The Russian Religion (Russian: Русская Религия), also termed Russian Vedism (Русский Ведизм), is one of the earliest doctrines of Rodnovery (Slavic Neopaganism) in Russia, founded in 1992 in Saint Petersburg by the psychologist and esoteric scientist Viktor Mikhaylovich Kandyba—revered as "Prophet Kandyba" within the movement—and his son Dimitry Viktorovich Kandyba. It is a monotheism based on Slavic heritage, and as such it has been compared to Ukrainian Sylenkoism. The concept of "Russian" in the name "Russian Religion" does not identify an ethnic identity, but a spiritual one, being used as a synonym of the concept of "Aryan".
Overview Viktor M. Kandyba grew up in the Soviet Union, in an environment of Marxist–Leninist atheism which viewed religion as a merely political and social tool. He attended a naval school in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) and was possibly influenced by Viktor Bezverkhy, the founder of Peterburgian Vedism, who taught there in the 1970s. Kandyba graduated in psychology and studied esotericism. He claimed to be the descendant of a line of ancient Russian priests, what he named Vedic "ideologists" or samans (саман). Together with his son Dimitry Viktorovich, he became popular in Russia in the late 1980s for their studies about the psychological "culture of trance" and their practice of hypnosis which they claimed to be unbroken traditions of "Russian Vedism".
In the 1990s, Viktor Kandyba began to elaborate and disseminate his own doctrine of "Russian Religion", first systematically presented in his book History of the Russian Empire published in 1997. In the creation of the literature about the "Russian Religion", Kandyba collaborated with the academic historian Petr Zolin. The "Russian Religion" does not acknowledge a hierarchic church organisation, as Kandyba himself preached that there is direct link between mankind and God, and therefore there is no need of mediating structures. Kandyba's doctrine has thus been defined by the scholar Victor Shnirelman as a "highly eclectic" Rodnovery characterised by monotheism, a "national Russian monotheistic religion" comparable to a "Russian Protestantism" and, within Rodnovery itself, to Ukrainian Sylenkoism. Shnirelman saw in Kandybaite Vedic cosmology a reflection of Zoroastrian cosmological dualism, and also saw similarities with Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy and German Ariosophy. The scholar Alexey V. Gaidukov found Kandybaite Vedic historiosophy to be similar to that of Aleksandr Dugin's Eurasianism.
Kandyba argued that the "Russian Religion", or the "Russian Vedism" that it represented, is the foundation of all later historical religions, and that it also corresponds to the original teachings of Jesus, which were distorted by the compilers of the Bible and by the creators of the Christian religion who introduced the concepts of sin and atoning sacrifice. The book History of the Russian Empire draws and reinterprets content from the Bible and the Hindu Rigveda, including entire extracts such as the Sermon on the Mount, expressions and prayers, and in doing so it claims to be returning ancient wisdom to its original possessors, the Aryans.
Beliefs Theology and cosmology Threefold essence of the One According to Kandybaite Vedic theology, the universe arises from the "One"—Yedinobog (Единобог, "One-God"; also Единый Бог, Yediny Bog, "One God") or simply Odin (Один, which in Russian means precisely the "One")—which acts as the spinning force of the north pole of the sky, which is the intracosmic paradise (Iriy) image of the extracosmic eternal paradise (Svarga). The One is threefold in its essence, reflecting such structure in both the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of the human psychophysical system. The north pole is the "starry origination" (звездная прародина, zvezdnaya prarodyna) of the Aryans or Russians, where the triune essence of the One shows itself most clearly.
The trinity of the One is composed of the following deities: The Father God (Бог-Отец) – which is the primordial quiescent void, the ideal informational supreme, the unmanifested dimension, corresponding in the microcosm of the human body to the left hemisphere of the brain; The Mother Goddess of the Lights/Fires (Богиня-Мать Огни) or Mother Goddess of the World (Богиня-Мать Мира) – which is the spiritual movement, the ideal figurative transience, the manifested dimension, the universal gravity and the right hemisphere of the brain. The Son God (Бог-Сын), Ur (Ур) – which is the electromagnetic radiation generated by the God and the Goddess, and the human psyche itself, whose energy is the basis of life.
Furthermore, Ur is the procreator of Oriy (Орий) or Oriya (Ория), the first god-man who gave cosmic knowledge to humanity and who acted as the forefather of all the Aryans or Russians.
In cosmological terms, the God and the Goddess are also described respectively as spirit and matter, the active life-giving masculine principle and the passive life-receiving feminine principle, and as the "two beginnings of the One" or "two eternal poles of the Great Void" (Великая Пустота, Velikaya Pustota), while Ur is described as the informational "waves" which develop and awaken the material substance into the universe and its self-creating peak—mankind, building forms around the universal vortex of the quiescent void. The waves of Ur express themselves as sound, light and word, but at the very beginning as the image of the word in itself, which is the starry image of the God and the Goddess—the "starry fiery cross" (swastika) drawn by the circumpolar stars.
