Zuism

Hungarian Zuism

The earliest organised Zuist movement was established by the Hungarian Assyriologist Ferenc Badiny Jós (1909–2007), together with the historian Ida Bobula (1900–1981)^[11] and other authors, including Tibor Baráth, Victor Padányi, and András Zakar,^[12] between the 1960s and the 1970s, among those Hungarians who sought to relate the origins of the Hungarians to the ancient Sumerians, especially based on the shared, common features of the Hungarian and Sumerian languages, notably agglutination.^[11]

Ferenc Badiny Jós, who emigrated to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, when Hungary became part of the Soviet Union, and after the latter's collapse returned to his home country, founded a "Hungarian Church" (Magyar Egyház) following the Sumerian tradition, the legacy of which continues to this day among Hungarian Zuists.^[13] An important bequest of Badiny Jós is his Magyar Bible of the Sumerian tradition.^[14] Among the Hungarian Zuist organisations that continue in the wake of Badiny Jós' teachings there are the "Hungarian Religious Fellowship" (Magyar Vallás Közössége) and the "Old Hungarian Church" (Ősmagyar Egyház).^[15] Another Hungarian Zuist group that follows Sumerian traditions is the "Bolyanest".^[16]

Hungarian Zuists interpret Hungarian runes and symbols as deriving from Sumerian cuneiform,^[17] the Turul bird of Hungarian mythology as being the same as the Sumerian Anzû,^[18] and they equate the Hungarian term Isten ("God") with the Akkadian Isten ("One"), as well as the Siberian Tengri ("God-Heaven") — the Hungarians and the Sumerians are considered within these circles, which espouse Turanist ideas, to have remoter Siberian origins — with the Sumerian Dingir–An ("God-Heaven"; Akkadian Ilu).^[19] The Lebanese cedar, a holy tree in ancient Middle Eastern religious cultures, is revered as a means of connection with the divine by Hungarian Zuists; during the solstices and equinoxes, they gather near cedars and light candles, offer libations, dance around the trees while singing and reciting prayers to the Sumerian gods.^[16]

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  The grave (942/2-1-105) of Ferenc Badiny Jós at the Farkasrét Cemetery in Budapest, Hungary. Carven onto the tombstone is the symbol of the Hungarian Zuist Church.
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  Pilgrimage to the Cedars in Lebanon (1907) by Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka. Some Hungarian Zuists make pilgrimages and perform rites at a giant Lebanese cedar on the edge of a forest in the mountains surrounding Budapest.^[16]

Mardukite Zuism

Mardukite Zuism is a Zuist doctrine established by the American mystical and esoteric philosopher Joshua Free in 2008 and incorporated by the "Founding Church of Mardukite Zuism".^[6][20] Mardukite Zuism harkens back to the later Akkadian-Babylonian tradition, rather than the earlier Sumerian tradition.^[5]

The religious books of the Mardukite Zuist movement comprise the Anunnaki Bible and other texts of the "New Standard Zuist Edition", The Power of Zu, the Mardukite Necronomicon, and the numerous other writings about theory and practice by the same author, Joshua Free. The latter defines Zuism as a "systemology" and "spiritual technology" for the realisation of oneself, that is to say the reunification of the self with God, and, beside "knowledge" and "understanding", he also gives to the concept of zu the meanings of "consciousness" and "awareness", and interprets it as the radiant energy that permeates all living beings.^[21]

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  Altar belonging to a Canadian practitioner of Mardukite Zuism. On the cover of the Book of Marduk, there is a Zuist version of the merkabah ("chariot") , the means of connection with the seven Anunnaki, the supreme trinity (An/Ilu, Enlil/Bel, Enki/Ea), and the transcendent One.^[22]
• 
  Blossoms of apricot tree at the Borsippa Headquarters of the Mardukite Zuist Church in Monte Vista, Colorado, United States.

Iraqi Zuism

The Russian Assyriologist V. V. Yemelyanov documented the rise of a Zuist movement in Iraq at the beginning of the 2010s, with the dissemination of prayers to the Mesopotamian gods in the Arabic language.^[23]

Among the Assyrian-speaking people and their diaspora across the world, there is a distinct Akkadian-Assyrian Zuist movement, also known as "Ashurism", that focuses on Ashur as the utmost god above An, incorporated since 2023 in Australia by the "Assyrian Creed Founding Council"^[24] of the "Zuist Church of Australia".^[25]

Canaanite Zuism

Canaanite Zuism, or Levantine Zuism, constitutes a small community in the region of the Levant (Canaan), most notably in Israel, trying to revive the ancient Canaanite religion. It has antecedents in the cultural and literary movement of Canaanism among the Jews of British Palestine during the 1940s.^[26] Fostered by the discovery of the site of Ugarit in 1928, which demonstrated the common origins of ancient Canaanite and Isralite cultures, Canaanism, whose members took inspiration from Canaanite mythology for their productions, sought to forge a new shared, and religiously non-Jewish, "Hebrew" ethnic identity for both Jews and other peoples residing in British Palestine, and later in the newly established state of Israel.^[27]

