Searching for the Slavic Soul

Computer-generated voiceover for this Substack post

I’ve done my best to provide a phonetic transliteration, but—as is often the case—Slavic words and names are still prone to mispronunciation by the AI reader.

You can find the original post with correct spelling and formatting here:

https://witia.substack.com

In this episode: summary of pages 418 to 472, discussing Slavic beliefs related to the sun, the moon, Venus, the stars, the clouds and the rainbow.

Caveats:

This entire third season of Searching for the Slavic Soul is a detailed summary of Kazimierz Moszyński’s monumental work Kultura Duchowa Słowian (Spiritual Culture of the Slavs). Everything I present in these episodes comes directly from Moszyński’s research and analysis. Whenever I add my own thoughts or commentary, I will clearly mark them as such.

When Moszyński speaks of “the Slavs,” he is referring to the pre-industrial rural Slavic populations he studied through fieldwork at the beginning of the 20th century. So whenever I say “the Slavs did this” or “among the Slavs it was common that…”, I am also referring to those same pre-industrial rural communities, not to all Slavs throughout history or to modern Slavic people in general.

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Links:

Episode 1 of season 3 (discussing the planets and the stars)

https://witia.substack.com/p/the-counting-of-time

Translated fragment from Urbańczyk with examples of prayers to the sun

https://witia.substack.com/p/the-idea-of-one-god

Episode 17 of season 1 (the magic of rainbow)

https://witia.substack.com/p/episode-17-rainbow-phobia-cc7

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Witia's substack:

https://witia.substack.com

Witia's email:

[email protected]

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Artwork for this episode is picture of Мирославль/Mirosławl, where there used to lived a czarownica responsible for kidnapping Venus. Photo by Богдан Левчук (https://maps.google.com/maps/contrib/106800570626115279427)

Computer-generated voiceover for this Substack post

I’ve done my best to provide a phonetic transliteration, but—as is often the case—Slavic words and names are still prone to mispronunciation by the AI reader.

You can find the original post with correct spelling and formatting here:

https://witia.substack.com/p/rodnovery-101-theophany

Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages is not a long book (around 170 pages), but it is source-rich and, at times, quite dense and difficult to read. I usually “read” books in electronic format using a TTS app, so I can listen to them while walking my dog, driving, or cleaning. With this particular book, however, I found I was unable to do so. I kept losing the thread and had to constantly rewind and re-listen to previous sentences and paragraphs just to understand what I was hearing. Eventually I gave up and decided to read the book the old-fashioned way: sitting down with a cup of tea and (somewhat less old-fashioned) an e-paper tablet on my lap. And I do not regret the less-than-usual productive time spent with this book.

I found Bylina’s work unique in that it examines Pagan influences on the religiousness of Central and Eastern Europe from the perspective of regular people. He does this by mining the reports of the elites—scholars, bishops, preachers, and theologians—as sources to investigate the actual attitudes and practices of the common folk. The volume of sources he analyses is absolutely mind-blowing: Bylina combed through archives of witchcraft trials, sermons (especially parish-level ones), synodal statutes, visitation protocols, and theological tracts, searching for what ordinary people of the late Middle Ages actually knew and thought about the religion they were supposedly following.

Spoiler alert: more often than not, the religion the common people were following was not really Christianity.

The book clearly shows how the Christianisation of Central and Eastern Europe was really just a long-running game of whack-a-mole. The Church kept trying to eradicate Pagan beliefs and practices, yet it essentially kept failing — until it often gave up the fight and instead incorporated elements of Pagan tradition into Christian ritual and everyday devotion. What I find particularly hilarious is that, according to the sources Bylina examines, the Christianisation of Pagans more often than not amounted to little more than getting them baptised and making them memorise one to three prayers. There were barely any attempts to explain actual Christian doctrine — including the Church’s point of view on things like animism or magic. This resulted in many “Christians” confidently reciting the Hail Mary during clearly Pagan rituals of healing or protective magic, all while being 100% certain they were being good Christians — because whatever magic they performed, they did it “in the name of Jesus.”

Reading Bylina’s book from the perspective of a Pagan, it is basically a monograph explaining how Slavic Pagan tradition survived over 1,000 years of Christianisation. It also clearly demonstrates why Slavic folk customs — particularly those from the less “civilised” (fewer roads, fewer churches, less contact with the clergy) parts of Slavdom — are the way to go when attempting to reconstruct the beliefs of our Slavic Pagan ancestors.

