168-535: Anastasianism ( Russian : Анастасианство, Анастасийство, Анастасиизм) or the Ringing Cedars (Звенящие Кедры; also "Jingling Cedars") falls into the category of (right-wing) esotericism and considers itself to be a new religious movement , often classified as New Age , that started in central Russia in 1997 and has since spread across the world. Ringing Cedars' Anastasians are sometimes categorised by scholars as part of Rodnovery (Slavic Neopaganism), and often as
336-649: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
504-471: A modern Pagan movement of their own. The Anastasians also define their life conception as Russian Vedism (Русский Ведизм) and themselves as Vedrussians (ведруссы), and Anastasianism has therefore often been classified among the various self-styled "Vedic" religions arising in post- Soviet Russia. The movement is closely linked to right-wing extremists and antisemitic conspiracy theorists in some countries: German constitutional protection authorities classify
672-510: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
840-422: A "means of self-realisation". Besides Megre's books, Anastasians draw from a variety of sources and authors, including B. A. Rybakov , V. Y. Propp , V. A. Chudinov, S. V. Zharni. Anastasians also organise pilgrimages to various sites that they consider to be holy, where they believe they may communicate with the ancestors and with God through meditation. These "places of power" are considered places of origin of
1008-405: A "new mankind" (нового человека, novogo cheloveka ), harmonious and perfect, which will overcome the decadent existing civilisation. According to Megre, when a man lives in harmony with his own kin a "love space" (пространство любви, prostranstvo lyubvi ) is established as a field where God is present , immanent , and which constitutes a "Heaven on Earth", where kindred people grow together with
1176-470: A "religion" but more correctly as a "culture of the way of life". Megre's books often make reference to specifically "Slavic" traditions, and most Anastasians identify the "Paganism" of Megre's books as the pre-Christian Slavic religion . Some scholars regard Anastasianism as part of Rodnovery (Slavic Neopaganism), as both have spread through the creation of a new society of ecovillages throughout Russia (and beyond), while other scholars distinguish between
1344-483: A belief that a divine self can be discovered within each individual. General aims are self-growth, physical healing and success in helping people to reach a higher consciousness , both in regards to the individual and to the collective unconscious . Commonalities between modern paganism and New Age can be found in their shared eclecticism and absence of central authorities and dogma, something that makes them atypical among new religious movements. Instead of being led by
1512-488: A charismatic leader and wanting to separate themselves from their surrounding society, both movements exist through decentralised networks of people, organisations, media projects, events and small communities. They have some terminology in common, tend to value creativity and imagination highly, and adherents may share interests in subjects like Native American and aboriginal cultures, reincarnation or shamanism . Modern paganism and New Age have similar dynamics between
1680-503: A direct involvement with the works of nature. Many Anastasian settlements have established their own schools. Ozhiganova compared the educational ideal of the Anastasians to that of the primitivists , especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau who in Emile, or On Education criticised urban life as "an abyss for the human race" where "races perish or degenerate over time" and advocated a renewal through
1848-684: A distinction between older versions of modern paganism and a "New Age variety". In the latter he includes Wicca, especially the forms established in the United States since the 1960s, and the Goddess movement. He addresses a contention made by the American Wiccan Aidan A. Kelly , that modern paganism "parallels the New Age movement in some ways, differs sharply from it in others, and overlaps it in some minor ways"; this argument, according to Hanegraaff,
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#17330847102952016-449: A false impression of homogeneity. Pearson, whose doctoral dissertation was about Wicca, says a part of the explanation lies in a failure to acknowledge how terminology is used differently depending on the context; for example how the terms "Wicca" and "traditional witchcraft" are understood differently in British and American discussions. Pearson responded to Heelas in 1998 and argued against
2184-571: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Modern paganism and New Age Modern paganism and New Age are eclectic new religious movements with similar decentralised structures but differences in their views of history, nature, and goals of the practitioner. Modern pagan movements, which often have roots in 18th- and 19th-century cultural movements, seek to revive or be influenced by historical pagan beliefs. New Age teachings emerged in
2352-584: A fundamental level. History is regarded as an endless cycle of death and rebirth. The New Age view of history generally has an evolutionary teleology. New Agers understand history as a progression of significantly different ages and focus on ways to shape the future which they believe will be characterised by a higher consciousness. Instead of seeking to be tradition-bound like modern pagans, New Agers are typically oriented towards an eclectic and new spirituality. Immanent theology often distinguishes modern pagan movements from New Age movements. For modern pagans,
2520-522: A holistic picture", given that, despite being undergirded by the shared framework represented by Megre's books, each community develops its own varying beliefs. Studying the beliefs of the Anastasian community Inberen ("Ginger"), in Sargatsky District , Omsk Oblast , the oldest and largest Anastasian settlement in Russia, they found that the members, apart from Megre's books, drew religious beliefs from
2688-613: A holy site in Tverai . Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of
2856-479: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
3024-572: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
3192-463: A lifetime of about five hundred and fifty years accumulated and never dispersed a great amount of energy. When they reach this age, they emit a barely audible ringing to give a sign to humans to take them, cut them down and use their energy for the benefit of the Earth. According to Megre's books, if the ringing cedars are not cut down within three years, they stop ringing and they begin to burn internally from
3360-607: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it
