Ynglism

The scholar Victor Shnirelman describes Ynglist theology as esoteric, and, by the words of volkhv Aleksandr Khinevich himself, as "neither monotheistic nor polytheistic" as were the beliefs of the "early ancestors"—the earliest Indo-Europeans, whom Khinevich identifies as the Slavic Aryans. According to Shnirelman, Ynglist theology owes much to Slavic, Germanic, Iranian and Indian sources, but integrates gods and concepts from other cultures as well.[16] The idea of reincarnation matching that of Hinduism, and the idea of a struggle between good and evil forces matching that of Zoroastrianism, are both incorporated within Ynglism.[19] The scholar Robert A. Saunders describes Ynglism as influenced by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century German Ariosophy.[5] All deities are regarded as the manifestations of a supreme universal God,[19] so that Ynglist theology may be defined as monistic. Ynglist sources define Ynglism, and Slavic religion overall, as a "rodotheism", that is to say "worship of the gods of the kins", that links back to the supreme God of the universe, which is the universe's supreme ancestor.[20]

Ynglists believe that all these ideas fit the original "Russian spiritual culture" which may rescue people from corruption. Much like other esoteric sciences, they are ambivalent towards Christianity, recognising Jesus as an important prophet (a "great wanderer", veliky putnik) while accusing Christian churches to have distorted his original message, which would be preserved in apocryphal literature. The journal Zhiva-Astra issued by the Ynglist Church has published Gnostic scriptures that are popular among Russian nationalists. Ynglists say that early Slavic volkhvs were aware of the concepts of a supreme God and of the trinity, which were later borrowed by Christian organisations. Like other Rodnover groups, Ynglists consider Christianity as an anti-national international machination aimed at the enslavement of people, chiefly Russians.[19]

The name of "Ramha" in stylised Ynglist runic writing.[13]

According to Ynglism, "Yngly" (Ингли, also called "Ynglia", Инглия; cf. the Germanic Yng, Yngwi, whose Scandinavian runic consists in square symbols → , and cf. the Germanic suffix "-ing", implying the action of generation and production) is the structural order of the universe and of all phenomena, characterised as a fiery radiance emanated by the supreme God,[8] called "Ramha" (Рамха, also spelled "Ramkha") in the Ynglist usage. Ramha is absolute, unknowable, unfathomable, and yet manifest in the gods generating of all phenomena in accordance with the supreme order, Yngly.[13] This last is personified as the intelligence of God, keeper of the source of the fire of the universe, and is the model of the earliest progenitor of humanity (Rod).[21] Yngly is represented by the swastika symbol, which Ynglists call the "image of Yngly", the first written symbol of humanity.[2]

Besides the similarity of the names of the Ynglist Ramha and the Indian Rama, it is worthwhile to note that Ramha is identified with the ancient Egyptian concept of Ra central to the other Russian Native Faith practice Vseyasvetnaya gramota.[22]

A hymn to Ramha declaims:[13]

Great Ramha, one supreme creator, you are in all worlds, giving them life! We glorify you, in all our nations, temples and sanctuaries, in all our settlements, cities and villages, in all sacred groves and in all oaks, on the banks of the sacred rivers and lakes; for holy Yngly, that brings to us the light of love and joy, and illuminates our hearts and thoughts. Let all our deeds be done, for your glory, now and ever from circle to circle.

A hymn to Yngly declaims:[21]

Great god Yngly, keeper of holy Ynglia! Hallow and warm our souls and our hearts, our temples and our homes, do not leave our clans without care, now and ever from circle to circle.

