Magical Thinking Through the Lens of Things: Contemporary Approaches to Studying the Spiritual Culture of Ancient Slavs

In the last decade, there has been a trend in the academic literature to express skepticism towards the possibility of reconstructing Slavic pre-Christian. “Everyday Magic of the Ancient Slavs” (2022) is a recent collection of ten academic essays devoted to specific “smaller” issues in the study of Slavic spiritual culture in the 5th to 11th centuries AD. Ukrainian and Czech archeologists present studies on such topics as sacred ornaments on household appliances, the use of the ancient stove as a sanctuary, and symbolic relations between humans and the spirit of the house. We believe these essays to have made two important contributions. Firstly, the earliest evidence of the “didukh,” the last sheaf after the harvest, which is a key Ukrainian tradition, can be traced back at least to the middle of the 10th c. AD. Secondly, the hypothetic temple of Volos mentioned in medieval sources can be localized in the eastern part of Podil, a district of Kyiv. This collected volume does not propose a holistic image of Slavic Paganism, but it helps to clarify and make concrete a variety of different aspects of Slavic pre-Christian spirituality.