About human sacrifices among the "pagan Slavs", wrote such a giant of Russian history as N.M. Karamzin (1766-1826):
"... they stained their blood with the blood of Christians, chosen by lot from captives or bought from sea robbers. The priests thought that the idol was amused by Christian blood, and to complete their horror they drank it, imagining that it conveyed the spirit of prophecy" (N.M. Karamzin, History of the Russian State, Volume 1).
One of the first written references to ritual murders can be considered a message in the so-called "Strategikon", created, probably on the initiative Byzantine emperor Mauritius at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries. In particular, it refers to the Slavic tribes of the Sklavs and Antes:
“Their wives are chaste beyond all human nature, so that many of them consider the death of their husbands to be their own death and voluntarily strangle themselves, not considering life in widowhood.”
The author of the "Strategikon" does not say that these suicides were of a ritual nature, but they could not have had a different nature in those days; other authors also mention them. The Arab geographer Ibn Rusta (Rust) wrote at the beginning of the tenth century about how the funeral rite takes place in the "country of the Slavs":
“And if the deceased had three wives and one of them claims that she especially loved him, then she brings two pillars to his corpse, they drive them upright into the ground, then they put the third pillar across, tie a rope in the middle of this crossbar, she stands on bench and end (of the rope) ties around his neck. After she has done this, the bench is removed from under her, and she remains hanging until she suffocates and dies, after which she is thrown into the fire, where she burns.
In the middle of the tenth century, shortly before the baptism of Rus', the Byzantine chronicler Leo the Deacon wrote about human sacrifice among the Slavs. In those years, the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav, the grandson of Rurik and the father of the future baptizer of Rus' Vladimir, was besieged by the Byzantines in the fortress of Doro-stol, which he had recaptured from the Bulgarians not long before. After that, military happiness turned away from the Rus, whom Leo the Deacon calls Scythians, in accordance with the Byzantine habit of calling all northern barbarians that way. However, since we are talking specifically about the soldiers of Svyatoslav, this inaccuracy can be neglected and the rest can be trusted to the famous historian:
“The Scythians could not withstand the onslaught of the enemy; greatly dejected by the death of their leader (Ikmor, the second man in the army after Svyatoslav), they threw their shields behind their backs and began to retreat to the city, and the Romans pursued them and killed them. And so, when night fell and the full circle of the moon shone, the Scythians went out onto the plain and began to pick up their dead. They piled them up in front of the wall, made many fires and burned them, slaughtering many captives, men and women, according to the custom of their ancestors. Having made this bloody sacrifice, they strangled several infants and roosters, drowning them in the waters of Istra.
Both of these rites - both the sacrifice of captives and the sacrifice of babies - are noted among the Slavs and other medieval authors. Archaeologists confirm that the Slavs made human sacrifices to pagan gods, so B.A. Rybakov in his book "Paganism of Ancient Rus'" writes that the settlement "Babina Gora" on the banks of the Dnieper, which existed at the turn of the era and belonged, in his opinion, to the early Slavs, was a pagan sanctuary where babies were sacrificed. Evidence of this, the researcher considers children's skulls buried nearby without inventory, which was customary to accompany ordinary burials. He suggests that Babina Gora "can be imagined as a sanctuary of a female deity like Makosh", where children were sacrificed.
The last victim of the official pagan cult in Rus' was Theodore Varyag and his son John, later canonized by the Church as holy martyrs. The Chronicle says this:
“Vladimir went against the Yotvingians and seized their land. And he went to Kyiv, offering sacrifices to idols with his people. And the elders and boyars said: “Let us cast lots on the boy and girl, on whom it falls, we will slaughter them as a sacrifice to the gods.” There was then only one Varangian, and there was his courtyard, where now is the Church of the Holy Mother of God, which Vladimir built. That Varangian came from the Greek land and secretly professed the Christian faith. And he had a son, beautiful in face and soul, and the lot fell on him out of the envy of the devil. For the devil, who has power over all, did not endure him, but this one was like thorns in his heart, and he tried to destroy him, accursed, and set people on. And those who were sent to him, having come, said: “The lot fell on your son, the gods chose him for themselves, so let us sacrifice to the gods.” And the Varangian said: “These are not gods, but a tree: today there is, but tomorrow it will rot; they do not eat, they do not drink, they do not speak, but they are made by hand from wood with an ax and a knife. God is one, whom the Greeks serve and worship; he created the heavens and the earth and man and the stars and the sun and the moon, and created life on earth. And what did these gods do? They themselves are made. I will not give my son to demons." The messengers left and told the people about everything. The same, taking weapons, went to him and smashed his yard. The Varangian stood in the hallway with his son. They said to him: “Give me your son, let us bring him to the gods.” He answered: “If they are gods, then let them send one of the gods and take my son. And why are you doing their rites? “And they called, and cut down the passage under them, and so they were killed.”
To which gods the young Varangian was to be sacrificed, the chronicler does not specify. B. A. Rybakov believes that Perun. But the latter did not have long to accept sacrifices from the people of Kiev ... Several years passed; Vladimir converted to Christianity. He was baptized and “ordered to throw down the idols - to chop some and burn the others. Perun ordered to be tied to a horse and dragged from the mountain along Borichev to the Brook and ordered twelve men to beat him with sticks. However, the chronicler explains that “this was done not because the tree feels something, but to scold the demon who deceived people in this image, so that he would accept retribution from people.” The beaten Perun was thrown into the Dnieper, and the princely people were ordered to push him away from the shore until he passed the rapids.
