Their are issues with a person following the faith and having no community backing. I would like to know as a new pagan, how should I venerate, how do I worship my ancestors and the gods? I am lost between these two questions.

Is it acceptable for a person with no Slavic ancestry or heritage to join rodnovery and worship the Slavic gods ?

Hi my brothers and sisters, I’m Martin, and I’m planning to learn the Glagolitic script because of my faith. Do you know any websites or YouTube channels on this topic?

Thanks for your answers

Might require the oversight or blessing of deity, if possible. What are some rituals or offerings I can perform to mayhaps gain anything? I look for preferably Western Slavic or southern Slavic stuff. I know Slavic pagans only do such things for life changing situations and this is one.

Blessing should contain wisdom, duty or diligence.

Hi all!

I’ve been a pagan practitioner for some time now, but recently have wanted to start learning rodnovery.

For sone context, my father’s side of the family comes from the Czech Republic. I’ve grown up slightly in the culture, hearing my grandma speak the language and tell stories about her own grandma, who came to the United States and settled in Ohio. My grandma is really the only family member I’m closest to, and I love spending time with her. She makes houska every christmas, and I am always so grateful to learn about her life. We have done some genealogy, however— everything stops after a certain time period. I have been told that the loss of birth records/census records/etc. was due to the bombing during WW2 on Prague, and because of that, we are unable to get the records going back any further to learn of our ancestors.

I still get an inkling that something wants me to try and connect with them. I’d like to begin studying the religion and honoring my ancestors that I possibly don’t even know about. I’d even love to create an altar space for them.

Any tips for beginners would be wonderful, thank you!

From a educating person, my understanding is thus. The gods are one and many. To pray to Svarog is the same to pray to Veles. Might be the reason why praying to the ancestors is very important to the Rodnover faith. There is Magic in every breath and life in every thing. If you really boil it down even a mountain moves. No roch is in the same place twice. Our ancestors are every where. We just have to find them.

Given what we know of the gods and the spirits, would it be possible to recreate our stories just as our ancestors did before us? If so should we write it down; would it be controversial to do so?

With the advent of science, we now know the reasons begins the phenomenon that could be placed under a gods circle of influence. For what reason do you worship the gods?

As far as comes in the grand scheme, how far along are the efforts to restore the veneration as a whole?

Looking for book recommendations to help me reconnect with my Yugoslavian/Czech/Croatian ancestors.

I just watched Ocean Keltois video on Syncretism vs multi traditionalism, I just had one question. Compared to the west slavs, the east germanic tribes are fairly close in terms of proximity, would it be wise to try to recreat as much as we know through the lense of adding certain aspects of known knowledge of other practices?

I've been looking into rodnovery for a while so I want to start making offerings to my domovoy and ancestors. My family is atheistic and would probably be weirded out if I told them I follow any religion, so I can't build an altair/space to make offerings anywhere outside of my room. I know some people have a rule that you shouldn't build one in the same space you sleep in, so I'm not sure if this is an option. The only offerings I've been able to make we're inside forests so far. Any tips?

hi all, i was wondering if anyone knows of and can recommend texts that have been translated to english? my father taught me polish when i was young but i dont remember enough to be able to read it. thanks!

I am very new to this but I’m gonna make a huge disclaimer

I’m not a believer, however I am interested in learning rodnovery especially with stories, practices, gods, etc.

This is because I’m making Pan-Slavic pantheon lore for a manga. That said, each culture and flavor rodnovery is different and that I’ll like help. I’m willing to take up as many facts, opinions, suggestions, etc for this. I only have some information from Wikipedia. However, because of the scarce resources and information about Slavic tales and gods in general, help is really need. Also I do plan to dm if there are many questions I need to ask on. Anyway I o started with Perun and Mokosh and those are my main priority. Thank you if you are reading this.

