Police have stated that if Zachary’s body had not washed ashore, they would not have recovered the bodies of his sisters and mother for another 10–15 years due to the tide.


title: Christian Longo

text: After he fled the United States, Longo was recognized at a hotel in Cancún, Mexico, on December 27, 2001. By that time, Longo was wanted in connection with the murder of his wife and three children. The next day, in Lincoln County, Oregon, a federal arrest warrant issued in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon charged him with multiple counts of aggravated murder and unlawful flight. He left the hotel on January 7, 2002, and was captured six days later without incident in the small town of Tulum, Quintana Roo, about 80 miles south of Cancún. He was taken into U.S. custody at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on January 14, 2002. He was sentenced to death in 2003.


title: Christian Longo

text: Years later, Longo admitted to being a narcissist in a letter he wrote to a woman that was obtained by KATU-TV, a television station located in Portland, Oregon. He wrote that he eventually began "studying what a psychologist said I was and came to terms with it, almost totally agreeing that he was right... his conclusion was the narcissistic personality disorder which he called 'compensatory' – basically self-centeredness related to a damaged core sense of self."


title: Christian Longo

text: When in Mexico, Longo used the name of Michael Finkel, the former "New York Times" reporter who later chronicled their experiences in his memoir "True Story", which was adapted into a 2015 film starring James Franco as Longo and Jonah Hill as Finkel.


title: Christian Longo

text: Longo was incarcerated on death row at Oregon State Penitentiary. On December 13, 2022, Longo's death sentence (along with everyone else on Oregon's death row) was commuted to life without parole by Governor Kate Brown.


title: Dash Mihok

text: Dashiell Raymond Mihok (; born May 24, 1974) is an American actor and director best known for playing Brendan "Bunchy" Donovan in the Showtime drama "Ray Donovan".


title: Dash Mihok

text: Mihok was born in New York City, the son of theater actors Andrea Mihok (née Cloak) and Raymond Thorne (né Mihok). He has two older sisters: Gwen Mihok, an actress, and Cecily Trenka, a science teacher. He is of Czech and British descent.


title: Dash Mihok

text: Mihok grew up in Greenwich Village and lived in the artist community Westbeth on Bank Street. Mihok went to PS 3, a public elementary school in Manhattan, currently named the John Melser Charrette School. He attended the Center School (MS 243) for middle school. While attending Bronx High School of Science, where he played baseball as a middle infielder, Mihok joined CityKids Repertory, and appeared in the short-lived TV show, "CityKids," which featured local New York child actors and Jim Henson's The Muppets. Mihok also attended the Professional Children's School in Manhattan with best friend, actor Donald Faison.


title: Dash Mihok

text: Mihok got his start doing guest spots in local New York City productions of "Law & Order," "NYPD Blue," and "New York Undercover." In 1994, Mihok debuted in the independent film, "Black is White." In 1995, Mihok appeared in the CBS movie of the week, "Murderous Intent."


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 1996, Mihok appeared in director Barry Levinson's film, "Sleepers," which was notable for its depiction of sexual abuse. Mihok said he did a lot of research for that role. He was also in the Angelina Jolie film, "Foxfire." In 1996, the Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes-starring "Romeo + Juliet" was Mihok's breakout role. To prepare for his audition, Mihok studied Shakespeare and had five extensive audition sessions with director Baz Luhrmann before landing the role of Benvolio. The film shot on location in Mexico, and Mihok said he considers the experience life-changing.


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 1998, for Terrence Malick's "Thin Red Line," Mihok said he spent an intensive six months working on the film, with the amount of footage constituting a full starring part, but during editing was reduced to an ensemble role as Private First Class Doll.


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 1996, Mihok was a featured regular in the role of Joey in the Rhea Perlman CBS sitcom "Pearl." In 1999, he appeared on The WB series "Felicity," where he portrayed Lynn, a competitive swimmer, in multiple episodes. He has been featured in roles in films such as "The Day After Tomorrow", "The Perfect Storm", "I Am Legend", and "Silver Linings Playbook". He has had starring roles in independent features such as "Telling You" and "Loveless in Los Angeles".


