Several historical reports, along with our own fieldwork data, cover a long period from the early 17th century until the present time, helping to reconstruct how the sacred site Ldzaa-nykh, which had been moving between and around Pitsunda Orthodox temple and Lidzava village, gradually took its present location; how families of priests succeeded each other, evolving into a kind of nativist leaders; and how a cult itself transformed into what it is now. Akadak as Lidzava annual praying ritual has been one of the last festivities in the whole Abkhazia, which continued to integrate not a few families but all the villagers. For centuries the lands of Pitsunda peninsula attracted new flows of immigrants, the protection of which was provided by the temple, and later the rural shrine spun off from it. The irony of history is that the melting pot that turned hundreds of strangers into "Abkhazians", was a hybrid, non-indigenous cult. Akadak praying more and more resembles a ceremony to integrate local community, helping to bring the current project of Abkhaz nationalism to life.
Keywords: Western Caucasus, hybridity, nativism, ethnography, Abkhazia, Georgia, Pitsunda temple, Orthodox Christianity, neo-paganism.
At the final stage, the study was funded by a grant from the Volkswagen Stiftung Foundation: program Between Europe and the Orient - A Focus on Research and Higher Education in/on Central Asia and the Caucasus, project N86427 Transformation of Sacred Spaces, Pilgrims and Concepts of Hybridity in the Post-Soviet Caucasus.
Kuznetsov I., Kuznetsova R. Akadak i Ldzaanyh: k istorii hybridnykh kul'tov v Abkhazii [Akadak and Ldzaanyh: on the history of Hybrid cults in Abkhazia]. Gosudarstvo, religiya, tserkva v Rossii i za rubezhom [State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad]. 2016. N2. pp. 38-66.
Kuznetsov, Igor, Kuznetsova, Rita (2016) "Akadak and Ldzaa-nykh: Towards History of Hybrid Cults in Abkhazia", Gosudarstuo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 34(2): 38-66.
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Hybridity and hybrid cults
Cultural hybrid, according to Nestor Cancini, is a phenomenon "specifically modern ... generated by the forms of integration that arise [through] nation-states, political populism, and cultural production"1. The process of hybridization is focused on the incorporation and adaptation of" alien " cultural phenomena and, in a broader perspective, acts as a response to such challenges of globalization as the impact of Western culture and strong trends towards unification. This position is further reflected in the reflections of Homi Bhabha, who places hybridity in a colonial context and defines it precisely as a strategy for the struggle of the oppressed (or subaltern) against their oppressors.2
However ,the" biological past " of the hybridity metaphor itself has served as an incentive to raise the question of the relevance of this concept by critics who still distinguish the birthmarks of essentialism on the body of modern Western social science. For example, similar voices were heard at a conference held in 1996 at the University of Texas (Austin), the results of which were then published by the Journal of American Folklore in a special issue entitled Theorizing the Hybrid3. In order to summarize the results of that discussion, Strauss had no choice but to state: "After all, there are no 'pure' individuals or 'pure' cultures <...>. Of course, we can construct them by making them relatively 'pure', and in fact we do so"4. Recently, similar doubts were repeated again by some participants of the Tbilisi conference " Religion and Secularism in the Caucasus: New Relations "(June 2015). Meanwhile, Bhabha warns against overly literal reading of his ideas and those of his followers:
1. Canclini, G.N. (1995) Hybrid Cultures. Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Trans. by C.L. Chiappari, S.L. Lopez, p. xxvii. London; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
2. Bhabha, H.K. (2007) The Location of Culture. London; New York: Routledge.
3. Kapchan, D.A., Strong, P.T. (1999) "Theorizing the Hybrid", Journal of American Folklore 112(445): 240.
4. Stross, B. (1999) "The Hybrid Metaphor: From Biology to Culture", Journal of American Folklore, 112(445): 266-267.
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[K]olonial hybridity is not a problem of genealogy or identity of two different cultures <...>. Hybridity is a problem of colonial representation and individualization, which unfold the effects of colonialist non-recognition so that other," denied " knowledge enters the dominant discourse and alienates its very basis - its rules of recognition.5
In a number of multiple manifestations of cross-cultural mixing, hybridization is called one of the most "advanced" forms, including in comparison with syncretism, creolization, and so on. This means not only that its action leads to the formation of more and more synthetic entities, such as New Age religions appearing here and there. In this sense, it is impossible and unnecessary to draw boundaries within each such new creation in order to classify some of its elements as "natural" and others as "alien". The latter approach is characterized mainly by static models, such as the notorious Hellenistic syncretism, understood as the result of a one-act Greek invasion of virgin countries belonging to barbarians. On the contrary, the concept of hybridity returns dynamics to the system, explaining each subsequent change in it as a manifestation of the relentless interaction of all active forces.
In the modern world, religious groups outside the mainstream are everywhere caught in the grip of competing political movements associated with various world religions. As Bhabha writes, referring to the situation in India, " When natives insist on the Indianization of the Gospel, they use the power of hybridity to resist baptism and make the conversion project impossible."6. Various local cults are increasingly playing the role of ethno-national ideologies, and the main trends in their development are also best described as the results of hybridization.
To what extent are all these ideas applicable to the study of objects considered by Caucasian ethnographers as remnants of still living ancient traditions? Especially if these relics are-
5. Bhabha, H. The Location of Culture, p. 114.
6. Ibid., p. 118.
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Do you live in a region that will not be affected by globalization in the first place? This is the main question of our research, which focuses on the veneration of the so-called Ldzaana(abh. where a-na (a), letters. shrine, sanctuary; icon 7) - probably the most famous of the holy places of Abkhazia. The Ldzaans still have an annual mass prayer, called akadak . The sanctuary is located in the village of Lidzava, located in the Gagra zone, near the resort town of Pitsunda. Currently, the population of Lidzawa is about two thousand people. For centuries, it has resisted the domination and sometimes outright conquest of neighboring States, which first introduced Christianity, then Islam, and finally Christianity again. Local history has known multiple waves of migrants from outside. The last significant changes in the ethnic composition of the village were associated with the tragic Georgian-Abkhazian armed conflict of 1992-1993, which turned Lidzava into a "truly" Abkhazian point on the political map of the region.
