Our ancestors, the Eastern Slavs, believed that they could influence Mother Nature, and they did it. They worked ancient magic through sounds and rituals that came from nowhere to the uneducated villagers. The most mystical month was May. He was called an equal and was a transition: from cold weather to warmth, from calmness to development, from expectations to results. Is it possible to "translate" the magic of the ancient pagans into our realities? In search of an answer, we analyzed the facts of ethnography, the opinions of esotericists and psychologists and share them with you.
RADUNITSA
The trail began for the Eastern Slavs symbolically: from the day of memory of their ancestors - Radunitsa (May 1, 2016, ed.). It was celebrated in different localities on different days (Sunday, Monday or Tuesday of St. Thomas's week). The day began with ceremonial sobbing at the graves of relatives, watering funeral pancakes and jelly with tears, our ancestors threw themselves into crazy revelry and merriment. On the mountain closest to the graves, the brave fellows fought in a special ceremonial battle, and the children competed in rolling painted eggs. By midnight, on the same mountain, women built a fire, went into a wild ritual dance with brooms, chasing away evil spirits, after that they jumped over the flame, thereby clearing themselves of winter obsessions. Until the morning everyone sang, played, danced, and generally rejoiced in every possible way.
Esotericists are sure: the pagan Radunitsa is something akin to ancient collective meditation: worshiping the very fact of death, the pagans used a thin layer of the universe, through food they established contact with it, and through dancing and collective festivities they pacified it. Thus, giving time to the forces of life, so necessary for a bountiful harvest, take temporary power. It is no coincidence that the sacred symbol of the birth of life is used in the ritual - an egg, and after this day, the commemoration of the dead was stopped and in every possible way censured. The time of the living was coming.
Advice / Opinion of psychologists:
Do you want the favor of higher powers? Make May 1 your personal day of remembrance for those who have left us. Remember, "talk to them", cry your fill, and then for a whole year - no, no. Not a word, not a memory. How it works? We live in an age of heightened anxiety. Forgetfulness will free your thoughts from sadness, longing and unnecessary negativity. You will work better and the result (your personal harvest) will turn out to be great.
Promotional video:
Sunrise Day
The whole day after Radunitsa the pagans devoted to rest. Simply put, we slept well after the stormy night festivities. And only in the evening they made fires on the same mountain and along the river banks, brought the remains of food and talked. And the daredevils experienced the birth of new forces for the first time. This day was called the Day of Shoots and, according to esotericists, carried a very important message: you need to calm down the stormy streams of new forces that people absorbed after the rite of general revelry in order to be born again.
Advice / Opinion of psychologists:
Of course, you shouldn't run to swim in the rivers of May. Get sick. But to start a "new life on Monday" in May and not from the first working Monday, but on a day off - as psychologists say - is a very effective method. More sun, anticipation of warmth - our psyche longs for change. Start at least washing your face with cold water, and then, you see, you will grow up to hardening.
DAZHBOG'S DAY (MAY 6)
Dazhbog is the god of fertility and sunlight. The progenitor of the Slavs. The pagans addressed him as "their own", without excessive servility and pathos. They glorified him, there is no dispute, but they asked for more, putting into spells not canonical phrases, but the power of hope. The Slavs drove out cattle for the first time, burned household rubbish exposed on the ground after winter in bonfires, and arbitrarily glorified their luminous ancestor.
Faith and hope in God is the secret of success - pundits assure. The ancient plowman asked for God, thereby respecting, the ancient God, of course, heard and will do his work, and now the farmer himself cannot work "non-godly". We must try.
Advice / Opinion of psychologists:
Clean more often in the spring. Don't be lazy and go to the cleanup. After all, most likely you do not have livestock, and you have no one to drive out to the field, but to feel the power of unity with people, to be saturated with the energy of renewal, to feel like a fellow, we will perform a heroic feat and conquer laziness in ourselves, it is very useful for self-esteem.
DAY OF THE MOTHER OF RAW EARTH (9-10 MAY)
For the pagans, grass is a month of cares, work and plowing. But one day it was impossible to disturb Mother Earth. The Eastern Slavs celebrated the name day of the Earth on May 10 - they did not plow or harrow. But what is really there: even the stakes were not stuck into the ground - the dear nurse was resting. The ceremony was performed throughout the day, and it was beautiful and primitive, like Mother Earth itself. In the furrow plowed in the evening they put grain, poured beer, turned in different directions of the world and whispered ancient words for the nurse. And so three times a day. After each appeal, beer was poured again, the jug in which it was brought (not in the furrow) was broken, and they had ritual sex. Right in the same furrow.
Esotericists agree that sex was the main element of the ceremony. After all, the energy, the goal of which is a new life, is very strong. The pagans woke her up in the subtle world, nourished herself with it, as if showing mother the damp earth that they were united with her in the desire to give birth to a new life after some time.
Advice / Opinion of psychologists:
May is a month of dramatic changes. Get yourself some rest, give yourself time to fully recover, set aside a day or two when you won't have any worries. This is the key to productive work. And of course, fall in love. A husband, a new job or new boots. Love is the driving force of life.
DAY OF LENNYCHA-LENNYCHA
At the end of the grass, the bread should already be sown, and exactly by a certain date, because on the 21st it was time for flax, the day of Olena Lennichi (or Flax). Flax was especially revered by our ancestors. Not food, but a deity - a living amulet. Therefore, sowing it was a sacred event. Women, sending their husbands to the field, put baked eggs in a sack with seed. The sower threw a sack with them, the higher the eggs fly, the higher the flax will grow. Flax was deified, flax was personified, flax was tried to pity. When sowing flax, some women themselves went to the field and there … they strip naked. It was assumed that flax, looking at a woman's nudity, would take pity, think: “Eh, poor woman - she doesn't even have a shirt on her body, she will have to pity her and have a good birth. Her dress."
Advice / Opinion of psychologists:
Do not shy away from accents and amulets, even if you are an inveterate materialist. Things that are dear to the heart and familiar words to the ear are salvation for the human psyche, they give hope and reassurance, which means they keep very important internal resources not wasted.
Ulyana Zelova