Pagans alive and well in Ossetia.

For those who have read the novel Black Widow - the news will come as no surprise, but it is news to the people of Kuwait! The Kuwati Times is running an interesting story about our fellow Pagans in Ossetia.

Few other parts of Russia are as closely guarded as the passes into the Caucasus, but when Ruslan Yenaldiyev looks up to the knife-like mountain range, his faith is not in tanks and satellites, but a bearded man on a white stallion. "I met a lad here not long ago who told me he'd seen the horse in the sky himself," businessman Yenaldiyev, 28, said after praying to the mysterious horseman, named Wasterzhi, at a sacred forest outside the city of Vladikavkaz. "It must be true." Yenaldiyev is one of the approximately half million Ossetians, an ethnic group whose ancestral lands rise from the plains to control two vital and heavily militarised mountain passes into Russia's US-backed southern neighbour Georgia. But holding the strategic key to the turbulent Caucasus-the name of North Ossetia's capital Vladikavkaz means "Ruler of the Caucasus"-is not all that makes the Ossetians unique.

Believed by scholars to descend from the ancient Scythians, an Iranian-speaking nomad tribe, the Ossetians still practice a pagan religion that has roots thousands of years old, but which has disappeared everywhere else. At the same time, Ossetians are nominally Christian.

Read the full article here: Pagan remnants of ancient tribe guard Russia's Caucasus

Tags: Sauna Recipes Food Suomi Wicca pagan