More than a thousand years have passed since the time of the baptism of Rus by Prince Vladimir, but during this time the Russian people have made their significant contribution to the traditions of Orthodoxy, having managed in a bizarre way to link strict Christian canons and ancient pagan rituals. These rituals are clearly visible, for example, in all Slavic summer-autumn festivals, which until recently were held in remote patriarchal Russian villages.
Seven festivities
Let us recall the song known to us from childhood: "I will go, go, take a walk, I will break a white birch …". We sang it without thinking about why our ancestors even needed to "break" a birch. Meanwhile, this text reflects the old folk seven-fold rite. It was on Semik, that is, on the Thursday before Trinity, that the village girls walked into the forest in a crowd, chose a young birch tree here, broke the top of it and decorated it with a wreath.
Then a round dance was performed around the tree decorated in this way. New decorations were added to the birch tree: a stuffed cuckoo was made from twigs and grass, which was planted on the top of a tree. Then the girls “mumbled”, that is, they kissed through a wreath curled on a birch tree, and after that they exchanged body crosses. It was believed that "those who had poured" became godfathers to each other, that is, close relatives, and a quarrel between them was now considered a grave sin that had to be forgiven for a long time.
Hours of round dances and "kumenee" at a broken birch tree ended with a general feast, when the kumas treated each other to pies, chicken cakes, gingerbread and other dishes prepared specially for this day. Seven Thursday was considered a girl's holiday. But adults and teenage boys on this day were supposed to go from early morning to the nearest Semichnaya fair in a city or a large village, where they could see people and show themselves.
Ethnographers note that the Seven Celebrations, although they are timed to coincide with the Trinity, have practically no Christian roots. In fact, this is a pagan holiday associated with the worship of the ancient Slavs to the spirits of deceased ancestors. It was for them that at the beginning of summer the young maidens wrung a birch tree, decorated it with wreaths and left a treat in the forest, which, according to ancient belief, at night the shurs and ancestors, the deceased representatives of the family, came to feast on.
As for the Christian Church, on the one hand, it has always turned a blind eye to the openly pagan content of the Seven Festivals, and on the other hand, it has always maintained that these celebrations glorify the Holy Trinity, and therefore are held on the 50th day after Easter. From here comes another name for the Trinity - Pentecost.
Promotional video:
Whit Monday
Pagan motives are clearly traced in the rituals associated with Spiritual Day, which the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates on Monday, the day after Trinity. Spirits day opens a whole Spirit week (week), during which, according to ancient legends, mermaids emerge from the water, swing on tree branches and flirt with passers-by.
Our ancestors believed that mermaids are the souls of young drowned women who did not know a man during their lifetime, and therefore they cannot rest until they seduce some male representative. It was believed that the guys should not resist the claims of the mermaids they met by the road: after all, a water charmer can get angry and in revenge tickles a shy peasant to death …
On Spirits Day, the villages celebrated a holiday called Seeing the Mermaid. The village youth arranged a procession of mummers who, with shouts, noise and the sound of spoons on pans and pots, went to the nearest river. Meanwhile, the most desperate local girls were hiding in the river reeds, stripping naked, hiding their faces under masks and taking on the "appearance of mermaids" with the help of homemade long horsehair wigs. When the procession approached the thickets, the girls were supposed to take turns running out into public view and jumping in front of the mummers on a poker or on a broomstick. Young people, whistling and hooting, drove the "mermaids" back into the reeds or to the nearest rye field, as if seeing them off until next summer. Of course, the guys liked the "naked" action, so the "mermaids" were sometimes chased by the river from morning until late at night. Used tothat only under cover of night did the girls manage to return home.
Stubble and ambush
According to the Russian folk calendar, the so-called "old Indian summer" begins in the second half of September in Russia. It lasts from Semyonov's Day, that is, from September 14 in a new style, to Nikita Gusyatnik, on September 28. In the old Russian village, this time was the time of the end of the harvest, when the Dormition Fast was completed, and after it it was supposed to meet autumn. The pagan rituals of the end of the harvest were always festively furnished, in compliance with all ancient traditions.
The zealous owner, for example, was required to leave a handful of uncompressed ears of corn on the strip, which they tied in a knot (the men said, “broke their beard”), and then bent down to the ground with the words: “Mikole on his beard so that the saint would not leave us next year. no harvest. " And next to the "beard" in the ground they invariably buried a crumb of bread and a pinch of salt so that these products would not be transferred from the owner.
As for the rituals of fertility, for the Slavs it was generally a "separate song". Contrary to the popular belief that the Russian people lacked frank eroticism in national traditions, the end of the harvest in Russia was not complete without very shameless ceremonies. This was also in pagan times, and after the introduction of Christianity in Russia, and for hundreds of years in a row these ancient games peacefully coexisted with Orthodox norms of behavior. At the same time, nudity was considered a completely natural thing.
At the beginning of the 20th century, ethnographers described the autumn rite, which could be observed in the villages of the western and southern parts of Russia, in the Ukraine and in Belarus. When the last spikelet was removed from the field, the men had to move away from the stubble, and the young women and girls had to strip naked and run naked on the stubble, roll over it (which could hardly give the unfortunate great pleasure, the stubble is prickly!) And say: “Stubble stubble, stubble, give my strength to the post, to the thresher, to the hammer, to the crooked spindle. It was believed that during this rite, the female body transfers its fertile power to the earth, which is greatest in young women and girls. At the same time, the earthly natural force passes from the earth to the women and girls, which they pretty much spent during the harvest, and in fact, in the near future they will need new energy - when threshing bread,in the processing of flax, in the manufacture and dressing of canvases, when spinning wool and other household chores.
Of course, the village boys took great pleasure in the ceremony, and although customs ordered the men to leave the field for this time, they at the same time were not forbidden to spy on the girls running through the stubble from the nearest fishing line. They usually knew about it and tried to show themselves in front of the guys in all their glory. After all, after the end of threshing and laying bread in the bins in the villages, traditionally, it was time for weddings, but did anyone want to stay in girls?
Soon after the harvest, evening "huts" began - this is how work in huts with fire was called in old Russia. These same "ambushes" in pagan times, again, did not do without liberties and, as the youth would say now, "jokes." When it was getting dark in the yard, married women had to leave these "public works" in their huts - to their husbands and children. And to unmarried girls "quite by accident" unmarried guys piled up in a crowd - seemingly to help them. The "ambush" usually ended with a common sleep side by side. Although it was believed that while doing this, young people remained celibate, few believed such stories.
The village public usually turned a blind eye to such liberties. After all, on Pokrov (October 14, new style), it was customary to send matchmakers to the bride's house, and if by this time some girl was left without the attention of potential suitors, then she had every right to blame the parents for this, who were too afraid of losing their daughter innocence.
For hundreds of years, neither the official Christian church nor strict royal decrees could knock out all this passion for pagan games from the Russian peasant. And even the communist regime failed to completely eradicate the rebellious spirit of paganism in Russia.
Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" № 32. Valery Erofeev