In the end, the desecrated idol was thrown onto the sandbank, which has since been called the Perunya sandbank. Vladimir “ordered to chop down the churches and put them in the places where the idols used to stand. And he built a church in the name of St. Basil on the hill where the idol of Perun and others stood, and where the prince and people sacrificed to them ... ".
Despite all the initiatives of Prince Vladimir, paganism in Rus' was not destroyed immediately, as well as human sacrifice, although this practice, apparently, went underground. After the prince liquidated the temple he had created in Kyiv and in other cities subject to him, the worship of pagan gods continued in the forests. For example, archaeologists have discovered a huge Zbruch cult center on the right bank of the Zbruch River, a tributary of the Dniester in Ukraine. It arose in the tenth century, apparently, shortly before the christening of Rus', but after paganism was banned in the cities, the Zbruch center experienced a real flourishing. The center stood in impenetrable oak and hornbeam forests. In its three small towns located close to each other - Bogit, Zvenigorod, Govda - probably priests lived and pilgrims stopped. Near each town there were temples with numerous sacrificial pits. And in many pits, in addition to pottery shards, glass bracelets, beads, temporal rings, animal bones and other traditional finds, archaeologists found human bones.
On the territory of the Bogit sanctuary, two elevations made of stones stand out. One of them was the pedestal of the idol, and the second was the altar. The temple was surrounded by eight sacrificial pits, in some of them human skeletons were found. However, regarding the two skeletons of adults, researchers suggest that they belonged to priests who were buried in a sacred place, since their bones were not dissected - they lay on their backs, with their heads to the west, with their hands folded on their stomachs or chests. As for the remains of two children, they leave almost no doubt that human sacrifices were made here.
The idol itself, to which bloody sacrifices were made, was not found in the sanctuary, but not far from here, in the Zbruch River, in the middle of the nineteenth century, a stone figure was discovered, the base of which fits so well into the pedestal of the Bogitsky sanctuary that experts have almost no doubt: this is the same an idol that once stood on the hill of the Bogit settlement. It is a tetrahedral column made of gray limestone, more than two and a half meters high. The four-faced head of the idol is crowned with a round cap. The column is divided into three tiers, each of which is covered with carved images of the gods - here, apparently, the entire main Slavic pantheon is revealed.
All three sanctuaries of the Zbruch cult center existed until the thirteenth century. It is not known what put an end to them - persecution by the authorities or the Tatar-Mongol invasion. One way or another, in the thirteenth century pagan sacrifices on the banks of the Zbruch were finished.
Innocent pagan rites, which have survived in some places to this day, remind of human sacrifices that were once performed. This is the burning of an effigy of Maslenitsa, the funeral of Kostroma, the drowning of an effigy of Kupala.
So, let's return to the "native faith" - will we sacrifice people to the "native gods"?
Not? Then how can we call ourselves "rodnovery" if we do not fulfill the precepts of our native faith? By analogy: how can a Christian call himself a Christian if he does not take communion, does not confess, is not baptized as the first Christians did? How can a person today call himself a bearer of the faith of his ancestors if he does not comply with the precepts of this faith? This is not "native faith", but some kind of "new faith" is obtained. One Rodnover in our community expressed an opinion against sacrifices: "I believe that we modern Rodnovers feel our native gods better" - that is, he believes that we know better how to interact with "native gods", that is, with those "gods" of which our ancestors when they themselves invented (or borrowed from other peoples. In my opinion, this is some kind of absurdity, because it was they who invented these "gods" and they, and not us, know better what the Slavic faith should be. And if you do not accept these relations of our ancestors with "native gods" then you are not a Slavic pagan, your faith has nothing to do with real ancient Slavic paganism.
P.S. God forbid, of course, that the "Rodnovers" will begin to practice human sacrifice, as Satanists do today by ritually killing the homeless, sacrificing to the devil.