I’ve been very interested/have been practicing Eastern European, more specifically Balkan ways of spiritual practice for a little while now. It’s a learning process for sure, but something that has remained constant for about a year now is the honoring of my ancestors. I have a little place set up for them, a candle, an offering dish, and a motanka doll. I try to pray to them everyday, leave offerings weekly, and keep a decent practice devoted to them. Though, I’ve been thinking of changing some things, like adding pictures of my loved ones, changing offerings, etc, and in general leaving more time dedicated for my ancestors. Amongst these ideas of change, I had a thought grace my mind - ‘Can most of, if not all my ancestors even understand me?’ Some of my family comes from the coast of now day Croatia, and the other traces their roots to central Europe, (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia), but I don’t speak any of those languages. I hope to someday at least learn Serbian/Croatian, as my dad is fluent, but currently I definitely don’t know enough to speak it. Do my ancestors even understand what I’m saying when I pray to them? Some of my recent ancestors definitely spoke English, as they grew up here like my mother’s-side of family, but what about my more distant ancestors or the ones who immigrated to America not to long ago and didn’t fully understand English? I never thought of this before, but now makes me nervous that majority of my ancestors might not even know what I’m trying to say/communicate with them. Until I can be fluent in at least one Eastern European language, can I ask my ancestors who were fluent in both their native language and English to commune with the other ancestors? Like my grandfather, who immigrated to America and eventually learned to speak English but also spoke Serbian/Croatian back in his village? Would this be rude of me towards such ancestors like my grandfather, or do you think they would gladly try to commune with those who don’t speak English? Or can all my ancestors magically understand me somehow? I’d like to think they all understand me, but they are human, and humans are very prone to miscommunication naturally, especially if they don’t even speak the same language. Any thoughts and or suggestions would help.

Hi

So im reading "The Book of slavic Paganism" by Perun mountain.

In one chapter its about needles as magical tool and embroidery.

It says at one point: "the ancient practice of cherty, the drawing of protective and powerfull symbols."

Soooo, i'm pretty new in slavic paganism/slavic faith. Im just "reconnection" with the roots of one side of my family.

So i wonder, what is cherty ? Is it compareble to drawing your own sigils? Couldnt find any good sources so far

Thank you for your help in advance :D

Hi,

This may be a slightly long/convoluted question. I apologise in advance.

To provide some background, I am predominantly of Western Slavic descent, with some distant Swedish and Baltic ancestry. My interest in the Native Slavic Faith started in my early teenage years, however only in the past couple of months I have felt a greater calling to dive deeper into research of the topic (I am currently 23 YO).

In the time between the first spark of my interest in the Rodnovery and its recent reigniting, I have already developed certain spiritual practices from other systems. These mainly involve elements of ceremonial magick, among many others. My approach to spirituality has always been pragmatic - if something works and yields results then I keep it, vice versa. I am not so much concerned with ‘ultimate reality’ as Abrahamic religions are. To my understanding many pre-Christian religions operated on a similar basis. I am aware that mixing of pantheons and practices in pagan circles is not generally an issue, providing that UPG is not passed off as having “genuine“ roots in history. From that perspective, I completely understand the need for a reconstructionist approach, however that is not the right approach for me in its entirety.

To cut to the chase, there are certain rituals which I practice on a near daily basis which yield good results and I would like to keep. My main issue is that these often call upon various Hebrew names of God and his angels, which I have always held certain reservations about. I feel like adapting these rituals with the Slavic pantheon would be ideal for my personal practice. However, in the case of the LBRP for example, this would mean I would be “invoking” or calling upon Slavic deities DAILY as a preliminary ritual for grounding and cleansing. In addition, there would be no offerings involved, other than my time. To my understanding, both of these points may be problematic with the Slavic pantheon. Certain rituals I can substitute with ancestral veneration, unfortunately the LBRP is not one of them.

For context, here is a link to examples of Egyptian and Norse adaptations of the LBRP.

