Native Spiritual Culture under the Pressure of Conservatism and Liberalism
ŽIARISLAV (Miroslav Žiarislav Švický), Slovakia – publicist, musician, writer, founder of the Rodný kruh (Native Circle), an association dedicated to revival Slavic natural culture and spirituality (1995).
Traditionalists and Liberals often regard native spiritual culture as an alternative worldview, and therefore perceive it as potentially threatening.
Native spirituality – the original natural faith – Slovak native spirituality – is perceived by conservative circles, especially Christian-oriented ones, as “neo-paganism.” They do not acknowledge that the original spirituality existed long before Christianity and still lives on. Instead, they impose on it the label “neo,” that is, a newly created spiritual system, which they can then dismiss as “pagan,” “neo-pagan,” and liken it to the Western “New Age” movement. Yet there are essential features that clearly distinguish the original faith from New Age: continuity with traditions in rituals, ceremonies, holidays, artistic and linguistic expressions, reverence for nature and its forces not only as abstract energies, but through sacred places, elements, memorial trees etc. Unlike New Age, native/original faith is essentially a national spirituality, indigenous in nature, the opposite of New Age and world religions. Even though in some respects spiritualities may share common traits, representatives of conservative (or semi-conservative) church spirituality, which once suppressed the original wisdom in a revolutionary way, generally seek to exclude native spirituality from public media and from the broader legal and cultural spheres. From a liberal perspective, native spirituality is often regarded as outdated, stereotypical, and therefore unacceptable. In contrast to church traditionalists, there are those who identify as liberals. But many are posing as liberals – “pseudo-free-thinkers” – because a true liberal should have no problem acknowledging a place under the sun that includes original spiritual values, they likewise consider native/original spirituality something to be marginalized and excluded. Liberals control most of the cultural landscape. Even if we see some traits of native spirituality appearing in artistic circles, especially music, the greater part of festival and club scenes, as well as airtime in public media, is controlled by figures of the so-called free-thinking stream. Many of them see native spirituality as embodying archetypes that need to eradicated. However, they do not seek to displace the church (organized religion) influence in general; they only adopt a dismissive stance toward native spirituality. Traditionalist circles may only occasionally gain significant political power through national elections, but they consistently retain support in the law, the constitution, state offices and the media.
On the other hand, liberal circles – even when they lose elections – still hold constant support from legal and civic instruments, as well as continuous funding flows, if not from their own state then from other Western countries – from the EU, through governmental and non-governmental structures alike. Thus, whether they hold more or less power, they always exert significant control over cultural space.
It should be noted that civic activists – whether from the state or the third sector – have never defended the rights of native faiths and cultures. Not when they were excluded from the media, not when a storage of sculptures in eastern Slovakia was burned down after a local priest labeled them pagan in his Sunday sermon, not when artifacts of native spirituality were damaged or destroyed, nor in other cases where civil law and freedom of religion were clearly violated.
Thus, conservative Christian and pseudo-liberal currents may agree on only one thing: that native spirituality must be excluded from public life. Traditional and progressive representatives have carved out their own spheres of influence, recognizing each other’s territories as fields of irreconcilable struggle.
By doing so, they marginalized those who do not fight them, but merely seek to survive and preserve their rightful space. In reality, the native spirituality of each tribe or nation exists only within its living, national space—and with the disappearance of that space, it vanishes. It is rooted in its natural foundation. It does not appeal to the legacies of invasive, revolutionary cultures, but cultivates surviving archetypes and seeks to create on its own ground for the benefit of the whole. Unlike monotheistic Judeo-Christian religions, which led holy wars to convert others, native spirituality made no attempt to convert anybody. From time immemorial, they sustained the spiritual diversity of Earth (spiritodiversity), maintaining at least some measure or natural balance. The so-called traditionalist and so-called progressive camps have thus built their fighting grounds, where they need each other in conflict. Both cultivate militant fringes and claim primary media space, easily excluding what does not serve their duel. The core national culture must therefore inevitably move somewhere between what is established and what is creative. Using cultural history terms, somewhere between folklore (what remains after the original is pushed into “folk” form) and creative expression lies the original natural spirituality in its many forms. At the end of the 1960s, when conditions in America loosened, with a release from cultural and social patterns (the supposed conservatism/traditionalism), development surged in two directions: free-thinking streams on one side, and revival of national/tribal values on the other. Shortly thereafter, creative folklore with a spiritual touch, called “ethno-music” in the West, was transformed by the intervention and agreement of big publishers into “world music.” Thus, music – perhaps the most followed art – was shifted from a revival of national (ethnic) currents into an artificial mixture, a globalist stew, supported by capital. While world music does not theoretically deny ethnic streams, in practice it marginalizes them, hijacking the audience’s affinity for native cultures into the globalist mix. In this way, world music in art does the same as New Age in spirituality. Slovakia – a Global Uniqueness of Unequal Law Where can such silent cooperation between so-called traditionalists and so-called liberals lead? Even if we ignore the exclusion of native-spiritual artists from public media and education, and the fact that Slovakia has not recognized a single native holiday (not even as a memorial day), we still face a global peculiarity: the legally required number of registered members for a religious community to be recognized. Guess how many? In large Poland and Hungary, recognition requires just 100 signatures. The most demanding are Czechia Check Republic, Lithuania, Greece, and Romania – 300 members. In many big states, no number is set at all – like the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK. In Russia and Ukraine, or in Slovenia, only 10 members are needed. In Estonia – 12. And what is the required number in Slovakia today? 50 000 members (!) to have the right to perform marriages.
Spelled out: fifty thousand. At the international gathering of ethnic religions, this number had to be repeated several times, because no one could believed it. Slovakia is a global rarity – requiring 50,000 adult signatures (a number even the most established churches today would not reach) to found a religious community with ritual rights. That is 120 to 5 000 times more than in other European states. The official justification is “to prevent the spread of Islam.” But do you really have to suppress native culture to stop Islam (or whatever you is considered a threat)? At the last census (2021), 4 007 citizens declared belonging to native/natural spirituality. enough be legally recognized. But how do you explain that a third of recognized religious communities in Slovakia have fewer members than this? Does Slovakia have a special patent on unequal law? If this were challenged in an international court, the Slovak Republic would most likely lose, just as Lithuania recently lost in its refusal to register the native faith Romuva.
The native faith in Slovakia may or may not be recognized. That depends on its efforts. But the real question is: How long will the far right and far left currents be allowed to suppress Slovak spiritual culture? More precisely – how long will we allow them to?