Ibn Fadlan about the rite of burial of the Rus, the beginning of the 10th century:
“And so, when this man, whom I mentioned earlier, died, they said to his girls: “Who will die with him?” And one of them said: "I". So, they entrusted her to two girls so that they would protect her and be with her wherever she went, even to the extent that they sometimes washed her feet with their own hands. And they began ( relatives) for his work - cutting clothes for him, for preparing what he needs. And the girl drank and sang every day, having fun, rejoicing in the future. When the day came on which [he] and the girl would be burned, I arrived to the river, on which [was] his ship, - and behold, [I see that] he has already been pulled out [on the shore] and for him four props made of hadang (white poplar) wood and another [tree] have been placed, and also placed around him (the ship) is something like a large platform made of wood.<...>And the old woman, who is called the angel of death, came and spread out on the bench the beds we mentioned. And she directs the dressing of it and the preparation of it, and she kills the girls. And I saw that she was a witch (?) big (and fat), gloomy (harsh).<...> And the girl who wanted to be killed, leaving and coming, enters one after the other from the yurts, and the owner of the [given] yurt connects with her and says to her: “Tell your master: 'Really, I did it out of love for you'” . When the time came on Friday afternoon, they brought the girl to something that they [already] made like a binding of a [large] gate, and she placed both her feet on the hands (palms) of her husbands, and she rose above this binding [looking around] and saying [something] in her own language, after which they lowered her, then raised her a second [time], and she performed the same [action] as the first time, then lowered her and raised her a third time , and she did the same thing that she did [those] twice. Then they gave her a chicken, she cut off its head and threw it away. They took the chicken and threw it into the ship. I asked the interpreter what she had done, and he said: “She said the first time she was raised, “here I see my father and my mother,” and said the second, “here are all my dead relatives sitting - and she said on the third, - here I see my master sitting in the garden, and the garden is beautiful, green, and men and youths are with him, and now he is calling me, so lead me to him. And they walked with her in the direction of the ship. And so she took off the two bracelets that were on her, and gave them both to that woman who is called the angel of death, and she is the one who kills her. And she (the girl) took off the two ankle-rings that were on her, and gave them both to those two girls who both [before that] served her, and they are both daughters of a woman known as the angel of death. Then they took her to the ship, but [yet] did not bring her into the tent, and the men came, [carrying] with them shields and pieces of wood, and gave her a goblet of nabid, and now she sang over it and drank it. The translator told me that she said goodbye to her friends with this. Then another cup was given to her, and she took it and sang a song, and the old woman encouraged her to drink it and to enter the tent in which [is] her master. And then I saw that she had already hesitated and wanted to enter the tent, but stuck her head between her and the ship, the old woman grabbed her head and stuck it into the tent and went in with her (the girl), and the men began to hit the shields with pieces of wood so that the sound of her cry would not be heard, and other girls would be excited, and would stop looking for death along with their masters. Then six men entered the tent and all copulated with the girl. Then they laid her on her side next to her master and two seized both her legs, two both her hands, and the old woman, called the angel of death, placed a rope around her neck, diverging in opposite directions, and gave it to two [husbands] so that they both they pulled her, and she came up, holding a dagger with a wide blade, and behold, she began to stick it between her ribs and take it out, while both husbands strangled her with a rope until she died.
Al-Masudi, about the rite of burial, the middle of the 10th century:
"As for the pagans who are in the country of the Khazar king, some of the tribes of them are Slavs and Russ. They live in one of the two halves of this city and burn their dead with their beasts of burden, weapons and jewelry. When a man dies, they burn his wife is with him alive; if a woman dies, then the husband is not burned; and if a single man dies with them, then they marry him after death. Their women desire their burning in order to enter with them (husbands) into paradise ... ".
Ibn Rust, on medicine men and the burial rite, early 10th century:
"They (Rus) have healers, of whom others command the king, as if they are their (Rus) bosses. It happens that they order to sacrifice to their creator, whatever they like: women, men and horses, and even when the healers order Taking a person or an animal, the medicine man throws a noose around his neck, hangs the victim on a log and waits until it suffocates, and says that this is a sacrifice to God ...
When one of the nobles dies among them, they dig out a grave for him in the form of a large house, put him there, and together with him put in the same grave both his clothes and the gold bracelets that he wore; then a lot of food supplies, vessels with drinks and a minted coin are lowered there. Finally, they put the dead man's wife alive and in the grave. Then the opening of the grave is sealed, and the wife dies in custody."
"Black Grave", a burial mound of the second half of the 10th century near Chernihiv, whose character of burial corresponds to Muslim descriptions.
The legend about the construction of the city of Yaroslavl (XVIII century):
“When the first pasture of cattle came to the pastures, the sorcerer slaughtered the calf and the heifer for him, but at the usual time he burned the victims from wild animals, and on some very difficult days - from people.
<...>When the fire at Volos died out, the sorcerer was removed from the keremeti on the same day and hour, and another was chosen by lot, and this one slaughtered the sorcerer and, lighting a fire, burned his corpse in it as a sacrifice, the only one capable of amusing this formidable god.
Voronin N. Bear cult in the Upper Volga region of the XI century.//
Local history notes (Yaroslavl). 1962. Issue. 4. S. 90-93.
Jan Dlugosz. Polish history (XV century):
“They brought sacrifices and treats to their gods from cattle, often from people captured in battle, those who believed that an indiscriminate multitude of paternal gods could be propitiated with libations.”
Dlugosz J. Historiae Polonicae//Dlugosz J. Kpera omnia. T. X. Cracoviae, 1873, pp. 47-48, 117.
Adam Bremen. Acts of the Hamburg Bishops (XI century):
“[On the death of John, Bishop of Mecklenburg], the barbarians cut off his arms and legs, threw his body on the road, cut off his head and, sticking it on a spear, sacrificed it to their god Radigost as a sign of victory.”
Slavic chronicle / Per. L. V. Razumovskaya. M., 1963. S. 37, 77.
Epistle of Bishop Adelgot (1108):
“The fanatics of them [(Slavs)] indulge in feasts as soon as they like, saying in savagery: “Our Prilegal wants heads,” then this kind of sacrifice should be made. (She lay down, as they say, Priapus and Belphegor shameless.)
Cutting off heads on their impious altars, they hold Christian bowls full of human blood, and howl with terrible voices: “We have reached the day of joy, Christ has been defeated, the most victorious has conquered!”