This article is based on the results of a long-term included observation of the religious practices of Lidzavtsy, consistently conducted for decades by the authors, one of whom is an insider for these places. In addition, materials for our research were compiled from a variety of printed historical sources, as well as a series of semi-structured interviews that were collected during two short-term excursions undertaken by the authors together with students, postgraduates and employees of the Department of Archeology, Ethnology, Ancient and Medieval History of Kuban State University in the summer of 2003 and 2013.
Historical roots
It is widely believed in the literature that the holy places revered by Abkhazians today arose independently of the ancient centers of Christianity in Abkhazia and even allegedly historically preceded them. In this series, for example, there are the following statements: "In most of these cases, the-
7. Kaslandzia V. A. [Abkhazian-Russian dictionary]. Akea Publ., 2005, vol. 2, pp. 35-36.
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There are still surviving Christian temples (Ilor, Lykhny, Pitsunda) or ruins of temples (Dydripsh, Leshkendar, etc.). In all probability, these temples were specially built in those places that have already been widely recognized by the people as the abodes of the oldest pagan deities"8. Similarly, Sh. D. Inal-Ipa, and after him a whole generation of historians, archaeologists, and ethnographers - specialists in the field of so-called Abkhazian "paganism" - were convinced that the Byzantines had not founded the Pitsunda temple from scratch and that the sanctuary of the indigenous population, at least since ancient times, existed in the ancient world. close proximity to the city built by Greek settlers:
Pitiunt was founded as a Greek colony, which apparently existed from the VI-V centuries BC. e. It is assumed that the name "Pitsunda" comes from the Greek "pitius" - pine (Greek myth says that in Pitsunda Pan turned the nymph Pitis into a pine). In Abkhazian, this area is called Ldzaa, and near the city there was one of the most revered sanctuaries of the same name (Ldzaanykh) .9
Recently, an attempt was made to develop this position on the basis of archaeological material, and it took the form of a theory that asserts that the characteristic Abkhazian religious syncretism in this region is a very ancient phenomenon and even in the most remote epochs formed a whole system of beliefs here.:
The highly revered traditional sanctuary of Ldzaa-nykha is one of the seven main Anykhas of Abkhazia; the now forgotten and non-locatable sanctuary of Angarnykh, obviously dedicated to the cult of the sevenfold deity Aitar, the patron saint of cattle breeding and farming; and numerous other sacred sites on the territory of the cape form a single sacred complex with them.
8. Chursin G. F. Materials on the ethnography of Abkhazia. Sukhumi, 1956. p. 27.
9. Inal-Ipa Sh. D. Abkhazians. Istoriko-etnograficheskie ocherki [Historical and ethnographic essays]. Sukhumi, 1965. p. 112.
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Written sources and ethnographic studies also leave no doubt that the local population adheres to religious syncretism from ancient times to the present day10.
And yet these opinions are still not supported by anything significant. As in other places, no reliable archaeological finds have been found on the Pitsunda Peninsula that directly testify to the existence of local "pagan" cults near Christian structures, and especially at the same time as them. Nor is there any such indication in the widely cited historical sources. The latter together allow us to cover a long period in the history of the Lidzava cult and the Ldzaani shrine from the beginning of the 17th century to the present, helping to reconstruct the ways in which the "sacred place" moved between the Pitsunda temple and the village of Lidzava, eventually finding its current location on the territory of the latter; how they changed each other priestly families who inherited their roles from Orthodox (Georgian) priests who left Bichvinta (Pitsunda), apparently at the end of the eighteenth century, and have now been reborn as a kind of nationalist leaders; and how the cult itself, together with its central institution - the annual prayer - has become what it is today.
So, in the drawing of the Pitsunda temple, made between 1631 and 1651 by Castelli, two scenes are placed: on one-a group of people either erects, or, on the contrary, overturns a column (it is signed that these are "mountain Svans"), on the other-two figures bow to another column topped with a cross. In this mention, one can discern some reminiscences of the Svetitskhoveli cult (gruz. "the life-giving pillar"). As in many Christian churches, Pitsunda apparently had its own holy spring. Additional information about this cult can be found in the description of another Italian missionary, J. R. R. Tolkien. Zampi:
10. Bartsits R. M. Abkhazian religious syncretism in cult complexes and modern ritual practice. Author's abstract. diss... Candidate of Historical Sciences. Nalchik, 2008; Bartsits R. M. Abkhazian religious syncretism in cult complexes and modern ritual practice. Moscow: RGTEU Publishing House, 2009, p. 83.
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They say that in front of this church there is a marble pillar, from which, by the will of God, a boiling stream of water came out, when the holy apostle [Andrew. - Auth.] was put to death; the flow of this stream was stopped by some persons, calling on the name of the holy apostle; therefore, after such a miracle, the people were imbued with great veneration for him and, passing by the pillar, they applied themselves to it and knelt down. I relate this from the words of one of our fathers, Father Christopher Castelli, who was in Picciota with the Catholicos and saw the veneration (let's say barbaric) shown by the people to the pillar, the holy apostle and the cross on his chest.11
Further, interesting evidence is found in Xaverio Glavani. As the French consul in Bakhchisarai, during the first two decades of the XVIII century, he apparently visited the Caucasian coast somewhere in the neighborhood of Abkhazia:
On the other side of the mountains is Mingrelia. Its inhabitants are idolaters and are ruled by the Khan. Behind them live the Achikbashi, also idolaters. < ... > They are ruled by the Khan. Then there are the Kadaks [emphasis added. - Auth.], who profess Christianity according to the Greek rite and have monasteries and churches. There are 24 independent Abaza beys beyond Kadaks. Their possessions extend from the Great Sea to the Gelindjik Estuary Bay in the Circassian land12.
