Oh, how many wonderful things we have lost sight of on the path of progress! How many wonderful traditions and mystical knowledge have gone away from us … But all this is not just “the poetry of antiquity: this is the science of being happy. Let's say a spinning wheel. Who now even remembers what she looked like? And a hundred years ago, this item accompanied a girl from birth to marriage.
WILL NOT GIVE ANYONE
Among the Eastern Slavs, the umbilical cord of a newborn girl was cut on a spinning wheel or spindle; a newborn godmother was passed through a spinning wheel; put the spinning wheel in the cradle of the girl. That is, this was a mystical object that fed the baby with femininity. The personal spinning wheel was not lent to anyone - not even a girlfriend! Bad omen: if you borrow a spinning wheel, there will certainly be a fire or bees will die in the apiary.
In the Russian North, the guy who wrote his name on the girl's spinning wheel made her an offer in this way, and as a gift for the engagement, the groom gave the girl a new, smart and surely made and decorated with his own hands.
How to live without this object, not a single woman could imagine. All chilly autumn, all long winter, the girls were spinning, interrupting only for the Christmas holidays. On the last day of Maslenitsa, women always rode from the icy mountain on the bottoms of the spinning wheels: it was a kind of festive fortune-telling - which beauty will go further, the flax will be longer. And God forbid someone falls from the spinning wheel, rolling down - the poor thing will not live until autumn.
At Christmas and Christmastide, the spinning wheel and all the spinning tools were taken out to the attic or in the closet - they were hidden so that their spirits would not spit.
By the way, not only in Russia there were "spinning" rituals: the Serbs on Christmas had a kind mistress who brought the spinning wheel to the barn and worked a little there on it - "so that the cattle were not naked."
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MYTHS AND LEGENDS
In the myths of different peoples, spinning is a ritual action, and the spinning wheel is an object associated with “that light”. According to the beliefs of the Eastern Slavs, evil spirits (kikimora, brownie, mermaid, bat) spin a bad fate for a woman and her family when the spinning wheel is left overnight (or for a holiday) with an unfinished tow or without a blessing. Therefore, leaving the spinning wheel for the night, it is better to pronounce the conspiracy: "Hostess-brownie, do not touch my spinning wheel, let it lie here," and the spindle must be hidden. The girls believed that if they did not finish the tows on the eve of Christmas, then evil spirits would come for them and drag them to certain death. It was believed that if in a dream you see a kikimora with a spinning wheel, then a dead man will be in your hut, and if you hit someone with a spinning wheel, this person will become seriously ill. To break the spinning wheel is a bad omen: a bad husband or an evil mother-in-law will come across. But a hard-working girlwhich treats the spinning wheel with respect, this item becomes a talisman. She protects girls from "bad" love, from an evil meeting, from the evil eye and damage. Therefore, the girl, even if she went to work in the field, took a spinning wheel with her to protect herself from evil people.
In Russia, they also treated with a spinning wheel: you put it under the cradle of the child, and the baby will have insomnia or toothache.
Rituals with a spinning wheel were performed not only by ordinary people, but also by “knowledgeable” people: sorcerers, healers, witches. In their arsenal there are hundreds of manipulations with tow, yarn, thread, rope and other attributes of needlework.
And how many fortune-telling on the spinning wheel! If you spin "naopak" (on the contrary) two threads - one to the groom, the other - to the bride, and then put them into a frying pan filled with water, then you will see the fate of the couple: they will converge, twist together - to be a wedding, and if they disperse, there will be no family. Hence, probably, comes the expression "to tie your destiny." One of the most popular fortune-telling was carried out on Trinity: a thread (life-fate, fate-death) was launched through the water, and they looked - it would sink or float.
The attribute of fortune-telling was often made of thread and yarn, for example, a girl's belt. They put him on the threshold of the church and watched which of the men would cross the belt first: this is exactly what the bride's mistress of the belt would be called.
At Russian weddings, they spun "the threads of a long life", tying the young "happily ever after." And if some villain wanted to destroy the family, she would twist the wool into a thread and stretch it across the road in front of the “wedding train” -that is, then wait in the nascent family of discord.
The fate-thread was necessarily presented for housewarming - so that the life of the owners of the house was happy and long, a ball of thread was thrown over the threshold, and then by seniority, holding on to the "guiding thread", entered the new walls.
Human hair was often equated with yarn as the center of vitality (soul). Our ancestors embroidered the mortal shirt with hair, and the hair of the deceased was woven into the shroud so that the deceased had a chance to get out into the world …
Inna Shevchenko