The founding ideologue of Canaanism was the poet and journalist Yonatan Ratosh (1908–1981), who was born under the name of Uriel Heilperin in Warsaw, Poland, and changed his surname to Shelach upon settling in British Palestine.^[28] Between 1942 and 1943, Ratosh founded the "Committee for the Consolidation of the Hebrew Youth", consisting at first of a dozen intellectuals and artists, followed in 1951 by a public group named the "Centre for Young Hebrews".^[29] Although thenceforth Canaanism rapidly declined, the thought and literary production of its members have a lasting influence among Israeli Zuists.^[30] Another influence for Canaanite Zuists is the Hungarian Jewish historian and anthropologist Raphael Patai (1910−1996), particularly his book The Hebrew Goddess.^[31]

The Canaanite Zuist movement is also known as Natib Qadish, an expression in the Ugaritic language that means "Holy Way" and was first used by the American practitioner Tess Dawson at the beginning of the 2000s.^[26] Dawson established a theoretical and practical framework for the movement, mostly based upon the Ugaritic texts and the Gezer calendar,^[26] which is often used by Canaanite Zuists, either in whole or in part.^[32] In Dawson's terminology, followers are sometimes called Qadish in the singular and Qadishuma in the plural, and the priests, male and female, are called respectively kahin and kahinat.^[10]

In order to integrate their beliefs and practices, Canaanite Zuists also take inspiration from Mesopotamian and Western esoteric and ritual models (such as Sumerian-Akkadian divine hierarchies and Wiccanate ritual systems),^[33] and also ancient Hebrew traditions (the Hebrew calendar and the liturgical use of ancient forms of the Hebrew language).^[34] They celebrate eight yearly festivals, most of which occur near the equinoxes, solstices, full moons, and new moons.^[26]

In the early 2010s, the Israeli Zuist adherent Elad Aaron formulated a cultural and political ideology called "Re-Zionist [Shni-Tzioni] New Canaanism", which includes the rediscovery of the ancient Canaanite religion, interpreted as theologically pandeistic,^[35] and distinguishes itself from Ratosh's earlier Canaanism by being aimed at Jews alone, and not at other peoples of the Levant.^[36] Aaron published two manifestos, namely The Hidden Hebrew and the Visible Hebrew (2012) and Hear Our Call: The Re-Zionist Manifesto (2013, co-authored by Ya'akov Hevroni), to detail his views.^[37]

Icelandic Zuism

The "Faith Fellowship of Zuism" (Zuism trúfélag) of the Sumerian tradition was established in Iceland in 2010 by Ólafur Helgi Þorgrímsson (who left it shortly afterwards) and the two brothers Ágúst Arnar and Einar Ágústsson, originally as a branch of a mother church located in the state of Delaware, in the United States, and was registered by the Icelandic state in 2013.^[38]

In Iceland, all citizens, on a yearly basis and regardless of whether they are believers or not, have to pay a tax on religion, the sóknargjald, which is then allocated by the government to religious organisations in proportion to the number of their followers.^[39] In 2015, some people, disapproving of such a system, and under the leadership of Ísak Andri Ólafsson, took control of the Zuist organisation with the aim of using it as a tool for tax resistance: in their plan, the portion of the religion tax allocated to the movement by the government was to be redistributed to each of the followers, who would thus find a way to bypass the system.^[7]

The Zuism trúfélag of Ísak Andri Ólafsson intended to fight against not only the imposition of the religion tax, but also the maintenance of the Icelandic national registry of the citizens' religious affiliations.^[7] This protest was part of a broader movement within the Icelandic population in those years asking for a complete separation of church and state, to such an extent that even some well-known politicians, including Birgitta Jónsdóttir, joined the organisation.^[40] Given that the Zuism trúfélag was used for clearly stated tax purposes and not for religious reasons, some Icelandic elected officials requested its removal from Iceland's national registry of recognised religions.^[41] Nevertheless, a spokesperson of the Zuism trúfélag answered to such a request by claiming that one can neither precisely define the religious nature of an organisation nor measure the sincerity of the religious belief of people.^[42]

As of 1 January 2015, the Zuism trúfélag had only four registered adherents, but their number grew very rapidly over a few weeks at the end of 2015, reaching 3,000 to 3,500 followers, or 1% of the Icelandic population in 2015–2016.^[43] The majority of the followers were young, connected to the Internet, and already disaffiliated from Christianity (then Iceland's major religion).^[44] After a legal struggle for the leadership of the organisation, in 2017 the Ágústsson brothers regained control of it.^[45] In 2020 the leaders of the organisation, still the Ágústsson brothers, were accused of tax fraud and embezzlement;^[46] they were later acquitted of all charges in 2022,^[47] but were indicted again and convicted in 2025.^[48]

• Logos of the Icelandic Zuism trúfélag over the years
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  2010–2015
• 
  2015–2017
• 
  2017–2025