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 2006, Mihok appeared in the film "Hollywoodland" and in 2007 in the film, "Firehouse Dog". In 2008, he played Detective Martin Soap in the film "". In 2011, Mihok directed a short film called "Abby." The film stars his sister, Gwen. He also directed the 2006 short film called "That Guy."


title: Dash Mihok

text: As part of the 2011 straight-to-video film, "Lifted," Mihok and the actor who plays his son in the film, Uriah Shelton, recorded a song called "I Miss You." The film features many musical and dance performances by Mihok. In 2013, Mihok portrayed the character "Gage" in "Payday 2" web series.


title: Dash Mihok

text: Since 2013, Mihok has co-starred as Brendan "Bunchy" Donovan in the Showtime drama "Ray Donovan". Bunchy had been sexually abused by a priest as a child and is an alcoholic and has sexual anorexia. For the show the cast works out at the Santa Monica, California boxing gym Wild Card West with boxer Rob Garcia. Mihok was slated to direct an episode in 2017, as he said he has been directing pilots to prepare. He directed the season 7 episode "An Irish Lullaby" which aired December 15, 2019.


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 2014, he portrayed Whelan, in the horror-thriller film, "Before I Wake," co-starring in the Mike Flanagan-directed film Annabeth Gish, Thomas Jane and Kate Bosworth.


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 2016, Mihok appeared in the film, "So B. It," which stars Alfre Woodard, Cloris Leachman, Jacinda Barrett, and John Heard. In 2017, Mihok appeared in the independent film, "The Girl Who Invented Kissing", as Victor, a man who becomes mentally disabled after being in a car accident. He stars opposite Suki Waterhouse and Vincent Piazza, who plays his younger brother. In 2017, Mihok played a car salesman in the film "Car Dogs", which features Patrick J. Adams, Octavia Spencer, Josh Hopkins, among others. In 2022, he played David, an intellectually disabled man, in "Wildflower".


title: Dash Mihok

text: When he was 12 years old, Mihok started a band with his friends called S.D.C. (Sam, Dash, Chris aka Strictly Devastating Crew).


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 2004, Mihok appeared on Sicilian-Puerto Rican New York-based rapper Sabac Red's record "," on the track "I Have A Dream." The lyrics refer to tics that people exhibit as symptoms of Tourette syndrome. For the 2005 movie "Green Street Hooligans," Mihok wrote the title track "Test of a Man." During this time he also collaborated with Daniel Freedman, a jazz drummer, percussionist, and composer on various music projects.


title: Dash Mihok

text: Since 2015, Mihok has been in the band Diz and the Fam. Members of Diz and the Fam are Mike Choi, Kenny Echizen, Justin Frazier, Sharlotte Gibson, Morris Hayes, Joel Hellman, Brett Nolan, and Elliot Yamin. The band has released three singles. The 2015 video for "Love (feat. Jeff Taylor)" features many actors from "Ray Donovan."


title: Dash Mihok

text: Mihok studied dance. He can be seen dancing opposite then-girlfriend Alanis Morissette in her music video "So Pure". Mihok is also a photographer. His photography of Morissette is used on the back cover of her "Thank U" single and is credited for "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie."


title: Dash Mihok

text: Mihok was named after writer Dashiell Hammett, the author of "The Thin Man", "The Glass Key" and "The Maltese Falcon". His Czech surname is pronounced "my"-Hawk.


title: Dash Mihok

text: Mihok was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome at age six, and is a spokesperson and is on the board for the nonprofit Jaylen's Challenge, founded by the then 9-year old, Jaylen Arnold. He is an active supporter of the Tourette Syndrome Association. Mihok's two older sisters both have Tourette's; it is often genetic.