3528-460: A mutual convergence of New Age and Neopaganism , and they defined it as "one of the most successful and large-scale projects in the field of alternative spirituality in modern Russia". Vladimir Megre's The Ringing Cedars of Russia manuals define the ideas they expound as " Vedism " and " Paganism ", implying that the latter is a continuation of the former, and at the same time they explain that Paganism, and even more so Vedism, may not be defined as
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#17330847102953696-553: A new web of blood relations. The "love space" is always a both transcendent and immanent space, where an individual may be reborn: the Anastasians believe in reincarnation , that it may be consciously planned, and that it mainly occurs within the kinship lineage and its spatial dimension because all reality and humans themselves are energy of thought, and therefore ancestors may reincarnate in the same lineage that they produced if they are remembered, thought and loved by their descendants. The soul constantly returns to its living relatives in
3864-675: A person in a state of love. That energy of radiance reflects into the planets above him in a short particle of a second, comes back to Earth again and gives life to everything that is alive. [...] Dark radiation emanates from a person who is in a state of evil feelings. Dark radiation cannot go up and gets into the depths of the Earth. Reflected from the bowels, it returns to the surface in the form of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, wars. In order to be respectful towards other forms of life, Anastasians try to eschew any form of killing, and therefore they adopt vegetarian , vegan , and sometimes raw food diets, and wear clothes made of natural materials. In
4032-516: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in
4200-575: A religious category that included ancient Greek and ancient Roman religions . It overlaps with the Germanic-language word heathen which carries on the meaning of the Greek word ethnikós , meaning "of a [foreign] people". Discourses about surviving or returning paganism have existed throughout the modern period and explicit attempts to re-establish pagan religions in Europe have taken place since at least
4368-511: A settlement, in an ecological settlement, that is, having settled on the earth, suddenly feel that it is necessary. Games, dances, songs — they need them! The ancestral memory wakes up and demands them. The books of Vladimir Megre make reference to various ancient traditions defined as "pre- Russian Revolution ", "pre-Christian Slavic", and "Vedrussian". These practices, according to the Anastasians, have not necessarily to be reconstructed ancient practices, but they may be innovated or invented as what
4536-570: A super-consciousness and a balancing principle. According to York, modern paganism and New Age began to become more similar in the 1990s, as modern pagans more frequently adopted panentheistic views, which combine the beliefs in immanence and transcendence, while New Agers embraced ideas such as holistic science and the Gaia hypothesis, making the movements more receptive to each other's perspectives. A 2001 book review in Publishers Weekly described
4704-546: A way of life consisting in the cultivation of Rod (Род, literally "Generator") — God conceived as continuous "Generation", "Nature" —, which has been preserved over the centuries in its purest form by Russians and volkhvs (shamans) who escaped the Christianisation of Kievan Rus' fleeing to Siberia — a Christianisation which was decided by the ruling elites in order to disrupt the relational ties within society and of human society with nature, with ancestors and gods of
4872-504: A wiseman, a deity in connection with the supreme God. For achieving this goal, it is necessary that the child is raised in an ancestral homestead and in the natural environment, not surrounded by artificial objects and toys; the attention of the child should be occupied with natural activities such as raking up hay, playing with animals, planting seeds and saplings, and not distracted with "meaningless and even harmful communication with man-made objects". As every animal and every blade of grass
5040-505: Is "dissolved" in nature and each "love space" is a parcel of God. In the kinship homestead, the concretisation of the "love space", a man is capable of building a house with natural materials, growing plants and domesticating animals, creating an ecosystem. As such it is perceived as a holy land, a microcosm reflecting the macrocosm , wherein individuals may "co-create" with kindred people and with God. According to Anastasians' own experiences reported by Julia O. Andreeva and Rasa Pranskevičiūtė,
5208-527: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,
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5376-475: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under
5544-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of
5712-607: Is a human, and she would have given birth to a son and a daughter from him, named Vladimir and Anasta, who would be living with their mother in Siberia and would have spiritual abilities like her. The scholar Anna Ozhiganova reported to have "never met" any Anastasian doubting that Anastasia truly exists as a woman living in the Siberian forests, but that many consider Megre's works to be an imperfect version of Anastasia's original teachings. Anastasia, especially in her name meaning "resurrection",
5880-593: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this
6048-407: Is also seen as personifying the tree of life , representing the never-ending spiritual flow of life emanated by God of which all entities, and men themselves, are part, the kins representing the branches of this never-ending whole; it also implies that in truth there is no eternal death, but eternal life and rebirth. The theme of the "ringing trees" is central to the Anastasian system of beliefs, and
6216-488: Is based on a selective view of New Age and possibly an expression of apologia for modern paganism. Agreeing with York's descriptions of the similarities and differences between the movements, Hanegraaff says their complicated relationship makes modern paganism "a special, relatively clearly circumscribed subculture within [New Age]". Heelas, in his book from 1996, points to the psychological interpretation of theology in New Age teachings, where gods are viewed as projections of
6384-485: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to
6552-613: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There
6720-443: Is characterised by immanence and thus connects the divine to the natural world. Religious practices vary in origin and execution, but typically revolve around ceremonies and have a focus on community. New Age is an umbrella term for an eclectic set of beliefs and techniques that emerged or became more prominent during the counterculture of the 1960s . It receives its name from the idea that human consciousness has changed with
