Somehow we had a controversial post about what Russia was like before baptism and how Russians began to be called "Russians". Let's continue this topic with more indisputable information - traditions when building a house.
Building a house is an act of creation, creation. And carpenters in Russia were likened to priests, were considered involved in the sacred sphere and endowed with supernatural strength and special knowledge of the outside world. To legitimize a new model of the world, a world transformed by a completed creation, construction was accompanied by certain rituals …
Center definition
Construction began with the definition of a ritual center. The middle of the future dwelling or its red (front, holy) corner was recognized as such a point. A young tree (birch, mountain ash, oak, cedar, tree with an icon) or a cross made by carpenters, which stood until the end of construction, was planted or stuck here.
A tree or a cross was likened to the world tree, symbolizing the world order, space. Thus, a relationship of similarity was established between the structure of the future structure and the structure of the cosmos, and the very act of construction was mythologized.
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Victim
the center, designated by the world tree, the so-called construction sacrifice was laid. Like the world, which in the mythological representation was “unfolded” from the body of the victim, the house was also “removed” from the victim. In the early stages, the Slavs did not exclude human sacrifices when laying buildings, then livestock (most often a horse) and small animals (rooster, chicken) became the ritual equivalent of a human sacrifice.
An excerpt from the Christian nomocanon says: “When building houses, it is customary to lay the human body as a foundation. Whoever puts a person in the foundation is punished with 12 years of church repentance and 300 bows. Put a boar, or a bull, or a goat in the foundation. Later, the construction sacrifice became bloodless. A set of three sacrificial symbols is stable: wool, grain, money, which correspond both to the ideas of wealth, fertility, prosperity, and to the personification of three worlds: animal, vegetable and human.
Laying the first crown
The sacrifice rite was combined with the laying of the first crown. Special attention was paid to this operation, because the first crown is a model and the rest of the crowns that make up the frame. With the laying of the first crown, the spatial scheme of the dwelling is realized, and now the whole space is divided into home and non-home, internal and external. Usually, on this day, carpenters put only one crown, followed by a "salary" ("overlaid", "stowing") treat, during which the masters say: "Good health to the owners, and the house will stay until it rot."
If the carpenters wish the owners of the future house evil, then even in this case, laying the first crown is the most appropriate moment: striking the log crosswise with an ax and keeping in mind the intended damage, the master says: “Hack! Nihay wake up like that! - and what he has in mind will come true.
Matrix laying
The central moment of construction - the laying of the mat (the timber that serves as the basis for the ceiling) - was accompanied by ritual actions, the purpose of which was to provide warmth and prosperity in the house. One of the carpenters walked around the topmost log ("cranial crown"), scattering grain and hops on the sides. The owners prayed to God all this time. The master priest stepped onto the matitsa, where a sheepskin coat was tied with bast, and in her pockets were bread, salt, a piece of meat, a head of cabbage and a bottle of green wine.
The bast was chopped off with an ax, the fur coat was picked up below, the contents of the pockets were eaten and drunk. They could lift the matitsa with a pie or loaf of bread tied to it. After installing the mat and the "matical" treats, they rode horses with songs so that the whole village could see that the mat was laid. And only a day later they continued to finish building the house.
Cutting through windows and doors
Close attention was paid to the process of making door and window openings in order to regulate and secure the connection of the inner world (at home) with the outside. When they put in the door frame, they said: “Doors, doors! Be you shut up the evil spirits and steal,”and made the sign of the cross with an ax. The same thing happened when they installed lintels and window sills for windows, and in the same way they turned to the windows with a request not to let thieves and evil spirits into the house.
Home coverage
The sky is the roof of the earth. Hence the orderliness of the world, harmony, because everything that has an upper limit is finished, of course. A house, like a picture of the world, becomes "our own", habitable and safe only when it is covered. The last, the most abundant treat of the carpenters, which was called the "lock" of the roof, is connected with the laying of the roof. In the North, they organized a "salamatnik" - a solemn family dinner for carpenters and relatives. The main dishes were salamata of several varieties - a thick paste made from flour (buckwheat, barley, oatmeal) mixed with sour cream and seasoned with ghee, as well as porridge made from cereals fried in butter.
End of construction
The rituals that complete the construction of the house seem to be traces. For a certain period (7 days, a year, etc.), the house had to remain unfinished in order to avoid the death of any of the family members. For example, they could have left a piece of the wall over the icons unbleached, or they didn’t make a roof over the entryway for a year so that “all sorts of troubles would fly into this hole”. So incompleteness, incompleteness was associated with the ideas of maintaining the existing order, eternity, immortality, the continuation of life.
entrance to the house
And now, finally, it was possible to start celebrating housewarming. In the old days, a person changed not only the house, but also the whole space, and in this space everything was important: whether the horizon, sunrise and sunset were visible, so that the road was visible, and there was water nearby so that the neighbor was good, it was comfortable for both the horse and the cattle had to. And the house itself, the center of this space, the most sacred place, has been checked many times. And suddenly, during the construction, the material was not the right one, the carpenters did not please, but they planted an "evil" log, a person with an unkind look passed and jinxed it, did the evil spirits settle out of someone's envy?
The ritual actions of entering the house began in a week. Experiencing the safety of housing, on the first night they let a cat and a cat into the house, if everything was all right, they carried a rooster and a chicken, on the third day already a piglet, on the following days a sheep, a cow and a horse. Birds and animals are very sensitive and thus show the owner whether the place is “good”. And only on the seventh day did people settle in the house. It has long been noticed that whoever enters the house first is the first to die. The first one who comes in takes on all the evil that may be present in a new place, or become a victim for trees cut down for construction. And if there were old people "tired of life" in the family, they were the first to enter. If there were no old people, they invited a stranger who did not believe in devil or in God, and later they began to invite a German pharmacist or a German doctor,who treated such orders as a game. Although, in some places they were limited only to launching a rooster in the house. If he crowed, it was a good sign.
Bread, grains and, especially, sauerkraut (wooden dough tub) have tremendous cleansing power. Therefore, sometimes the owner could enter the first with a sauerkraut in his hands, followed by the hostess with the chicken, then the youth followed. The family's move in was accompanied by the rite of transferring the fire from the old dwelling and the resettlement of the Brownie from the old baking oven to the new one. The brownie was called and invited: “Brownie! Brownie! Come with me!". Or the owner, standing at the gate and bowing on three sides, exclaimed: "Father Brownie and Mother Brownie, Father Dvorovoy and Mother Dvorovaya with all the family, let's go to our new home to live with us!" The brownie was carried with the heat from the oven on a "bread shovel", with a pot of porridge or in a felt boot. Then the hostess cut off the first slice of the loaf of bread and put it “under the stove” and greet the Brownie.
They entered the house on a thread, rope or belt. All these items are symbols of time, longevity, life that bind relatives. They carried with them both water and a honey drink (mead), they tried to take Dolya with them from the old house to the new one. It was believed that not only a person has a share, but also a hut. The transfer of Dole was expressed in the fact that from the former place to the new one were transported some “symbols of habitation”: home statues of the gods, amulets, hearth fire, house litter and even a basket of manure from the barn. They carried the porridge undercooked and immediately set it to cook on a new fire.