Sword in brushwood prepared for worshipping Perun by Ynglists in Omsk. Note the inscription in Ynglist runes on the sword's crossguard. According to the scholar Richard Foltz, the ritual of swords planted in piles of stones or brushwood has Scythian origins, and honoured the martial deity. According to the scholar, also the British Arthurian legend of the sword in the stone is an echo of this cult, which was brought to Britain by Alan (i.e. "Aryan" through a consonant shift; the name of Sarmatian tribes from the first century onwards[23]) regiments settled there by the Romans during the first century CE.[24]

Primary concepts are the already described absolute God and the matrix into which its gods incarnate—the Earth, characterised as Midgard ("Middle-Realm") in Scandinavian terminology. A third important concept is Rod, who is the archetype of humanity, progenitor of all ancestors. Gods are described as immutable, informational personal laws who harmoniously engender the different forms of life in the universe and support them in their course. They are all in accordance with the order (Yngly) begotten by the supreme God, but at the same time they may exceptionally intervene in the course of phenomena helping people's spiritual evolution along the right path, if people are motivated by sincere creativity and love. An Ynglist dictum is that "the gods are our fathers, and we are their children".[25]

Ynglists distinguish three classes of gods: "Gods-Protectors" (Боги-Покровители, Bogi-Pokroviteli) are those patronising the celestial bodies, the stars and planets, the Earth, the Moon as well as the "Rods", the progenitors of human lineages (of the bright Aryan "great race"); "Gods-Governors" (Боги-Управители, Bogi-Upraviteli) are those who control various elements, desires, the measured flows of life on Earth; "Gods-Guardians" (Боги-Охранители, Bogi-Okhraniteli) are those who ward various locations on Earth, such as arable lands, forests and the countries of the Aryans. The most important gods from these categories are the "Highest Gods" (Вышние Боги, Vyshniye Bogi): the "Rod-Forefather", Vyshen (Вышень, Slavicised Vishnu), Svarog, Perun, Ramkhat, Matushka, Veles, god-generatrix Mokosh, Chislobog, Dazhbog, Zhiva, god-generatrix Rozhana, Simargl, Kupala, Svetovid, Indra and Kryshen (Крышень, Slavicised Krishna).[25]

"Rod-Forefather" (Род-Породитель, Rod-Poroditel; Ynglist runes: ) is the archetype of all the progenitors of the lineages, and is described as one and the same with Ramha, through Yngly. He is without image, like Ramha, but Ynglists worship him through the three-runes symbol of Ramha. His protection flows through Prav, Yav and Nav, the three worlds of traditional Slavic cosmology.[26]

A hymn to Rod-Forefather declaims:[26]

Great is our Parent! Attend to the call of you! For you are the eternal source of the life of our gods and of our generations, and therefore greatly glorify you, and day and night we are and we rule, now and ever from circle to circle.

According to Ynglist cosmology, reality consists of the three dimensions recognised by common Rodnover cosmology, Prav (lit. "Right"), Yav (Явь, lit. "actuality") and Nav (Навь, lit. "probability"); Ynglists, however, distinguish a fourth concept defining a part of Nav, Slav (Славь, lit. "glory"). Prav is the plane of the gods, who follow the right law (Yngly) of Ramha; Yav is the plane of matter in which all phenomena are incarnated; Nav is the world of spirit/movement, which can be Bright Nav (Светлый Навь, Svetly Nav) or Dark Nav (Темный Навь, Temny Nav). Bright Nav, otherwise called Slav, is the dimension of ancestors, while Dark Nav is the dimension of chthonic demons. In the cosmological scheme, the Bright Nav is above while the Dark Nav is below, and the Yav is the boundary in-between the two and may develop according to the model of both. Also, Prav is purely mental, while Nav is astral (it consists in the movements of the asterisms of Heaven), and Nav is physical (phenomenical).[27]

The "Nine Great Warps" (Девять Великих Основ, Devyat' Velikikh Osnov) constitute the ethical code of Ynglism which guides the "weft" of the destiny of the Aryans and their descendants towards perfection. Only Aryans are considered to be the offspring of the gods of the Bright Nav, while non-Aryans (black races) are considered the offspring of chthonic demons.[1] The union of whites and blacks is held to produce wicked mixlings, the "grey race"; Abrahamic religions and the masses they persuade are believed to be essentially of a grey nature.[15]

