Bazhovism

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Bazhovism (

Mistress of the Copper Mountain.[4]

The Bazhovites regard Arkaim, not far from Magnitogorsk in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, as the navel of the Earth where there is an exchange of energy with the higher planes of the universe,[5] and the Ural Mountains as the energetic heart of Russia, being the line of juncture between Europe and Asia.[6] Bazhovites are mostly concentrated in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Tyumen Oblast, Perm Krai and Bashkortostan within Russia, but there is also a community in Kazakhstan.[7]

Overview

Idol representing a shaman at the Bazhov Park in Sysert, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia.

Bazhovism was founded in 1993 in

Dunovism (the works of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov are authoritative within the movement), Russian Orthodoxy and East Asian religions.[11] The movement is Eurasianist in trying to unify European and Asian identity and in seeing the Ural Mountains as the location of their junction.[3] Notably, the founder Sobolev proclaimed himself a reincarnation of the Chinese philosopher Confucius,[5] and is considered by his followers as a prophet and diviner.[3]

Because of its sacralisation of Bazhov's legacy, Bazhovism has been compared to the other Russian Rodnover movement of

esoteric interpretation and doctrinalisation.[15]

The tales of Pavel Bazhov are deemed the "Gospel of the Urals" within the Bazhovite movement, and their characters are held to be personifications of deities and saviours of the Urals.[16] Bazhov presented himself as a reteller of sacred knowledge about the Urals, not as a creator of it, although this claim is not considered reliable within the academic community.[17] In his At the Old Mine (1938), a critical essay about his own work, Bazhov says that he learnt the stories about Ural sacred knowledge from his grandfather V. A. Khmelinin (nicknamed Slyshko) between 1892 and 1895.[18] In the popular science book Ural Hyperborea written by the Russian philosopher V. N. Demin, which contains an interpretation of Bazhov's tales similar to that of the Bazhovites, it is written that Khmelinin in turn learnt the sacred knowledge from other old storytellers, and that such knowledge ultimately arose from the "collective unconscious" of the Ural people.[19] Demin parallelises the concept of "Ural" with that of "Hyperborea", both representing, according to him, the original undivided humanity bearer of an original "single mythology, culture, language and social system".[19] According to Demin, Bazhov's tales present this very idea of "Ural Hyperborea".[20]

Beliefs

Theology

An idol of the Ural goddess.

In Bazhovite theology, the supreme God is called the "Father of the Universe" and is equated with the

Cossack ataman of the 16th century, is deified as another of the "great incarnations" and as the "unifier of Europe and Asia".[21] In a Bazhovite magazine he was described as follows:[4]

Yermak connected Europe and dug the way to the East, from where the light always comes, where the mysterious Belovodye is located, attracting the seekers of God and meaning of life for centuries. Yermak knew about all this.

— Atlantis, 1995, No. 2

The Mistress of the Copper Mountain is the most important deity of Bazhovism,[4] believed to guard the access to the sacred knowledge and to open it only to her elects.[16] The goddess manifests herself through the animal, vegetal and mineral kingdoms,[16] and is considered to protect all the peoples of the Urals through her "fiery" spiritual force.[4] The anthem of the major yearly festival of the Bazhovites recites:[16]

Not in a wonder tale – the Mistress of the Mountain will come in reality, / To the one willing to devote his skill to the people, / As an impulse of beauty out of the strain for work, / With the knowledge of the higher powers, he will be enlightened.

The Mistress of the Copper Mountain is the guardian of the real overworld hidden from ordinary perception, the "Ural Elysium",[22] represented as well as the interior of a mountain full of treasures, accessible only to those whom the goddess allows to enter[23] — unmarried young men who become her lovers.[24] Before being codified into Bazhov's tales, this belief was already present among the mining workers of the Ural Mountains.[23] According to V. N. Demin, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain is an instance of the worldwide cult of the mother goddess.[24] In his essay At the Old Mine, Bazhov described the Ural goddess as follows:[23]

The Mistress of the Mountain became the personification of the power, wealth and beauty of the subsoil, which are fully revealed only to the best representatives of the working people.

Besides the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, the Bazhovites also worship the Great Snake/Colubrid (Veliky Poloz), the Blue Snake/Dragon (Sinyaya Zmey), the Blue Lady (Sinyushka) and the Fire Lady (Ognevushka), among other characters from Bazhov's tales; they are considered to be assistants of the Ural goddess.[25] The Great Snake, also called the Snake/Dragon Man (Chelovek-Zmey), is the "guardian of the Earth"; according to Demin, the snake or dragon is another element of the "archaic worldview of the Hyperborean ancestors", representing the union of the masculine and feminine principles.[24]

Eschatology

Arkaim Shining—Russian artist Lola V. Lonli, 2013.