title: Dash Mihok

text: Mihok once stated that an early reason he became an actor was because he had so much experience in hiding his Tourette's. He said the focus required of acting allows him to mask many of his tics. Mihok says the biggest misconception about Tourette's Syndrome is about vocal tics, called coprolalia. Not everyone with Tourette's does that: "Tics tend to wax and wane, not everybody's screaming obscenities all the time." Mihok said he took medication during high school for the Tourette's. In 1997, Mihok met Alanis Morissette through mutual friend Leonardo DiCaprio during a trip to Cuba. The lyrics to the songs "So Pure" from "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" and "That Particular Time" from "Under Rug Swept" are about him.


title: Dash Mihok

text: In 2009, Mihok married singer Valeria Mason. They have two children and live in Los Angeles. Mihok has said that he is a Roman Catholic.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: The Baghdad Battery is the name given to a set of three artifacts which were found together: a ceramic pot, a tube of copper, and a rod of iron. It was discovered in present-day Khujut Rabu, Iraq in 1936, close to the metropolis of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian (150 BC – 223 AD) and Sasanian (224–650 AD) empires, and it is believed to date from either of these periods.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: Its origin and purpose remain unclear. It was hypothesized by Wilhelm König, at the time director of the National Museum of Iraq, that the object functioned as a galvanic cell, possibly used for electroplating, or some kind of electrotherapy, but there is no electroplated object known from this period, and the claims are near universally rejected by archaeologists. An alternative explanation is that it functioned as a storage vessel for sacred scrolls.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: The artifacts consist of a terracotta pot approximately tall, with a mouth, containing a cylinder made of a rolled copper sheet, which houses a single iron rod. At the top, the iron rod is isolated from the copper by bitumen, with plugs or stoppers, and both rod and cylinder fit snugly inside the opening of the jar. The copper cylinder is not watertight, so if the jar were filled with a liquid, this would surround the iron rod as well. The artifact had been exposed to the weather and had suffered corrosion.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: Austrian archeologist Wilhelm König thought the objects might date to the Parthian period, between 250 BC and AD 224. However, according to St John Simpson of the Near Eastern department of the British Museum, their original excavation and context were not well-recorded, and evidence for this date range is very weak. Furthermore, the style of the pottery is Sassanid (224–640).


title: Baghdad Battery

text: Its origin and purpose remain unclear. Wilhelm König was an assistant at the Iraq Museum in the 1930s. He had observed a number of very fine silver objects from ancient Iraq, plated with very thin layers of gold, and speculated that they were electroplated. In 1938 he authored a paper offering the hypothesis that they may have formed a galvanic cell, perhaps used for electroplating gold onto silver objects. This interpretation is rejected by skeptics.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: Corrosion of the metal and tests both indicate that an acidic agent such as wine or vinegar was present in the jar. This led to speculation that the liquid was used as an acidic electrolyte solution to generate an electric current from the difference between the electrode potentials of the copper and iron electrodes.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: After the Second World War, Willard Gray demonstrated current production by a reconstruction of the inferred battery design when filled with grape juice. W. Jansen experimented with benzoquinone (some beetles produce quinones) and vinegar in a cell and got satisfactory performance.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: In 1978, Arne Eggebrecht reportedly reproduced the electroplating of gold onto a small statue. There are no (direct) written or photographic records of this experiment. The only records are segments of a television show.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: Though the iron rod did project outside of the asphalt plug, the copper tube did not, making it impossible to connect a wire to this to complete a circuit.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: König himself seems to have been mistaken on the nature of the objects he thought were electroplated. They were apparently fire-gilded (with mercury). Paul Craddock of the British Museum said "The examples we see from this region and era are conventional gold plating and mercury gilding. There's never been any irrefutable evidence to support the electroplating theory".


title: Baghdad Battery

text: David A. Scott, senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute and head of its Museum Research Laboratory, writes: "There is a natural tendency for writers dealing with chemical technology to envisage these unique ancient objects of two thousand years ago as electroplating accessories (Foley 1977), but this is clearly untenable, for there is absolutely no evidence for electroplating in this region at the time".