The Warps are: 1. dedication, towards the study of holy writings, traditions and ancestral wisdom, and to the worship of the gods; 2. spirituality, that is to say engagement in understanding and developing one's spiritual side; 3. compassion, for all living things created by God; 4. penitence, for upkeeping the harmony of body and spirit which grants peace; 5. tolerance, for the freedom of others which nevertheless may not go against the right laws of God; 6. friendship, towards other human lineages but not towards wicked people who go against the right laws of God; 7. love, towards all living things created by God and reflected among humans as the worship of ancestors; 8. testing, to be gone through in order to develop spiritual virtue; 9. integration, that is to say the search for and upkeeping of the meaning and purpose that everything has within its own context.[1]

Alatyr Stone, by Russian artist Lola Vyacheslavovna Lonli.

Woman from Belovodye, Lola Lonli.

Ynglists believe that "Yngling", a name that identifies the earliest royal dynasties of Scandinavia, means "offspring of Yngly", and that the historical Ynglings migrated to Scandinavia from the region of Omsk, which was a spiritual centre of the early Indo-Europeans. They hold that the Saga ob Ynglingakh, their Russian version of the Scandinavian Ynglinga saga (itself composed by Snorri Sturluson on the basis of an older Ynglingatal), proves their ideas about the origins of the Ynglings in Omsk, and that the Scandinavian Eddas are ultimately a more recent, western European and Latinised version of their own sacred books, the Slavo-Aryan Vedas.[12]

Ynglism presents itself as the true spirituality of the Indo-Europeans or Aryans, a term which means "harmonious men", those who act in accordance with the laws of God and therefore manifest bright white features.[1] The first Aryans were spiritually influenced by the northern celestial pole and the circumpolar stars, especially the Great Bear and the Little Bear, and the Big Dipper and Little Dipper astral images; these constellations, spinning around the pole, draw the changing image of Yngly (the swastika) in the four phases of the day and the year. The first Aryans dwelt at the geographic North Pole, whence they are known in Greek sources by the name "Hyperboreans" (lit. "over the north"). After leaving their original homeland they mostly settled in what is today Russia and broader Eurasia, where the richest occurrences of hooked cross symbolism in historical testimonies have been found, in patterns of architecture, weaponry, and tools of everyday life. Ynglism would be the means to regather the Aryans and reconnect them to their progenitors, reawakening their pristine way to perceive the world.[1]

The area that Aryans settled once they left the pole was that which in Russian folklore is known as Belovodye (Беловодье, lit. "White Waters"), which Ynglists locate in Siberia and identify as the same as the Tibetan concept Shambhala, the Scandinavian Asgard ("Gods-Realm"), and the land of the Rigvedic rivers: they identify the rivers as the Yenisei and Angara, the Lena, the Irtysh and Ob, and ultimately the Ishim and the Tobol. Architectures were built according to the pattern of Alatyr (Slavic mythological stone or mountain which represents the world centre or the world axle), which is the same as the image of Yngly (hooked cross), which endows human consciousness with virtue.[15] Omsk was the location of the capital, "Asgard the Great", of the Aryan spiritual civilisation which the Ynglists also call "Arctida", and it is the place where the salvation of all humanity begins. In Okunevo, in the same region of Omsk, was located an important religious centre, a temple.[28]

The Ynglist Church is concerned with the health of the Russians, and other Slavic peoples, and of the family as any folk's fundamental unit. They emphasise that men are innately disposed towards "public" life, while women fulfil themselves in the "private" life of the family at home.[29] Kaarina Aitamurto describes the church as strongly patriarchal; the social model that Ynglism proposes is the traditional hierarchy of the family, headed by male elders. The veche of the church itself is conceived as the gathering of these elders, the fathers. According to Ynglist beliefs, women are "so tied to their natural task of reproduction" that they may not reach the same intellectual and spiritual achievements of men, who are naturally more prone to the abstract thinking that is needed for political assignments.[30]