Sevenfold manifestation of the One
Divinity is nativity and what generates everything is the power of the One, which is the universal spinning represented by the hooked cross rotating at the north celestial pole. The circumpolar stars themselves are the symbolic image of the Goddess, the figurative transient manifestation of the One. The rhythmic rotation of the pole (Prav) is the information for the development of both the united unmanifested (Nav) and manifested (Yav) dimensions of reality. The unmanifested dimension is also the Great Void, and since every manifested entity comes from the unmanifested Great Void, everything in the manifested dimension carries within itself the Great Void. The rhythmic rotation of development is set by both the poles of the One, the masculine God and the feminine Goddess, and it proceeds from the unmanifested Great Void generating Ur, the first light, which organises itself as the five elements of the manifested dimension—the Force Field (Поле Сила, Pole Sila) which functions as the fourfold receptacle of Fire, Air, Water and Soil. The light of Ur is like a fire which illuminates and drives the manifested world to its peak, that is the development of enlightened mankind, and which becomes aware of itself in such enlightened mankind, represented by Oriy. Ur is the Father God itself coming in transient nature as Oriy, thus the Son God and the Father God are One through the Mother Goddess of the Lights.
The complete expression of the One is thus sevenfold, as it includes the trinity of information (God), transient image (Goddess), plus the five elements of the manifested cosmos as expressions of light (Ur), and ultimately the perfected mind of a deified mankind represented by Oriy. In Kandybaite Vedic theology there is an identity between divinity and humanity, especially the latter's mind informed by the "idea of God"; a founding dictum of Kandybaite Vedism is:
According to Kandyba, the One realises itself through mankind, through its imaginative thinking which is the means for realising the "Divine Kingdom":
The human being is actively involved in a co-creation with the One: in the psychic life of the human being the manifested dimension acquires the ability to radiate forms—images and informations—back into the unmanifested dimension and then again into the manifested dimension. In other words, God begins the creation and mankind develops and completes it. The left side of the human brain is the receptacle of the ideal informations of the Father God, while the right hemisphere of the brain expresses the ideal figures of the Mother Goddess of the Lights; the human psyche, as the begotten Son God and the progenitor Oriy, closes the circle of being—from the One it descends and to the One its thoughts return. The left side is spiritual, theoretical and logical while the right side—which includes the oldest parts of the brain—is animal, practical and metaphorical; according to Kandybaite Vedists the left hemisphere is that which distinguishes mankind from animals, and should be developed as much as possible from an early stage of life.
Cycles of manifestation and demanifestation According to Kandybaite Vedic cosmology, the universe is eternal and it exists in the manifested dimension (Yav) for a limited time known as the "Day of Infinity" (День Беспредельности, Den' Bespredel'nosti), lasting for billions of years, at the end of which it disappears again reabsorbed into the unmanifested dimension (Nav) for a time known as the "Night of Infinity" (Ночь Беспредельности, Noch' Bespredel'nosti), which lasts the same as the Day of Infinity. Days of Infinity and Nights of Infinity alternate one another ongoingly from always and for ever. The universe is only apparently time–space, as these two concepts are representations of the sequence of changing forms of the emanation of the One from Nav to Yav, preserved as a unified whole by the constant wave of Ur.
The manifested world is the battlefield of spiritual forces of good and material forces of evil, which are objective realities rather than subjective categories, as "good " is any force which favours the maintenance of the cosmic order (Prav) while "evil" is any force which disrupts it. Bright good forces are believed to come from the God of Heaven, from Svarga or Iriy at the north celestial pole, while dark evil forces are believed to come from Navya (Навья), the chthonic goddess of the Earth and of the south celestial pole, governed by her male counterpart Yama; bright forces and dark forces are associated respectively to the left side and the right side of the brain in the microcosm of the human body, and are collectively represented respectively by Belobog (Белобог, "White-God") and Chernobog (Чернобог, "Black-God").
The polarity of good and evil forces manifests itself in the four directions of space: good entities manifest themselves in the north and the east directions, associated with the heavenly seat of God and the movement of its law, and characterised by spirituality, light, purity and eternity; evil entities manifest themselves in the south and west directions, characterised by materiality, darkness, mixing and depravity. There is an eternal struggle between the two poles of the web of forces, as the southern and western forces try to corrupt the northern and the eastern spiritual entities, while the northern and eastern forces try to sublimate the southern and western material entities. In History of the Russian Empire Kandyba says:
Oriy and the god-men of nations Ur is the god-builder of the manifested universe, drawing the images of the Mother Goddess of the Lights and realising them in structures, creating and recreating the manifested dimension in always better schemes which reintegrate and reorganise the images of the previous cycles. If the dimension of the stars lives according to the law of Ur, the world of humanity lives according to the law of Oriy, the first god-man, progenitor of all the Aryans or Russians, who drew from the order of the sky the holy laws for the spiritual realisation of a deified mankind. Sharing an idea similar to the Nietzschean concept of the "god-man", Kandybaite Vedists believe that each man has the potential to become a deity, a folk spirit, that is to say a man conscious of his divine nature and ability to co-create with the One.