Ivanov VV, Toporov VN Slavic language modeling semiotic systems. M., 1965. S. 41.
Helmold. Slavic chronicle (XII century) Per. A.V. Razumovskaya.
“When the priest, at the direction of fortune-telling, announces festivities in honor of the gods, men and women with children gather and sacrifice their oxen and sheep, and many people - Christians, whose blood, they assure, gives special pleasure to their gods.
<...>
Therefore, as a sign of special respect, they tend to annually sacrifice to him (the god Svyatovit) a person - a Christian, to whom the lot will indicate.
<...>
Among various sacrifices, the priest is in the habit of sometimes sacrificing people - Christians, assuring that this kind of blood gives special pleasure to the gods.
Helmold. Slavic chronicle. Per. L. V. Razumovskaya. M., 1963. S. 45, 73,129,185, 235.
Titmar of Merseburg "Chronicles" (XI century):
“How many regions (Slavs) are in that country, there are so many temples and images of individual demons that the infidels revere, but among them the mentioned city (temple) enjoys the greatest respect. They visit him when they go to war, and upon returning, if the campaign was successful, they honor him with appropriate gifts, and what kind of sacrifice the priests should bring in order for it to be desired by the gods, they guessed about it, as I already said, by means of a horse and lots. The wrath of the gods was propitiated by the blood of people and animals.
When they say "the funeral of Shrovetide" or "the mermaid is buried", these expressions are only partly true, since the whole ceremony imitates a funeral procession. But only the dead can be buried, in the ritual the buried creature is not dead, but lives. We do not have a funeral, but the putting to death of a living being. An outstanding Russian and Soviet scientist, philologist and folklorist V.Ya. Propp showed that “in Russian holidays... the moment of being torn to pieces, drowning and burning is accompanied by jubilation, fun, laughter and farcical actions... There is no celebration of the resurrection in Russian rituals and holidays. The feast does not consist in resurrection, but in mortification.
The companion of Santa Claus, the Snow Maiden, is a revived snow woman, a symbol of winter and death, a pledged dead person (i.e. a dead person who died an unnatural death). The Snow Maiden is associated with the sacrificed Kostroma, which is also a pawn dead, and has a connection with death. So that Frost would not touch, the Celts made a sacrifice to him: they tied a girl who froze. It seems that the Snow Maiden can be a frozen girl sacrificed to the god of winter, who stood until spring in the form of a snow woman, and was burned on Maslenitsa, which meant "seeing off winter." Probably, the girl’s unburied corpse frozen in a snowman brought the Snow Maiden closer to the pledged dead.
In one of the ritual songs about Kostroma, it is sung like this: “As Kostromin’s father began to gather guests, start a big feast, Kostroma went to dance. Kostromushka danced, Kostromushka played out.
This strange death of Kostroma at the holiday suggests that the girl, having drunk wine with poppy seeds, was sacrificed. Possibly by freezing.
That's what B.A. Rybakov writes about Kostroma:
“In the temporal transformations of the rite, the doll of Kostroma or Kupala replaced not the deity Kostroma or Kupala (the researchers who deny the existence of ideas about such goddesses are right), but a sacrifice, a human sacrifice, brought in gratitude to these natural forces and their symbols. And the sacrifice was made not to these forces of seasonal action themselves, but to the constantly existing ruler of all underground-underwater forces that promote fertility, that is, the Lizard, Hades, Poseidon.
Ivanushka wants to return her drowned sister:
Alyonushka, my sister!
Swim to the beach:
The fires burn flammable
Cauldrons boil seething,
They want to kill me...
The drowned girl replies:
(I'd love to) jump out -
A combustible stone pulls to the bottom,
The yellow sands have sucked my heart out.
The name of brother Ivanushka may indicate a rite on the night of Ivan Kupala; then sister Alyonushka is Kupala herself, a victim doomed to become "sinkable in water." On the Kupala night and "great fires burn" and rituals are performed near the water, imitating the drowning of the victim: bathing a girl dressed up as Kupala, or dipping a stuffed doll depicting Kupala into the water.
From the answer of the drowned girl, we can conclude how the pagans imagined the posthumous fate of the sacrifice they made: the girl lies at the bottom, the sands suck out her heart, she wants to get up, but she can’t - “the combustible stone pulls to the bottom” ...
A.A. Potebnya, in her study of the Kupala festival, cites the tragic cry of a mother for a drowned (in ancient times - drowned) girl: "people, do not take water, do not fish, do not mow grass on the bends of the river - this is the beauty of my daughter, this is her body, her scythe ... This song was sung when the ceremony of drowning Kupala was performed.
They say that mermaids are not those girls who themselves drowned or drowned, but those who were forcibly drowned. Perhaps the ceremony was performed when they moved to a new place: the drowning of a member of a kind in the river made this river "one's own". They could also bring a human sacrifice for the "development" of the forest and field. During the construction of the fortress, a person was sacrificed - they were immured in the wall.
