Hetanism

The Armenian Native Faith, also termed Armenian Neopaganism or Hetanism (Armenian: Հեթանոսութիւն Hetanosutiwn; 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" (Armenian: հեթանոս Hetanos, which means "Heathen", thus "ethnic", both of them being loanwords from the Greek ἔθνος, ethnos) or Arordi, meaning the "Children of Ari", also rendered as "Arordiners" in some scholarly publications.

The Arordiner movement has antecedents in the early 20th century, with the doctrine of Tseghakron (Ցեղակրոն, literally "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".