The Armenian Native Faith, also termed Armenian Neopaganism or Hetanism, 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"  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 of the philosopher and 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". Neopaganism expert Victor Schnirelmann estimated the following of Armenian neopaganism to be "no more than a few hundred people".

Nzhdeh's and Kakosyan's experiences

The first organisation of Armenian Native Faith, the "Order of the Children of Ari" was established in 1991 by the armenologist Slak (Eduard, or Edik) Kakosyan (1936–2005). He belonged to a generation of Armenian dissidents and was exiled in the 1970s from Soviet Armenia; in 1979 he fled to the United States where he became familiar with the ideas of Garegin Nzhdeh (1886–1955).

Nzhdeh was a philosopher, statesman and fedayi of the first half of the twentieth century, who left an enduring legacy in the history of Armenia, and is still one of the driving forces of Armenian nationalism. Kakosyan praised him as the "prophet of the Armenians". Nzhdeh founded a movement named Tseghakron ("religion of the nation"), which was among the core doctrines of the Armenian Youth Federation. In Nzhdeh's poetic mythology, the Armenian nation is identified as Atlas upholding the ordered world, and it makes reference to Hayk, the mythical patriarch of the Armenians, and to Vahagn, the solar and warrior god "fighter of the serpent", as means through which to awaken the Armenian nation and raise its spirit. Nzhdeh's movement took place in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide of 1915.

During his exile, Slak Kakosyan made extensive use of Nzhdeh's works to codify the Ukhtagirk ("Book of Vows"), the sacred text of the Armenian Native Faith movement. In the book, Garegin Nzhdeh is deified as an incarnation of Vahagn, the re-establisher of the true faith of the Armenians and of the Aryan values. While still in the United States, Kakosyan claimed that he had been initiated to the ancient Armenian hereditary priesthood mentioned by Moses of Chorene, changing his forename from "Edik" to "Slak". He likely became acquainted with Zoroastrian communities in the United States.

1990s: Establishment of the Children of Ari

Returning to Armenia in 1991, Slak Kakosyan gathered a community and founded the Children of Ari. They began to hold rituals on traditional Armenian holydays. The Temple of Garni became the centre of the community, a council of priests was set up in order to manage the organisation and the rites. During the 1990s, the group reached visibility in wider Armenian society. According to the scholar Yulia Antonyan, the emergence of the Armenian Native Faith is attributable to the same causes which led to the rise of other modern Pagan movements, but also Hindu and Protestant movements, in the other post-Soviet countries: The Armenian Native Faith represents the indigenous answer to the social and cultural upheavals which followed the collapse of Soviet society and of its atheist and materialist ideology.