Assianism
Assianism (, "Watsdin") is a modern Pagan religion derived from the traditional mythology of the Ossetians, modern descendants of the Alan tribes of the Scythians. Assianism is believed to be a continuation of the ancient Scythian religion. The religion is known as "Assianism" among its Russian-speaking adherents ("Assianism" means the religion of the "As" or "Oss"—an ancient name of the Alans, from which the Greeks possibly drew the name of "Asia", which is preserved in the Russian and Georgian-derived name "Ossetians"), and as Watsdin (Уацдин), Ætsæg Din (Æцæг Дин; both meaning "True Faith"), Æss Din (Æсс Дин, Ossetian -language rendering of "Assianism"), or simply Iron Din (Ирон Дин, "Ossetian Faith") by Ossetians in their own language. It started to be revived in a conscious and organised way in the 1980s, as an ethnic religion among the Ossetians. The religion has been incorporated by some organisations, chiefly in North Ossetia–Alania within Russia, but is also present in South Ossetia, and in Ukraine. The Nart sagas are central to the religion, and exponents of the movement have drawn theological exegeses from them. Etymology and definition. The revival of Ossetian folk religion as an organised religious movement was initially accorded  the formal name "Ætsæg Din" (Æцæг Дин, "True Faith") in the 1980s by a group of nationalist intellectuals who in the early 1990s constituted the sacerdotal "Styr Nykhas" ("Great Council"). "Ætsæg", meaning "truthful", is the name of the foundational kinship in the Nart sagas, while "din" corresponds to the Avestan "daena", meaning divine "understanding" or "conscience", and today "religion". Fearing that the concept of "Ætsæg Din" carried implications of universal truth that might offend Christians and Muslims, the Ossetian linguist Tamerlan Kambolov coined the alternative term "Uatsdin" (Уацдин) in 2010, which has become the most common name for the religion  in Ossetian. Daurbek Makeyev, the most known exponent of the movement, has preferred to name it "Æss Din" (Æсс Дин), meaning the "religion of the "Æss"", "As" or "Os", an alternative ancient name of the Alans, preserved in the Russian and Georgian name "Ossetians", and root from which the ancient Greeks likely drew the term "Asia". Khetag Morgoyev, the leader of the religious organisation "Ætsæg Din", also uses the simple name "Iron Din" (Ирон Дин, "Ossetian Faith") while rejecting the name "Uatsdin", in which, according to his opinion, he sees no sense. In his Russian-language writings Makeyev has used  the Russian variation of "Æss Din", "Assianstvo" (Ассианство), i.e. "Assianism". Ruslan Kurchiev, president of the "Styr Nykhas" in 2019, prefers to define Assianism as a "culture" rather than a "religion", claiming that what it champions are rituals and values which are encapsulated in the Ossetian tradition. Similarly, representatives of the "Dzuary Lægtæ" ("Holy Men"), the council of the priests of the Ossetian sanctuaries, define Assianism, by citing the folklorist and ethnographer Soslan Temirkhanov, as "[...] a worldview [...] that arouses that holy spark that raises a person, illuminates and warms his soul, makes him strive for good and light, gives him courage  and strength to fearlessly fight evil and vice, inspires him to self-sacrifice for the good of others". According to them, this Ossetian worldview is "not some form of perception abstracted from material, productive activity, but on the contrary, it is interwoven and reflects all aspects of being, at the same time being the very basis of being, an ontological principle, which we can phenomenologically characterise as pantheism", a worldview characterised by "intertwining, interconnection, interdependence" which favours a natural "logical-conceptual type of thinking and discursive thinking". Khetag Morgoyev defines the religion in similar terms, while emphasising its similarity to  other Indo-European traditions, and especially its "almost identicity" to Indo-Iranian traditions. According to the scholar Richard Foltz, despite claims to antiquity, from a scholarly point of view the movement "can be comfortably analysed within the framework of new religious movements". The adherents of Assianism object to the use of the term "Paganism" to refer to their religion, such term having strong derogatory connotations in Ossetian language and being still used by Christians and Muslims to ridicule traditional Ossetian beliefs and practices. History. From the ancient Scythians to the modern Ossetians. The Scythians were a large group of Iranian  (linguistically Eastern Iranian) nomadic tribes who