There is a custom in medieval Slavic culture that still survives today in modern Russia and the Ukraine and that is the banya or bathhouse. The bathhouse was and is akin to the Native American sweat lodge, the Scandinavian badstu or the Finnish sauna. All of these produced heat and steam, encouraging sweating and a general detoxing. Likewise, all of these were at one time used for a spiritual experience. In medieval Russia and Ukraine, the banya was also a place where women went to have their babies. Icons were forbidden there, as was laughing, singing or any sort of boisterous behavior. It was regarded as “a habitation for witches and ghosts of the dead.” As Kenneth Johnson further writes in his book Slavic Sorcery – Shamanic Journey of Initiation, “In short, the bathhouse was a Pagan temple, and in fact, was called the “temple of the Mothers”, the Three Fates who represented the ancestors of the clan and whom we shall meet later on. Its association with “witchcraft” reminds us that the bathhouse was often the setting for esoteric rites of sorcery. A sorcerer might heat himself up in the bathhouse, then dive into ice-cold water and, through his own shamanic inner heat, warm the water and change its polarity.
The “Mothers” Johnson mentions are the Rozhenitsa who can be likened to the Greek Fates or the Norse Norns. There are usually three of them and they spin the destiny of every newborn child just as do the Norns.
In my WIP The Bone Goddess, Sigga takes Þórsteinn out to the banya to divine for him what he wants to know.
Sigga said nothing as she poured water over the hot stones. The steam soon enveloped the banya, wreathing both of them in its density. “Will you help me or no?” Þórsteinn’s voice came to her over the hiss of steam.
You speak of the Norns and of Óðinn, yet I thought the people here had abandoned the Northern ways and Slavic gods only were followed here. Are you from the North?”
He could not contain his curiosity. She allowed silence again to fall between them. She pounded the herbs on the stone, their pungent fragrance filling her nose. She threw them onto the hot rocks and soon the entire banya reeked of wild chicory and hempr. She sat back, and laid her head back against the pine planks of the banya.
“No, my father’s people came from Norvegr. My mother was Thracian and a Christian. She died when I was young and my father thought it best that my sister and I be brought back to the north country to be raised among his people and learn the old ways. He gave to me and my sister Northern names and he tried, for the sake of my mother, to follow her Christian god, but it was not in his heart to do so.”
“I hear that your Rus prince has forbidden the oak pillars, both Norse and Slav and dragged the idols in the streets when he married the Roman princess.”
She gave him only the barest glimmer of a smile. The banya was not the place for laughter if one did not wish to anger the spirits. She probably should have warned him.
Historically, the banya has also had its use for revenge. The Radzivill Chronicle tells us how the Rus Princess Olga got revenge on the Drevalian (a Slavic tribe) murderers of her husband Prince Igor. When the Drevalian leader sent word of his interest in marrying Olga, she sent word back that she would entertain the idea.
“When the Drevlians arrived, Olga commanded that a bath should be made ready for them and said, ‘Wash yourselves and come to me.’ The bath-house was heated and the unsuspecting Drevlians entered and began to wash themselves. [Olga’s] men closed the bath-house behind them and Olga gave orders to set it on fire from the doors, so that the Drevlians were all burned to death.
Perhaps one of the most interesting and persistent things about the banya, was one of its spooky inhabitants, the Bannick. Like most Slavic folk spirits, he has a dark side. The Bannik was variously described as being small and having hairy legs. He could be very malicious and great lengths were gone to propitiate him. It was because of the Bannik that icons were not allowed in the banya for fear of offending him. He is supremely a creature of the old pre-Christian forest gods. If offended he could pour boiling water on you or even strangle you, or at the very least invite a whole host of forest spirits in with him. The banya may have been a place where a volkhvy (Slavic shaman) would work his magic. In the tradition of the Native American sweat lodge, the banya was a place to transcend yourself, perhaps to go into trance.
The banya was not just a place to maintain good hygiene or to bring young children into the world, but a place to commune with the old gods, long after Russia and the Ukraine had officially accepted Christianity. Even the 1917 revolution could not crush the indomitable spirit of of the native Slavs and today Rodnovery or the Slavic Native Faith has made great leaps in popularity in eastern Europe, especially with younger Slavs as they seek to reconnect with their ethnic identity in an increasingly global, multicultural world that pays no homage to distinct ethnic identity.
The little people, tontu, who live under the sauna in Finland. I guess they are the bannick.