Ynglism is critical of modern Western liberal democracy, and espouses instead an ideal of democracy that is more similar to ancient Greek democracy. According to the Ynglists, universal suffrage leads to unwise decisions and ultimately to the disruption of society, because the majority of people are not wise. In their view, modern liberal democracies are dictatorships of the "biggest minorities", whereas ancient Slavic veche and mir were based on "consensual decision-making". Ynglists propose the traditional Slavic principle of samoderzhavie, meaning "people ruling themselves", which according to them is the highest "true will of the people" which comes to be incarnated and exercised by a wise ruler.[31]

According to the church, the demographic decline of contemporary Russia has to be studied as a crisis of the psycho-physical heritage transmitted by Russian parents to their children, and of the environment where these children grow up. Within the Ynglist Church, miscegenation is considered as unhealthy, and they also condemn "perverted" sexuality and the consumption of alcohol and drugs as threats imported from the "degenerated" West. As a solution, Ynglists emphasise the theme of "creating beneficial descendants" (sozidanie blagodetel'nogo potomstva).[32]

In a broader metaphysical discourse, all forces of globalisation coming from the West are perceived as alien models that infiltrate and spoil the spirit of Slavic culture. An excerpt from the Slavo-Aryan Vedas declaims:[33]

It is not appropriate for Slavs and Aryan to venerate alien idols, to pour water into an alien watermill, to give one's psychic energy to an alien egregor! There is no point for Russians to destroy their own Slavic and Aryan culture with their own hands by adopting an alien pseudo-culture! Our ancestors warn us from the distant past: "... we ourselves are the grandchildren of Dazhdbog and have not aspired to sneak in the footsteps of foreigners".

Ynglist doctrines emphasise a "healthy way of life", which includes eating natural and pure food, being responsible and sober, but also ideas based on theories of human biology and genetics which are "far from academic perceptions".[34] For instance, the Ynglists firmly condemn sex out of wedlock, as they believe that it, as all other "unnatural" ways of life, shortens the lifespan, and they espouse the theory of telegony, that is to say the idea that a woman is genetically shaped by the men with whom she has sexual intercourse, and her offspring would inherit genetic characteristics of all her bedmates. By the words of Aleksandr Khinevich:[34]

... the first lover of a woman gives her the form of the Spirit and Blood of his Rod and therefore, even if the woman gets later married to another man, her children will genetically be of her first lover. Furthermore, people are designed to live for centuries, but because of the unhealthy and unnatural way of life they nowadays tend to die prematurely. Every extramarital intercourse shortens man's life in three years.

Yujism (юджизм; Ynglist runes: ; lit. "good life"), also spelled "yudzhism" or "eujism", is the theory, learning and practice of the right vision of reality, characteristic of and taught by the "earliest ancestors" with whom the Ynglists identify (Aryans). The basic requirement for yujism is the ability of figurative thought; according to Ynglists, images convey much more informations than either sounds or gestures, whence their emphasis on runes, which immediately set in motion images in the mind. The goal of yujism is the understanding of reality as a process which reveals itself as consciousness.[41]

The first rune, the aforementioned "image of Yngly" which is the swastika symbol, is conceived as well as the representation of yuj or yudzh (юдж) itself, which Ynglist sources themselves equate with Indian yoga. Yuj is the expansion of human consciousness that is triggered by becoming aware of Yngly in reality. Such consciousness articulates into two opposite actions, a positive and a negative one respectively called Ha–Tha (Ха–Тха) and represented by two beams of the swastika. Ynglists claim that they are the ancient Slavic name of the same concept that is known in Chinese thought and language as yin–yang.[41]

