Europe's last pagans defend their faith on the net

Europe's last pagans defend their faith on the net

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Many readers would be surprised that there remains one corner of Europe where at least in some areas Christianity never took root at all and the locals remain pagans just like their parents and their parent’s parents before them.
This corner of Europe is the Republic of Mari-El (Capital city: Yoshkar Ola) in the middle Volga region of the Russian Republic. The Mari people are classified as a Volga-Finnic people which means, as the name suggest, that they are related to the modern day Finnish and possibly the Hungarians. The Mari have their own language or set of dialects which are widely spoken throughout the republic.

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Some really cools pics on the website about a people who are less known about than they should be.

Europe’s last are now getting online and reaching out to the world to tell their story and explain their beliefs. Their website is an initiative of The Supreme Kart of the Mari Traditional Religion (MTR), and its energetic leader: Aleksandr Tanygin who represents at least 100 000 adherents. So what do the Mari believe in? According to their website they believe in nature as the source of all that is good. They worship a multitude of gods, the most important of them being The Great White God, The God of Fire and The God of Wind. They also revere many Herculean style half-men half-gods, the most popular being ‘Chumbulat’ who is said to reside on a mountain in Mari-El.

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