Bonfires for the sun

Jumping bonfires is an ancient pagan tradition in many cultures. Although some of them cellebrate this ritual to mark the shortest day of the year (summer solstice) and others do it to mark the end of the winter and the arrival of the spring, in Armenia this traditions has more to do with love and prosperity for marriage and family and it coincides with Valentine´s day in other countries, although this ritual was also associated with sun worshipping during pagan times in Armenia. Despite this differences, all them share one reason to cellebrate this ritual: to honor the sun.

As all our participant countries cellebrates this ritual, we burned and jumped our own bonfire in May.

Yezidi representatives visited our Youth Exchange

Two representatives of Yezidi community living in Armenia visited us. The vice-president of the organization "Yezidi National Union", Khdr Hajoyan, shared their unknown beliefs and traditions. They talked about Melek Taus, the holy pickock that the worship, who has been identified like Satan in other cultures, trying to make people think that Yezidis are a Satanic sect, just to discredit this religion. This believe is not true because Yezedis doesn´t have the concept of Satan that other religions created. Furthermor, they don´t believe in the notion of bad. They explained us how their three casts works in issues like weddings, forbidden between two people who belongs to different casts.

After the presentation, Khdr Hajoyan played and sang traditional Yezedi songs and they pretended a yezedi traditional wedding between two of our Slovenian participants.

We will keep on knowing Yezidi culture, this time, from inside: they invited us to their New Year cellebration, which will take place this week in an Armenian cementery.

Armenian pagan deities

Armenian group presented some topics about paganism in Armenia, like the main gods that Armenians worshipped.

Armenian mithology was influenced by Zoroastrianism and Assyrian traditions. At first, Armenians worshipped fire, sun, water and holy animals like lions, but relations with other countries made them begin to worship some gods. Some of these gods were identified with hellenistic gods.

Aramazd

God-Sun. The father of all the gods and creator of the Universe. Aramazd was supposed to born on 21th of March, according to the current calendar. Some neo-pagans in Armenia still cellebrate this feast.

Anahit

Anahit was the god of fertility and birth. It´s not clear yet if she was the wife or the daughter of Aramazd. Navasard, still celebrated in August, is the feast dedicated to Anahit. Identified with Aphrodite.

Mihr

The God of light and Sun. The pagan temple of Garni was built to worship him.

Vahagn

God of thuder and lightning. He was a God of war aswell. Identified with Heracles.

Astghik

God of love, beauty and water. Lover of Vahagn. Her feast, Vartavar, is still celebrated with water fights. It´s said that the day of this feast is the hottest day of the year in Armenia.