Between the vast area of Turkish influence in the south-east and the possessions of the "independent Abaza beys" (most likely the future Sadzas, the western neighbors of the Abkhazians who spoke a language close to Abkhazian) in the north - west, there was that part of Abkhazia (Pitsunda and its surroundings) where Christianity still glimmered at the beginning of the XVIII century. This is where Glavani placed his Kadaks (les Kadaks). In this mention of their very name, we see the earliest written evidence of Akadak prayer, which gradually turned from a temple to a rural one. It is important that the Kadaks here are just a certain group, perhaps a priestly one, and not a religious practice or its attribute, as it might be
11. Chardin J. Chevalier Chardin's journey through Transcaucasia in 1672-1678. 1900. N6 [1711]. pp. 42-43.
12. Glavani, X. Relation de la Circassie dressee par M. Xaverio Glavani, Consul de France en Crimee et p. (rentier) medecin du Khan a Bakche-Seray. Le 20 Janvier 1724 / translated by E. G. Weidenbaum // Collection of materials for describing the territories and tribes of the Caucasus. Issue No. 17. Otd. 1. Tiflis, 1893. P. 163.
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perhaps, if the term was borrowed directly from ancient Georgian biblical texts, cf. "sermon". And the ethnography of the XIX century really recorded in the mountainous parts of Eastern Georgia (Tusheti, Pshavi, Khevsureti, etc.) the institution of such kadagi, which are quite suitable for us as a prototype. The most eloquent description of their divinatory activity, which is associated with seizures and immersion in an ecstatic state, was given by R. D. Eristov:
Kadagi preachers. Kadagami are both men and women. The latter are scarier with their fanatical bitterness. They run into the mountains, hit themselves in the chest with stones, scream, rage... in a word, they are a kind of evangelical demoniac 13.
In addition to the "island" term known only in Lidzava, the appearance of which may be due to the influence of the Pitsunda temple, or rather some hybrid cult that has developed here, modern Abkhazian speech still retains an interesting verb "to talk, to talk nonsense, to talk nonsense." Two nouns are formed from it (razg.): "chatter, chatter, tar-bars" and " 1. chatterbox. 2 (outdated). 14. The latter circumstance suggests that this kind of semantic shift must have reflected an ideological rejection of the very religious practice behind the term, quite in the style of the "natives" of Bhabha (see above), who resisted any project of converting them to Christianity.
A century later, the service in the Pitsunda temple completely stopped. The Mkhitarist scholar Minas Bzhshkyan (Medici), who visited Bichvinta ( "Bujunda") sometime between 1815 and 1819, left a description of the church, short but containing important details. Here is a snippet from it:
Scraps of [old] vestments have been preserved here and are used in the performance of spiritual requirements by the elders who are attached to the church.
13.Eristov R. D. O Tushino-Pshavo-Khevsursky okrug [About the Tushino-Pshavo-Khevsursky district]. Book 3 (Tiflis, 1855). pp. 103-104.
14. p. 536.
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they live in the same way and, like priests, go in and out of the church, and all spiritual services, prayers and commemorations are celebrated by them15.
The place of Christian priests was taken by certain ministers of worship, obviously not connected or only indirectly connected with official Christianity. It is difficult to say whether these were the Kadaks of Glavani, or whether they had already been forgotten by this time, and so they began to call the mysteries themselves, as they do in Lidzawa today. In any case, the functions of the elders mentioned by Bzhshkyan should have included both those that fully corresponded to the duties of church elders, and something unusual for the order established by representatives of official Christianity. From other sources, we know that the Pitsunda eldership brought the inhabitants to the oath (oath)16, which made it already very similar to the modern "pagan" priesthood formed around the Lidzava shrine.
Apparently, another fateful event in the history of the Lidzawa cult was the impact on the dome of the lightning temple, which took place somewhere between the end of the XVIII and the beginning of the XIX century. This natural phenomenon attracted special attention of mountaineers to the already abandoned church, and the local cult formed around it acquired the features of reverence for the thunderer, known in other places of the Caucasus, which was manifested, in particular, in the ritual offerings of metal objects that began. In 1833, Professor Dubois de Montperay of Neuchatel discovered traces of a new cult in a church that had just been occupied by Russian troops.:
The altar and the steps leading up to the choir were covered with old weapons, gun barrels, sabres, pipes, hinges, nails, locks, and all sorts of junk that had accumulated, and the Russians, who did not want to touch them, put them under the arch that supports the steps. There are no people related to the subjects of the church like Abkhazians and Georgians 17.
15. [M. Bzhshkyan. History of Pontus or the Black Sea]. Venice, 1819. pp. 112-113; Melikset-Bekov L. M. Pontica Transcaucasica Ethnica (According to the Mina de ' medici data from 1815-1819). 1950. N2. P. 169.
16. Dubrovin N. F. Istoriya voiny i vlad'stva russkikh na Kavkaze [History of the war and the rule of the Russians in the Caucasus]. St. Petersburg, 1871, p. 15.
17. Dubois de Montpereux, F. (1839) Voyage autour du Caucase, chez les Tscherkesses et les Abkhases, en Colchide, en Georgie, en Armenie et en Crimee: avec un atlas
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Analyzing this report, we use essentially the same methodological approach as Mark Leon and Gladys-Mary Fry, who examined various evidences of the conjure or rootwork African-American religion during the excavation of Charles Carroll's Annapolis, Md., homestead, where black slaves and their whites lived together at one time the owners. At the same time, Mark Leon, an archaeologist, paid attention to every detail associated with the daily life of Carroll's household, whether it was a button or a pin, in which place of the dwelling (at the door jamb, etc.) they were found, as well as any numerological patterns associated with them. The folklorist Gladys-Mary Fry then worked with elderly informants who still remembered something about the former magical use of these items, etc. 18
В нашем случае мы можем датировать подношения в виде металлических предметов в Пицундском храме началом 1820-х годов, так как Бжшкян (см. выше) ничего подобного им еще не обнаруживал. Кроме того, даже в 1920-е годы металлические стрелы особого типа продолжали приносить в Илори - другой храм в Юго-Восточной Абхазии. Обворованные кем-то втыкали стрелу либо гвоздь в стену церкви или в дерево, адресуя своему обидчику проклятие19. Сохранился его текст: "Как этой стрелой всемогущий Афы [божество молнии и грома у абхазов] раздробляет деревья-гиганты в щепки, так да раздробит Святой Георгий голову вора (обидчика)". Наши лидзавские информаторы до сих пор еще уверены в чудесной силе металлических изделий, якобы способных "притягивать" грозу и дождливую погоду.