populated the Eurasian Steppe during the first millennium BCE, from Eastern Europe to western China. Their name "Scythians" comes from Greek, Σκύθοι "Skuthoi", meaning the "archers", a skill for which they were known and feared. They left a rich cultural legacy, particularly in the form of gold jewellery, frequently found in the "kurgan" burials associated with them. They practised the ancient Iranian religion. A group of Scythian tribes, the Sarmatians, known as the Alans (i.e. "Aryans", through a common internal consonant shift, i.e. "Iranians") from the first century onwards, migrated into Europe. Allied with  the Germanic Goths, the Alans penetrated west into France, Italy, Spain, and other territories under the Roman Empire. The Romans tried to manage the threat by hiring them as mercenaries in the cavalry, or, particularly in France, by buying them off as landed gentry. Many toponyms in France, such as Alainville, Alaincourt, Alençon, and others, testify that they were territorial possessions of Alan families. Alan equestrian culture formed the basis of Medieval chivalry, and in general Alan culture had a significant role—though rarely recognised—in the development of Western European culture. While most of the Scythians assimilated into other  ethnic groups by the Middle Ages, the Alans of the Caucasus maintained a distinct identity and continued to dominate the area, so that the Byzantine Empire recognised them as an independent allied kingdom. Through their relations with the Byzantines and missionaries from Georgia in the south, the Alan aristocracy adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity during the tenth century. This, however, had little effect on the general Alan population, so that the thirteenth-century Flemish traveller William of Rubruck reported that "they knew nothing (of Christianity) apart from the name of Christ". The Ossetians are the sole modern population culturally and linguistically  descending from the Alans, and they have preserved beliefs and rituals likely dating back to Scythian religion, even through waves of partial syncretisation with Christianity. After the conquests of the Mongol Empire in the Caucasus during the mid-thirteenth century, contacts between the Alans and Eastern Orthodox religious authorities ceased completely, and their superficial Christianisation was stopped. There is evidence that between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, shrines which were apparently built in honour of Christian saints were converted to indigenous Pagan use. The Russian Empire's expansion in the Caucasus by the end of the eighteenth century brought  with itself Russian Orthodox missionaries who sought to "re-Christianise" the Ossetians. Their efforts had had limited success by the time when they were completely obliterated by the Russian Revolution of 1917, which introduced the peoples of the Caucasus into the rapid processes of industrialisation, modernisation and urbanisation of the Soviet Union. Between the traditional and the new religion. The Ossetian people are today split between two states: North Ossetia–Alania, a constituent federal republic within Russia, and the neighbouring only partially recognised state of South Ossetia. The incipient collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s triggered projects of  identity-building among many of its constituent nations. In Ossetia, as in other nations, this involved the recovery of an "authentic national religion" harking back to pre-Christian times. Ossetian nationalism also played a role, powered by ethnic conflicts for lands and resources with neighbouring peoples in North Ossetia, and for independence in South Ossetia, a territory historically part of Georgia, whose status as an independent entity is a matter of international controversy (cf. the 2008 Russo-Georgian War). According to Victor Shnirelman, in the Ossetian case certain traditions had survived with unbroken continuity and were revived in rural areas . This contrasts, and interacts, with an urban and more intellectual movement which elaborated a systematic revived religion associated with ethnic nationalism and with the opposition to both Russian and Georgian Orthodox Christianity, perceived as foreign, and to Islam, professed by the neighbouring Turkic and Caucasian ethnic groups and by a small minority of Ossetians. According to the scholar Sergey Shtyrkov, intellectual projects for the elaboration of an "ethnic religion" for the Ossetians date back to the early twentieth century, and it was with the Soviet atheist anti-religious "furious fight against Ossetian Paganism" in