6888-466: Is emphasised, and well explained in Megre's books even with the description of the childbirth rite of the ancient Vedrus, while medical support in childbirth is completely rejected as the "main crime of civilisation against humanity", as "it is a vivid illustration of the loss of ability in women of the generative instinct, and the loss in modern people of the knowledge not only of the primary sources, but also of
Ringing Cedars' Anastasianism - Misplaced Pages Continue
7056-555: Is extremely harmful to the body, only a few practised a raw food diet, and some supplemented their diet with eggs, milk and fish. They also abhorred smoking and the consumption of alcoholic drinks . The Anastasians also propose "traditional" values antagonistic towards the "wrong" values of modern Western lifestyle; they "do not want to compromise on specific questions like gender equality and capitalist economy". Anastasians believe that males and females are naturally different and should be raised according to their different natural roles:
7224-502: Is heavily influenced by New Age in its individualism and element of commercialism, which he exemplifies with commercial spell books. The Gaia hypothesis , which was proposed in the 1970s and understands the Earth as a living being, has influenced both modern pagan and New Age practitioners. Among modern pagans, it has had most impact on the Goddess movement , where Gaia is venerated as the earth mother ; in New Age, Gaia has been defined as
7392-484: Is in connection with the universe, they help the child to "realise the essence of the universe and of himself within it". The parents should also upbring children with good attitudes and exposing them to good thoughts. Children are a frequent subject featured in Anastasian works of art, where they are represented in the kinship homestead doing natural activities, often representing specific quotes from Megre's books. Anastasians pay great attention to health, and especially to
7560-428: Is inconsistent and less of a defining feature. New Age practices usually take the form of relationships between specialists and clients and often involve meditation. Placing less emphasis on serving a community, the primary focus in New Age teachings is on personal growth, especially the potential for an individual to reach a higher level of consciousness, and the ultimate goal is often to facilitate this shift. Beyond
7728-563: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially
7896-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which
8064-488: Is often understood as distinct from ancient religions, although some scholars have categorised paganism as a generic religious category. The religious studies scholar Michael York advocates the latter approach and says that despite the diverse interpretations of modern paganism, there are general traits that can be summarised as an ideal type . Modern pagans typically attribute wisdom and insight to past cultures, especially those of pre-Christian times. Modern pagan theology
8232-422: Is really important is that they are not performed thoughtlessly and mechanically as an empty form, but that they are invested with meaning, with semantic value. The meaning of the tradition is precisely to do things as if they were done "for the first time", as the "first actions". Andreeva defines Anastasian traditionalism as one who "accepts innovations and adapts to the surrounding reality" as traditions have to be
8400-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and
8568-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to
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#17330847102958736-576: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in
8904-528: Is that Nature materialises thanks to the thoughts of God. God invented grass, trees and animals. These are the thoughts of God, and through communication with them, we communicate with God. And this is not an esoteric position. [...] Thoughts are read with great attention by a person with good imagination. [...] In this way there is an opportunity to speak with God. In Anastasian doctrines, the supreme God expresses itself as many gods or deities , who are "more or less concentrated energy clots in space", and influence
9072-400: Is the "materialised thought of God", or the expression of the "divine power of God". All living things, and superior living beings or gods, are believed to be thoughts of God, and therefore by communicating with them humanity may communicate with God. The "divine thought" or "divine design" is reflected in the eternal cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death and rebirth, as well as in the cycle of
9240-486: Is the manifestation of God, and it reads, and is actively shaped, by the thought and word of humans. A Lithuanian Anastasian defined God as follows: God is Nature – a twitter of birds, the wind, a rustle of trees... everything that is in Nature is the living book of sensual information, and much more: he touches us through Nature. God is an energetic entity, and everything is born of its essence. Anastasians believe that nature
9408-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
9576-461: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population
9744-966: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian
9912-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in
10080-555: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of
10248-615: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as
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#173308471029510416-575: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
10584-638: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
10752-400: The archetype of the perfected human being. According to the books written by Vladimir Megre, she received the knowledge reported in the books themselves directly from the supreme God, through the ancestors. Megre describes her as a prophetess with various spiritual abilities, as being able to understand all the languages of the world, as being aware by intuitive knowledge of all what happens in
10920-510: The emic and etic —the perspectives of the practitioner and the outside observer. The religious studies scholar Kocku von Stuckrad attributes this to the second half of the 20th century, when many European and North American intellectuals were sceptical of narratives that held modern Europe as superior and tied European culture to Christian values . This created both academic and popular interest in marginalised and ambiguous parts of European culture, history and identity, which became widespread as