О вторичном характере и зависимости культа Лдзаа-ных от Пицундского храма говорил, например, член Сухумской сословно-поземельной комиссии полковник А. Н. Введенский ("Аъ"): "в Лзаа - Анан-лзаа-ных (храм Пицундской Божией Матери)"20. Еще более определенен в своих оценках был зоолог и археолог-любитель В. Чернявский: "Абхазцы зовут Пицунд-
geographique, pittoresque, archeologique, geologique, etc. par Frederic Dubois de Montpereux, Tome 1. Paris: Libraire de Gide. p. 238.
18. Leone, M.P., Fry, G. -M. (1999) "Conjuring in the Big House Kitchen: An Interpretation of African American Belief Systems Based on the Uses of Archaeology and Folklore Sources", Journal of American Folklore 112(445): 381.
19. Чурсин Г. Ф. Материалы по этнографии Абхазии. С. 30.
20. А-ъ. Религиозные верования абхазцев // Сборник сведений о кавказских горцах. Вып. 5. Тифлис, 1871. С. 19.
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Ldzaa-nyh Temple (Pitsunda-Ldzaa) and worship it"21. The Abkhazian educator Anton Ivanovich Chukbar came to similar conclusions:
The shrine is undoubtedly of Christian origin <...>. But it was precisely "once upon a time". < ... > At the present time, for A. [nan] L. [dzaa] n.[s] There is a small wooden room in the Ldzaa. A special priest has the key to it. This is where all the festivities in honor of A. L. N. take place.It is also where Abkhazians take the so-called purifying oath <...>22.
Our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the appearance of this "small wooden room" in the village is fragmentary. In all respects, it seems that we should be talking not about one, but about several buildings adapted for collective rural prayers, built at different times and having a subsidiary character in relation to the main religious center in Pitsunda. So, according to F. According to Zavadsky, the Pitsunda church had a "large metal cross as tall as a man" 23, which the locals worshipped, put candles in front of it and took the oath. It is reasonable to assume that we are talking about the head cross, given its material and size. And allegedly, after the Russians occupied Pitsunda, the mountaineers moved it to a chapel specially built by them for this purpose in their village of Lydzaa, due to the fact that the church itself was no longer accessible to them.
The chapel mentioned by Zavadsky was supposed to be closed after 1864, when most of the surrounding mountaineers (we consider them Sadzas, i.e. not yet fully Abkhazians), defeated by the Russians, went to the Ottoman Empire. The construction of the second chapel mentioned by Chukbar can probably be dated more precisely. Most likely, it should have been held in 1884 or 1885. As luck would have it, almost immediately after that-
21. Chernyavskiy V. Zapiskaia o pamyatnikakh Zapadnogo Zakavkazya, issledovanie chego meshestvenno [A note on the monuments of Western Transcaucasia, the study of which is most urgent]. Protocols of the Preparatory Committee, Moscow: Synodal Printing House, 1879. From 20.
22. Chukbar A. I. Anan Ldzaanyh / / Employee of the Transcaucasian mission. 1915. N8. P. 119; N9. P. 141.
23. Zavadsky F. Abkhazia and Tsebelda. "Kavkaz". 1867. N59-61, 63; cit. by: Abkhazia and Abkhazians in Russian periodicals (XIX - early XX century). XX centuries) / Comp. R. H. Aguajba, T. A. Achugba. Book 1. Sukhum, 2005. Book 1. pp. 353-354.
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go (1886) Lidzavu was visited by Countess Praskovya Uvarova. Here's what she writes::
< ... > [In]ozvrachivaemsya to the village, and vegetable gardens, wattles, corn fields, past Abkhazian houses with vast courtyards and sheds on chicken legs, make our way to a secluded place, where under the shadow of five huge spreading oaks, built a new wooden chapel in the name of Pr. The Virgin Mary, a chapel that looks exactly like a Mingrelian house, and inside of which we find nothing but a small icon of the Mother of God, woven on silk. It is said that these oaks were considered sacred by the Abkhazians, which forced the clergy to build a chapel, which, however, does not serve for lack of a priest; thus, we Christians consecrated a pagan place, but left the work unfinished, unfinished...24.
A good example of how the hybrid nature of the Ldzaan cult manifests itself is the small wooden goblet still used during Akadak. Both the shape of the vessel and the way it is used during the rite indicate that it is undoubtedly a church chalice intended for the Eucharist. Previously, it was kept at home by the Lidzawa priest Fedya Gochua (1921-2004 / 05), but recently, after the reconstruction of the Lidzawa sanctuary (see below), the object was moved there. If the icons, as well as candles, were apparently supplied by the newly arrived Russian clergy in Pitsunda, who continued to feed the surrounding flock until the final Sovietization of the region, this does not mean that the Lidzavtsy also got the cup in the same way. There was no altar in the chapels, which meant that there were no opportunities for celebrating the liturgy. Therefore, it was completely pointless to transfer the chalice there.
The material from which it is made - wood-is also of interest. In Orthodox churches of the late XIX century, especially in such important ones as Pitsunda, metal vessels were much more expected. Hence, it is very likely that the specified object was either made directly in the village, imitating church utensils, or taken from some village church that was operating at that time, and such objects should most likely be found in Megrelia.
24. Uvarova P. S. Kavkaz (Abkhazia, Adjara, Shavshetia, Poskhovsky site): Travel Notes, Part 2, Moscow, 1891, pp. 133-134.
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According to the last representative of the Wondyrba family, who also claimed a priestly role in the Ldzaans, a certain shrine from Megrelia could have been taken out by someone from Gochua: (interview, 2003). It is possible that we are talking about this particular thing. Similar wooden chalices are also known from other Caucasian shrines of mixed origin, such as Rekom in the Tseysky Gorge of North Ossetia.
A similar situation, but based on Canaanite material of the late Bronze Age, has already been commented by Louise Hitchcock and Aren Mair: there, among the imports, there were Mycenaean craters (capacious vessels with a wide neck), but there were no corresponding kiliks (flat, on short legs), which together formed a necessary part of the drinking set used for sacred rites in Mycenae itself. Hence, it is clear that the crater in the new location has changed its function: it was not used for any other purpose.
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mixing wine and water, and as a container for beer, unknown to the Mycenaean Greeks 25. All this is a very close analogy to our case: the mentioned cup appears in prayers held not in the chapel, but next to it, having turned from a familiar church object into an attribute of the local cult of the Ldzaans.