the 1950s that the idea appealed  once again to Ossetian intellectuals. According to him it was Soviet anti-religious activism that drove ancient local practices from the sphere of "ethnic tradition" into the sphere of "religion" in the minds of the Ossetian people. The scholar Richard Foltz reconstructs the development of Ossetian religion through seven phases: 1. An original Scythian Paganism; 2. a first wave of Christianisation under Byzantine and Georgian influence from the tenth to the thirteenth century; 3. a "re-Paganization" during the fourteenth and fifteenth century following the Mongol invasions and the disruption of the contacts with the Byzantines; 4. a partial re -Christianisation during the sixteenth and seventeenth century conducted by Georgian missionaries; 5. a further re-Christianisation conducted by Russian missionaries beginning in the late eighteenth century; 6. enforced state atheism during the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1991; and 7. a resurgence of "traditional Ossetian religion" since the 1980s–1990s. According to Foltz, the narrative of the contemporary promoters of Scythian Neopaganism is that the religiosity of the Ossetians maintained a strong underlying continuity while absorbing and adapting superficial influences from Christianity, and to a lesser extent from Islam and neighbouring Caucasian traditions, superficial influences which may be easily stripped away  to reveal its essential, distinct "Iranian character". Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Ossetian politicians have been outspokenly supportive of Scythian Assianism. During the 1990s, after the clashes between Ossetians and Georgians in 1991–1992, a field beside a sacred grove 30 kilometres to the west of North Ossetia–Alania's capital Vladikavkaz, where the Ossetian hero Khetag was said to have taken refuge from his enemies, was dedicated by the government as a holy site. Since 1994, sacrifices are held at the site with the participation of government officials and community leaders, with activities supervised by the sacerdotal Great  Council ("Styr Nykhas"). The ceremony is dedicated to the most important deity, Uastyrdzhi, said to have saved Khetag from his pursuers. Government participation is also seen at the ceremonies organised at the Rekom Temple in Tsey, Alagirsky District, North Ossetia–Alania. Writings. The Nart sagas are regarded as the "holy writings" of Assianism, from which some exegetes of the movement, such as Daurbek Makeyev, have drawn theological doctrines. The scholar Richard Foltz defines the Narts a "typical Indo-European heroic epic". According to Makeyev, who according to Foltz takes an essentialist perspective, "the framework [i.e., the rituals that actualise the  content of the books] is changeable" and yet "the meaning is eternal", and "the ultimate divine reality is light", reflecting a theme shared by all Iranian religions. According to the scholar Sergey Shtyrkov, the Assian exegetes have created "their own dogma and theological system", through etymology and comparison with other Indo-Iranian traditions. Foltz finds this effort to elaborate theological doctrines from traditional texts comparable to similar efforts found in Germanic Heathenry and modern Hellenism. Apart from the Narts, there are two other traditional texts, both in poetic and in prosaic forms, the "Daredzant" and the "Tsartsiat". The artist and  architect Slava Dzhanaïty has published many books on the Ossetian folk religion, emphasising its philosophical aspects in contrast to the more practical leaning of Makeyev's writings. Theology and cosmology. The "Dzuary Lægtæ" and Khetag Morgoyev define Assian theo-cosmology as a pantheism and non-dualism. Assianism contemplates the worship of a supreme God, Xwytsau (Хуыцау), who is the creator of the universe and of all beings, and is the universe itself, or the universe is "the body of God", comprising both the immanent material world of living and the transcendent spiritual world of God, where the dead make return . It has "no tangible, personal qualities, nor extension in space and time", and it is pure light. The transcendent spiritual dimension of God is the "World of Light" (Рухс Дун, "Rukhs Dun") or "True World" (Æцæг Дун, "Ætsæg Dun"), while the immanent material dimension of life is the "Illusory World" (Мжнг Дун, "Mæng Dun"). The supreme God may be called upon by a multiplicity of epithets, including simply "Styr Xwytsau" (Стыр Хуыцау), meaning "Great God", but also "Duneskænæg" (Дунескæнæг), "Creator of the Universe", "Meskænæg Xwytsau" (Мескаенаег Хуыцау) and "Xwytsauty