title: Baghdad Battery

text: Paul T. Keyser of the University of Alberta noted that Eggebrecht used a more efficient, modern electrolyte, and that using only vinegar, or other electrolytes available at the time assumed, the battery would be very feeble, and for that and other reasons concludes that even if this was in fact a battery, it could not have been used for electroplating. However, Keyser still supported the battery theory, but believed it was used for some kind of mild electrotherapy such as pain relief, possibly through electroacupuncture.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: A bitumen seal, being thermoplastic, would be extremely inconvenient for a galvanic cell, which would require frequent topping up of the electrolyte for extended use.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: The artifacts are similar to other objects believed to be storage vessels for sacred scrolls from nearby Seleucia on the Tigris. Since these vessels were exposed to the elements, it is possible that any papyrus or parchment inside had completely rotted away, perhaps leaving a trace of slightly acidic organic residue.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: The object was looted along with thousands of other artifacts from the National Museum during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University, an expert on Iraqi archaeology, returning from the first archaeological expedition in Iraq after 20 years, stated that she does not know a single archaeologist who believed that these were batteries.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: The idea that the terracotta jars in certain circumstances could have been used to produce usable levels of electricity has been put to the test at least twice. On the third episode of the 1980 British Television series "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World", Egyptologist Arne Eggebrecht created a voltaic cell using a jar filled with grape juice, to produce half a volt of electricity, demonstrating for the programme that jars used this way could electroplate a silver statuette in two hours, using a gold cyanide solution. Eggebrecht speculated that museums could contain many items mislabelled as gold when they are merely electroplated.


title: Baghdad Battery

text: The Discovery Channel program "MythBusters" built replicas of the jars to see if it was possible for them to have been used for electroplating or electrostimulation. On "MythBusters" 29th episode (23 March 2005), ten hand-made terracotta jars were fitted to act as batteries. Lemon juice was chosen as the electrolyte to activate the electrochemical reaction between the copper and iron. Connected in series, the batteries produced 4 volts of electricity. When linked in series, the cells had sufficient power to electroplate a small token and to deliver current to acupuncture type needles for therapeutic purposes, but not enough to deliver an electric shock to "MythBusters" co-host Adam Savage who was instead pranked by co-hosts who hooked him up to a 10,000 volt cattle fence shock generator. Archaeologist Ken Feder commented on the show noting that no archaeological evidence has been found either for connections between the jars (which would have been necessary to produce the required voltage) or for their use for electroplating.


title: Wootz steel

text: Wootz steel, also known as Seric steel, is a crucible steel characterized by a pattern of bands and high carbon content. These bands are formed by sheets of microscopic carbides within a tempered martensite or pearlite matrix in higher carbon steel, or by ferrite and pearlite banding in lower carbon steels. It was a pioneering steel alloy developed in India in the mid-1st millennium BC and exported globally.


title: Wootz steel

text: Wootz steel originated in the mid-1st millennium BC in South India, in present-day Tiruchirappalli, Kodumanal, Erode, Tamil Nadu. There are several ancient Tamil, North Indian, Greek, Chinese and Roman literary references to high carbon Tamil steel. In later times, wootz steel was also made in Golconda in Telangana, Karnataka and Sri Lanka. The steel was exported as cakes of steely iron that came to be known as "Wootz".


title: Wootz steel

text: The method was to heat black magnetite ore in the presence of carbon in a sealed clay crucible inside a charcoal furnace to completely remove slag. An alternative was to smelt the ore first to give wrought iron, then heat and hammer it to remove slag. The carbon source was bamboo and leaves from plants such as Avārai. The Chinese and locals in Sri Lanka adopted the production methods of creating wootz steel from the Chera Tamils by the 5th century BC. In Sri Lanka, this early steel-making method employed a unique wind furnace, driven by the monsoon winds. Production sites from antiquity have emerged, in places such as Anuradhapura, Tissamaharama and Samanalawewa, as well as imported artifacts of ancient iron and steel from Kodumanal. Recent archaeological excavations (2018) of the Yodhawewa site (in Mannar District) discovered a lower half-spherical furnace, crucible fragments, and lid fragments related to the crucible steel production through the carburization process. A 200 BC Tamil trade guild in Tissamaharama, in the South East of Sri Lanka, brought with them some of the oldest iron and steel artifacts and production processes to the island from the classical period.