Most notably, until recently, even the priests of the "pagan" sanctuary did not doubt the Christian origin of the Ldzaans. This is evidenced, for example, by an interview with Fedya Gochua (2003):
Q: Well, you think Ldzaa-nyha is a Christian thing, right?
F. G.: Whose is it? [laughs]. Is it Muslim or something?
Q: Well, then, why do the Amaraas go there? Dbaraa go? [surnames that are considered Muslim in Lidzawa]
F. G.: Well, what do you say to them? Will you tell me not to come?" And he doesn 't know it.
The earliest detailed description in the literature, and not just a mention of the akadak rite, is contained in the same A. Chukbar. The cult practice recorded by him differs from the prayer that is currently known among the inhabitants of Lidzawa. We will return to the reasons for the formation of these differences. It is also interesting to link akadak, as it was seen by the author of the description, with the Easter cycle:
There is in honor of A. [nan] L. [dzaa] N.[s] and entire public festivals organized annually by the Ldzavtsy. This is so called. "kadach". It is always held on the fourth Sunday after Easter at the expense of three of the residents of Ldzaa who have reached the turn. Each of the three next buys a ram or goat, millet and gomi according to the layout, and prepares the right amount of wine. In the morning, the sheep are slaughtered with prayer and boiled. Hominy is made from gomi, and ailaj is made from millet. hominy cooked with cheese). Cheese for such hominy, a cup from the house, is delivered by all residents of the village, which limits their total participation in the feast.-
25. Hitchcock, L.A., Maeir, A.M. (2013) "Beyond Creolization and Hybridity: Entangled and Transcultural Identities in Philistia", Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28(1-Archaeology and Cultural Mixture): 59, 61, 66.
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When everything is ready, the criers call the people to prayer. The priest opens the room and enters it, holding a trident with the liver, heart and part of the ribs of the killed animals. He lights candles bought at the Pitsunda monastery and says a prayer. In it, he asks A. L. N. to accept from those who are coming what they were able to sacrifice today, as well as intercession and patronage. < ... > After the prayer, everyone sits down to dinner. The latter results in the usual Abkhazian feasting with wine and other attributes, with the only difference that here it is done in a more limited way, in accordance with the sanctity of the place and time. < ...>26.
The general essentialist attitude of most Abhaz studies prevents the emergence of models that take into account the changing, dynamic nature of local cults. As for the question of the role of the priesthood in all this, the prevailing view is that the current families of the servants of the Abkhazian sanctuaries are primordial and unchangeable, in particular, the Ldzaans have always been under the control of the Gochua. Needless to say, this view reflects the ideology of the most modern priesthood, and any other would be contrary to its interests. Alas, this is precisely the uncritical position adopted by A. B. Krylov, who even called akadak "the annual prayer of the priestly family of Gochua" .27
The view that the cult of the Ldzaans is entirely the work of the Gochua is very common among modern Lidzawans. However, back in the 1990s, many of them remembered that previously the same function was performed by representatives of the now-extinct Wandyrba family. I have also heard that before Gochua, the priests of Lidzawa were the Brandzaa, who also disappeared. Obviously, Krylov simply did not know all this. But the most complete sequence of priestly surnames of the village, which replaced each other, was described to us by the late Valya Bagaturia (interview, 2003), who on her mother's side came from Wandyrba:
26. Chukbar A. I. Alan Ldzaanykh. N10. pp. 146-148.
27. Krylov A. B. Religion and traditions of the Abkhazians (based on the materials of field research in 1994-2000). Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2001, p. 272.
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As our mother's sister told us, first there were Sadzovtsy (SaааAa), then Brandzaa, then Wandraa. < ... > After our grandfather, the Gochu people took over, but we know that our grandfather was the first.
At present, we already have many details that help us understand how this relay race took place. All of these families were actually represented in Lidzawa at various times, and the Gochua still live there. And, apparently, all four families really not only had the most direct relation to the cult of the Ldzaans, sometimes competing with each other, but also made a significant contribution to its formation. For example, it seems to us that it is precisely with the activity of the Wandyrba family that the cult of the sacred oak grove becomes relevant in Lidzawa at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. Krylov goes on to call Gochua a "priestly dynasty." This is in no way true. It seems that with the construction of the chapel described by Uvarova in the village in 1884/85, and up to the crushing blow to the Ldzaani cult inflicted by the authorities in 1937, even a kind of double faith was established here: The Wandyrba practiced their own "pagan" cult of sacred trees, while the Gochua, being much closer to official Christianity, supervised the chapel, if not initiated its construction at all.
Constructing the Abkhazian religion
With the advent of the Soviet government, which was radically atheistic, the first blow was dealt to official Christianity: in 1924, the Pitsunda monastery was dispersed. Then Lidzawa was fully affected by the wave of Stalinist repression. In 1937, the then priests of Ldzaa, Zhago Wandyrba and Yesif Gochua, were arrested. The first went missing, the second was shot. Church items were looted and destroyed, the chapel was demolished (Krylov believes that in 1947) and the sacred oak grove was cut down. It was decided to use the empty space for the project "Abkhazperselenstroy": a Georgian resettlement house was built right on the site of the former Lidzavsky sanctuary.
Since that time, all religious practices related to Ldzaanah have undergone dramatic changes. At first, after the removal of legitimate priests from the sanctuary, all life around it subsided, but gradually continued to control-
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they are related to the latter. But since such active female participation in the affairs of the cult clearly contradicted the norms of the established gender order, including Christian and Muslim restrictions, apparently, not immediately, but gradually, the scoundrels found compromise forms. Thus, according to F. Gochua, quoted by A. Krylov, the heiresses of their deceased parents and husbands began to perform all the preparatory actions for the sacrifice, then passing the knife to the eldest boy from their family, so that "the sacrifice passed through the hands of small men to the deity" 28.
This extremely new and unusual situation occurred just in the 1940s, when women really dominated the economy and even the social life of the village. In the early 1950s, Lidzavtsy experienced another sharp turn in its development, when due to the massive resettlement of Georgians, the space of the rural community, both economically and culturally, was sharply reduced. After Lisa Brandza's death, in accordance with the previous order, the legal heirs of the sanctuary, along with Gochua, were to be considered representatives of the mixed Mingrelian-Sadz family of Bagaturia (the family of their mother, Wandyrba, apparently came from the society of Akhchipsa, i.e. was Sadz). But this was no longer possible in the conditions of nationalism that came to Lidzava, or rather the mobilization of the villagers, who were considered indigenous at that time and united on an ethno-national basis in opposition to all outsiders.