Xwytsau" (Хуыцаутты Хуыцау), meaning "God of the Gods". Assian theology affirms  that God is within every creature, is "the head of everything", and in men it manifests as reason, measure and righteousness ("bar"). God and its triune manifestations. Lesser gods, including the most important of them, Uastyrdzhi, are worshipped as intermediaries of Xwytsau. Defined as "forces" and "spirits", they are the "ideas" through which the supreme God governs the universe. In another definition, they are God's "immanent manifestations", elements of the single whole, endowed with form and functions. The supreme God unfolds in triads. The fundamental triad is that of God–matter–spirit: On the plane of the phenomenon, God 's universal mind-spirit further manifests as the triad of: Another distinction is established between the three cosmological states of: In the theology of Khetag Morgoyev, "barduag" is a general concept comprehending the "zhad" and the "dzuar" (дзуар), with the former representing the deities as transcendent ideas and the latter their immanent extension. The term "dzuar" is indeed used polysemantically for both a given deity and its shrine(s). The activity of the "barduag" is called "minzhvar" (минжвар), a concept difficult to be translated which means "making connections", "arranging things in the right way". The most important of them are the  cycles of nature and of the cycles of human economy, which coalesce and interconnect in the time–space continuum, constituting the calendar of the year. Each thing has its "zhad", there are "zhad"s of the kins/families, of villages, of natural environments; each phenomenon, event and point of time–space contains a "zhad". The seven planetary deities and other deities. Like other ancient Iranian religions, the ancient Scythian religion contemplated seven deities (арвон дауджита, "arvon daudzhita") as most important among the others, each of which associated to a planet and to certain natural phenomena, living beings and plants. The total  number of "daudzhita" recorded in traditional Ossetian texts is about ninety. Uastyrdzhi is the chief among them, as he can access directly the supreme Xwytsau, and all the other deities are introduced by him. They are believed to either favour or punish people, and therefore sacrifices (of bulls, rams, and sometimes goats) are offered to them. Herodotus attested the seven Scythian gods as: Papaios (corresponding to Zeus), the sky god; Tabiti (Hestia), the hearth goddess (today called Safa, and symbolically associated to the sacred chain of the hearth of the house); Api (Gaia), the earth goddess; Oitosyros (Apollo), the sun  god; Argimpasa (Aphrodite), the fertility goddess; and "Herakles" and "Ares" for whom Herodotus did not provide the Scythian name. In ancient Ossetian, the seven days of the week were still named after the seven deities, and, in the conservative Digor dialect of Ossetian, Monday is still "Avdisar", "Head of the Seven". According to Foltz, "Ares" was probably Mithra, and the modern Uastyrdzhi; he was widely worshipped through altars in the form of a sword planted in a pile of stones or brushwood. The cult of the sword continued among the Alans as late as the first century CE. Herodotus also  mentioned an eighth deity worshipped among the Royal Scythians, Thagimasidas, the water god, equated with Poseidon. The modern Ossetians have preserved the sevenfold-eightfold structure, though the deities have changed as have their names, which in some cases are adaptations of the names of Christian saints: Uastyrdzhi (whose name derives from "Saint George"), the god of contracts and war (the Iranian Mithra), but also general archetype of men and of disadvantaged people; Uatsilla ("Saint Elijah"), the thunder god; Uatstutyr ("Saint Theodore"), the protector of wolves; Fælværa (maybe the conflation of "Florus and Laurus"), the protector of livestock; Kurdalægon, the blacksmith  god (the Iranian Kaveh, Kawa); Donbettyr, the water god; Mikaelgabyrta (conflation of "Michael and Gabriel"), the fertility and underworld god; and Æfsati, the god of the hunt. Ethics. According to Assian doctrines, human nature is the same as the nature of all being. Mankind is a microcosm within a macrocosm, or broader context, and the same is true for all other beings. The universe is kept in harmony by "Uas" or "Ard", the order of God, the foundation of divine reason, measure, and righteousness ("bar"). The deities ("daudzhita" or "ualimon") form the world according to this universal law, while demons  ("uayguyta" or "dalimon") are those entities which act disrupting the good contexts of the