To summarise: Religiousness in the Late Middle Ages is not a book that will teach you anything new about how to follow Slavic Native Faith. It will not even give you any groundbreaking context on this or that aspect of Rodnovery. But it will provide you with a very thorough and historically grounded explanation of why reconstructing Slavic Paganism in the 21st century makes sense — particularly if you base your reconstruction on the customs preserved in Slavic folklore. Besides, once you find the time to actually sit down and focus on reading it, you will gain a new appreciation for actual, high-quality scholarly research, which will hopefully allow you to fine-tune your fakelore detector even more accurately.

In this episode: summary of pages 265 to 298, discussing basic rules and types of Slavic magic

Caveats:

This entire third season of Searching for the Slavic Soul is a detailed summary of Kazimierz Moszyński’s monumental work Kultura Duchowa Słowian (Spiritual Culture of the Slavs). Everything I present in these episodes comes directly from Moszyński’s research and analysis. Whenever I add my own thoughts or commentary, I will clearly mark them as such.

When Moszyński speaks of “the Slavs,” he is referring to the pre-industrial rural Slavic populations he studied through fieldwork at the beginning of the 20th century. So whenever I say “the Slavs did this” or “among the Slavs it was common that…”, I am also referring to those same pre-industrial rural communities, not to all Slavs throughout history or to modern Slavic people in general.

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Links:

Translations from chapter 9 (the practice of ecstasy):

Nestinari:

https://witia.substack.com/p/nestinari

Khlysty:

https://witia.substack.com/p/khlysts

Rusalii/călușari:

https://witia.substack.com/p/rusaliicalusari-healing-dances

Season 1, episode 11 (on Slavic demonology):

https://witia.substack.com/p/episode-11-its-not-slavic-to-be-a-624

Season 3 episode 4 (on Slavic medicine):

https://witia.substack.com/p/till-cure-or-death

Season 3, episode 2 (in Slavic ways of knowing):

https://witia.substack.com/p/fallen-clouds

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Witia's substack:

https://witia.substack.com

Witia's email:

[email protected]

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Artwork for this episode is a drawing (by Moszyński) of a sieve used in divination, taken from Kultra Duchowa.

Music: The Meaning by Dark Fantasy Studio

Computer-generated voiceover for this Substack post

I’ve done my best to provide a phonetic transliteration, but—as is often the case—Slavic words and names are still prone to mispronunciation by the AI reader.

You can find the original post with correct spelling and formatting, as well as with all the Moszyński's comments here:

https://witia.substack.com/p/rusaliicalusari-healing-dances

Computer-generated voiceover for this Substack post

I’ve done my best to provide a phonetic transliteration, but—as is often the case—Slavic words and names are still prone to mispronunciation by the AI reader.

You can find the original post with correct spelling and formatting, as well as with all the Moszyński's comments here:

https://witia.substack.com/p/khlysts

Computer-generated voiceover for this Substack post

I’ve done my best to provide a phonetic transliteration, but—as is often the case—Slavic words and names are still prone to mispronunciation by the AI reader.

You can find the original post with correct spelling and formatting, as well as with all the Moszyński's comments here:

https://witia.substack.com/p/nestinari

In this episode: summary of pages 298 to 348 discussing 2 remain types of Slavic magic, details of Slavic protective magic and of czary (spell-casting)

Caveats:

This entire third season of Searching for the Slavic Soul is a detailed summary of Kazimierz Moszyński’s monumental work Kultura Duchowa Słowian (Spiritual Culture of the Slavs). Everything I present in these episodes comes directly from Moszyński’s research and analysis. Whenever I add my own thoughts or commentary, I will clearly mark them as such.

When Moszyński speaks of “the Slavs,” he is referring to the pre-industrial rural Slavic populations he studied through fieldwork at the beginning of the 20th century. So whenever I say “the Slavs did this” or “among the Slavs it was common that…”, I am also referring to those same pre-industrial rural communities, not to all Slavs throughout history or to modern Slavic people in general.

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Links:

On the superpower of parents:

S2E2:

https://witia.substack.com/p/maps-of-meaning-bonds-of-blood

S2E3:

https://witia.substack.com/p/shadow-work-with-an-axe

-------------------------------

Witia's substack:

https://witia.substack.com

Witia's email:

[email protected]

-------------------------------

Artwork for this episode is picture of Slavic symbols from Moszyński’s Kultura Duchowa

Music: The Meaning by Dark Fantasy Studio

Computer-generated voiceover for this Substack post

I’ve done my best to provide a phonetic transliteration, but—as is often the case—Slavic words and names are still prone to mispronunciation by the AI reader.

You can find the original post with correct spelling and formatting here:

https://witia.substack.com/p/rodnovery-101-slavic-pagan-state