Ringing Cedars' Anastasianism

[17] The two names of the movement are explainable as follows: "Anastasia" (Ἀναστασία, Anastasía), from anástasis (ἀνάστασις), is a Greek word meaning "resurrection",[20] and "incorruption", according to the Anastasians implying the reconnection with the never-ending spiritual flow of life emanating from God, visualised as the universal tree of life of which all entities are part as branchings;[19] "Ringing Cedars" refers to the movement's beliefs about the spiritual qualities of the Siberian cedar (Pinus sibirica), a kind of pine.

[21] According to the Anastasians, the theme of the "singing trees" or "ringing trees", that is to say trees emitting vibrations transmitting information, is part of an ancient Eurasian and worldwide wisdom,[22] a way of life consisting in the cultivation of Rod (Род, literally "Generator") — God conceived as continuous "Generation", "Nature" —, which has been preserved over the centuries in its purest form by Russians and volkhvs (shamans) who escaped the Christianisation of Kievan Rus' fleeing to Siberia — a Christianisation which was decided by the ruling elites in order to disrupt the relational ties within society and of human society with nature, with ancestors and gods of the environment as the direct link to the supreme God, justifying the confiscation of all land and the enslavement, and exploitation through taxation and trade, of the population.

[28] Yashin and Kostin found Anastasianism to be a mutual convergence of New Age and Neopaganism, and they defined it as "one of the most successful and large-scale projects in the field of alternative spirituality in modern Russia".

[32] This book expounds the history and wisdom of the "Vedrus", an ancient kin who populated Eurasia and lived in full awareness of God and harmony with the cosmos, presenting them not merely as progenitors of the modern Russians and Slavs but of the peoples of the whole world.

[27] God is Rod, i.e. continuous "Generation", "Nature",[36] and the reconstruction of society on the basis of the "ancestral", "tribal", or "genealogical" (родовой, rodovoy) community, the central idea of the Anastasian movement, is proposed for all the peoples of the world.

[19] However, Megre emphasises that Anastasia is a human, and she would have given birth to a son and a daughter from him, named Vladimir and Anasta, who would be living with their mother in Siberia and would have spiritual abilities like her.

[55] The Vedic "Golden Age" lasted 990 thousand years, during which humanity directly possessed the awareness of God and lived in perfect harmony with the universe, and the bearers of righteousness and of the highest wisdom were the Vedrus, who populated an area spanning from the lands near the North Pole to the Mediterranean Sea.

[27] Then came the Imagic era, lasting nine thousand years, when the highest knowledge was no longer directly perceived and was therefore codified into figurative means and transmitted by castes of priests who reincarnated over the generations.

[56] According to Megre, when a man lives in harmony with his own kin a "love space" (пространство любви, prostranstvo lyubvi) is established as a field where God is present, immanent, and which constitutes a "Heaven on Earth", where kindred people grow together with the surrounding world; it is not merely a geographic concept — the actual "ancestral homestead" (родовое поместье, rodovoye pomest'ye), the land of at least one hectare in size owned and inhabited by the kin —, but it is first of all the web of relationships between kindred people and includes any good creation of the spirit of mankind.

[58] In the kinship homestead, the concretisation of the "love space", a man is capable of building a house with natural materials, growing plants and domesticating animals, creating an ecosystem.

[...] Through Nature you can gain insight into God's purpose.In the Anastasian movement the family or extended kin (rod) is conceived as an entity, embodied as the "love space" and its ancestral homestead, whose aim is the projection of itself in the future as a lineage of descendants of its original progenitors.

[65] In the Anastasan settlement Blagodati ("Grace") in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Yaroslavl Oblast of Russia, studied by Anna Ozhiganova in 2015, the overwhelming majority of the settlers were vegetarian (though some ate eggs laid by their own chickens), and some of them practised a raw food diet.

[78] The Anastasians believe that modern urban life is a system that binds people in unnatural ways of conduct, that it is "a structure that works by itself and distracts a person from nature".

[79] Anastasians engage in communal ceremonies and individual rituals and folk traditions, which are deemed "an obligatory component of a full life",[80] necessary to integrate the "isolated modern man".

[82] Various ritual activities are aimed at awakening the "ancestral memory" and the channels of reincarnation; they may include meditation, singing songs and playing musical instruments, composing and reciting poems, and dancing in circle.

[81] Rituals of purification, performed in preparation for the holidays and the connection with the ancestors, may include bathing in icy water and then jumping three times over a bonfire, as well as walking on hot coals.

The ancestral memory wakes up and demands them.The books of Vladimir Megre make reference to various ancient traditions defined as "pre-Russian Revolution", "pre-Christian Slavic", and "Vedrussian".

[106] Usually, it is necessary to fill out a questionary and to write a short essay, and to present oneself to a general meeting or to a board of members responsible for recruiting newcomers, where a decision is made whether to welcome the applicant or not.

[117] Pozanenko observed that the inhabitants of the Anastasian settlements that he studied are for three fourths members of the "urban intelligentsia with higher education", with 75% of them having graduated from university, a majority in technical and natural sciences, and others in humanities.

[118] Single people are extremely rare among Anastasian settlers, as they are often refused admission since they risk not continuing the kinship line, not taking root and not becoming attached to the place.

[107] Some Anastasians bury their dead directly in their own plot of land, planting a tree over the grave to symbolise the rebirth of the deceased; nothing is intended to remain of the burial.

[67] The central aim of Anastasianism is "to escape from the urban miseries and find God's presence, good ecological environment, have a family and reconstruct national values".

[54] The 2000s–2010s Great Recession contributed to the strengthening of Anastasians' eschatological beliefs about the downfall of the evil technocratic Western civilisation and the rise of a new Vedic Golden Age.

[122] According to the scholars Julia O. Andreeva and Rasa Pranskevičiūtė, Russian Anastasians tend to give a political meaning to their experience, feeling actively engaged in a movement which frees from the yoke of technocracy and evil Western forces.

[125] The Anastasians espouse, instead, the system of the veche, the ancient Slavic popular assembly which they believe goes back to the mythical Vedic Golden Age,[125] or otherwise to the Novgorod Republic (1136–1478),[126] as the best model of government, as a form of "self-government" where everyone may express their opinion which will be taken into account in a unanimous decision-making.

[125] The Anastasians regularly make reference to the Russian Constitution to support their movement and their political ideas, especially the Article 3 which affirms that the only source of power in Russia is its "multinational population".

The usual Neopaganism: jumping over fires, performances that are not truly ethnic, but new, invented, including on the basis of the Book of Veles and the Vedas, those written by Khinevich [the father of Ynglism], which are banned here and rightly so.

[43] Other hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church have called for a dialogue and even integration between Orthodox Christianity and Neopaganism, abandoning the strategies of antagonism and discrimination, prejudice and defamation, while recognising the values about connection with the land and the ancestral tradition that the Neopagan movements carry with themselves,[134] as "it is not worthwhile to erect vain and unfounded vilification and throw mud at our ancestors",[135] as these values were "not even in sight for a thousand years in Russia, for rare exceptions, and even more so in other countries.

[136] About Anastasianism, Sergey V. Kurepin stated that:[135] Somehow in the mid-90s, an ordinary businessman [Vladimir Megre] engaged in trade on the waterways of Siberia made an unplanned stop with his ship in a place on the banks of a Siberian river and met the local residents.

These people have not only preserved the entire pre-Christian culture, but also adequately assess modern reality, know everything about it and even understand some issues better than you and I.The book series The Ringing Cedars of Russia and at least a part of the movement are reproducing antisemitic narratives.