deities, and are the causes of illness and death. Every entity is governed "by it itself" within its own sphere of responsibility; God and its order are not seen as an external force of coercion. These positive and negative forces also influence humanity's consciousness: A man may take the side of either deities or demons, and this choice will shape this man's life and action. If a man is able to subdue passions, not putting exclusively egoistic material motives in his actions, he becomes  open to the "Uas", or its receptacle (уасдан, "uasdan"; good-spell receptacle), a wise noble who perceives the order of God and higher spirits and receives their energy, acting like them by producing good, truth and beauty. On the contrary, if a man's actions are driven by egoistic material ends, "Dalimon" and demons own him and he becomes a source of evil, lie and ugliness. In the words of Khetag Morgoyev, mankind is endowed with the free will to choose between good and evil, deities and demons. Practices. Myths and rites. By citing V. I. Dobrenkov, the "Dzuary Lægtæ  emphasise the semantic unity of myth and ritual within the practice of the cult, the first being a system of verbal symbols" and the second being "a system of symbols as objects and actions". There is much variation of myths and rites throughout Ossetia, though underlaid by the same semantics, testifying the vitality of the tradition. According to Shtyrkov, the modern Assian movement tries "to create a unified ritual system, every tiny element of which has a theological motivation". There have been efforts in the second half of the 2010s for the creation of a unified Ossetian religious calendar. The  Ossetian calendar has many days dedicated to ceremonies, some of which are performed within the household and others at outdoor sacred spaces. Household ceremonies are centred around the hearth chain ("safa", which functions as a symbol of the hearth goddess Safa, representing the world tree) which upholds a cauldron, over a fire (the holy element in Indo-Iranian religions). There are sixty fixed celebrations throughout the year, the most important of which is the Week of Uastyrdzhi beginning the last Tuesday of November. Holidays are linked to the days of the week, the phases of the moon, and the solstices ; for example, the Ossetian New Years is celebrated on the second Thursday of January. The Day of Uastyrdzhi, together with those of Uatstutyr and Uatsilla, form the complex of the solar holidays, with the three deities representing the three interconnected phases of the Sun and the corresponding manifestations in nature and in the economic activities of mankind; Uastyrdzhi is the Winter Sun which dies and then rises again, Uatstutyr is the Spring Sun which becomes more and more powerful towards Summer, while Uatsilla is the Summer Sun in its full splendor, whose power then fades in Autumn towards the new  Uastyrdzhi. Ritual ceremonies consist in holding a feast (фынг, "fyng" or кувд, "kuvyn") in honour of a particular deity. The ceremony is led by a "holy man" ("dzuary læg"), who invokes the deity through the offering of a "toast", "kuyvd" (куывд), which also means "prayer", towards the sky. Beer is the substance usually offered in libation, though it may be substituted by any type of strong liquor. During the ceremony other toasts are made to the other deities, and ceremonial cakes ("ualibakh") are consumed along with meat from an animal sacrificed for the ritual. Only herbivorous animals like bulls, rams , goats or lambs, are acceptable as sacrifice, and fish are accepted too. Much like ancient Scythians, as attested by Herodotus, the Ossetians do not sacrifice omnivorous animals like pigs, and chickens. Beer and other alcoholic beverages are also generously consumed for each toast, echoing the ancient Scythian custom. Such ceremonies may be accompanied by a circular dance called "simd". A distinctive version of the "simd" has one circle of dancers standing on the shoulders of another circle of dancers. The Narts tell that the "simd" was invented by the hero Soslan. A system of divination using sticks, already attested in  Herodotus' accounts of Scythian customs, is still practised today. The scheme of the prayer displays the process of creation of the world: Starting with the invocation of the supreme God, the supreme source, then it tells about the beginning and manifestation of things; graphically, it is compared to a "mandala", a point from which the forces of the world depart in circle. The same scheme is also represented by the ceremonial cake, constituted by three circular layers with a hole in