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Accepted Paper:
(Re)constructing the wheel of the year in Polish Native Faith. Slavic heritage in the age of late modernity
Piotr Grochowski
(Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland)
On the basis of field research, the paper presents how various factors typical of late modernity change the traditional thinking about sacred time and shape the way of temporal organization of rituals in Polish Native Faith (Rodzimowierstwo), which is one of the branches of contemporary paganism.
Paper long abstract:
Rodzimowierstwo (Native Faith) is one of the trends of contemporary Polish paganism, which refers to the pre-Christian religion of the Slavs. Due to the limited number of historical sources concerning Slavic culture from the pagan period, the followers of Rodzimowierstwo must (re)construct their beliefs and rituals using ethnographic materials from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Based on my field research that I have been conducting since 2018, I would like to discuss some paradoxes that are typical of such (re)constructions and to present how they are conditioned by competing ideologies of premodern and (post)modern times. Analysing the way of temporal organization of ritual year in Rodzimowierstwo I will argue that various factors typical of late modernity (economic, social, political) significantly change the traditional way of thinking about sacred time and are of greater importance than the rules of folk rituals present in ethnographic sources. Such a situation, in turn, is one of the factors limiting the development of Rodzimowierstwo and putting its followers in a problematic position. They have to make difficult choices and reconcile the contradictions between the realities of life in (post)modern society and the principles of thinking and acting characteristic of folk cultures and the religion of pre-Christian Slavs.