Wrapping this up, it boils down to two main questions:

1. Is calling upon the Gods daily in a ritual of this manner compatible with the Slavic pantheon?
2. Is a material offering a requirement in order to keep a respectful relationship with the Slavic Gods?

Slawa!

Hey there, guys. I hope that this is appropriate to post here. It is Pathfinder 2e, it is about a game, but this character is heavily inspired by the research that I've been able to do so far into Polish pre-Christian belief and I wanted to talk about it somewhere where I thought that people might appreciate this sort of thing.

So, I started off creating this character kind of off of a joke: I knew that horse-mounted archers were a thing, so I thought, "What if the archer were the horse." And so, I started to build a centaur fighter as a horse mounted archer.

At the same time, however, I was researching the Polish branch of Slavic pre-Christian belief in order to connect with my ancestors. Something that I am still working on. I learned that they were animists, believing that everything had a spirit. I learned a lot about my ancestors.

And as I learned, I started to incorporate things into her. During the process of creating her, the Animist class released, a spellcaster class that bonds with spirits of their ancestors or spirits of nature in order to cast spells. It couldn't be more perfect.

And so now, I have Ziemira, the half-elf centaur liturgist (uses music to channel the spirits; in her case, a drum strapped to her horse sides that she beats with a drumstick attached to her spear) animist who channels the fallen spirit of her warrior ancestor to guide her strikes in battle.

And Ziemira is also an herbalist, creating herbal remedies and healing allies when needed. She can craft potions, and she gets a bonus to healing allies when she's in the wilderness as she can take the time to scavenge for herbs to help in the healing process.

I feel that everything that she's got comes together as a deeply spiritual, natural healer and fierce warrior, and I hope that posting about her here isn't too off-topic. I dunno, I just wanted to talk about her. This is probably my favorite character that I've ever built, and she is deeply personal to me. If anyone has any suggestions for how I could improve her further, I'm open to hearing about them.

Hello, I live in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí. This morning, a fire started there. Why am I talking about this? On my altar, I have statues of gods, and yesterday, when I looked at the altar, I saw that Svarog was positioned oddly. Normally, he would be facing the wall, but he was looking toward the town(Window). I didn’t pay much attention to it, but today, when I woke up, I heard on the syrens about the fire. Honestly, I think the gods were trying to warn me. what you think about that?

Hey there, long story short, I'm an American who was raised Christian. My mom's side of the family is Polish, and this past year, I've spent a good amount of time trying to research ancient Polish belief. I was able to find actually quite a lot - Perun, Veles, Mokosh, Marzanna (and the Drowning of Marzanna festival that is apparently still practiced to this day in Poland), the belief in reincarnation and animism, and stuff about all sorts of creatures - Rusalki, Leshy, Warewolves, Striga, and so many others. I started just searching in order to create a world for Pathfinder 2e games that was inspired by the beliefs of my ancestral homeland, both because I wanted to play in this world and because I felt disconnected from my ancestors and wanted to reconnect.

However, after almost a year of research, I have started to be drawn into the faith more as a believer rather than a researcher. I'm interested in learning how to practice, how to contact the spirits, how to connect with my ancestors on a more serious level. I want to learn about how the practice is done, rather than just learn the same information over and over again. I've been able to find two YouTube channels as sources. The first is https://www.youtube.com/@SlavicDeerGirl, who is a Polish person raised in Poland on ancient Polish belief, and who also seems to be a historian/archaeologist from her videos, but she only has a handful of videos and her microphone quality is bad enough to be kinda annoying. However, she does have a video on praxis, which I have watched through and it is great. The other is https://www.youtube.com/@SlavicSpirit-Slav, who I think said that she's Czech in one of her videos? But living in Canada now. She mostly does shorts where she actually shows her practice and how she does it. Which, is great, but they're also just shorts. One minute or less. Not as informative as I would like.

And so, I ask, what are some good sources outside of these two? How can I learn more about Polish praxis specifically, and how do I get started?