11088-608: The occulture —the spiritual undercurrents of the West—and likens them to two different streams that merge at some points. Modern pagan movements in the United Kingdom , the United States and Australia have been influenced by ambitions to create individualistic and egalitarian communities, which is less prominent elsewhere in Europe. Especially in the United States, the modern pagan phenomenon largely emerged alongside New Age in
11256-417: The "Vedrus", an ancient kin who populated Eurasia and lived in full awareness of God and harmony with the cosmos, presenting them not merely as progenitors of the modern Russians and Slavs but of the peoples of the whole world. God is Rod , i.e. continuous "Generation", "Nature", and the reconstruction of society on the basis of the "ancestral", "tribal", or "genealogical" (родовой, rodovoy ) community,
11424-451: The "gnostic–pagan divide", where New Age teachings are part of a gnostic tradition that de-emphasises or negates the body and the physical existence. "Generally speaking, whereas we have seen that much in the New Age is explicitly epistemologically individualistic, focusing on enabling the individual to 'go within' and to discover the 'Higher Self', in Paganism there is a greater emphasis on
11592-531: The "isolated modern man". Rituals for the sacralisation of the "love spaces" are crucial for most believers, a sacralisation which means making the "love space" a place where nature, the thought of God, is ideally free to unfold itself. Various ritual activities are aimed at awakening the "ancestral memory" and the channels of reincarnation ; they may include meditation , singing songs and playing musical instruments, composing and reciting poems, and dancing in circle. Rituals of purification, performed in preparation for
11760-433: The "love space"; as the latter is a parcel of God, the soul always returns to its divine source, to its "paradise" (рай, ray ), in both transcendent and immanent terms. The Anastasians believe in the interconnectedness of all being, and therefore they greatly emphasise the moral responsibility of individuals and humanity towards the surrounding world; they believe that human thoughts and feelings actively, magically influence
11928-433: The 15th century. Positive self-identification with the term pagan has frequently been combined with criticism of Christianity and of organised religion in general, and became more common in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many modern pagan new religious movements have roots in the cultural revival and national independence movements of these centuries. There is no universally accepted definition of modern paganism; it
12096-548: The 1990s and 2000s, increasing exposure in popular culture of Wicca —a modern pagan movement inspired by Celtic culture and the witch-cult hypothesis —with examples such as the 1996 American film The Craft , led to mutual influence between modern paganism and New Age. It helped to create and popularise a lifestyle-oriented form of Wicca, represented by writers such as Silver RavenWolf and Scott Cunningham , which primarily became popular among teenage girls. Ezzy says this version of Wicca, which he calls "popularised Witchcraft ",
12264-508: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as
12432-408: The 20th century, and often incorporate older scholarship in their teachings. Although both movements are diverse and without central dogma, scholars have described major differences in their general tendencies. Whereas modern pagans commonly attribute wisdom to past cultures, New Agers believe in the coming of an improved human consciousness . Modern pagan theology is typically immanent and connects
12600-546: The Anastasan settlement Blagodati ("Grace") in Pereslavl-Zalessky , Yaroslavl Oblast of Russia, studied by Anna Ozhiganova in 2015, the overwhelming majority of the settlers were vegetarian (though some ate eggs laid by their own chickens), and some of them practised a raw food diet. The scholar Artemy A. Pozanenko, in the settlements that he studies, found that while almost all Anastasians were vegetarian, believing that meat
12768-467: The Anastasian belief, their content was transmitted to Megre by Anastasia, a prophetess, "bearer and keeper of ancient knowledge" living in Siberia . The books do not expound doctrines in a systematic way, and are characterised by "adogmatism and variability". A book giving more clearly teachings of religious mythology is the sixth one in the series, The Book of Kin . This book expounds the history and wisdom of
12936-404: The Anastasians. Anastasianism proposes a whole new model of social organisation, that of the "kinship homesteads", many of which constitute larger "kinship settlements". The Anastasian movement has become one of the most successful new religious movements in Russia, and from there it has then spread to other Slavic countries, broader Eastern Europe , and communities have also been established in
13104-465: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
13272-519: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
13440-578: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
13608-515: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
13776-602: The Ringing Cedars' books, Anastasia teaches a cyclical eschatology, according to which time develops through three phases: a "Vedic" (of vision) period when humanity lives in harmony with Heaven; an "Imagic" (of image) period when knowledge starts to be codified and concentrates in the hands of progressively fewer holy men; and an "Occultic" (of hiding) period in which knowledge is totally "hidden" and humanity's consciousness severely downgrades. The Vedic "Golden Age" lasted 990 thousand years, during which humanity directly possessed
13944-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated
14112-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from
14280-496: The Siberian taiga , whom Megre met during one of his trade expeditions. The books have been translated in twenty languages and have sold millions of copies. They offer a holistic worldview, teaching about humanity's relationship with nature, God and the universe, the creation of the world, the power of thought in modelling reality and the future, a cyclical eschatology , the relationship between men and women, and education. Family, tradition and environmentalism are core values for
14448-454: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
14616-460: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of
14784-527: The West. In Russia, Anastasians have faced the hostility of the Russian Orthodox Church . The two names of the movement are explainable as follows: "Anastasia" (Ἀναστασία, Anastasía ), from anástasis (ἀνάστασις), is a Greek word meaning "resurrection", and "incorruption", according to the Anastasians implying the reconnection with the never-ending spiritual flow of life emanating from God, visualised as