title: Wootz steel

text: Trade between South India and Sri Lanka through the Arabian Sea introduced wootz steel to Arabia. The term "muhannad" مهند or "hendeyy" هندي in pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabic refers to sword blades made from Indian steel, which were highly prized, and are attested in Arabic poetry. Further trade spread the technology to the city of Damascus, where an industry developed for making weapons of this steel. This led to the development of Damascus steel. The 12th century Arab traveler Edrisi mentioned the "Hinduwani" or Indian steel as the best in the world. Arab accounts also point to the fame of 'Teling' steel, which can be taken to refer to the region of Telangana. The Golconda region of Telangana clearly being the nodal centre for the export of wootz steel to West Asia.


title: Wootz steel

text: Another sign of its reputation is seen in a Persian phraseto give an "Indian answer", meaning "a cut with an Indian sword". Wootz steel was widely exported and traded throughout ancient Europe and the Arab world, and became particularly famous in the Middle East.


title: Wootz steel

text: Tipu Sultan's legendary swords are now part of valuable collections in museums of England. The sword had an incredibly hard and sharp edge that could easily rip through the opponent's armour. This quality of the sword came from a special type of high carbon steel called Wootz which was produced all over south India. Wootz steel when made into swords produced a very sharp edge with a flowing water pattern. This pattern came from very small carbon crystals embedded in the iron.


title: Wootz steel

text: From the 17th century onwards, several European travelers observed the steel manufacturing in South India, at Mysore, Malabar and Golconda. The word "wootz" appears to have originated as a mistranscription of "wook"; the Tamil language root word for the alloy is "urukku". Anothertheory says that the word is a variation of "uchcha" or "ucha" ("superior"). According to one theory, the word "ukku" is based on the meaning "melt, dissolve". Other Dravidian languages have similar-sounding words for steel: "ukku" in Kannada and Telugu, and "urukku" in Malayalam. When Benjamin Heyne inspected the Indian steel in Ceded Districts and other Kannada-speaking areas, he was informed that the steel was "ucha kabbina" ("superior iron"), also known as "ukku tundu" in Mysore.


title: Wootz steel

text: Legends of wootz steel and Damascus swords aroused the curiosity of the European scientific community from the 17th to the 19th century. The use of high-carbon alloys was little known in Europe previously and thus the research into wootz steel played an important role in the development of modern English, French and Russian metallurgy.


title: Wootz steel

text: In 1790, samples of wootz steel were received by Sir Joseph Banks, president of the British Royal Society, sent by Helenus Scott. These samples were subjected to scientific examination and analysis by several experts.


title: Wootz steel

text: Specimens of daggers and other weapons were sent by the Rajas of India to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and 1862 International Exhibition. Though the arms of the swords were beautifully decorated and jeweled, they were most highly prized for the quality of their steel. The swords of the Sikhs were said to bear bending and crumpling, and yet be fine and sharp.


title: Wootz steel

text: Wootz is characterized by a pattern caused by bands of clustered particles made by melting of low levels of carbide-forming elements. Wootz contains greater carbonaceous matter than common qualities of cast steel.


title: Wootz steel

text: The distinct patterns of Wootz steel that can be made through forging are wave, ladder, and rose patterns with finely spaced bonds. However, with hammering, dyeing, and etching further customized patterns were made.


title: Wootz steel

text: The presence of cementite nanowires, and carbon nanotubes has been identified by Peter Pepler of TU Dresden in the microstructure of wootz steel. There is a possibility of an abundance of ultrahard metallic carbides in the steel matrix precipitating out in bands. Wootz swords were renowned for their sharpness and toughness.


