On the Agony of Czech Slavic Paganism and the Representation of One’s Own Funeral among Contemporary Czech Pagans

Abstract

At the end of the 1990s in the Czech Republic, a significant effort to revitalize the ethnic religion of the Slavs occurred. The emergence of this religious and cultural phenomenon was related in particular to two elements: to a nationalist organization and to a group of students of Slavic Studies in the College of Arts of Charles University in Prague. The study presents-in its first part-the activities of those students, their relationship with the Prague Slavic studies of this particular time and with the Indo-European ideology, which became dominant in the group that emerged after the collapse of the original Czech Rodna vira. In the second part of the study are presented the results of field research into attitudes of Contemporary Czech pagans towards funeral and especially towards their own funeral.