The Armenian Native Faith, also termed Armenian Neopaganism or Hetanism (Armenian: Հեթանոսութիւն Hetanosutiwn; a cognate word of "Heathenism"), is a modern Pagan new religious movement that harkens back to the historical, pre-Christian belief systems and ethnic religions of the Armenians. The followers of the movement call themselves "Hetans" (Armenian: հեթանոս Hetanos, which means "Heathen", thus "ethnic", both of them being loanwords from the Greek ἔθνος, ethnos) or Arordi, meaning the "Children of Ari", also rendered as "Arordiners" in some scholarly publications.
The Arordiner movement has antecedents in the early 20th century, with the doctrine of Tseghakron (Ցեղակրոն, literally "national religion") of the nationalist political theorist and Nazi collaborator Garegin Nzhdeh. It took an institutional form in 1991, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union in a climate of national reawakening, when the Armenologist Slak Kakosyan founded the "Order of the Children of Ari" (Arordineri Ukht). Neopaganism expert Victor Schnirelmann estimated the following of Armenian neopaganism to be "no more than a few hundred people".
History
Nzhdeh's and Kakosyan's experiences
The first organisation of Armenian Native Faith, the "Order of the Children of Ari" (or "Ara"; Arordineri Ukht in Armenian) was established in 1991 by the armenologist Slak (Eduard, or Edik) Kakosyan (1936–2005). He belonged to a generation of Armenian dissidents and was exiled in the 1970s from Soviet Armenia; in 1979 he fled to the United States where he became familiar with the ideas of Garegin Nzhdeh (1886–1955).
Nzhdeh was a philosopher, statesman and fedayi of the first half of the twentieth century, who left an enduring legacy in the history of Armenia, and is still one of the driving forces of Armenian nationalism. Kakosyan praised him as the "prophet of the Armenians". Nzhdeh founded a movement named Tseghakron ("religion of the nation"), which was among the core doctrines of the Armenian Youth Federation. In Nzhdeh's poetic mythology, the Armenian nation is identified as Atlas upholding the ordered world, and it makes reference to Hayk, the mythical patriarch of the Armenians, and to Vahagn, the solar and warrior god "fighter of the serpent", as means through which to awaken the Armenian nation and raise its spirit. Nzhdeh's movement took place in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide of 1915.
During his exile, Slak Kakosyan made extensive use of Nzhdeh's works to codify the Ukhtagirk ("Book of Vows"), the sacred text of the Armenian Native Faith movement. In the book, Garegin Nzhdeh is deified as an incarnation of Vahagn, the re-establisher of the true faith of the Armenians and of the Aryan values. While still in the United States, Kakosyan claimed that he had been initiated to the ancient Armenian hereditary priesthood mentioned by Moses of Chorene, changing his forename from "Edik" to "Slak". He likely became acquainted with Zoroastrian communities in the United States.
1990s: Establishment of the Children of Ari
Returning to Armenia in 1991, Slak Kakosyan gathered a community and founded the Children of Ari. They began to hold rituals on traditional Armenian holydays. The Temple of Garni became the centre of the community, a council of priests was set up in order to manage the organisation and the rites. During the 1990s, the group reached visibility in wider Armenian society. According to the scholar Yulia Antonyan, the emergence of the Armenian Native Faith is attributable to the same causes which led to the rise of other modern Pagan movements, but also Hindu and Protestant movements, in the other post-Soviet countries: The Armenian Native Faith represents the indigenous answer to the social and cultural upheavals which followed the collapse of Soviet society and of its atheist and materialist ideology.
Republican Party support and grassroots spread
Ashot Navasardyan (1950–1997) and Andranik Margaryan (1949–2007), founding fathers of the Republican Party of Armenia, were Arordiners like many other members of the party and took part in the very first ritual at the Temple of Garni. The Republican Party provided financial support for the Children of Ari until recent times, sponsored the publication of Ukhtagirk and the set up of a memorial stele to Slak Kakosyan on the grounds of the Temple of Garni. Arordiner festivals are celebrated in some regions with the support of local municipalities. Despite this strong link with the nationalist political scene, the Children of Ari does not declare a political orientation, and the priests are forbidden from joining any political party.