Hetanism
The Armenian Native Faith, also termed Armenian Neopaganism or Hetanism, is a modern Pagan new religious movement that harkens back to the historical, pre-Christian belief systems and ethnic religions of the Armenians. The followers of the movement call themselves "Hetans" or Arordi, meaning the "Children of Ari", also rendered as "Arordiners" in some scholarly publications.
The Arordiner movement has antecedents in the early 20th century, with the doctrine of Tseghakron of the nationalist political theorist Garegin Nzhdeh. It took an institutional form in 1991, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union in a climate of national reawakening, when the Armenologist Slak Kakosyan founded the "Order of the Children of Ari". Neopaganism expert Victor Schnirelmann estimated the following of Armenian neopaganism to be "no more than a few hundred people".
History
Nzhdeh's and Kakosyan's experiences
The first organisation of Armenian Native Faith, the "Order of the Children of Ari" was established in 1991 by the armenologist Slak Kakosyan. He belonged to a generation of Armenian dissidents and was exiled in the 1970s from Soviet Armenia; in 1979 he fled to the United States where he became familiar with the ideas of Garegin Nzhdeh.Nzhdeh was a philosopher, statesman and fedayi of the first half of the twentieth century, who left an enduring legacy in the history of Armenia, and is still one of the driving forces of Armenian nationalism. Kakosyan praised him as the "prophet of the Armenians". Nzhdeh founded a movement named Tseghakron, which was among the core doctrines of the Armenian Youth Federation. In Nzhdeh's poetic mythology, the Armenian nation is identified as Atlas upholding the ordered world, and it makes reference to Hayk, the mythical patriarch of the Armenians, and to Vahagn, the solar and warrior god "fighter of the serpent", as means through which to awaken the Armenian nation and raise its spirit. Nzhdeh's movement took place in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide of 1915.
During his exile, Slak Kakosyan made extensive use of Nzhdeh's works to codify the Ukhtagirk, the sacred text of the Armenian Native Faith movement. In the book, Garegin Nzhdeh is deified as an incarnation of Vahagn, the re-establisher of the true faith of the Armenians and of the Aryan values. While still in the United States, Kakosyan claimed that he had been initiated to the ancient Armenian hereditary priesthood mentioned by Moses of Chorene, changing his forename from "Edik" to "Slak". He likely became acquainted with Zoroastrian communities in the United States.
1990s: Establishment of the Children of Ari
Returning to Armenia in 1991, Slak Kakosyan gathered a community and founded the Children of Ari. They began to hold rituals on traditional Armenian holydays. The Temple of Garni became the centre of the community, a council of priests was set up in order to manage the organisation and the rites. During the 1990s, the group reached visibility in wider Armenian society. According to the scholar Yulia Antonyan, the emergence of the Armenian Native Faith is attributable to the same causes which led to the rise of other modern Pagan movements, but also Hindu and Protestant movements, in the other post-Soviet countries: The Armenian Native Faith represents the indigenous answer to the social and cultural upheavals which followed the collapse of Soviet society and of its atheist and materialist ideology.Republican Party support and grassroots spread
and Andranik Margaryan, founding fathers of the Republican Party of Armenia, were Arordiners like many other members of the party and took part in the very first ritual at the Temple of Garni. The Republican Party provided financial support for the Children of Ari until recent times, sponsored the publication of Ukhtagirk and the set up of a memorial stele to Slak Kakosyan on the grounds of the Temple of Garni. Arordiner festivals are celebrated in some regions with the support of local municipalities. Despite this strong link with the nationalist political scene, the Children of Ari does not declare a political orientation, and the priests are forbidden from joining any political party.Although it started among the Armenian intellectual elites as a means to reawaken Armenian identity, in most recent times the Armenian Native Faith movement has expanded its contingent of adherents among the provincial and rural populations, and among the Armenian diaspora. Besides the philosophical approach of the intellectuals, the common people are driven to the Armenian Native Faith by various reasons, ranging from mysticism to a sentimental devotion to the gods. Antonyan documented the case of a thirty-five years-old woman who believed to be infertile, and who joined the Armenian Native Faith movement after she allegedly became pregnant by praying to Anahit, goddess of fertility, and to Astghik, goddess of love and beauty. The woman gave her daughter the name "Nana", another name of the goddess of fertility.
Local Arordiner communities have been organised in villages outside the capital Yerevan. The structure of the Order of the Children of Ari, and of the local communities themselves, is characterised by a clear hierarchy, with the council of priests, led by an elected chief, handling the organisation of all activities. The highest position within the hierarchy is that of the supreme priest, which has remained vacant since Slak Kakosyan's death in 2005.
