Some bookmarked links are piling up, so let’s clear them away.
¶ Lee Morgan: What happens when a writing project turns mysteriously magical:
It wasn’t long before the story, its characters and underlying mythic themes came to life in very tangible ways for me. Not only did I start to dream about the characters who would inform me of what their ‘future’ should hold, but other friends dreamed about them and sometimes it wasn’t easy to tell if they were the character from the book or being ‘gloved’ by a spirit or god they were aligned to mythically in the book. The characters have become what is known in the western Occult tradition as “egregores’” or thought-forms.
¶ Via Forging the Sampo, a link to a post on “The Survival of Animism in Russia — and its Destruction in the West,” which, given the source, you know will focus on Finnic peoples,
¶ But never underestimate Russian xenophobia, now aligned with resurgent Orthodoxy, which has led, among other things, to the closing of the only Mari-language primary school that served this partly-Pagan nation.
¶ The list of polytheistic devotional books (and some Pagan SF) published by the Biblioteca Alexandrina continues to grow. I have one and should get a couple of others.
Not directly related to paganism or Mari religion per se, but in relation to your fourth point, there was a recent incident of Russian Orthodox militants belonging to Bozhaya Volya attacking a Pastafarian Pride Parade in Moscow. Clearly, the Orthodox backlash isn’t just against the Mari but is part of a much wider attack on alternative spiritual beliefs, including parody religions.
There’s an article discussing the subject here: http://freethinker.co.uk/2013/08/19/first-they-began-gunning-for-the-gays-now-religious-russian-zealots-are-attacking-pastafarians/