Cult (worship) stones

Subject / Relics
Cult stones. The worship of cult stones was registered in all northern part of the East Europe including Baltic countries and Scandinavia. Track-stones, with deep image of a human foot track, are wide presented. Those images are sometimes accompanied by deepenings in the form of animals. A human hand tracks and images of horns, fish, trident, triangle, circle, oval, arrow, etc. are found rarely. Cup-shaped stones with distinctive round deepenings and cross-stones form a special group. There is a supposition about the connection of track-stones with the cult of Veles, a patron of domestic cattle; later the cult was transformed into the worship of St. Vlasy. Cult stones are the traditional farming culture distinctive element reflected the long-term interaction of Pagan and Christian overview (so-called "ditheism"). During the adaptation to Christianity of rural population, cult stones were destroyed, conducting other rituals were forbidden. Later legends about cult stones are connected with Christian faith. In the 19 - 20th centuries inhabitants kept the overview about medicinal qualities of cult stones, the tradition to bring gifts to cult stones. All information about stones with signs, located in the Leningrad Oblast territory, were systematized by A.V. Kurbatov. Most of cult stones were not survived untill the present days. Some stones were researched by archaeologists. Among survived cult stones there is the huge boulder with the image of foot located at the burial mound edge at the village Bolshaya Vruda in the Volosovo district (E.A. Ryabinin, 1971); the stone "Pyatnitsa" at the village of Bolshoye Konezerye in the Luga district (G.S. Lebedev, 1979); several stones in the Priozersk district (A.I. Saksa, 1980; V.A. Lapshin, 1990) and others. There is the known Kon-kamen (Horse-stone) on Konevets Island in Ladoga Lake which was the place of Pagan sacrifices. Plotkin, Konstantin Moiseyevich
Feodosy, archbishop
Kurbatov, Aleksandr Valeryevich
Lapshin, Vladimir Anatolyevich
Lebedev, Gleb Sergeyevich
Makary, metropolitan
Ryabinin, Yevgeny Aleksandrovich
Saksa, Aleksandr Ivanovich
Leningrad Oblast, the/Volosovo District/Bolshaya Vruda Village
Leningrad Oblast, the/Luga District/Bolshoye Konerezye Village
Topographical landmarks/Konevets, Island
Topographical landmarks/Ladoga Lake
Leningrad Oblast, the/Priozersk District
Historical Toponyms/Veliky Novgorod/Vodskaya Pyatina ("Fifth")
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Лебедев Г.С. Памятники урочища «Священка» на оз. Врево в Верхнем Полужье // Археология и история Пскова и Псковской земли: Тезисы конференции. Псков. 1987. С. 67-69, С. 67-69
Рябинин Е.А. От язычества к христианству (по материалам средневекового прошлого Северо-Западной Руси) // Культурное наследие Российского государства. Вып. III. СПб. 2002., С. 130-149
"Friday", a stone
"Kon-kamen" ("Horse-stone"), a natural monument