Old people were also sacrificed, which was also reflected in the games. Analogues of the games of the “funeral of Kuzma and Demyan” are contained in some variants of the South Slavic legends, in which the son took his father to a deep forest and left him under a tree (to the mercy of fate - to be eaten by wild animals, starvation and cold death, etc.) or, standing under a tree, he killed with a blow to the head with a special object, apparently serving at the same time as a device for carrying the old man. "The old people were also drowned, and buried alive, and beaten with mallets, performing a ritual dance around them. they were simply killed, but also eaten to get their strength. Death and the presence of decrepit people in the village could be considered very harmful to the well-being of the community. The custom was reinforced by the consideration of "extra mouths". During a drought, the old people were drowned in the river - "sent for rain" Cases of ritual murder of old people occurred even in the Middle Ages, although the church and the authorities fought against this.
N.M. Karamzin:
“Speaking of the cruel customs of the pagan Slavs, let us also say that any mother had the right to kill their newborn daughter when the family was already too numerous, but she was obliged to preserve the life of her son, born to serve the fatherland. This custom was not inferior in cruelty to another: the right of children to kill parents burdened with old age and illness, painful for the family and useless to fellow citizens "(N.M. Karamzin. History of the Russian State. Volume 1).
Not only old people were sent to the forest. You can recall various fairy tales, including those close to the theme of the Snow Maiden, fairy tales like "Frost". In various fairy tales, in order to get rid of their children, parents send them to the forest. Probably, the parents not only got rid of the "extra mouths", but also hoped that such a sacrifice would improve their situation.
Young couples jumping over the fire is a remnant of the ritual, when a boy and a girl committed self-immolation to ensure the well-being of their families. In those days, people believed that, having burned together, the young couple would remain together forever.
It is difficult to consider the abundance of such songs and fairy tales as accidental: the conclusion suggests itself that they spoke about the everyday life of the ancient Slavs. Revealing the connection of poems, songs, games, ritual dolls, stuffed animals and snow women with human sacrifices, gives (returns) these "children's fun" their real creepy meaning.
bear wedding
Below is a story about a sacrifice of a girl to a bear, which happened in the 20th century. The words "as old grandfathers did" indicate that this method of ransoming from a bear was once practiced:
“In 1925, such an incident occurred in the Olonets province. In one of the villages, a bear got into the habit of walking, which killed the cattle. On the advice of the old people, "in order to appease the bear", the residents decided to make a "bear wedding", "get rid of the girl" - give the girl to the bear "on the conscience ... as in the old days grandfathers did ... the most beautiful woman." They chose a girl by lot, dressed her in a bride’s outfit and, despite her resistance, they took her into the forest to the bear’s lair, where they tied her to a tree: “Don’t judge, Nastya.
pagan sacrifices of people are inherent in all peoples: African tribes, Huns, Gauls, Scythians, Jews, Arabs ... And the Slavs are no exception in this matter. There are many sources that describe human sacrifice among the Slavs.
As Sedov V.V. “Ancient authors (Mauritius, John of Ephesus) repeatedly mention the numerous herds that were in the possession of the Slavs. Small clay figurines of animals were found in Slavic settlements, obviously associated with the ritual of sacrifice, emphasizing the importance of domestic animals in the life and life of the Slavs.
The economic basis of the life of the Slavs - agriculture - left a significant imprint on pagan beliefs. According to the pagan calendar, most ritual festivities reflected a certain cycle of agricultural work.
But, from the 6th to the 10th century there is a lot of evidence of human sacrifice. He wrote about it in the VI century. Mauritius. The same custom was mentioned by St. Boniface in the 8th century, he was described in detail by Arab writers of the 9th-10th centuries. Masudi explains this killing of women in Golden Meadows by the fact that “the wives ardently desire to be burned along with their husbands in order to enter paradise after them.” If Fadlan and Masudi describe this ritual action as a ritual burning, then in Ibn-Ruste's work “Dear values” he describes this rite as follows: “If the deceased had three wives and one of them claims that she especially loved him , then she brings two pillars to his corpse, they drive them upright into the ground, then they put a third pillar across, tie a rope in the middle of this crossbar, she stands on a bench and ties the end [of the rope] around her neck.
Fadlan notes: “When the aforementioned man died, they said to his girls: who will die with him? and one of them answered: I am! Ibn Miskawayh also points out the current when describing the campaign of the Rus against the Muslims: if one of the Rus died, then “his servant, according to their custom (buried together)”.
German chroniclers, and in particular, Titmar of Merseburg, says that among the Slavs "the terrible wrath of the gods is propitiated by the blood of people and animals." If Fadlan describes the custom of sacrificing sheep and other livestock to the gods to improve trade, then Titmar says that the wrath of the gods "is propitiated by the blood of people."
The first real references to human sacrifices that cannot be refuted are found by Helmold in the Slavic Chronicle.
According to Helmold, the Slavs "sacrifice to their gods with oxen and sheep, and many with Christian people, whose blood, they assure, gives special pleasure to their gods."
Svyatovit is annually sacrificed “a Christian man, whom the lot will indicate.” The number of Christians sacrificed during the uprisings of the Slavs especially increased, for example, when in 1066 the encouragers sacrificed Bishop John and many priests: “To Bishop John, an elder, captured with other Christians in Magnopolis, that is, in Mikilinburg, life was saved for the triumph [of the pagans]. For his adherence to Christ, he was [first] beaten with sticks, then he was taken to reproach in all Slavic cities, and when it was impossible to force him to renounce the name of Christ, the barbarians cut off his hands and feet, threw his body on the road, cut off his head and, sticking it on a spear, they sacrificed it to their god Redegast as a sign of victory. All this took place in the capital of the Slavs, Retra, on the fourth ides of November.
