The terms Prav, Jav, and Nav (Prava, Iava, Nava) are often used by modern Rodnovers and the self identified “Old Believers.” Prav is the Spirit World, Jav is the physical world that we live in, and Nav is the Underworld. The terms would seem to originate in the questionable literary source, the Book of Veles, however, the concepts are a good way to describe the world of the seen and unseen. You can certainly use these terms if they work for you, but so as not to give them undue credibility, I will stick with Svarga, Zemlja, and Virij or their English equivalents of the Spirit World, the Physical World, and the Underworld. While we are defining these as separate “worlds” they overlap energetically, and as such, can be traveled between.
Our connection to magic and Spirit is rooted in the unconscious mind. This we can direct with the conscious mind using various tools, the primary one is the language of symbols. As Psychiatrist Carl Jung pointed out, there are many symbols that are collective in their origin and these tend to be religious in nature. The Tree of Life is one of them. It shows up in many varied cultures as The World Tree or axis mundi. This symbol is used in shamanistic practices to “travel” to other realms. In the night sky, the North Star is called the Pole Star because it stays still and it looks like the constellations rotate around it. So the World Tree is seen as reaching up to the Spirit World centered on the Pole Star. For a more in depth study on how to navigate these worlds, I would recommend, Rebekah Elizabeth Gamble’s book, Map to Otherworld.
The ancient Slavs believed that after death a person’s spirit could do one of four things: linger around (astrally or in the form of an animal,) reinhabit the dead body, go on to an afterlife and/or be reincarnated.
TALK ABOUT LINGERING SPIRITS - mouse, insect, etc.
AFTERLIFE - In the Slavic areas there are found both ancient burials in kurgans, as well as graves with cremated remains. The Carpathians in the north during the Early and Middle Bronze Age would “bury their dead in low barrows, in stone cists, or in house-graves of other sorts, with or without stone constructions, and during the Late Bronze Age in flat graves.” (1) The evidence of barrows shows the influence of the Kurgan people, which included the Sarmatians and Scythians, but these existed at the same time as cremation. Professor Lubor Niederle, of the Bohemian University at Prague describes the evidence of ritual around cremations, “...immediately following the cremation, or the following day, they gathered the ashes together with the charred remains of bones, weapons, and luxurious garments into a pile or into a separate receptacle, which they buried in the grave or placed on top of a stone or a stake, depending on the custom of the region. Into the receptacle containing the remains were added articles that the deceased might need in the next life… If the burial rite did not involve cremation, the body was lowered into the grave together with the assembled articles and a sacrificial fire was set on top, around which the funeral feast “the tryzna” was held.” (2) These show evidence of the belief in the continuation of life of the spirit. In Slovakia, burials were usually in the forest, under a tree or in a field or grove, until Christianity and then it was in designated Christian “sacred ground” cemeteries.(3) In 1,100 CE, Otto exhorted the newly baptized Christians to bury the Christian dead, not “with the heathen in the woods or the fields” but in cemeteries and to “not place sticks on their tombs…” (4) (which presumably this is a totem of their ancestor which they would visit and “feed” at the liminal times of the year, Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, etc.)
The afterworld was depicted as ...
While the ancient Scythians mainly did burial mounds, the practice of cremation seems to have started in the Balkans around 1300 BCE under the influence of the Celtic peoples and become much more prevalent throughout the Slavic areas.(5) Switching back to mainly burials around 1000 CE with the practices of the Orthodox church. This provides a clue as to when the concepts of the “evil” undead and vampires most likely arose was under the Orthodox church.
REINCARNATION - .
Vladomir the Great, when he was writing his last instructions (will) he started with “Being ill and about to seat myself in the sleigh…” since the dead at that time were always taken away by sleigh whether it was winter or summer. (6)
Boris Rybakof did a study of East Slavic head gear in ancient folk costumes preserved in pagan burial mounds. Tree of Life symbology.
TALK ABOUT THE PARTS OF SOULS: In death, the soul traveled the Milky Way “The Way of Souls” and variations on “The Bird Path” (which are associated with souls) and the “Straw Way.” (7) The Transylvanian “Fairy Way.”
1- Gimbutas. Bronze Age Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe. p. 453
2- Markovych. Rusyn Easter Eggs from Eastern Slovakia. p. 19
3- Brunn. The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identies, Practices and Politics. p. 431
4-Clark. The Life of Otto, Apostle of Pomerania, 1060-1139. p. 87
5-"Celtic Tribes 13th Century BC-6th Century AD" European Kingdoms: Celtic Tribes. The History Files
6-Wiener. Anthology of Russian Literature: From the Tenth Century to the Close of the Eighteenth. p. 51
7-Ivashina. "Names of Stars and Constellations in the Slavic and Germanic Languages." p. 108