the middle, representing the three levels of reality: sky, Sun and water/earth. The three-legged ceremonial table itself  represents the threefold model of reality, while its round surface — like the round surface of the ceremonial cake — represents the Sun and the infiniteness of God. On the table is also laid down the meat of sacrificed animals with an equilateral cross ("dzuar", the same term for the manifested state of a deity) carved on the forehead, which represents the point of origination and manifestation of divinity like the hole at the centre of the ceremonial cake. For a particular deity worshipped during the feast, another ceremonial cake, different from the main one, is prepared and laid down on the  ceremonial table. This cake is constituted by three triangular pies arranged to form a nine-pointed star if looked from above. Shrines and temples. Ossetian deities are associated with natural phenomena, and communal ceremonies are usually held at natural shrines or sanctuaries called "kuvandon" (кувандон, literally "place of prayer"), which are often provided with a temple built in wood or stone. Sanctuaries may be in groves, forests, on hills, in fields, in caves, and in any place where it is believed there being a "strong energy field". The journalist Alan Mamiev observed that "Ossetians pray in nature" and "every family  has its own shrine on their land". Slava Dzhanaïty, who projected the reconstruction the Rekom Temple, an important Ossetian shrine in Tsey, Alagirsky District, North Ossetia–Alania, destroyed by an accidental fire in 1995, observed that: Ruslan Kuchiev, the president of the "Styr Nykhas" in 2019, said: There are many shrines in Ossetia; the Alagir region alone has about three hundred of them. In the village of Gaiat, in the region of Digoria of western Ossetia there is a temple dedicated to the cosmological seven deities. These shrines are places where to make oaths, contracts, weddings, and where to identify  violators of the divine law, the "Ard". Within the private household, the most sacred area is the "khadzar" (хждзар); it is the "kuvandon" of the house, where the hearth and the chain of the goddess Safa are located. The sacred chain of Safa is also present at many public "kuvandon". Such chain symbolises the world tree which connects the three realms of sky, Sun and water/earth. Symbolism. The most important symbol in Assianism, according to the "Dzuary Lægtæ", is the "Uatsamongzh" (Уацамонгж) or "Uatsamonga" (Уацамонга), a bowl, goblet or cup mentioned in the Ossetian Nart epics whose name means  indicating (amongzh") truth ("uats")" or "revelator of divinity". It is a symbol of truth representing the inverted vault of the sky, which can saturate the worthy ones (the hero of the Nart epics) with unearthly knowledge. The origins of this symbol go back to the earliest Indo-Europeans and it is also present in later Celtic and Germanic cultures. In medieval Western European legends, the magic chalice took the Christianised form of the Holy Grail. Another important symbol within the religion is the horse, another ancient Indo-European symbol, which is associated in Ossetian culture with funeral rites, with both  celestial and terrestrial forces, and which appears as the steed of deities in many visions. The "Three Tears of God" ("Trislezi Boga"), a symbol representing Assian theology and three most important Ossetian shrines, was first "perceived" and drawn by the architect and painter Slava Dzhanaïty, and has become the most common symbol of the faith, "seen everywhere throughout North and South Ossetia on t-shirts, car stickers, and advertisements". Within the three "tears" of Dzhanaïty's symbol there are three equilateral crosses; "cross" is said "dzuar" in Ossetian, the same term for the manifestation of divinity. The three most important  Ossetian shrines that the symbol represents are the Rekom Temple, the Mykalygabyrtæ Temple to the southeast of Rekom, and the Tarandzhelos Temple located south of Mount Kazbek in Georgia. Relations with other philosophies and religions. With Eurasianism. In 2009, at the Center for Conservative Research of Moscow State University, a conference was held about the role of Ossetians in Russian history led by the Eurasianist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. Among participants there was Daurbek Makeyev, the head of the "Atsætæ" religious organisation of Assianism. On that occasion, Dugin praised the revitalisation of Ossetian culture for it having preserved a pristine Indo -European heritage. He discussed the importance of Scythian culture in the development of broader