title: Wootz steel

text: T. H. Henry analyzed and recorded the composition of wootz steel samples provided by the Royal School of Mines. Recording:


title: Wootz steel

text: Wootz steel was analyzed by Faraday and recorded to contain 0.01-0.07% aluminium. Faraday, Messrs, and Stodart hypothesized that aluminium was needed in the steel and was important in forming the excellent properties of wootz steel. However T. H. Henry deduced that presence of aluminium in the Wootz used by these studies was due to slag, forming as silicates. Percy later reiterated that the quality of wootz steel does not depend on the presence of aluminium.


title: Wootz steel

text: Wootz steel has been reproduced and studied in depth by the Royal School of Mines. Dr. Pearson was the first to chemically examine wootz in 1795 and he published his contributions to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.


title: Wootz steel

text: Russian metallurgist Pavel Petrovich Anosov (see Bulat steel) was almost able to reproduce ancient Wootz steel with nearly all of its properties and the steel he created was very similar to traditional Wootz. He documented four different methods of producing Wootz steel that exhibited traditional patterns. He died before he could fully document and publish his research. Oleg Sherby and Jeff Wadsworth and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have all done research, attempting to create steels with characteristics similar to Wootz, but without success. J.D Verhoeven and Alfred Pendray reconstructed methods of production, proved the role of impurities of ore in the pattern creation, and reproduced Wootz steel with patterns microscopically and visually identical to one of the ancient blade patterns. Reibold et al.'s analyses spoke of the presence of carbon nanotubes enclosing nanowires of cementite, with the trace elements/impurities of vanadium, molybdenum, chromium etc. contributing to their creation, in cycles of heating/cooling/forging. This resulted in a hard high carbon steel that remained malleable


title: Wootz steel

text: There are other smiths who are now consistently producing Wootz steel blades visually identical to the old patterns. Steel manufactured in Kutch particularly enjoyed a widespread reputation, similar to those manufactured at Glasgow and Sheffield.


title: Wootz steel

text: Wootz was made over nearly a 2,000-year period (the oldest sword samples date to around 200 AD) and the methods of production of ingots, the ingredients, and the methods of forging varied from one area to the next. Some Wootz blades displayed a pattern, while some did not. Heat treating was quite different from forging, and there were many different patterns which were created by the various smiths who spanned from China to Scandinavia.


title: DJ Drama

text: Tyree Cinque Simmons (born April 22, 1978), professionally known as DJ Drama, is an American DJ, record executive and music promoter. He is the co-founder (with Don Cannon) of Generation Now, an Atlantic Records imprint with artists including Lil Uzi Vert, Jack Harlow, and Skeme on its roster. He initially gained recognition as the official DJ for Atlanta rapper T.I. and as a prominent mixtape DJ with his series, "Gangsta Grillz". Numerous artists have appeared on DJ Drama's "Gangsta Grillz" tapes, including Lil Wayne, Fabolous, Ludacris, Jeezy, Gucci Mane, and many others. He was a co-founder of the Atlanta-based DJ and artist collective known as the Aphilliates. Drama has released 5 studio albums, curating tracks with some of the industry's most lucrative talent, the most recent of which being "Quality Street Music 2" in 2016.


title: DJ Drama

text: Tyree Simmons was born from a Black Father, and White Mother in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, also being raised largely in Germantown, Philadelphia. At age 13, his sister took him to New York City where he purchased his first mixtape. He began making his own tapes soon after, including one titled "Illadelph" which featured artists like Black Thought, Dice Raw, Malik B., and others. He also started experimenting with turntables. Simmons attended Central High School in Philadelphia and graduated in 1996.