Bazhovism is a pronouncedly

Belovodye.[28] This would be the Ural "place of serene existence".[14] From Belovodye, located either in the region of the Ural Mountains or, according to other accounts, in that of the Altai Mountains, a universal Slavic empire would arise, led by a new incarnation of the Great Leader, the Ural Chud.[28]

The new race of the Age of Aquarius would be constituted by elements of the Russians governing the heart, of the Tatars governing the will, and of the Jews governing the intelligence.[29] V. N. Demin, in his Ural Hyperborea, also introduced the concept of "spiritual Shambhala", a higher plane of comprehension of sacred knowledge which is revealed only to those who conduct "a righteous life, righteous thoughts, righteous deeds".[14] According to the Bazhovites, Shambhala is the same as Arkaim, the energetic centre of the Earth, its "navel", where the "exchange of energy with the universe takes place", and will be the model for building the new Aquarian civilisation.[30] For this belief, the Bazhovites are sometimes also referred to as the "Bazhov-Arkaimites".[4]

Practices

People at the 2018 Bazhov Festival.

Since 1993 a yearly "Bazhov Festival" (Bazhovka) is held on the summer solstice, the Kupala Night, originally at the Lake Chebarkul.[31] The festival receives the support of the local administration of Chelyabinsk Oblast, the ministries of culture of Bashkortostan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, local entrepreneurs, and over the years it received appreciation by many public figures, including Nikita Mikhalkov, and was attended amongst others by Lev Anninsky and Altynshash Jaganova.[32] Often, tickets for railway and airplane transport to the festival were provided free of charge, trains of the Moscow–Chelyabinsk route were decorated according to Bazhovite themes, and shields painted with mystical Bazhovite icons were hung throughout the cities.[33] Local troops of the Russian army also took part in the festivity.[33]

The festival is believed to represent a prototype of the "millennial kingdom" of Belovodye.

Roerichian movement.[5]

Demographics

Bazhovite conference in Yekaterinburg in 2011.

The Bazhovite Association (Бажовское общество), one of the organisations of the Bazhovite movement other than the Bazhovite Academy of Esoteric Knowledge of the Urals, was founded in 2011 in Sverdlovsk Oblast, with branches in the cities of Pervouralsk, Severouralsk and Krasnoturyinsk, and 35,000 adherents from the same region joined it by the end of that year.[36]

See also

Citations

References

  1. ^ Gaidukov 2000, p. 37; Lunkin & Filatov 2000, p. 145; Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 40; Popov 2016, 5.3; Povstyeva 2020, p. 47.
  2. ^ a b Popov 2016, 5.3; Povstyeva 2020, p. 47.
  3. ^ a b c d Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 40.
  4. ^ a b c d e Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 41.
  5. ^ a b c Lunkin & Filatov 2000, p. 145.
  6. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 40; Popov 2016, 5.3; Povstyeva 2020, p. 47.
  7. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 11; Popov 2016, 5.3.
  8. ^ Gaidukov 2000, p. 37; Popov 2016, 5.3.
  9. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 48.
  10. ^ Gaidukov 2000, p. 37; Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 40.
  11. ^ a b Lunkin & Filatov 2000, p. 145; Popov 2016, 5.3; Povstyeva 2020, p. 47.
  12. ^ Povstyeva 2020, passim.
  13. ^ Povstyeva 2020, p. 48.
  14. ^ a b c Povstyeva 2020, p. 53.
  15. ^ Povstyeva 2020, p. 60.
  16. ^ a b c d Povstyeva 2020, p. 49.
  17. ^ Povstyeva 2020, p. 55.
  18. ^ Povstyeva 2020, pp. 51, 55.
  19. ^ a b Povstyeva 2020, p. 51.
  20. ^ Povstyeva 2020, pp. 51–52.
  21. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 41; Popov 2016, 5.3.
  22. ^ Povstyeva 2020, pp. 50–57.
  23. ^ a b c Povstyeva 2020, p. 50.
  24. ^ a b c d Povstyeva 2020, p. 52.
  25. ^ Lunkin & Filatov 2000, p. 145; Popov 2016, 5.3; Povstyeva 2020, p. 50.
  26. ^ Povstyeva 2020, p. 47.
  27. ^ Popov 2016, 5.3.
  28. ^ a b Popov 2016, 5.3; Povstyeva 2020, p. 48.
  29. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 42.
  30. ^ Lunkin & Filatov 2000, p. 145; Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 41.
  31. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 45; Popov 2016, 5.3; Povstyeva 2020, pp. 47–48, note 8.
  32. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, pp. 45–46.
  33. ^ a b Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 46.
  34. ^ Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 45.
  35. ^ a b Bourdeaux & Filatov 2006, p. 45; Povstyeva 2020, pp. 47–48, note 8.
  36. ^ "Свыше 35 тысяч свердловчан вступили в патриотическое "Бажовское общество"" [Over 35 thousand Sverdlovsk residents joined the patriotic 'Bazhovite Society']. Government of Sverdlovsk Oblast. 15 November 2011. Archived from the original on 4 September 2021.

Sources

External links

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