14952-491: The accumulated energy, dying painfully over the course of years. For this reason, the Anastasians try to find and save the ringing cedars. It is also believed that under the canopy of any cedar is good to practise meditation and easy to receive divine revelations. Anastasian doctrines about the crisis and degeneration of modern civilisation are inspired by thinkers of the Traditionalist School , such as René Guénon . In
15120-606: The ancestors of more or less all modern kins; the spirits of the ancestors are believed to reside in these places, their "paradises". Sites important to Russian Anastasians include megalithic buildings like the dolmens of the North Caucasus , and sites on the Black Sea coast, especially Gelendzhik in Krasnodar Krai , and other places like Gelendzhik characterised by Siberian cedar groves. Lithuanian Anastasians make pilgrimage to
15288-488: The ancient Vedrus, and knowledge should also be transmitted from generation to generation during the major holidays, viewed as moments of "information exchange". As the ideal school model, Megre proposes that of the "ancestral school" (родовой школой, rodovoy shkoloy ) first established in 1994 in Tekos, Krasnodar Krai , by Mikhail Shchetinin, which follows the same ideal of a vocational education held in natural settings and through
15456-674: The awareness of God and lived in perfect harmony with the universe, and the bearers of righteousness and of the highest wisdom were the Vedrus, who populated an area spanning from the lands near the North Pole to the Mediterranean Sea . Then came the Imagic era, lasting nine thousand years, when the highest knowledge was no longer directly perceived and was therefore codified into figurative means and transmitted by castes of priests who reincarnated over
15624-654: The basic tendencies of New Age, as described by Wouter Hanegraaff , are the millenarian idea of a new age, the mixing of psychology and religion , evolutionist beliefs in regards to teleology , pedagogy and creativity, a quest for "wholeness" and weak reliance on worldly experiences. New Age teachings generally favour transcendence of the physical existence and de-emphasise material concerns. Adherents often combine and mix practices according to individual needs and interests: they may use techniques such as channeling , visualisation , positive thinking, alternative healing methods and meditation . Some practices are based on
15792-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter
15960-607: The central idea of the Anastasian movement, is proposed for all the peoples of the world. The seventh book The Energy of Life then defines Anastasia herself not just as a "Vedrussian", but as a "Pagan" (язычница; the Russian word is more accurately rendered as "Gentile") of the Russian Slavic tradition. Regarding the ancient Vedrus and their descendants, Anastasia, in The Book of Kin (p. 93), says: Quite recently, just five thousand years ago, our people were still happily awake in
16128-511: The common New Age metaphor of a battle between the forces of light and darkness, arguing that darkness represents a necessary part of the natural world which should not be viewed as evil . New Agers criticise modern pagans for placing too much emphasis on the material world and for lacking a proper spiritual perspective. There has been New Age criticism of how some modern pagans embrace extravagant subcultures, such as adopting dark colour schemes and imagery. People from both movements have accused
16296-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
16464-659: The counterculture and youth culture of the baby boom generation , and there is significant overlap between the movements. According to the religious studies scholar Sarah M. Pike , who wrote a monograph about modern paganism and New Age in the United States, the movements share a high degree of religious personalisation and tend towards apocalypticism , and their relationship can be understood through their place in American religious and social history. American modern pagan and New Age communities are often connected to social change movements, promoting sexual liberation , feminism and
16632-589: The counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. A complex relationship continues to exist between academic study and practice in modern paganism and New Age. Older scholarship such as the Great Goddess hypothesis and Jung's psychological theories continue to have impact on religious practices, new academic terms are adopted by practitioners, and when scholars use a term that originated in an emic milieu, it might be taken as legitimisation of that term. Modern pagans and New Agers typically have contrasting views of history and
16800-562: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language
16968-417: The day and the seasons of the year; God is the spiral of time expressing itself in physical (natural) cycles, it is the year itself, and the "Kingdom of God" is not a transcendent dimension or an afterlife but is immanent and attainable in the physical dimension, "Heaven on Earth" is attainable in the "here and now". According to the words of another Anastasian: A very important thing, according to Anastasia,
17136-401: The doctrines of a variety of Rodnover organisations and authors, from Aleksandr Khinevich's Ynglism , from Roerichism , and even from Orthodox Christian and Tibetan Buddhist sources. Anastasianism may be described as a nature religion , since Anastasian spirituality emphasises the sacredness of nature or generation, conceived as manifested divinity and as the means of communication with
17304-481: The elementary culture of feelings". The reasons for Anastasians' refusal of medical treatments for illness and childbirth are primarily esoteric, as they believe that medical intervention violates the integrity of the body and the spiritual essence of the human being. The education of children should contribute, first of all, to the development of the speed of thought, through a system of questions and independently found answers, and then it should be vocational as among
17472-468: The environment as the direct link to the supreme God, justifying the confiscation of all land and the enslavement , and exploitation through taxation and trade, of the population. Anastasianism has been studied by scholars of religion as a new religious movement , a nature religion classified as New Age and Neopagan . The scholar Julia O. Andreeva noted that Anastasianism is a movement difficult to define because of its "blurred boundaries". Similarly,
17640-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,
17808-451: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or