The main results of the Soviet period were that the worship of the Ldzaans, firstly, completely broke away from Christianity, secondly, having been officially banned, acquired an exclusive, if not esoteric character, and, thirdly, turned exclusively into an Abkhazian cause. This explains why in the future, when the question of the legitimacy of the rights of the priests of Ldzaan was raised again, almost no one in the village listened to the voices of Vali Bagaturia and her brother Bori, who lived to the 2000s,and who also left no descendants.
Two people played an exceptional role in the restoration of the akadak tradition, which followed a break that lasted virtually until the Khrushchev thaw. The first is Margarita, the wife of Niko Gochua of the "priestly dynasty". To her on the first
28. Krylov A. B. Religion and traditions of the Abkhazians. p. 268.
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At that time, the duty of preparing a ceremonial cheese pie (amgyal) and organizing purificatory oaths and oaths was transferred. It is known that her maiden name was Maled, she was the daughter of Musa Akhba and came from a family of returned mahajirs. The second was Noah Dmitrievich (as the lidzavtsy still respectfully and officially call him in Russian), who represented a completely different branch of Gochua. Noi (Noe) worked as a teacher in Pitsunda and enthusiastically conducted public activities, namely, he was, as it was then expressed, an asset of the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Abkhazia (since 1954), and then maintained personal contacts with the chairman of the Abkhazian Council of the Society for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the Georgian SSR Vianor Panjoevich Pachulia.
Later, Noah Dmitrievich collaborated with the museum-exhibition of the Pitsunda Temple and in 1963 even conducted archaeological excavations on its territory together with the late archaeologist George Kuchievich Shamba (at that time an employee of the museum). Both in Moscow and Tbilisi, the temple and museum played an exceptional role in attracting tourists to the newly opened resort of Pitsunda. Involvement in a matter of national importance only increased the social status of the Lidzava local historian.
All these details are necessary to understand the motives of this man, who decided to legalize the cult of the Ldzaans in the eyes of the official authorities, and at the same time the difficulties that he inevitably had to face on such a slippery path. On the one hand, just such a person, from a respected family, who was a member of the offices of co - employees and party bosses, could take risks, and on the other hand, the same factors dictated strict rules of the game for him.
First of all, in order to meet the requirements of the time, Noah Dmitrievich set out to correct the Abkhazian folklore. At one time, V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko (the brother of a well-known theater figure) published a book of his own travels in the Caucasus "At a Party", where he cited one legend, which refers to the appearance of the Pitsunda temple 29. When the legend was reproduced in the cult for the late Soviet decades compilation work of V. P. Pachulia "The Fall of Anacopia", it was Apparently, for atheistic reasons, they cleared out all the details of the church's character.-
29. Nemirovich-Danchenko V. I. On a visit: [Essays and short stories]. St. Petersburg: Emil Gartier Publishing House, 1880, pp. 161-162.
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ra, including linking it to the construction of the Pitsunda temple. The reference to angels and Mary in the form of a cloud was replaced by the passage " a flock of huge mountain eagles descended from behind the clouds." This and similar texts were declared authentic, allegedly heard from the mouths of folk storytellers. And the role of such a storyteller was played by N. D. Gochua 30.
In the same way, the annual public prayers in Lidzawa had to be transformed into something akin to a harvest festival, in which, if desired, one could find more to celebrate peasant labor than religious superstition. Obviously, the model for the new revived akadak was chosen as a village-wide holiday (abh. atsu "village", although it was already out of use in the time of N. Janashia 31; and "holiday, prayer"), which is still customary to celebrate in many localities of Abkhazia. By that time, its probable Christian background, in particular its connection with the Trinity rites, had been completely forgotten, and the participation of professional priests in the drought prayer, which was central to the holiday, which would have been especially unacceptable for the authorities, was not supposed at all. And now, as a result of a certain selection of cultic practices relevant not only for this village, but also for other villages, which, presumably, was undertaken by N. D. Gochua, who was interested in Abkhazian antiquity, the annual prayer of lidzavtsy has again acquired certain features of rural atsunykhua.
If Noah Dmitrievich defined, as we believe, the main vector of development of akadak, then Margarita Akhba is the place where it took place at the beginning of a new period of its existence. This place became the ancestral home of her husband (now owned by the family of her grandson Vadim), and a little later-the space between the courtyards of Gochua and Mamasakhlisi. As it is now recalled, the woman in question actually managed the ritual under conditions when men were still afraid to openly assume the priestly role.
By the early 1960s, Noah was replaced by the son of the repressed Yesif, Fedya Gochua, who would become the most famous Lidzava priest.
30. Pachulia V. P. The Fall of Anakopia (Legends of the Caucasian Black Sea Region). Sukhum, 2009. pp. 120-123, 212-213.
31. Dzhanashia N. S. Abkhazian cult and life of the Village: Printing House of the Academy of Sciences, 1917 (Separate print from the Christian East, Vol. 5, Issue 3). p. 163. Note 1.
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he also served time in the Norilsk camps, and when he returned, he worked as a forester and tobacco grower on a collective farm. It is not known for certain in what form the annual Lidzava prayer was held at that time. In 1982/83, it changed its location again, becoming even closer to atsunihua: people began to gather in the forest behind the village, near the spring. At this time, akadak was no longer held on the 4th-5th Sunday after Easter, as at the beginning of the XX century under Chukbar, but later-usually on the 1st-2nd Sunday of June, i.e. very close to Trinity ("June, on the 10th-15th, so that it coincides with Sunday" - F. Gochua, interview, 2003).
