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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how the imagined Slavic past shapes gender roles in Rodzimowierstwo (Native Faith), showing how contemporary religious practices both reinforce binary divisions and open spaces for their negotiation and transformation.

Paper long abstract

This article analyzes how the imagined past of pre-Christian Slavs shapes the distribution and legitimization of gender roles within the ritual practices of Rodzimowiercy (Native Faith) in Poland. The religious practices of Rodzimowiercy are largely organized around principles of gender essentialism, expressed through a binary division into male and female roles. These include, for example, gender-based divisions in making offerings to Slavic gods and goddesses, as well as the organization of ritual labor among participants. At the same time, this division is not entirely fixed, and various gender-related issues are actively debated within the community, such as women’s ritual authority and the boundaries of acceptable practice.

Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2024 and 2026 in Kraków, the article argues that gender roles are actively negotiated among Rodzimowiercy through efforts to repeat and continue what are perceived as early Slavic beliefs, as well as through reinterpretations of the past. The ways in which contemporary religious practices challenge an essentialist order also foster new understandings of the past, in which historical imagination and personal values mutually shape one another. Thus, images of the past, understood as a space of dialogue within the community, become a significant arena in which binary gender divisions coexist with ambiguity and contestation.