Hetanism

The Armenian Native Faith, also termed Armenian Neopaganism or Hetanism (Armenian: Հեթանոսութիւն, romanized: Hetanosutiwn; possibly 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" (հեթանոս, Hetanos, 'heathen'; thus, "ethnic", a loan word from then Greek ἔθνος, ethnos) or Arordi ('children of Ari'), which also rendered as "Arordiners" in some scholarly publications.

The Arordiner movement has antecedents in the early 20th century, with the doctrine of Tseghakron (Ցեղակրոն, 'national religion') of the nationalist political theorist 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" in 2004.

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.