17976-477: The forefront of the rebirth of a Golden Age, and their appeal to go "back to nature" implies to go back to the original awareness of God and to reawaken the connection with the ancestors. These ideas are expressed in Ringing Cedars' books as follows: When we find our inner charms, how to awake our inner ancestors [...] we are born as young gods. The Anastasians believe that with their practices of good childbirth, good education and good living, they are giving rise to
18144-493: The former should be taught how to build the house, the stove, the shed, and so on; the latter should be taught how to create a harmonious family environment, how to know herbs and to heal. As the aim of the kin is its own perpetuation as a lineage into the future, the cultivation of the offspring, the raising of children, takes a great importance in Anastasianism, as it is the success or failure in raising children that determines
18312-405: The future of the kin and the broader community. Megre's books, Anastasia's teachings, contain a lot of instructions on how to raise children: a child is a perfect man, and the most perfect being in the universe, pure and blameless, who in the first nine years of existence is capable of "independently cognise the essence of the universe and the meaning of human existence, having the potential to become
18480-409: The future. Modern pagans turn to religious views from the past which they try to revive or, often, to reinvent. Particularly in Europe, modern pagan movements sometimes claim to have an unbroken lineage that can be traced to ancient times. Their view of history is usually based on myths and images derived from past cultures, existing traditions, or nature, and they do not anticipate a future change at
18648-672: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
18816-446: The generations. The Occultic era, lasting just one thousand years, is the current epoch in which the highest knowledge has become completely hidden, "occult", and humanity has degenerated and is prey to dark forces. According to Anastasian doctrines, the last descendants of the Vedrus inhabited the territory of modern-day Russia, and they are about to start a new disclosure of the original Vedic wisdom. Anastasians believe that they are at
18984-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and
19152-617: The groups that perform them and may involve ancestor veneration or attempts to communicate with spirits. Modern pagans tend to place emphasis on serving a community and many movements in Europe involve ethnic pride and have been connected to nationalism . Although the ethnic dimension is less prevalent in the United States, it is generally viewed as controversial for American modern pagans of European descent to adopt traditions and motifs from non-European cultures. New Age communities sometimes observe and perform rituals during celestial events, but compared to practitioners of modern paganism, this
19320-418: The health of children, often rejecting the treatments of modern medicine, as Anastasian anthropology conceives man as an integral entity, existing only as an inextricable interconnection of the spiritual and the physical. In this vein, many Anastasians practise home birth or birth at sea, body hardening, herbal medicine , treatment with honey and bee products, and refuse vaccines and drugs. Natural childbirth
19488-479: The holidays and the connection with the ancestors, may include bathing in icy water and then jumping three times over a bonfire, as well as walking on hot coals. It is imperative that when a kinship homestead or larger settlement is established, rituals have to be developed within its tradition. An Anastasian, founder of a folklore society, found that such imperative arises spontaneously in the settlers as they recover their "ancestral memory": You see, people living in
19656-510: The human mind. This results in self-sacralisation, which he also attributes to modern paganism and uses as a basis for its inclusion under the New Age umbrella. A number of scholars of modern paganism dispute the categorisation of their field under the umbrella of New Age. According to York, several factors may have contributed to the confusion between the movements, such as their shared status as "outsider heresies" in relation to Western mainstream society and Christianity. Other factors include
19824-517: The ideal types and general tendencies, modern paganism and New Age can exhibit features of each other. New Age materials in particular do not always make a distinction between them. Modern paganism as it exists, according to York, is characterised by confusion between generic and nominal forms, and may incorporate elements of Kabbalism , Freemasonry -derived ceremonial magic , neopythagoreanism and neoplatonism . The religious studies scholar Christopher Partridge describes both movements as parts of
19992-467: The involvement of the Wiccan Miriam "Starhawk" Simos in organised New Age activities, and modern pagans who in the 1980s adopted the metaphor of a "new age", before distancing themselves from New Age terminology in the 1990s. Harrington, who describes herself as a scholar of Wicca, attributes Faivre's and Hanegraaff's categorisation to the breadth of their study of religious subcultures , which creates
20160-530: The maximum – in other words, to live in accordance with the programs which have been put by God. [...] Through Nature you can gain insight into God's purpose. In the Anastasian movement the family or extended kin ( rod ) is conceived as an entity, embodied as the "love space" and its ancestral homestead, whose aim is the projection of itself in the future as a lineage of descendants of its original progenitors. A kin may be constituted by people already related by blood, or by like-minded people who come together to create
20328-409: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on
20496-535: The movement as a right-wing extremist suspect; the State Security Service in Austria also observes it. The movement is based on the series of ten books entitled The Ringing Cedars of Russia written by Vladimir Megre . The knowledge contained in the books is attributed to a beautiful woman named Anastasia, a remarkable woman embodying the natural qualities of mankind without technocratic influence, who dwells in
20664-480: The natural world is at the centre of conceptions of the sacred. They generally promote views of completeness where mind–body dualism is absent and the world is regarded as fully functional. Paul Heelas , York and other scholars say the dominant New Age view is that spiritual truth is more important than material concerns, and this leads to a Manichean dualism where the natural world is viewed as less important, as an obstacle or rejected as an illusion. Heelas says