In June 1988, 32 one of the authors was present during akadak in the forest. Only men participated in the collective feast on the occasion of prayer. Women and children stood at a distance. A bull was sacrificed. Priest F. Gochua said a prayer in front of the audience, holding a cup of wine and a knife with pieces of the animal's liver and heart on it. Those who participated in the meal were placed on an oblong hill covered with a long roll of paper. The table was served with boiled meat, hominy, salt and a fair amount of wine. Instead of plates, large leaves were used - another dominant symbol, referring us back to atsunihua. After the end of the festival, the skin of the dead animal was hung out on a tree. The "canon" of those years looked about the same. Gochua, interview, 2003):
"We slaughter cattle, cook meat. The liver and heart are cooked separately. And we put it separately with salt, in the middle of the table-to make it better than last year. I approach. It is celebrated early, and words are pronounced to make it better than last year. < ... > And at the same time words of congratulations are pronounced. All around me are men <...>. Prayers, an oath, a request. < ... > I am the first to taste bread. <...> Everyone eats: both children and adults. Meanwhile, the table is set on the ground - walnut leaves and ferns, which are used to make a table; then, paper on top, without plates. Meat, wine and hominy, for dessert hominy with cheese, and the children now - candy, lemonade. Previously, candy was replaced by honey. [Question: "Why did the location change
32. Our previous publications erroneously indicate "July": see Kuznetsova, R., Kuznetsov, I. (2006)" War, Peace and Community in the Abkhaz Village of Lidzava", Bulletin: Anthropology, Minorities, Multiculturalism, New Series 1(1): 74; Kuznetsova R. Sh. To be an Abkhazian (choice of ethnicity) / / Archeology and ethnography of the Pontic-Caucasian region. Issue 1. Krasnodar: Kuban State University. University, 2013, p. 102.
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Maybe it used to be in the yard, but now it's in the woods?" Time changed everything. It used to be near the chapel, then it was broken down.
Curiously, F. Until his death, Gochua continued to insist that, in fact, the Lidzawa prayer remained akadak, despite all the layers. As one of the conceptual differences between it and atsunihua, he mentioned to A. Krylov the fact that in this case the remains of food after a public meal cannot be taken with you, but you must either finish it or leave it at the place of prayer.33 Thus, the priest emphasized the sacred, if not mystical, nature of the ceremony, in the approval of which he himself took a significant part.
By the early 1990s, there was a tendency, mainly on the part of the nativist-minded Abkhazian intelligentsia, to form a single normative Abkhazian religion out of local cults still remaining in some places, such as the Ldzaani 34. In particular, an attempt was made to fill the old expression of abzhnykh - "seven sanctuaries" - with real content, which we believe was not typical of it initially. The origins of this concept, which is given so much attention by modern supporters of neo-Paganism in Abkhazia, go back to the writings of Abkhazian enlighteners and ethnographers of the XIX century. Thus, S. Zvanbaev mentions the form "Shashu abzhnykha" as an epithet of the smithy deity ("More precisely: Shashva abzhnykha [Shashy abzhnykha]" - corrects him GA. Dzidzariya 36, i.e. "the seven shrines of Shashva"). At the same time, however, it is not mentioned what kind of nykha - "sanctuaries" we are talking about.
The struggle for national sovereignty, more specifically, the development of the Abkhazian flag, in the upper left corner of which its author Valery Gamgia (1944-1992) placed a white palm and seven stars on a red rectangle, served as an incentive for further research in this direction in a broad sense. Now this image is interpreted as an indication of the number of historical regions of Abkhazia (or modern districts and towns).-
33. Krylov A. B. Religion and traditions of Abkhazians. p. 273.
34. See A. Aghababyan's article in this issue of the journal.
35. Zvanba S. T. Abkhazian mythology and religious beliefs and rituals between the inhabitants of Abkhazia (From the notes of a natural Abkhazian). Abkhazian ethnographic studies. Sukhumi: "Alashara", 1982 [1855]. P. 34.
36. Там же. С. 87. Прим. 28.
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dov), but back in the 1990s it was mostly associated with abzhnykha.
The fact that this idea came from above is perfectly illustrated by the confusion that still arises in the minds of informants when trying to "remember" what the "seven" should consist of: no one doubts only Dydripsh (the sanctuary of the village of Achandara), Ldzaanyh, Ilor temple (abh. Elyr-nykha) and Lykh-nykh (Lykhna sanctuary). The remaining three must be chosen from those cults that have long since sunk into oblivion by the specified time,and only ethnographers and national educators know about them. And in the lists given by experts, not everything is unambiguous, at different times the ruins of the Lashkendar temple near Tkvarcheli were added to the four existing nykhas, as well as the mountains: (I) nal-kuba (Pskhu village), less often Adagua near Tsebelda or Bitha in Sochi. Krylov, apparently, came across other variants, including Aerg-Lapyr-nykh, for example, nykh, Gech-nykh and Kapba-nykh 37.
Sporadic contacts between priests from different shrines took place earlier, but on August 3, 2012, the so-called Council of Priests of Abkhazia was formed in Sukhumi.38 Among the initiators and developers of its charter were: a politician (MP Ahra Bzhania); a whole group of anthropologists and historians dealing with the religion of the Abkhazians (M. Bartsits, S. Amichba, V. Avidzba, R. Gozhba), including those from Moscow (Ya. Chesnov, A. Krylov); as well as theorists of the so-called Abkhazian pre-biblical monotheism (L. Regelson, I. Khvartskiya). Practitioners of anykha paayu Zaur Chichba (Dydripsh, Chairman of the Council and "high priest"), Sergey Shakryl (Lykh-nykh) and Galter Shinkuba (Elyr-nykha) responded to their call to unite. The founding document was signed by Valera Gochua (priest, 2009-2013) on behalf of the Ldzaa. Among the first steps of the new religious organization is to fill vacant positions in the "seven". It began with the revival of the missing nyha Lashkendar and Pshu.
The latest changes concerning akadak are due to the ascetic activity of another lizavets - Vakhtang Konstantinovich ("Sashki") Gochua (born in 1951). This man with pronounced creative inclinations writes prose in do-
37. Krylov A. B. Religion and traditions of the Abkhazians. p. 153.
38. The religious organization "Council of Priests of Abkhazia" was created in Abkhazia / / State Information Agency of the Republic of Abkhazia "Apsnypress". 3.08.2012 [http://apsnypress.info/news/6898.html, accessed from 1.03.2016].
