Oro

The depiction or the Serbian circular dance "kolo" or "oro" from the 14th century Serbian monastery Lesnovo which is located in today's Republic of Makedonija...

This is the same dance danced 700 years later, Bosnia

And the same dance danced 700 years later, Macedonia

I think that it is important that on this fresco, people are dancing "kolo" under what looks like the sun (see the exaggerated sun rays just above the dancing people)...

This is important because "kolo" or "oro" is a ceremonial circle dance representing the turning of the sun wheel...

Why would something like this be depicted on a fresco in an Orthodox Christian monastery?

Now we know that "kolo" is a Slavic word meaning spinning wheel. However "oro" is apparently not a Slavic word. It is believed to come from Ancient Greek "χορός" (khorós) meaning "dance ring, round dance, dance accompanied by song, chorus, choir, band of singers and dancers, place for dancing" of uncertain origin...

This is the plan of a typical Orthodox Church. You can see that the central part of the church is the "nave", which is in Greek known as "naos".

Now, the word ναός (naos) is an Ancient Greek word meaning temple, the innermost part of a temple, sanctuary, the part of the temple considered most pure and holy...

Which is why the central "naos" dome has an image of "Christ" looking down from heaven...The Central Dome in the "naos" of the mid-13th century Serbian Church of the Apostoles, in the Patriarchate of Pec, Kosovo...

What is very interesting is that in Orthodox Churches, right under the main "naos" dome, right under the image of "Christ in heaven", we find a circular chandelier called "horos" (circular dance???) with many candles on it...

During the chanting of the Polyeleos psalms, all of the candles are lit and chandelier is pushed with a rod so that it spins back and forth during the singing. This practice is still seen in the monasteries of Mount Athos and in other traditional Orthodox monasteries...

Now, Polyeleos is part of the Orthodox monastic nighttime liturgy, ending at dawn. It is called "ὄρθρος" (dawn) in Greek and "Оўтреня" (Oútrenya) in Church Slavonic. In traditional monasteries it is held daily so as to end at sunrise...

In parish churches, this service is held only on Sundays and feast days. Like Easter...

As part of the Easter "dawn" service "the priests open...the church door and together with the people exit the church and go in procession three times around it while singing the hymn of the resurrection..."

Why opening the church doors and stepping out of the church?

I believe that it has something to do with the way early Christians prayed: facing the rising sun in the east... Tertullian (2nd-3rd c. AD ecclesiastical writer) felt constrained to write this in his “Apology,” and again in his writing “Against Valentinian”.

Which is why the first churches were "oriented". The word "oriented" comes from

1. orient - east
2. to orient - to position towards east, to face east.  From Latin oriēns (“east”).
3. orientation - correct position facing east

The earliest allusion to churches being build to face east in Christian literature is in Apostolic Constitutions: "a church should be oblong with its head to the East". Tertullian also speaks of churches as erected in "high and open places, and facing the light". From Catholic Encyclopedia.

This is why in Orthodox Churches the altar is at the eastern end, which means that both the priest and people face both the Altar and the East during the Canon...Which means that the door is at the western end...

So opening of the door during Easter dawn sermon makes no sense from the point of view of praying to the sun...

But it seems that "facing the light" was interpreted differently by the builders of the earliest churches. Roman Basilicas built by the First Christian Emperor, Constantine, were built in a shape of a horse shoe or semi-circle with the priest at the western end, the altar in front of him, and everyone facing east toward the entrance doors and the rising sun...The Lateran, St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and San Lorenzo in Rome, as well as the Basilicas of Tyre and Antioch and the Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem, had their apse facing the West and entrance facing East.

Here is the drawing of The San Lorenzo fuori le Mura from Rome, with orientation. You can see that the doors are facing East...

Now if the doors of the church are facing East. opening the doors at Easter dawn prayer, and stepping out of the church, makes a lot of sense. The doors are opened to let the rising sun into the church and to signal to the faithful that it is time to go out and meet it...It or Him?

As you can imagine, this caused ambiguity, as to whom were the people actually praying...Also people were praying facing the door and not the priest, and we can't have that in a church...So this orientation was quickly abandoned and replaced with the altar, and the priest being in the east, so everyone was facing the same direction while praying...Still praying towards the rising sun though...

Was this rising sun facing "orientation" during prayer a Roman influence on essentially Jewish Christianity? Coming from Sol Invictus cult which was predominant in Rome at the time of Constantine??? Well, you could say that the Romans were reviving the religious practices of the builders of the First Temle...Who also prayed "to the rising sun"...I wrote about this in my post "Sun god from the first temple"...

By the way, did you know that The First Temple was built on a threshing floor? And that threshing floors were in the past used not just for threshing but also as solar observatory, and most likely were regarded by the sun worshipers as holy places? I talked about this in my post "Boaz and Jachin"...And do you know that apparently "oro", the solar circular dance was first danced on threshing floors of Minoan Crete, which were used as solar observatories? I talked about this in my post "Shield of Achilles"...

Sooo...Back to the naos, with the image of Christ in Heaven, under which the "oro" (circular chandelier) is made to spin during the sunrise service...Remember the Serbian medieval fresco depicting the "oro" (circular dance) spinning under the sun?

Remember that "oro" was a ceremonial circular, spinning solar dance...Depicting ever spinning solar wheel...So being danced under the sun is kind of appropriate...But why is "oro" (circular chandelier, source of light) made to spin under Christ during sunrise prayer?

Christ is looking at the spinning "oro" from the dome over "naos" which symbolises heaven. The same way sun is looking at the spinning "oro" from the sky in the fresco from Lesnovo...

Official etymology for "naos" says: from Proto-Hellenic *nahwós, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *nes- (“to join with, to conceal oneself”)...

But I would like to propose another etymology...

In my post "Nav" I talked about this interesting group of words:

In Irish the word for heaven is "neamh" pronounced like "nav".
In Slavic languages the word for otherworld is also "nav".
In Slavic languages the word for sky is "nebo".
All these words come from PIE "*nébʰos" meaning sky...

The word "naos" was written and pronounced differently in different Greek dialects:

ναϝός ‎(nawós) Laconian
ναῦος ‎(naûos) Aeolic
νεώς ‎(neṓs) Attic

νηός ‎(nēós) Ionic

This all looks very similar to both Irish and Serbian words...

Did "naos" originally just mean sky too? Eventually becoming a temple representing sky? Eventually becoming the central part of the temple, where god resides. Up in the dome. In heaven (sky)...

Our lord who are in heaven (sky)...

Have a look at this: Roman green glass cup showing the haloed figure of Christ wearing a tunic and pallium vestments, extending his arms towards a cockerel. Found buried in the peristyle of Desenzano Roman Villa, c. 4th century AD...A figure with halo surrounded by stars with a cockerel...Looks very much like a rising sun to me...

I will finish this post with the picture of a fresco painted on the walls of the 3rd c. baptistry in the Church House at Dura-Europus, Syria. Women visiting the empty tomb after Christ's resurrection.

Is that the rising sun above the tomb?