[7] The revival of Ossetian folk religion as an organised religious movement was initially accorded the formal name Ætsæg Din (Æцæг Дин, "True Faith") in the 1980s[4] by a group of nationalist intellectuals who in the early 1990s constituted the sacerdotal Styr Nykhas ("Great Council").

[11] Similarly, representatives of the Dzuary Lægtæ ("Holy Men"), the council of the priests of the Ossetian sanctuaries, define Assianism, by citing the folklorist and ethnographer Soslan Temirkhanov, as "[...] a worldview [...] that arouses that holy spark that raises a person, illuminates and warms his soul, makes him strive for good and light, gives him courage and strength to fearlessly fight evil and vice, inspires him to self-sacrifice for the good of others".

[15] A group of Scythian tribes, the Sarmatians, known as the Alans (i.e. "Aryans", through a common internal consonant shift, i.e. "Iranians"[16]) from the first century onwards, migrated into Europe.

Allied with the Germanic Goths, the Alans penetrated west into France, Italy, Spain, and other territories under the Roman Empire.

[17] While most of the Scythians assimilated into other ethnic groups by the Middle Ages, the Alans of the Caucasus maintained a distinct identity and continued to dominate the area, so that the Byzantine Empire recognised them as an independent allied kingdom.

Through their relations with the Byzantines and missionaries from Georgia in the south, the Alan aristocracy adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity during the tenth century.

This, however, had little effect on the general Alan population, so that the thirteenth-century Flemish traveller William of Rubruck reported that "they knew nothing (of Christianity) apart from the name of Christ".

The Ossetians are the sole modern population culturally and linguistically descending from the Alans, and they have preserved beliefs and rituals likely dating back to Scythian religion, even through waves of partial syncretisation with Christianity.

[18] After the conquests of the Mongol Empire in the Caucasus during the mid-thirteenth century, contacts between the Alans and Eastern Orthodox religious authorities ceased completely, and their superficial Christianisation was stopped.

There is evidence that between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, shrines which were apparently built in honour of Christian saints were converted to indigenous Pagan use.

Their efforts had had limited success by the time when they were completely obliterated by the Russian Revolution of 1917, which introduced the peoples of the Caucasus into the rapid processes of industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation of the Soviet Union.

According to Foltz, the narrative of the contemporary promoters of Scythian Neopaganism is that the religiosity of the Ossetians maintained a strong underlying continuity while absorbing and adapting superficial influences from Christianity, and to a lesser extent from Islam and neighbouring Caucasian traditions, superficial influences which may be easily stripped away to reveal its essential, distinct "Iranian character".

Since 1994, sacrifices are held at the site with the participation of government officials and community leaders, with activities supervised by the sacerdotal Great Council (Styr Nykhas).

[24] The Nart sagas are regarded as the "holy writings" of Assianism, from which some exegetes of the movement, such as Daurbek Makeyev, have drawn theological doctrines.

[26] According to the scholar Sergey Shtyrkov, the Assian exegetes have created "their own dogma and theological system", through etymology and comparison with other Indo-Iranian traditions.

[28] The artist and architect Slava Dzhanaïty has published many books on the Ossetian folk religion, emphasising its philosophical aspects in contrast to the more practical leaning of Makeyev's writings.

[38] The activity of the barduag is called minzhvar (минжвар), a concept difficult to be translated which means "making connections", "arranging things in the right way".

[43] According to Foltz, "Ares" was probably Mithra, and the modern Uastyrdzhi; he was widely worshipped through altars in the form of a sword planted in a pile of stones or brushwood.

[47] According to Shtyrkov, the modern Assian movement tries "to create a unified ritual system, every tiny element of which has a theological motivation".

[52] Holidays are linked to the days of the week, the phases of the moon, and the solstices; for example, the Ossetian New Years is celebrated on the second Thursday of January.

The ceremony is led by a "holy man" (dzuary læg), who invokes the deity through the offering of a "toast", kuyvd (куывд), which also means "prayer", towards the sky.

[64] Slava Dzhanaïty, who projected the reconstruction the Rekom Temple, an important Ossetian shrine in Tsey, Alagirsky District, North Ossetia–Alania, destroyed by an accidental fire in 1995,[65] observed that:[64] Gratefully appreciating the works of nature, the ancient sage did not build gigantic structures that stand out and argue with the environment created by the world's best architect mother nature, just as he did not try to restrict the presence of the Spirit within fixed boundaries.

[66] These shrines are places where to make oaths, contracts, weddings, and where to identify violators of the divine law, the Ard.

[35] Within the private household, the most sacred area is the khadzar (хждзар); it is the kuvandon of the house, where the hearth and the chain of the goddess Safa are located.

[58] The most important symbol in Assianism, according to the Dzuary Lægtæ, is the Uatsamongzh (Уацамонгж) or Uatsamonga (Уацамонга), a bowl, goblet or cup mentioned in the Ossetian Nart epics whose name means "indicating (amongzh) truth (uats)" or "revelator of divinity".

It is a symbol of truth representing the inverted vault of the sky, which can saturate the worthy ones (the hero of the Nart epics) with unearthly knowledge.

[69] In 2009, at the Center for Conservative Research of Moscow State University, a conference was held about the role of Ossetians in Russian history led by the Eurasianist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin.

No one would throw garbage at Rekom itself, but they don't realize that there is no division between sacred and non-sacred land; every place has its resident deity, who will be offended if anyone violates its sanctity.The Dzuary Lægtæ articulate a historical critique of Christianisation: For them, Orthodox Christianity is an "alien religion" that "seeks to captivate and corrupt the souls of the conquered", and in Ossetia it was spread by foreigners and by the tsarist autocracy through coercion, by police measures and by luring children and the poor with gifts, a process which led to the disintegration of families and to the ruin of farms.

The Russian Orthodox archbishop Leonid in Moscow sought to silence Makeyev by trying to ban his books as "extremist literature", calling on his personal contacts when he was a general in the Federal Security Service.

[5] Some categories particularly well represented among the believers are the military, hunters, and sportsmen, attracted by the heroic ethics of the Narts, but also intellectuals and artists.