Yearly Cycle of Slavic Celebrations
Yearly Cycle of Slavic Celebrations – Attempted Reconstruction As a rule, modern Rodnovers use the Gregorian calendar in which the Latin names are substituted with the Slavic ones. The dates of Slavic celebrations come from the Julian (Church) calendar (the new and the old style), however, the timing differences between them are not taken into account. E.g. modern Rodnovers celebrate Veles Day on the Day of St. Blasius, 11th of Feb according to the Gregorian calendar. In the past, the Day of St. Blasius was celebrated on the 11th of Feb of the old style, which corresponds to the 24th of Feb the new style. Rodnovers apply the same rule to most of Slavic celebrations – dates come from the church calendar and names are changed. They explain it by the fact that after the Christianization the Christian celebrations overlapped the pagan ones. That is correct, but it doesn’t mean that reconstruction of the Slavic traditional calendar can be done by only substituting Christian names. A closer look at the folk’s traditional calendar reveals that the overlapping was caused not only by matching dates of celebrations but by semantics of Christian celebrations. Correspondence between names and images of Christian saints and Slavic gods played a significant role too such as Veles/Vlasiy & Juriy/Jarila. Moreover, often pagan rituals are linked to different days of the church calendar. We suggest avoiding linking pagan celebration dates to the church calendar. So, we present our reconstruction of pagan calendar based on yearly natural phenomena and ethnography studies. Spring Traditional spring celebrations are not tightly attached to any particular dates.
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