title: DJ Drama

text: After high school, he moved to Atlanta to attend Clark Atlanta University (CAU) where he studied mass communication. While there, he met two other Philadelphia-raised DJs: DJ Sense and Don Cannon. The three would eventually form the Aphilliates DJ and artist collective. During his studies, Simmons began making and releasing mixtapes under the moniker, DJ Drama. One of his first series (called "Electric Relaxation") included a variety of R&B tracks. In 1998, he released his first mixtape ("Jim Crow Laws") composed exclusively of Southern hip hop acts like Outkast, Three 6 Mafia, and Mystikal. The success of that tape led DJ Drama to start the mixtape series, "Gangsta Grillz". He would go on to graduate from CAU in 2000.


title: DJ Drama

text: DJ Drama, alongside Don Cannon and DJ Sense, officially founded the Aphilliates Music Group (AMG) in 2003. The group distributed DJ Drama's "Gangsta Grillz" mixtape series, which saw early successes with T.I.'s "Down With the King" (2004) and Jeezy's "Trap or Die" (2005). By 2005, Drama and his AMG cohorts were hosting radio shows on Atlanta's Hot 107.9 and on Eminem's Shade 45 channel on Sirius Satellite Radio. In late 2005, Drama produced and hosted Lil Wayne's "The Dedication" mixtape, which would spawn a long series of "Dedication" tapes. "Dedication 2", released in May 2006, appeared on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and was labeled by "The New York Times" as "one of the 10 best recordings of 2006."


title: DJ Drama

text: AMG signed a joint venture deal with Asylum Records in September 2006. The first artist signed was American rapper Willie the Kid. In January 2007, AMG's Atlanta studios were raided by Fulton County police officers, who seized over 80,000 mixtapes, 4 vehicles, and some recording equipment. Both DJ Drama and Don Cannon were taken into custody on RICO charges. Hard drives containing tracks from Drama's first "official" album, "", were also seized despite the fact that the album was due to be released "above-board" by Grand Hustle Records via Atlantic Records. No further legal action was ever taken against Drama or Cannon in relation to the raid.


title: DJ Drama

text: Despite the setback, DJ Drama's "Gangsta Grillz: The Album" was released in December 2007 on the Grand Hustle label. The album's first buzz single, "Takin' Pictures", was released in March 2007 and featured Jeezy, Willie the Kid, Jim Jones, Rick Ross, Young Buck and T.I. The album's lead single—"5000 Ones" featuring Nelly, T.I., Yung Joc, Willie the Kid, Jeezy, and Twista—debuted on BET. The second single, "The Art of Storytellin' Part 4", was released in 2008 and featured Outkast and Marsha Ambrosius. The album peaked at number 26 on the "Billboard" 200.


title: DJ Drama

text: In May 2009, DJ Drama released his second album entitled "", with the singles "Day Dreaming" (featuring Akon, Snoop Dogg and T.I.) and "Ridiculous" (featuring Gucci Mane, Yo Gotti, Lonnie Mac and OJ da Juiceman). In addition to his own studio albums, DJ Drama also continued working on mixtapes, including those for Gucci Mane ("Mr. Zone 6"), Chris Brown ("In My Zone 2"), Dead Prez ("Revolutionary but Gangsta Grillz"), and Wyclef Jean ("From the Hut, to the Projects, to the Mansion"), among others. In March 2010, Drama appeared on T-Pain's musical television special "", in a voice role as a radio announcer named Mr. Thanksgiving.


title: DJ Drama

text: Drama released his third album, "Third Power" in October 2011. It featured the single, "Oh My" (featuring Fabolous, Wiz Khalifa, and Roscoe Dash), and reached number 95 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. He followed that with the release of his fourth album, "Quality Street Music", in late 2012. The album was preceded by the singles "We in This Bitch" and "My Moment". The album peaked at number 15 on the "Billboard" 200, which is the highest a DJ Drama album has gotten on the chart to date.