Eurasia, recognising that Scythian culture had an enormous impact on the development of Finno-Ugric, Turkic and Slavic cultures, and despite this European scholars have paid little attention to it so far. Makeyev declared that the "Atsætæ" organisation was founded for fostering traditional Ossetian religion, but also to share the heritage of Assianism with other peoples, because "what was preserved in Ossetia is not [merely] Ossetian, but is a worldwide heritage". Russian Assian resources present the religion as a universal truth "addressed to the whole world . With Christianity. Scythian Assian leaders, notably Daurbek Makeyev, have articulated strong positions against Christianity, criticising it for its alien origins, its Jewish origins, and criticising the corruption of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2002 and 2007 works he states that the Christian religion breaks the connection of a nation with its own spirit, thus dooming this nation to degeneration and death: At the same time, Makeyev criticises Christianity for its anti-environmentalist essence, which stems from a theology which separates God from nature, and the sacred from the profane. In a 2019 speech he affirmed: The Dzuary Lægtæ" articulate a  historical critique of Christianisation: For them, Orthodox Christianity is an "alien religion" that "seeks to captivate and corrupt the souls of the conquered", and in Ossetia it was spread by foreigners and by the tsarist autocracy through coercion, by police measures and by luring children and the poor with gifts, a process which led to the disintegration of families and to the ruin of farms. According to them, Islam spread among the Ossetians as an alternative to avoid forced Christianisation. The Russian Orthodox Church is for them a "socio-cultural and cultural-political problem" in Ossetia, as it has "neither  knowledge of the peculiarities of Ossetia, nor interest in its culture, nor concern for its future". The movement of Scythian Assianism has attracted strong hostility and complaints from Christian and Islamic authorities. The Russian Orthodox archbishop Leonid in Moscow sought to silence Makeyev by trying to ban his books as "extremist literature", calling on his personal contacts when he was a general in the Federal Security Service. The Russian Orthodox Church has also been trying to have the Rekom Temple destroyed and a church built in its place, but without success so far. Demography and institutions. The movement of Scythian  Assianism is present in both North Ossetia–Alania and South Ossetia, though it is more widespread in the former. Some categories particularly well represented among the believers are the military, hunters, and sportsmen, attracted by the heroic ethics of the Narts, but also intellectuals and artists. According to Shtyrkov, the movement "occupies a visible place in the social landscape of the republic". Scythian Assianism is also popular in Russia and Ukraine among Cossacks, especially those who claim a Scythian identity to distinguish themselves from Slavs. Some of them identify within the category of Rodnovery, the general "Slavic Native Faith". According  to Foltz, the movement has become so widespread among the Ossetians that its success is "unrivalled" among all Neopagan religious movements. According to the 2012 "Arena Atlas" complement to the 2010 census of Russia, 29.4% of the population of North Ossetia (comprising Ossetians as well as ethnic Russians) were adherents of the Ossetian Pagan religion. Authorities of the religion itself claim that a large majority of over 55% of the ethnic Ossetians are adherents of the religion. On 18 May 2014, the "Forum of Ossetian Kins–National Forum 'Alania'" was held with the participation of 1,500 delegates of Ossetian traditional  kins from both North Ossetia and South Ossetia. Among the issues considered at the forum, the kins drafted a document entitled "On Amendments and Additions to the Constitution of the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania" in which they proposed, "in order to preserve and develop the culture of the Ossetian people", the constitutional recognition of the Ossetian worldview and religion as "the most important part" of Ossetian culture, the recognition of the Ossetian mountainous regions as "the material basis of the spiritual enlightenment of the Ossetian and other Indo-European (Aryan) peoples from ancient times to the present [...] The sacred  center of the Ossetian people, of general Aryan significance", and the adoption of a framework for the standardisation of the Ossetian language as a state language.