It's obvious from the quotation above that personal-cause prayers of pre-Christian Slavs had a different logic than the prayers for a common-good goal. The personal-cause prayer was not supported by an offering, but only by a promise of one if the prayer was answered by the Gods. Here we once again see Slavic lack of “trust” in Gods. As our ancestors did not rely on Gods to make the good harvest happened, but worked hard to make it happen, so they made the promised sacrifice, only if their personal prayers were answered. Of course it goes without saying that apart of praying for their life, our ancestors did everything in their power to survive the battle or illness.

Despite all the benefits of the scientific and technological progress, in XXI century we seem to have more individual problems, which are not only more common, but also more complicated, than the problems our ancestors had. In order to survive a battle one had to “only”* fight with all one’s might. An illness in medieval times was even “easier” – the survival rate of any diseases was much lower than nowadays, so chronic diseases were less common (people died sooner) and treatment was simpler and less painful/onerous (was limited to drinking herbs or cauterisation of wounds). I don’t think we need historical sources to know, that in Medieval ages nobody survived cancer*, and the issues of patients after ostomy surgery or chemotherapy were completely unknown. Today, in XXI century, we can treat more and more forms of cancer, and even if there is no cure, the patients can be kept alive for longer than in the times of pre-Christian Slavs.

The price we are paying for the luxuries of modern times are problems completely unknown to our ancestors. Homelessness, unemployment, chronic diseases, including diseases which our ancestors simply did not survive, and which surviving (or living with) comes with significant deterioration of quality of life and/or social stigmatisation (like, for example, heart diseases requiring multiple surgeries and medications, kidney diseases requiring dialyses, congenital disease such as cystic fibrosis, or acquired diseases like cerebral palsy and many, many more). I suspect pre-Christian Slavs would not even be able to comprehend the scale and complexity of problems their children’s children will one day have. Which does not change the fact that, in their generosity and wisdom, they left us a simple and easy to use instruction how to deal with our modern issues.

The ancestors’ algorithm

The instructions left by our ancestors are genius in their simplicity: firstly the actual problem has to be identified, in order to be able to establish which God’s help is most needed. Before a battle our ancestors did not pray to just survive a battle (like a follower of Judaeo-Christian tradition would), they prayed for particular skills/blessings necessary to make it out alive – they prayed for strength, courage, good fortune etc. They had to define the blessing needed, in order to be able to name the God they needed the blessing from. Because of the nature of their beliefs, Slavs did not have a deity of survival, but they did know Gods capable of blessing a warrior with strength, courage or good fortune. Therefore, before a battle, Slavic warriors did not pray to Veles or Morena (who were incapable of giving the needed blessing), but instead they called upon Perun, Svarog or Raróg (the embodiment of good fortune and one of Svarog’s incarnations). They called upon those Gods promising Them a suitable sacrifice, in exchange for the needed blessing.

So now we can see the beauty of the pre-Christian logic: identify your problem (in the example above: how to survive a battle), identify the exact “things” needed to solve your problems (in the case of a battle those “things” are: strength, courage and luck) so you can identify the God/Gods capable of helping you, then pray to this/those God/Gods, offering Them a valuable sacrifice, if They help you out. And – last but not least – after you say your prayer and promise the sacrifice, do your absolute best to survive, so you can make the promised sacrifice.

The beauty of Slavic logic lies also in its universality. In medieval times as well as in our modern world one can solve problems using the same algorithm left to us by our ancestors.

Lets take, for example, unemployment: it’s a common problem nowadays, affecting many people from different social groups, of different education, age, gender etc. There is almost as many causes of unemployment, as there is people affected by it – and this is why an unemployed Rodnover, before he/she gets down to prayers in the intention of finding a job, should think long and hard about what really is the problem in his/hers particular case. Maybe the issue lays in too high expectations (for example expecting unrealistic salary or working hours), or maybe it’s the wrong approach to job-hunting, or to work as such. I am absolutely not claiming that the cause of unemployment always lies in the attitude of the unemployed, but, having had some experience in recruitment process, I’ve noticed, that in some cases the people who look/apply for a job just don’t seem to be doing it right.

Only after a thorough and honest assessment of the situation and after identifying the core causes of the problem, our Rodnover can choose a God capable of helping out. If, for example, our Rodnover came to a conclusion that in order to find a job he/she has to gain new qualifications, he/she can pray to Veles - the keeper of the secretive wisdom (and, of course, to the ancestors, which we will discuss another time). If our Rodnover has to change his/her lifestyle (for example: start getting up early, cut down on drinking/partying, improve hygiene etc) it would be more appropriate to ask for the blessing of Mokosh – the biggest transformational power among all Slavic Gods. If the core of the problem is lack of grit or self confidence during job interviews, it might be a good idea to call upon Perun. It is of course possible that the cause of unemployment is not something our Rodnover does or does not do, but the core lies in a faulty socioeconomic system of the country our Rodnover lives in. In such case the appropriate solution might be voting for a different political party in the upcoming election, or even emigrating to a different country. In those examples the appropriate Goddess to pray to might be Morena – whose power includes the death and rebirth as well as dreams; or even Rodzanice – responsible for spinning our fate.

After deciding which God/Goddess is capable of helping us, it is time to start praying and promising the appropriate sacrifice (which will be made, after our prayers are answered). But lets not forget – Slavic Gods do not solve the problems for Slavs, they can only help out with Their gifts of strength, wisdom, good fortune and other blessings. However the whole process of finding out the God/Goddess most capable of helping us, makes it easier for Rodnovers to understand the causes and the nature of their problems, hence – as I wrote before – the instructions left to us by our ancestors are genius in their simplicity.

What is the conclusion of this (I hope not too long) elaborations? Well, the conclusion is: if you are a Slav and you follow your ancestors’ wisdom:

you never ever pray for things that you are not prepared to work hard for;

there is always something that you can do to solve your problem. Opposite to Judaeo-Christian way of thinking, in the pre-Slavic system of beliefs nothing is set in stone. Not the future, not the fate and not the final outcome of your struggles.

In the next – and last – part of this series of posts we will discuss the value and the nature of appropriate sacrifices which we – the Rodnovers – can offer to our Gods, instead of the mentioned in the last post, Gods-offending steak from Tesco.

But for now –

Slava!