Hi! I wanted to ask about symbols in Rodnovery. I know that there are many symbols/runes that are not actually historically accurate, especially the ones relating to gods, so if anyone has any sources or knowledge they'd be willing to share, I'd be very grateful ^^.

It doesn't just have to be symbols in relation to the gods, I'm very happy to also learn about the different meanings of symbols used for example in embroidery.

I wanna get more into Rodnovery and incorporate it into my day to day life and since I'm an artsy and creative person, I think making things like jewlery or something with those symbols could be a good first step for me. You know, to feel more connected with my faith. But now I'm just yaping. Anyways, thanks for any responses in advance!

Short version: If you name your house spirit, will it get mad?

My wife and I moved into a new house a year ago and I think we may have a house spirit. We noticed things would go missing, or our cats would suddenly stare at something or we would hear knocks in the night.

We started talking to whatever it was as a joke, but we noticed when we asked for things back they would be returned to us in the WEIRDEST places (my wife found her headphones stuffed in her shoe after asking for them back once), or if we asked it to stop knocking or startling our cats it would stop.

We started promising the house spirit (???) cream if it did things for us (returned our missing things, or fix little annoyances), and it usually answered us. We didn't have a name for it, we just called it a gnome.

Eventually I read a fiction book about Russian fairytales (The Bear and the Nightingale) and it mentioned the domovoi. It sounded familiar to our 'gnome' so I looked it up. I'm half Bosnian by my father, but he never told me stories about his home in favor of more American traditions as my mother is American.

Anyway, all that to say, I'd like to keep our 'gnome' or domovoi happy. I know they like a tidy house (appeasing this thing might actually help with me and my wife's messiness!), and occasional offerings of bread, cake, and cream.

What I don't know is if they take offense to being named. I can't find any information on it. I know some English spirits don't like being named, or even talked about, but our house spirit seems OK with being talked to? Me and my wife absolutely cannot speak any Slavic language, so it would be great to give our house spirit a name we can pronounce without pissing him off.

Thanks for reading! If you have any suggestions, book recommendations or anecdotes I'm happy to hear it!

For me it was when i found out about fall of Arkona and Polabian Slavs. Their resistance and strong faith inspired me to learn more about them and about our native faith. Although they were basically eradicated, they made at least one person (me) to convert back to our native faith. I hope they are proud.

Hi, I'm Martin or Pan monster(Pan monster).

This is my first post, and I would like to dedicate it to two topics:

1. Finding faith
2. Solitude

1. Finding Faith

I never found much appeal in the Abrahamic religions. Christianity, for example, lost me due to its issues, such as hypocrisy and the idea of an all-loving God who curses children for the mistakes of their fathers and grandfathers (Exodus 20:5) while still being considered 100% morally perfect.

However, when I was around 15 or 16, I discovered an appreciation for the gods. Faith revealed itself to me in such a way that I truly believe it was a revelation of gods

2. Solitude

Unfortunately, due to my isolation caused by a lack of time, I am cut off from a community of like-minded believers. The only connection I have is through brothers and sisters here on Reddit. I want to thank you all for giving me a sense of belonging — a place where I can see that the children of the gods experience similar things.

As said, I'm aware of a couple Polish patterns similar to the 4 squares around a cross (often used by modern Rodnovery as the Mokosz cross or sun cross). Wondering if folks have either book references (meybe of embroidery or folk-outfit guides) or their own examples they're willing to send of similar folkart motifs, to help me understand the regional forms and variety of this sort of shape, rather than only the most popular rendition? For example the six-armed sun or rozeta does indeed have much more variety in Polish folkart than the popular online version, so I would like to learn if similar is true here. To be clear I have no issue with the way one is most popular, its only causing difficulty in looking around.

My mothers side of the family is from pure pomeranians, but my dad side of the family is brazilian, i’m exactly like my mother and don’t look nothing like my dad (unnecessary info), but i was just thinking in starting to look for slavic paganism and those stuff, would i be allowed to practice it? I’m brazilian as well (documents)