New Article on Polish Paganism

Via Scott Simpson, who is quoted in it, “Pre-Christian Slavic Beliefs are on the Rise in Poland” (PDF file), from the Krakow Post.

“The native faith movement as a whole is loosely organised and doesn’t
have a strong dogmatic component, it is actually less about faith – as in
‘correct belief’ – and more about being faithful, living the lifestyle,” said
Scott Simpson, a scholar of religious studies at the Jagiellonian University,
and a co-author [sic] of a recent study of Eastern European neo-paganism.

Scroll to page 22 and watch out for extraneous commas.

6 thoughts on “New Article on Polish Paganism

  1. So maybe they should call it a native religion and not a native faith? Honestly, “faith” as a synonym for “religion” only plays into the framing that you have to have “faith” in order to be a “religion.” Which only helps the 3 large monotheisms, AFAICT.

    1. Hecate: I too am not always comfortable with the connotations of “faith” in English, but that is the word used by some translators, perhaps because it has a more emotional resonance than “religion.”

  2. Medeine Ragana

    🙁 Can’t get into the PDF file. I even went to the site to download it and it gets stuck on page 3. (Damned Chrome!!!)

    But this is a very interesting site. Being 1/4 Polish, it’s nice to know what’s going on in “the old country”.

      1. Medeine Ragana

        Ah, you know what they say: 3 times makes the charm! Maybe I was just being impatient to read it. Thanks for the link!

  3. Medeine Ragana

    “Polish believers celebrate six main festivals, four
    of them associated with the seasons. The other two are:
    Dziady…”

    Dziady: when you go around visiting ancestor’s graves. My gosh! When I was growing up my Mom used to drag us around to all the cemeteries on certain days because we had to “visit babcia’s grave” or “dziadek’s grave”. She absolutely insisted upon it, usually around Easter time but I also remember doing it sometime in the fall as well. I used to think this was just something peculiar to our family. Now I know better.

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