Gone to Croatan

I will not be blogging for the next few days as I am off to present a paper on; The Book of Vles and Ukrainian Neo-Paganism at the Gaia Gathering; The Canadian National Pagan Conference in Winnipeg over the long weekend. This is the third year this conference has happened.

Abstract

Discovered in a Ukrainian bombed out home at the end of WWI a set of wooden boards inscribed in runes was translated in the 1950’s and transcribed into English in the 1970’s. Known as the Book of Vles (or Veles[1]) the translator purports it to be the oldest known written account of pagan pre-Christian beliefs in the Ukraine.

The pagan traditions of the Ukraine being largely undocumented meant The Book of Vles was mired in controversy. Its discovery by a White Russian officer associated with the counter-revolutionary forces of Denikens[2] White army has led critics to devalue its authenticity. More modern writers use this dubious origin in an effort to associate it with modern racialist nationalists and Anti-Semites.

With modern research being conducted in the fields of ethnography, anthropology, archaeology, religious studies, and the opening up of the Ukraine to Europe as a democratic regime, the pagan lore in the Book of Vles is being validated by new discoveries.

This paper looks at the Book of Vles in light of the information we have on pagan traditions in the Ukraine, and in light of the work of Maria Gimbutas who herself was no stranger to controversy.

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[1] Vles or Veles refers to a particular Ukrainian pagan diety.

[2] Deniken led the White Army a counter revolutionary force against the Ukrainian Anarchist Army of Nestor Makhno and the Bolsheviks Red Army under Trotsky, another Ukrainian, in the Russian Civil War 1918-1921.

See ya next week.


Oh yeah about Croatan;

TAZ: "Gone to Croatan"

The Search For Croatan

Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture

Preface to Gone to Croatan

Gone to Croatan: Origins of American Dropout Culture. - book reviews

COMIN' HOME
Defining Anarcho-Primitivism with John Moore

Interview--John Zerzan

THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE

Gone to Croatan


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