Peterburgian Vedism "to know" ("vedat")—a semantic root which is shared in Slavic and Sanskrit languages alike—, and it expresses the difference between sight or knowledge and dogmatic belief ("verit"), the latter being typical of non-Vedic doctrines. According to one of the contemporary leaders of the Peterburgian Vedic movement, Roman Perin, "Rodnovery" defines the practised religion, while "Vedism" defines the philosophy or knowledge at its core. Vedism therefore is not a religion but pure knowledge. According to Bezverkhy, dogmatic religions such as Christianity, but also Brahmanism (the successor of Vedism in India), were created in order to control the masses. Bezverkhy codified his
There is No Natural Religion summarises "There is No Natural Religion" as "an early and fundamental statement of [Blake's] philosophical beliefs, expressed in the rational language of 18th-century philosophers." In line with this way of thinking, S. Foster Damon suggests that "the first series states John Locke's philosophy of the five senses until it becomes self-evidently absurd." A similar conclusion is reached by Denise Vultee, who argues that both "All Religions are One" and "There is No Natural Religion" are "part of Blake's lifelong quarrel with the philosophy of Bacon, Newton, and Locke. Rejecting the rational empiricism of 18th-century deism or "natural religion", which looked