The Tale of Bygone Years describes how, after Prince Vladimir’s campaign against the Yotvingians in 983, the elders and boyars chose by lot a boy or a girl “to fall on him, we will slaughter him by God,” and the lot fell on the son of a Christian Varangian: “Bring my son and my daughters, and I will kill them before them, and the whole earth would be defiled.” The father refused and blood was shed. These were the first martyrs of the Orthodox faith.
The testimonies of Leo the Deacon also speak of the presence of another rite: “after the battle, the soldiers of Prince Svyatoslav gathered their dead and burned them, stabbing, according to the custom of their ancestors, many prisoners, men and women. Having made this bloody sacrifice, they strangled several babies and roosters, drowning them in the waters of Istra. There are some interesting points in this description. So, fellow believers are burned, and the sacrifice is carried out by drowning. From ancient times, water was considered by the Slavs as a way to the “Heart of the World”. Therefore, the mortgaged dead were drowned in swamps. Although this rudiment, according to Afanasiev, is traced to the killing of the sorceress “in the 19th century. in Belarus, during a drought, they drowned an old woman"
In the "Tale of Bygone Years" there is evidence of ritual killings. In Suzdal, during the famine in 1024, on the initiative of the Magi, “I beat the old child according to the devil’s teaching and demonization, saying tako si to keep gobino”; in 1071, also during a famine in the Rostov land, the sorcerers declared: “ve sveve, who keeps abundance”, “the best wives speak the same narcissus, they keep such a living ...”, “and I bring my sisters to them, mothers and my wives ... and killed many wives.”
These actions cannot be interpreted otherwise as a sacrifice. The purpose of the sacrifice is to propitiate the gods and send the harvest. Veletskaya N.N. believes that in this way the Magi "sent their representatives to the next world to prevent crop failure."
There were other reasons for sacrifices. Serapion's "Word of Little Faith" (XIII century) says that his contemporaries burned innocent people with fire during disastrous life events - crop failure, lack of rain, cold.
According to many scientists (Afanasiev, Toporov), the echoes of the ancient custom of human sacrifice among the Eastern and Southern Slavs have been preserved almost to the present. They can be traced in a degraded and transformed form, when instead of a person a stuffed animal or a doll was sent to the next world, they staged a staging of such a sacrifice during the holiday (the funeral of Kostroma, Yarila, Morena, seeing off Shrovetide).
Archeology confirms human sacrifices. There are especially many ritual pits, wells, etc. found in temples near Zvenigorod.
So, in building 3, located on the road leading to the sacred mountain, lay the crouched skeleton of a teenager and around him in one layer were stacked carcasses of cows cut into pieces, their most meaty and edible parts (vertebrae with ribs, femurs) and four cow jaws . Among the bones, an arrowhead was stuck into the earthen floor. This structure belongs to the type of sacrificial pits widely known in the Slavic lands. There are no signs of residential or utility premises in it, which indicates a sacrifice, and not a funeral rite.
The second crouched skeleton at the site of Zvenigorod was found in a well located on a terrace in the southern part of the sanctuary. The skeleton belonged to a man of 30-35 years old, whose skull was pierced on the crown of the head with a sharp tool. Next to the skeleton lay an axe, the rim of a wooden shovel, and fragments of utensils from the 12th century. It is possible that the tools with which the sacrifice was performed were laid near the slain.
But, there are opinions that bones and some corpses cannot be differentiated as sacrifices due to weak contextual links. So the bones and parts of the body could be brought to the temple from campaigns. And the sorcerer sent to the other world what was left of the warrior. Also, the bodies can be buried in the temple in honor of respect. There were several funeral customs. These were burial in the fetal position, and cremation, and cremation with burial in the ground and corpses. Several species could overlap in one era, so what is considered a violent death may also be a funeral rite. But, all this does not give us the right to exclude sacrifices among the Slavs. It was, but already from the 6th century it was not universal, and by the 10th century it was already closer to fanaticism, it was rudimentarily fixed until the 19th century.
In Zvenigorod, the corpses of children and babies, individual parts of the body, and much more were found, which makes it possible to unequivocally state that human sacrifices among the Slavs took place. Also, many bones were found near the Temple of Arkon. In places of human sacrifice, crosses were often found, and even a censer was found in Zvenigorod. This will allow us to say that the pagans sacrificed Christians.
The rituals of sacrifices still existed among the Western and the southern and Eastern Slavs. But this does not at all speak of the novelty of the rites - sacrifices were the norm for the pagan world. And according to the remaining evidence, we can say that they were widespread, in paganism, everywhere and paganism does not exist without a culmination - the sacrifice of a person to the gods.
Among people who know about Slavic paganism only by hearsay, the stereotype is very actively imposed that the practice of human sacrifice was common among the pagans2. In fact, such a statement is nothing more than a myth.
In fact, such a statement is nothing more than a myth.
"Bloody human sacrifices" among the Slavs exist exclusively in Christian teachings "against the pagans."
