The umbrella term for the indigenous highland religious systems of the Caucasus: the Circassian pantheon headed by the sky god Tha, the Ossetian Uatsdin tradition of dzuar holy beings such as Wastyrdzhi, and related Abkhaz, Vainakh and Georgian highland cults. These systems overlap and were layered under Christianity and Islam over centuries rather than erased by them, and their shared narrative inheritance survives most fully in the Nart sagas, an oral epic cycle common to the Circassian, Abkhaz, Ubykh, Ossetian and several neighboring peoples.
Facts
Cultural Restriction
Restricted TraditionCaucasian native religion survives today as a living tradition with living custodians. Ossetian Uatsdin communities maintain active dzuar shrine pilgrimage and priesthoods, and Circassian Habze revival movements practice aspects of the old customary code. This atlas describes the shared Nart epic cycle and the historically recorded pantheon rather than instructing present-day ritual practice. 1 Disputed
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 1 Scholars describe the Circassian strand, with its supreme sky god Tha presiding over a wider community of spirits, as sometimes closer to henotheistic than the plainly polytheistic Ossetian and Abkhaz pantheons, which recognize many roughly coequal holy beings with no single supreme figure common to all of them. Origins
Place of OriginThe North and South Caucasus highlands, particularly the mountainous interior of historic Circassia, Ossetia, Abkhazia and highland Georgia (Pshav-Khevsureti and Svaneti). 1 Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Objects and Practices of This Tradition
Regions Where This Is Principal
Worship Of
Sources
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