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Vlatovskaya manner, interested in painting and runs an art salon in Pitsunda. His youth, unlike the priests of the older generation, fell on the mature Soviet period. He and his peers were brought up exclusively in an atheistic spirit and have almost no religious knowledge. In this sense, it is much easier for them to part with Christianity (and Islam), and they are even more eager to establish a "new Abkhazian religion". In the mid-1980s, when tensions were running high in Lidzawa, it was V. K. Gochua and his group who prevented the construction of an Orthodox chapel.
Sashka Gochua started its transformation in 2009. The sanctuary has returned to its old place, considered today as the original one. A wooden altar was restored in the courtyard enclosed with an updated wooden fence, and a brick house was built right on the site of the destroyed Uvarovskaya chapel, both for preparing the ritual amgyal and as a storage of the Lidzavskaya shrine (cup), along with all sorts of belongings for mass feasts. These innovations marked significant changes in the structure of the nyha. On the one hand, it shrank due to the fact that part of its territory, previously occupied as a sacred grove, remained behind the fence. But, on the other hand, the space became homogeneous for the first time, because the new building was fully integrated into the "pagan" cult, replacing the chapel, which in former times was an enclave of official Christianity surrounded by the territory where "pagan" sacred rites took place:
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Another innovation of V. K. Gochua was an attempt, seemingly successful, to restore and institutionalize the social networks that supported akadak during the Chukbar period, but then were severely destroyed during the years of Soviet repression. Now the registration of all those who take part in the annual prayer has been introduced. According to Gochua's lists, there are 220 such people.
Another of his achievements is the division of Lidzawa into districts ("brigades"), the population of which must take turns on duty at the Ldzaans. Since 2011, the following order has been established: the men of one of the districts (the first was Adamia Street with "Sashka" Gochua himself at the head) converge at the sanctuary, ask him to apologize for having disturbed it, arrange a short ritual feast with meat and drinks, and then start cleaning the sacred territory and during the entire day of the event, they will be able to They've been keeping order there for years. They also organize the prayer that falls on the time of their duty. The next year, residents of the second district do the same, and so on.
Finally, V. K. Gochua joined the process of standardization of the "unified Abkhazian religion". In particular, he contributed to the inclusion in the practice of annual prayer of the Ldzaans of certain dominant symbols (necessarily a white bull as a sacrifice, during the sacrifice instead of a knife, a branched stick, etc.), known in other regions of Abkhazia, but hitherto not used in Lidzava itself. To top it all off, he avoids calling the annual prayer of the lidzavians akadak, convinced that in reality we are looking at nothing more than the all-Abhaz atsunihua, the truth, performed at a unique local sanctuary. Akadak's story also seems to have ended there. The tendency for the unique Lidzawa prayer to converge with the common Abhaz Atsunihua led to its being completely absorbed and dissolved in the latter. In today's Lidzawa, it is no longer even customary to use the term "akadak", and soon with the death of the last people who still heard it, it will be completely forgotten. Like many other aspects of the" traditional " culture of the Abkhazians, the structure of the rite itself has become extremely simplified and schematized, there is nothing left in it except a dozen moves and elements that are standard for any place in Abkhazia, which also indicates the death of the tradition, no matter how metaphorically we do not understand it.
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Conclusion
So, the Lidzawa sanctuary has a long history. But on the other hand, it is hardly an accident that the search for material evidence of the existence of "pagan" temples on the Pitsunda Peninsula, separate from Christian places of worship, is still fruitless. One of the most important strategies for the survival of "native" cultures in the conditions of their submission to external control, H. Bhabha considered the so-called colonial mimicry, which he understood as "the influence of hybridity-a way of both appropriation and resistance at the same time", when the" imposed "(the disciplined) eventually becomes "desired" (the desiring)39. This mechanism of incorporating the "alien" into one's own cultural (religious) tradition, giving new meaning to old symbols, seems to be quite typical of other regions of the Caucasus, and in this sense one should not look everywhere for the ruins of "pagan" temple complexes like Garni, which, admittedly, were probably the rarest here exceptions.
39. Bhabha, H. The Location of Culture, p. 120.
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The first reliable traces of the hybrid cult that developed around the Pitsunda temple are clearly visible already in the middle of the XVII century-the veneration of a marble pillar with a hot spring recorded by Castelli and Zampi. At about the same time, but most likely not directly at the church, but on the territory of the choir, the institute of kadagi (diviners or soothsayers) was strengthened, apparently, looking like an attempt by the surrounding rural population to use the sacred resources of the temple for their own purposes. Both traditions found their closest parallels in Eastern Georgia and were apparently imported from there, just as Russian cakes and pasochki, which came to Russia as part of a hybrid form of Byzantine Orthodoxy, go back not so much to Slavic paganism as to the ancient cult of Dionysus.
Located on the border of Abkhazia, the lands of the Pitsunda Peninsula for centuries attracted streams of new immigrants from all sides, patronized by the temple, and then the rural sanctuary that spun off from it. The irony of history is that the melting pot that soon turned hundreds of visiting "Circassians" (Sadz) and Mingrelians into Abkhazians turned out to be a hybrid cult, which we believe is only partly of local origin. But starting from the turn of the XVIII and XIX centuries, it was completely separated from the temple that gave it birth several times and immediately overgrown with elements inherited from the cult practices of local mountaineers and neighboring sadzas. The last time this gap occurred was after the final closure of religious buildings by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s. The development vector of the Lidzawa sanctuary, no longer constrained by Christian dogmas, was apparently determined by a case of lightning striking the dome of the Pitsunda temple. And from this event, understood by the mountaineers in the context of the cult of the thunderer, which was still preserved in those days, circles spread for a long time in the form of a sacred attitude to metal products.
What does the Ldzaa cult expect in the future? Of course, the search for national identity that Abkhazian society is now engaged in is more consistent with a single religion on a national scale, rather than local cults, on the contrary, which strengthen centrifugal tendencies, internally consolidating individual rural communities. However, as integration with Russia deepens, we can also expect the Orthodox Church to strengthen its position in Abkhazia, which means that attempts are being made to deprive Abkhazian neo-Paganism of its dominance. And all this will be another challenge, leading to the manifestation of new hybrid reactions. Already sei-
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An hour later, a small group of Pitsunda adepts hold annual atsunihua festivals on the territory of the Pitsunda hillfort, thereby reviving the original practice in a sense.
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