About initiation in ancient Russia.Ancestral experience for parents

In ancient Russia, IX-X centuries, initiation rites accompanied the most important stages of human development.The transition of a person from birth to adulthood took place in stages.
1. The beginning was laid when the midwife, after accepting the baby from the mother's womb, cut the umbilical cord for him (for a boy with an arrowhead, for a girl with scissors). In parallel, the child was given a name - a talisman that only the family knew.After all, in fact, initiation is the acceptance of a person into a cell of society: a boy - into a courageous war, or a hunter, and a girl - into a wife and a keeper of the hearth.
2. At the age of three, the baby was first put on a horse and taken around the yard (three times around the yard), and the three-year-old was given a spinning wheel and a spindle.This is how the children got to know their life responsibilities, and from that day they learned about them.
3. Alas, at that time, the period of childhood, and even more so adolescence, was short-lived.On their fifteenth birthday, boys and girls entered adulthood.However, then life did not tolerate weakness and physical weakness.Therefore, in order to be accepted into the ranks of adults, future grooms and brides had to go through the last stage of the 3rd stage of the initiation rite, which implies the death of a teenager and the revival of an adult.During the ceremony, teenagers were in youth homes.There they comprehended the mysteries and endowments of their ancestors.These buildings were located at a distance from the settlements in a wooded area.They emitted the afterlife.
At the very beginning of the initiation rite, the young men were met by the priestess-maidens, the goddess of fertility Mokoshi, but the sacrament was led by the priests-elders serving the god of war Veles.
During the sacrament of the ritual, children's features died in adolescents.They were forced to endure pain and humiliation.They were branded with red-hot iron, beaten with sticks, smeared with filth.The youths had to endure all this with courage and unwavering composure.Probably for the sake of investing their lot, the priestesses provided the unfortunate teenagers with drugs and hypnosis.
All these manipulations were aimed at the symbolic rebirth of a teenage child into a man - war.
The girls also underwent a rite of passage, but it was softened by the order.
After initiation, newly minted adults received new names, which, like children, were known only to family members.The priests solemnly handed them clothes in place of the nursery.Pants for boys, and plaid skirts for girls (poneva). my site