Such a practice existed only among some semi-savage peoples on the most early stages development of society. When we talk about paganism in its developed form, such phenomena can no longer be found in it. Some echoes are found only in the class-military environment, which is wild by definition, and, accordingly, in their narrow caste cults. And then, not everywhere, but precisely in archaic echoes, more often in a symbolic form. And only so much, since their "profession" itself is daily connected with death.
The Slavs, on the other hand, did not practice human sacrifice at all - except in Christian propaganda, along with "mud sin" and other delights.
And this is explained by nothing other than the very essence of sacrifice in pagan cults. And the essence of this is the following. The pagan Slavs make rites to the gods. Bringing a trebe or actual sacrifice is an act of arranging a meal together with the gods. To this day, we all perform such rites in everyday life, when, for example, we arrange a commemoration, and we put a symbolic glass of vodka and a piece of bread near the image of the deceased. The essence of worship is participation in a joint meal with the gods - communion in this common meal. Hence the expressions "guzzle to someone" (guzzle, eat, sacrifice, grub, priest - of the same root) and "mass", "make a vow". And in churches (originally converted from pagan temples), a certain part of the building still has the name - "refectory".
The general meaning is that part of what people eat themselves is dedicated to the gods. If a tribe of savages practices cannibalism, then they also "feed" their deities with a little human, and if not, then this does not even occur to them! You wouldn’t put a bunch of cockroaches instead of bread in front of the photo of the deceased grandfather at the wake, would you? And the pagans don't think of that either.
Modern man, cut off from rural life, does not understand the meaning of the phrase: "such and such a king sacrificed 200 bulls on this occasion!". Modern man thinks that the meaning was that this someone, for the sake of the gods, took, and even took the life of as many as 200 innocent cows! But the bottom line is that this someone arranged a huge feast dedicated to the gods, and fed his army with these bulls. The meaning was not in the deprivation of life or bloodshed, but in the common meal itself, at which the gods were also mystically present.
Haven't you heard phrases from villagers - like: "Here, I will slaughter this pig for my daughter-in-law's birthday" or something like that? You understand that the meaning of what has been said is not that he will specifically kill a pig on the occasion of his daughter-in-law's birthday, but that on her birthday he will cook many tasty and satisfying dishes from this pig. So the pagans, when they say that they sacrificed three rams, they mean that they arranged a big feast on some occasion.
By the way, the Christian liturgy is carried out exactly according to the same scheme. The gifts (the body and flesh of Christ) are first prepared on the altar, then brought to the altar, and then collectively consumed by all those present who are partakers of this meal.
And precisely for the reason that the mystical essence of the liturgy is clear to the pagans, they called Christians with amazement and rejection - God-eaters. From the point of view of the pagan Slavs, such a custom was the height of not only blasphemy, but also moral savagery, for Christians mystically ate not just a person - which in itself is terrible for a cultured person, but also their god!
The practice of sacrifice has existed at all times and among almost all peoples of the world. This was also practiced in Rus'.
Bloodless victims - a myth?
There is an opinion that sacrifices to ancient Slavic deities were bloodless. Allegedly, they were "brought" only grain, fruits and other food. However, there is also a lot of other evidence.
At the beginning of the 10th century, the Arab traveler Ahmad Ibn-Fadlan described the funeral of a noble Rus, at which poultry and cattle, as well as one of his wives or concubines, were sacrificed along with the deceased.
Captives could also be sacrificed. The Byzantine historian Leo the Deacon testifies: “The soldiers of Prince Svyatoslav after the battle gathered their dead and burned them, slaughtering many prisoners, men and women, according to the custom of their ancestors. Having made this bloody sacrifice, they strangled several babies and roosters, drowning them in the waters of Istra..
The German chronicler Titmar of Merseburg claims that the Slavs "the terrible anger of the gods is propitiated by the blood of people and animals". Helmold from Bosau in the Slavic Chronicle reports that the Slavs “They offer sacrifices to their gods with oxen and sheep, and many with Christian people, whose blood, they assure, gives special pleasure to their gods”.
"The Tale of Bygone Years" claims that in 983, during the reign of Prince Vladimir, even before the adoption of Christianity by Russia in Kyiv, they had to sacrifice to Perun. The lot fell on the son of a Christian Varangian. The father refused to give his child to the slaughter, and both were torn to pieces by the pagans. Theodore and John are considered the first Christian martyrs in Rus'.
Death to the Snow Maiden!
In some regions, the tradition of human sacrifice existed until the 17th century! The unfortunate were torn to pieces alive and scattered their meat across the fields - it was believed that then bread would be born, and after all, the general welfare depended on this.
The celebration of Maslenitsa in Rus' was originally associated with the glorification of the sun god Yarila. Hence the term that has come down to our days - "Bloody Maslenitsa". Spilled blood guaranteed protection from adversity, such as drought and floods.
Even the traditional image of the Snow Maiden, according to folklorists, can be associated with the custom of sacrificing a living girl as a sacrifice to God in winter: she was drunk and tied in the forest, where she stood until spring, covered with snow and ice. According to one version, the predecessor of the Snow Maiden was the so-called Kostroma, which, according to ritual songs, dies under strange circumstances during the holiday. Subsequently, a tradition arose to burn an effigy of Kostroma on Maslenitsa. Here is what Academician B.A. Rybakov in the book "Paganism Ancient Rus'»: “In the temporal transformations of the rite, the doll of Kostroma or Kupala replaced not the deity Kostroma or Kupala (the researchers are right who deny the existence of ideas about such goddesses), but a sacrifice, a human sacrifice, brought in gratitude to these natural forces and their symbols”.