The worldview that results from the practice of yujism is symbolised by Ynglists as an image of a "flat earth sustained by three elephants sustained by a turtle which swims in an unlimited ocean": the flat earth represents the twofold structure of perception (articulating in all dualities, from "yes–no" to "up–down"); the three elephants are symbols of the three dimensions of reality—Yav, Nav and Prav—material, ideal (which realises in word) and mystical, which are also three forms of life; the turtle is yuj itself, awakened consciousness, which draws information from the ocean, which represents infinite energy.[42]

Ynglism has a different structure of time distinguishing it from mainstream Rodnovery. According to Ynglist teachings, the structure of the year is itself a phenomenon reflecting the order of the supreme God, his action which is Yngly. Each month's name may also be written as a compound of two Ynglist runes. Ynglists claim that original Slavic months are nine, instead of twelve, and each month comprises forty or forty-one days. The first rune is either Ay (Ай), Bey (Бэй), Gey (Гэй), Day (Дай), E (Э), Vey (Вэй), Xey / Khey (Хей), or Tay (Тай), reflecting basic sounds in Indo-European tongues and representing the character of the given month. The second rune in the names is always the rune Let (Летъ), which means "year" as well as "summer", as months are phases of the year which comes to full maturity in summer. The only exception to this rule is the first month whose name is "Ramhat" (Рамхатъ), a term which refers to the beginning of Ramha's ordering action, Yngly, represented by the swastika-like first rune.[43]

Name	Runic sign	Meaning	Corresponding Latinate month(s)
Ramhat / Ramkhat Рамхатъ		Represents the principle of divinity; Ramha/Ramkha who creates and approves a new year cycle.[43] Another symbol of this month is a hooked cross, which is the symbol of "Yngly" itself (the fiery action of the supreme God in the universe).[2]	September–October
Aylet Айлетъ		Aylet is the month of new gifts. The rune Ay means prosperity, full baskets. It is the propitious tide for weddings, for beginning building new things, and for harvests.[43]	November
Beylet Бэйлетъ		Beylet is the month of white light and peace, representing the pure radiance of divinity, glory and the rest of the soul.[43]	December
Geylet Гэйлетъ		Geylet is the month of blizzards and fierce and severe cold.[43]	January–February
Daylet Дайлетъ		Daylet is the month of the rebirth of nature; plants and animals awaken and are strengthened.[43]	March
Elet Элетъ		Elet is the month of sowing, this being the foremost meaning of the rune E. It is the sowing not only of seeds in the ground, but also of the word in people; it is therefore the month of naming and renaming of persons, for them to be born again.[43]	April
Veylet Вэйлетъ		Veylet is the month of winds. The rune Vey is an image of flying, and of blowing wind. This month is sacred to Stribog ("Wind God").[43]	May–June
Xeylet Хейлетъ		Xeylet, or spelled "Kheylet", is the month of the receipt of the gifts of nature. The rune Xey is an image of positive force. What was sown in Elet and grew throughout Veylet, is finally harvested in Xeylet.[43]	July
Taylet Тайлетъ		Taylet is the month of completion of the year, of divine creation, of full summer. The rune Tay means the top, the limit, the end of something (just like the homophonous Chinese grapheme and in words like "Taiga", literally "end of the path").[43]	August

Ynglism respects eight holidays throughout the year. They are arranged in a "year's wheel" (кологод, kologod) and they correspond to the eight major deities of nature. Holidays are called "thresholds" (порог, porog) and they mark the beginning of various phases of the year. There are also overarching phases: the phase between the holidays of Koliada and Kupalo is that of the blossoming of males, while the phase between Lelia and Mokosh that of the blossoming of females. The threshold of Perun marks a period of quiescence of forces, while the subsequent Mara is a phase that is unfavourable for both sexes. Each holiday and the period that it begins has appropriate, different ritual actions to be carried out; Ynglists believe that if one behaves incorrectly, his life cycle is disrupted, he becomes unhealthy and quickly grows old.[44]