20832-416: The natural world to the divine, whereas New Age proponents favour transcendence of the physical existence. Modern pagan practices tend to be ceremonial and focus on community, whereas New Age practices are concerned primarily with the personal growth of the individual. Some hybrids between modern paganism and New Age have emerged, especially in the United States where they tend to overlap and be connected to
21000-450: The new social organisation represented by the kinship homesteads helps people to leave the unnatural and decaying urban technocratic system, which they conceive as a close system which smothers human creativity ensnaring it in meaningless behaviours. A Russian Anastasian described her experience of the kinship homestead as follows: [It is] a way to open your inner potential – it is the place where every person can open his inner potential to
21168-516: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of
21336-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to
21504-432: The other of egocentrism and narcissism . Several late 20th-century scholars and religious writers treated modern paganism and the New Age culture as the same phenomenon, or included modern paganism, especially Wicca, under the umbrella of New Age. This was done by some of the leading scholars of the New Age phenomenon, such as Antoine Faivre , Hanegraaff and Heelas. In his 1996 monograph about New Age, Hanegraaff makes
21672-455: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,
21840-501: The other, on that which is external to the self: the planet, the deities and the community." Modern pagan practices can be characterised as striving for long-term continuity, which Pearson contrasts with the focus on reaching specific results that exists in many New Age practices. Among modern pagans, ceremonies are usually central to the religious identity, and seasonal holidays and life passages are ritualised and celebrated in small groups. The ceremonies take different forms depending on
22008-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held
22176-523: The passage of astrological ages , and that the arrival of the Age of Aquarius , which is believed to be the next or current age, will result in a renewal of human spirituality . The term New Age was first used in Theosophical literature and was picked up by post-war UFO religions and other movements that held millenarian beliefs in a coming advancement in human consciousness and understanding. A broader use of
22344-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or
22512-455: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian
22680-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in
22848-479: The post-war American environmental movement . An example of overlap is the annual Starwood Festival , which features modern pagan and New Age activities as parts of a stated goal to be eclectic and inclusive. Some versions of modern Celtic paganism characterise Celtic identity as peripheral and view the ancient Celts as noble savages . This has led to the creation of Celtic-themed pagan music and modern pagan websites where New Age themes are commonplace. In
23016-548: The prerequisite for the mutual exchange of ideas and practices between the three is "the axiological significance of family and kinship values". Andreeva has found that some Anastasians who are more focused on Slavic traditions tend to be dissatisfied with the cosmopolitan and international aspiration of the movement. The books fundamental to the Anastasian movement, deemed the "Bible" of the Russian New Age, are The Ringing Cedars of Russia written by Vladimir Megre. According to
23184-403: The priests who invented the global religions and the modern technocratic system in order to subjugate the consciousness of mankind, hampering men's direct communication with God and projecting instead their consciousness towards the worship of the priests and of the dark forces themselves. Some Anastasians consider Anastasia a deity, or the incarnation of a deity, while some others regard her as
23352-475: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration
23520-466: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,
23688-539: The real world in the territory from the Mediterranean and Black Sea to the extreme northern latitudes [...] We are Asians, Europeans, Russians and even those who recently called themselves Americans, are, in fact, people-gods from the same Vedrussian civilisation. There was a period of life on our planet that is called Vedic. Then, in The Energy of Life (p. 136) Megre says: Your distant, very distant ancestral mother
23856-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed
24024-408: The return to village life and natural education. The Anastasians believe that modern urban life is a system that binds people in unnatural ways of conduct, that it is "a structure that works by itself and distracts a person from nature". Anastasians engage in communal ceremonies and individual rituals and folk traditions, which are deemed "an obligatory component of a full life", necessary to integrate
24192-562: The ringing trees are identified as those of the Siberian cedar ( Pinus sibirica ) species. According to the first of Megre's books, Anastasia : God created the Cedar as an accumulator of the energies of the Cosmos. [...] The cedar receives the energy emanating from a person through the Cosmos, stores it and gives it back at the right time. Anastasians believe that cedars which "ring" are those that during
24360-421: The same social change movements. The presence of the modern pagan movement Wicca in popular culture since the 1990s has contributed to the creation of individualistic and commercialised hybrid forms focused on witchcraft . Differing views of the natural world and spirituality sometimes create friction between the movements. Modern pagans often seek to distance themselves from New Age identity and sometimes use
24528-567: The same time as being more like a "cosmopolitan Neopaganism" framework detached from any specific ethnicity and aiming at the reconstruction of universal archaic ideological concepts and life practices, including "ethnocentric Neopaganisms", that is to say the restoration of the ethnic religions of any specific ethnic group, Slavic or other. Megre's books create equal opportunities for the development and coexistence within Anastasianism of both cosmopolitan Neopaganism, Slavic Neopaganism, and other ethnic Neopaganisms. The "common denominator" that creates
24696-449: The scholars Vladimir B. Yashin and Boris I. Kostin defined it as a "soft-frame movement" fillable with elements drawn from a variety of traditions. The scholar Anna Ozhiganova observed that "the Anastasians themselves, claiming to be the successors of some ancient tradition, consider themselves to be modern Paganism", and researchers, on the other hand, view them as "a variant of the Russian New Age". Yashin and Kostin found Anastasianism to be