Also, according to the researcher, according to beliefs, it was not girls who drowned of their own free will that turned into mermaids in Rus', but who were drowned by force, sacrificed to a river deity.
There was also a tradition in the Slavic period to take the infirm old people, who become a burden for their family, into the deep forest and leave them under a tree. Someone was eaten by wild animals, someone died from hunger and cold ... Or they were beaten to death with a blow to the head, drowned, buried alive in the ground. It also looks like a sacrifice. They could "pay off" people from wild animals. For example, if a bear began to terrorize a village, killed cattle, arranged a “bear wedding”, tying a girl in a bride’s outfit chosen by lot to a tree in the forest near the bear’s lair. This rite is described in the book by Yu.V. Krivosheev "Religion of the Eastern Slavs on the eve of the baptism of Rus'".
Archaeological finds also confirm the theory that the Slavs of Ancient Rus' sacrificed people. In particular, in the Zvenigorod region, a ritual burial ground was discovered, in which there was a crouched skeleton of a teenager, surrounded by the remains of cows cut into pieces. An arrowhead was stuck into the earthen floor, which is typical for the sacrificial rituals of the Slavs. Other similarly buried corpses have been found, mostly of children and infants.
Sacrifices in the Christian Era
AT Russian Empire If somewhere the loss of livestock began, local peasant women performed the so-called rite of ploughing. At the same time, an animal was sacrificed. However, if any man came across on the way of the procession, then he was considered the personification of the disease or death against which the ritual was directed. Such a poor fellow was beaten with anything until they were beaten to death, therefore, when they saw the procession, all males tried to run away or hide.
In 1861, one of the inhabitants of the Turukhansk region, in order to escape from the epidemic of a deadly disease, voluntarily sacrificed his young relative, burying her alive in the ground.
In our time, sacrifices are practiced only by members of satanic sects. And for the most part, these are ritual killings of animals - for example, cats and rats. Everything happens though. Yes, ritual murders are rare, but on the other hand, it is not so rare ...
When in the 1940s America and Soviet Union successively tested a nuclear bomb, both superpowers decided that the atom was the future. Various large-scale projects using the half-life force of isotopes of uranium and other elements with similar properties were developed by almost dozens.
One of these ideas was to create "atomic bullets" whose power would be as destructive as that of a nuclear bomb. That's just information about these developments is negligible, and this whole story has acquired so many tales that today it is a semi-myth, in the veracity of which few people believe.
Atomic bullets appear in a number of science fiction examples. But at some point, Soviet military engineers seriously thought about the possibility of creating ammunition that would contain a radioactive element. In fairness, it should be pointed out that in some way these dreams were realized and are actively used today. We are talking about armor-piercing sub-caliber shells, which actually contain uranium. But in these ammunition it is depleted and is not used at all as a “small nuclear bomb”.
As for the “atomic bullets” project itself, according to a number of sources that began to appear in the media already in the 1990s, Soviet scientists managed to create 14.3 mm and 12.7 mm caliber ammunition for heavy machine guns. In addition, there is information about the 7.62 mm bullet. The weapons used in this case vary: some sources indicate that the bullets of this caliber were made for the Kalashnikov assault rifle, while others indicate that for his easel machine gun.
According to the plans of the developers, such unusual ammunition was supposed to have tremendous power: one bullet "baked" an armored tank, and several - erased an entire building from the face of the earth. According to published documents, not only prototypes were made, but also successful tests were carried out. However, physics stood in the way of these statements, first of all.
At first it was the concept of critical mass, which did not allow the use of uranium 235 or plutonium 239, traditional in the manufacture of nuclear bombs, for atomic bullets.
Then Soviet scientists decided to use the recently discovered transuranium element californium in these ammunition. Its critical mass is only 1.8 grams. It would seem that it is enough to “compress” the required amount of californium into a bullet, and you will get a nuclear explosion in miniature.
But here comes new problem- excessive heat release during the decay of the element. A californium bullet could put out about 5 watts of heat. This would make it dangerous for both the weapon and the shooter - the ammunition could get stuck in the chamber or in the barrel, or it could spontaneously explode during the shot. They tried to find a solution to this problem in the creation of special refrigerators for bullets, however, their design and operating features were quickly considered inappropriate.
The main problem with the use of californium in atomic bullets was its depletion as a resource: the element quickly ended, especially after the introduction of a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. In addition, by the end of the 1970s, it became obvious that both enemy armored vehicles and structures could be successfully destroyed and more traditional methods. Therefore, according to sources, the project was finally closed in the early 1980s.
Despite a number of publications about the "atomic bullet" project, there are many skeptics who strongly reject the information that such ammunition ever existed. Literally everything lends itself to criticism: from the choice of California for the manufacture of bullets to their caliber and the use of Kalashnikov weapons.
To date, the history of these developments has become something between a scientific myth and a sensation, information about which is too little to draw unambiguous conclusions. But one thing can be said with certainty: no matter how much truth there is in published sources, such an ambitious idea in itself undoubtedly existed in the ranks of not only Soviet, but also American scientists.