2009: Avetisyan and the Armenian Aryan Order
Another party that was closely associated to the Arordiners is the Union of Armenian Aryans, led by Armen Avetisyan, headquartered in Abovyan, a city which is the second most important center of the Armenian Native Faith movement after Yerevan. The relations with the party, known for its extreme views, were cut in 2009 when Avetisyan proclaimed himself a spiritual leader and announced the initiative to build a central temple in Yerevan; as the Children of Ari expressed their opposition to the project, Avetisyan founded a separate religious group, the Armenian Aryan Order.Beliefs
Theology and cosmology
Ar and Ara
Beliefs among the individual Arordiners vary, though there is a common theological underpinning provided by Ukhtagirk. This theology is a monism: The beginning of the first section of the book recites that "in the beginning was the Ar, and Ara was the creator". The Ar is the impersonal, without qualities, transcendent principle begetting the universe, while Ara is his personal, present form as "the Creator". The book continues telling the myth of how Ara generates the gods and how the goddess Anahit gives birth to Ari, the form of mankind. According to Arordiner theology, Ar is the life-giving word root, and it is the origin of words like, for instance, art, aryyun, argand, armat, arka, ara, Arev, Ara, Ari, Chari. The "essence of things" and their "perfection" is represented by swastika motifs.Ari and Chari, and the many deities
The different deities are conceived by the supreme Ara. Some Arordiners do not consider them to be separate beings, but as "incarnations of different aspects of Ara". They are organised in a cosmic duality, representing the "light side" and the "dark side" of the universal power, with the latter led by Vishap, the great snake, who is identified as being the same as Yahweh. The history of mankind itself is seen as a constant struggle between these two forces: One represented by Ari, the right men of the creative light side; the other one represented by Chari, destructive dark-sided creatures made from soil by Vishap.The Armenian Native Faith is polytheistic in practice. The gods of the Arordiners include: Aramazd, the chief of the gods, Hayk, the mythical founder of the Armenian nation, Aray the god of war, Barsamin the god of sky and weather, Aralez the god of the dead, Anahit the goddess of fertility and war, Mihr the solar god, Astghik the goddess of love and beauty, Nuneh the goddess of wisdom, Tir the god of art and inspiration, Tsovinar the goddess of waters, Amanor the god of hospitality, Spandaramet the goddess of death, and Gissaneh the mother goddess of nature.
Afterlife and eschatology
The Arordiners have a cyclical view of reality, and they believe in the reincarnation of individual souls through the genetic lineage. That is to say, men are believed to come back to life in the following generations of their own descendants, in the kin which they begot while living. According to Arordiner doctrines, the entire world goes through similar cycles, from the smaller ones represented by the days and the years, to the greatest ones represented by eras of ten thousand years.The struggle between light and dark forces unfolds through the cycle of each era: Order and connection with the ancestors prevail during the world's summer and spring; while disorder, confusion and forsaking of the ancestral roots prevail during the world's autumn and winter. In the latter period, beings are not in harmony with Ara, they are not nourished by cosmic energy, and they fall prey of the evil Chari forces. At the darkest stage of history, though, which according to Arordiners corresponds to the current times, Vahagn manifests again and brings the Ari forces back to life.
The ''Ukhtagirk''
Ukhtagirk, the holy book of the Armenian Native Faith, may be translated as "Book of Vows". It was the life work of Slak Kakosyan, who finished the manuscript just before his death in 2005. Kakosyan, however, is not credited as the "author" of the Ukhtagirk, but rather as the "recorder" of an eternal truth understood by inspiration, its "compiler". The book was officially proclaimed the holy text of the Order of the Children of Ari in 2000, a couple of years before its completion, when the religious organisation was officially registered by the Armenian state.The book is divided into seven parts: Astvatsashoonch, which explains the Armenian language as a mystical system of symbols related to the root Ar; Tsagumnaran, which explains in mythical terms the origin of the world, the gods and mankind; Avetaran and Dzonaran, which deal with philosophical and ontological categories to explain reality and values; Veharan and Patgamaran, which present mythologised descriptions of Nzhdeh's life and ideas, respectively; and Hymnergaran, which is a collection of poems written by Kakosyan and his followers, as well as by authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The mythological parts about creation rely upon Armenian medieval sources and folk knowledge.
Chanting ritual texts from the book is considered to procure mystical experiences, and the physical book itself is crucial for some ritual activities, such as wedding ceremonies, in which the rings are passed to the bride and groom on top of a copy of the Ukhtagirk. At the same time, Arordiners do not consider their book unquestionable, but the text is open to corrections as required by changing circumstances, according to Kakosyan, who conceived the book in the terms of a changeful and adaptable truth.