title: DJ Drama

text: In August 2013, Drama co-founded The Academy, a DJ incubator and art collective, with Don Cannon and DJ Sense. The Academy announced its first roster of 23 DJs in September of that year. In January 2014, it was announced that DJ Drama would join the A&R at Atlantic Records. Within his first year, he had signed several artists to the label, including Kap G, Spenzo, and Que. Throughout this time, he continued hosting and producing mixtapes for artists like 50 Cent ("The Lost Tape"), Nipsey Hussle ("Crenshaw"), Snoop Dogg ("That's My Work Volume 3"), and Big K.R.I.T. ("It's Better This Way").


title: DJ Drama

text: In 2015, DJ Drama and Don Cannon founded the Atlantic Records imprint, Generation Now. One of their first signees was Lil Uzi Vert, and Drama served as an executive producer on Uzi's 2015 debut commercial mixtape, "Luv Is Rage". Generation Now also signed Skeme to the label that year. In July 2016, Drama released his fifth studio album, "Quality Street Music 2", with the single "Wishing" featuring Chris Brown, Skeme, and Lyquin.


title: DJ Drama

text: Generation Now had its first number one record on the "Billboard" 200 with Lil Uzi Vert's August 2017 debut studio album, "Luv Is Rage 2". DJ Drama served as executive producer on the album. Other acts signed to Generation Now by Drama include Skeme, Lyquin, Jack Harlow, Lil James, and Killumantii.


title: DJ Drama

text: In 2021, Drama narrated Tyler, the Creator's album "Call Me If You Get Lost", and was credited as a feature on the first track Sir Baudelaire. The album as a whole was inspired by Drama's "Gangsta Grillz" series and is often credited as being a part of it.


title: DJ Drama

text: A further instalment of the Gangsta Grillz series, "D-Day: A Gangsta Grillz Mixtape", was released on March 31, 2022, in collaboration with Dreamville and J. Cole.


title: DJ Drama

text: Generation Now is an American record label imprint founded in 2015 by DJ Drama and Don Cannon. The name of the label derives from a 2004 mixtape Drama and Cannon curated.


title: Andre Gray

text: Andre Anthony Gray (born 26 June 1991) is a professional footballer who plays as a striker for Super League Greece club Aris. Born in England, he represents the Jamaica national team.


title: Andre Gray

text: A product of the Shrewsbury Town youth system, Gray came to prominence after scoring 57 goals in 111 appearances in a two-season spell with Luton Town. He made six appearances for England C from 2012 to 2014, before being called up to the Jamaican national team and making his debut in March 2021.


title: Andre Gray

text: Gray began his career in the academy at hometown club Wolverhampton Wanderers, but was released at age 13. Gray joined the youth system at League Two club Shrewsbury Town in 2004, signing his first professional one-year contract prior to the start of the 2009–10 season. Awarded the number 20 shirt, he made his debut on the opening day of the season, coming on as an 89th-minute substitute for Nathan Elder in a 3–1 win over Burton Albion. An injury crisis saw Gray make four further cameos, with what would be his final appearance for the club coming as a 57th-minute replacement for Kris Bright in a 2–0 Football League Trophy second round defeat to Accrington Stanley on 20 October. He spent periods of the 2009–10 season away on loan, but competition for places meant that Gray was relegated to the reserve team substitutes' bench. Gray was released by Shrewsbury on 14 May 2010, having made just five appearances for the club. Looking back on his time at Shrewsbury, Gray said "I was at the stage in my life where I thought everything was set for me. I didn't really care about playing in Shrewsbury's reserves, which it shouldn't have been".


title: Andre Gray

text: Gray joined Conference North club AFC Telford United on 26 November 2009 on a one-month loan. Gray's good form meant that his loan was extended for a second month. He scored his first goal for the club with a late winner against local rivals Stafford Rangers on Boxing Day. Competition for places meant that Gray gradually lost his place in the team and he returned to Shrewsbury Town on 5 February 2010. Gray played six times for the Bucks, scoring once.


title: Andre Gray

text: On 5 March 2010, Gray joined Conference North club Hinckley United on an emergency one-month loan. He made five appearances and scored no goals for the club, before returning to Shrewsbury Town.