Kaarina Aitamurto characterises the Ynglist Church as less politically goal-oriented than other Rodnover movements.[40] By contrast, the Russian scholar of religion Vladimir B. Yashin of the Department of Theology and World Cultures of Omsk State University wrote in 2001 that the church had close ties with the regional branch of the far-right party Russian National Unity of Alexander Barkashov, whose members provide security and order during the mass gatherings of the Ynglists.[4]

The headquarters of the Ynglist Church were prosecuted and liquidated by law between 2002 (in the Omsk region) and 2004 (in Russia), primarily because of its use of swastika-like religious symbolism and because of its teachings about the unhealthiness of interracial mixing. Aleksandr Khivevich himself was prosecuted on 11 June 2009 at the International Court of Justice of Omsk, which found him guilty of inciting racial hatred under the article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and sentenced him to one year and a half of prison with two years of probation.[11][4]

Despite the prosecutions, the church continued its activities and mass celebrations as an unregistered religious movement, expanding to other regions of Russia and abroad, and Aleksandr Khinevich resumed large-scale preaching activities in 2011.[8][4] The scholar Vladimir Yashin reports that it was impossible to uproot the church from public life, since in 2001 there were already about three thousand Ynglists in Omsk alone.[4]

According to Yashin, Ynglism has come out strengthened from the prosecutions, turning into a decentralised phenomenon, so that as of 2015 it is more correct to describe it as a movement of dozens of organisations spread between the regions of Chelyabinsk, Krasnodar, Tyumen, Moscow, but also Ukraine, Germany and the Czech Republic. Ynglism, together with mainstream Rodnovery, has gathered many adherents in the North Caucasus regions, according to Yashin as a Slavic-identity counterweight against Islam. In 2015 it was the turn of the Slavo-Aryan Vedas, the sacred writings of Ynglism, to be condemned as "extremist literature" in Omsk.[4] In the same year, Ynglist communities based in Stavropol were prosecuted on the charge of extremism.[47]

• Aitamurto, Kaarina (2007). Russian Rodnoverie: Negotiating Individual Traditionalism. CESNUR 2007 International Conference: Globalization, Immigration, and Change in Religious Movements. Bordeaux, France.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
•  ———  (2008). "Egalitarian Utopias and Conservative Politics: Veche as a Societal Ideal within Rodnoverie Movement". Axis Mundi: Slovak Journal for the Study of Religions. 3: 2–11.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
•  ———  (2016). Paganism, Traditionalism, Nationalism: Narratives of Russian Rodnoverie. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781472460271.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Gennadevich, Kuzmin A. (2014). "Неоязыческая печать в современной России: особенности идеологии и пропагандистской деятельности" [Neo-Pagan press in modern Russia: Specifics of ideology and propagandistic activity] (PDF). Gramota. 12 (50): 121–24. ISSN 1997-292X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 February 2018.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Golovneva, Elena (2018). "Saving the Native Faith: Religious Nationalism in Slavic Neo-paganism (Ancient Russian Yngling Church of Orthodox Old Believers-Ynglings and Svarozhichi)". In Stepanova, Elena; Kruglova, Tatiana (eds.). Convention 2017 "Modernization and Multiple Modernities". Yekaterinburg, Russia: Knowledge E. pp. 337–347. doi:10.18502/kss.v3i7.2485. ISSN 2518-668X.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Foltz, Richard (2019). "Scythian Neo-Paganism in the Caucasus: The Ossetian Uatsdin as a 'Nature Religion'". Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. 13 (3): 314–332. doi:10.1558/jsrnc.39114.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Saunders, Robert A. (2019). "Rodnovery". Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 565–567. ISBN 9781538120484.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Shnirelman, Victor A. (2017). "Obsessed with Culture: The Cultural Impetus of Russian Neo-Pagans". In Kathryn Rountree (ed.). Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Modern Paganism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 87–108. ISBN 9781137570406.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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