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.