24864-512: The search for metaphysical perfection and the view that mankind is malfunctioning are defining features of New Age spirituality, which the sociologist Douglas Ezzy, the sociologist Melissa Harrington and the religious studies scholar Joanne Pearson contrast with modern pagan views. Using sociological classifications of world-affirming and world-rejecting religious movements, York says that modern paganism and New Age represent two rival theologies, and that New Agers in particular tend to underestimate
25032-476: The second half of the 20th century and are characterised by millenarian ideas about spiritual advancement. Since the counterculture of the 1960s , there has been interaction, mutual influence, and often confusion in the popular mind between the movements. Among their commonalities, modern pagan and New Age movements have similar relationships between academic study and practice, take interest in aspects of European culture and history that were marginalised before
25200-438: The supreme God ( Rod ); the scholar Rasa Pranskevičiūtė characterised this vision as pantheistic , and noted how it is a fundamental influence in Anastasians' social project. They stress the importance of harmony, that is to say giving and receiving love and respect, appropriate reciprocal cultivation, good thought and good word, between individual and between the community of individuals and the divinity of all nature, since nature
25368-426: The surrounding world, having the power to affirm or disrupt natural harmony. The surrounding reality is actively shaped by human thought and speech, which is read and realised by the universal mind; therefore it is important that humans have good thoughts and good speech, avoiding any negative and destructive word. Pranskevičiūtė reports the following excerpt from Megre's first book, Anastasia : Radiation emanates from
25536-416: The surrounding world; it is not merely a geographic concept — the actual "ancestral homestead" (родовое поместье, rodovoye pomest'ye ), the land of at least one hectare in size owned and inhabited by the kin —, but it is first of all the web of relationships between kindred people and includes any good creation of the spirit of mankind. The "love space" mirrors the modality of God's work through nature; God
25704-675: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
25872-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to
26040-438: The term "New Age" as an insult. New Agers commonly criticise modern pagans for their emphasis on material concerns. In the 1990s, several scholars studying New Age movements placed modern paganism under the umbrella of New Age, a classification which has been contested by scholars of modern paganism . The word pagan comes from the Latin paganus , which was used by ancient Christian writers, notably Augustine of Hippo , as
26208-524: The term, based on shared interests, milieus and historical links, became established in the 1970s and 1980s. The main precursors and sources of inspiration to concepts within the New Age movement are Theosophy, New Thought and Carl Jung . Other precursors mentioned by scholars include Joachim of Fiore , transcendentalism , Swedenborgianism and Christian Science . Like several of their precursors, New Agers are often interested in Eastern religions . Among
26376-587: The two, identifying two different ideologies underlying them: Slavic Neopaganism primarily emphasises the revival and reinvention of the ancient culture of the Slavs , while Anastasianism primarily develops within the framework of the ideas contained in Megre's books. Both the movements, however, are united in their ecological orientation, and the Anastasian movement is also defined as a wholly environmentalist movement. Yashin and Kostin found Anastasianism to have indeed many points of contact with Slavic Neopaganism, but at
26544-770: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature
26712-421: The universal tree of life of which all entities are part as branchings; "Ringing Cedars" refers to the movement's beliefs about the spiritual qualities of the Siberian cedar ( Pinus sibirica ), a kind of pine. According to the Anastasians, the theme of the "singing trees" or "ringing trees", that is to say trees emitting vibrations transmitting information, is part of an ancient Eurasian and worldwide wisdom,
26880-459: The urban world, and as having the appearance of the typical "Russian beauty", with "golden hair" and "smooth skin". Anastasia would be living in the Siberian taiga as a hermit, and, according to the books, her role would be to instruct humanity about the righteous way of living. She, or her divine form, would have been known by different names in different cultures, for example as Persephone in ancient Greece . However, Megre emphasises that Anastasia
27048-506: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to
27216-453: The view that modern paganism is characterised by self-sacralisation. Some feminist modern pagans share the New Age goal of finding an inner goddess and may refer to Jungian archetypes . This has led some scholars to classify them as part of the New Age movement, which typically describes gods as creations of the human mind and not as discrete entities. Other scholars view such feminist modern pagans as differing from New Agers because they view
27384-508: The views of the American writer Francesca De Grandis as a hybrid of Goddess worship and New Age teachings about self-love, which resulted in "a book on how to worship yourself as a goddess ". Modern pagans frequently seek to distance themselves from New Age identity and some communities use the term "New Age" as an insult. Their recurring criticism of New Age ethos and practice includes accusations of charging too much money, of thinking in simplistic ways and of engaging in escapism. They reject
27552-411: The world on the energetic plane, and in turn the conscience of supreme God is the "unified conscience of all living creatures". God and the many gods are generally held to be impersonal and are not regarded as objects of worship. Megre's books also recognise the existences of "dark forces" associated with the Earth, which emerged when God created it as opposites of his action. These dark forces were used by
27720-463: Was Pagan. She loved and understood nature. She knew the Universe and the meaning of the rising Sun. [...] They were Pagans, they could understand God's thought through its nature. Your distant, very distant ancestral mother and father knew how to make you happy. They knew because they were Pagans. Yashin and Kostin defined Anastasianism as a "kind of puzzle" of communities of which it is "impossible to form
27888-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian
28056-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of
28224-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
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