Embroidered Samplers as charms

 Embroidered samplers:  I’m surprised to find that this article from the Victoria &Albert Museum does not mention the charms.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/embroidery-a-history-of-needlework-samplers

I found a Zalktis - the good snake in the samplers pictured in this article from the V&A.  There are many other symbols of fertility/abundance.  I should make a list of them.

The article discusses the boxer as a mysterious figure.  But it’s not so mysterious:  it looks like a figure of male fertility.  It matches all the other wild men in the book, Santa Claus: Last of the Wild Men by Phyllis Siefker, published in 1997 by McFarland ISBN 978-0786429585.

My guess is the boxer matches Punch (of Punch and Judy fame); he matches Harlequin with his elegant walking stick, and he matches the leader of Scottish bagpipe troupes with his great club.  There was also a pagan tradition of beating people with birch branches for good luck - that’s the boxer.  How about the tradition of representing the New Year as a little boy? -That, also.

Many old samplers were made by young girls.  I think their age made the sampler more powerful as a protective charm.  There was a belief that before they had children, all their fertility was held inside.  I think they had to complete the sampler before they became a bride.  All our extravagant weddings today are a remnant of the belief that the bride and groom are the embodiment of all that is fertile and abundant. And once they probably represented the gods: lord and lady of life.

...

Dear Piecework magazine, that’s an obergi/charm

 Dear Piecework,

That’s a lovely obergi on the cover of your latest issue.  It’s a magic charm.  Obergi is a Russian word for charm, amulet...

All the decorative art from Europe is loaded with charms.

You have been publishing charms for many years without identifying them.  I can’t find an art history teacher nor book that can identify the charms.  I know only 2 people in the world who see it my way and they probably think I’m crazy.  But their names are Patricia Robin Woodruff and Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

I’m saying that all handmade objects were once magical.  The amulets were woven in during the making.  But it seems that art history was written by people who could not discuss paganism.  Anyway, that sampler on your cover is a picture of the Mother of All.  She bring abundance to the person who has the sampler.  Most samplers have a charm -or layers of charms.  And any time you see a vase of flowers in European art, you should compare it to a Grain Goddess obergi - usually they match perfectly.  The vase symbolizes a full womb with goodness overflowing toward the person looking at it. And the plant or flower is the Berginia, a Russian word for Grain Goddess, Mother of All.

There was a book in the 1980’s that looked at Russian art this way. [ I can’t remember] the author, Mary B. Kelley, [ somebody,] very beloved, her out of print books are now very expensive.  I think the title of her first book was Goddess Embroideries of Russia.

Thanks for listening.  No, I don’t write much, and I’m nobody - just an amateur.

-Virginia Miller

172 Puckerbrush Road, Campton, NH, USA

guzel36@yahoo.com

La Morena is Hecate?

 Tire la Catherine - Canadian tradition of making pulled taffy on Saint Catherine’s day, 25 November...

La Morena - Spanish phrase for a dark haired girl, used in lots of odd contexts...

Ekaterina - Russian given name, possibly derived from Hecate...

______ - Spanish name for the queen of the dead

______ - a famous piece of music from Mozart’s Magic Flute, the song of the queen of the night

Are these items related to a pagan goddess?

How exactly does animism work?  What animists believe?

Ogun at Santiago de Compostella

 How many people know that Saint James is Ogun?  Yesterday I was looking at pictures of the Camino de Santiago, and I found a patch to put on your clothing with the symbol of Saint James.  It’s a red cross in the shape of a sword, and that was my last clue.  I’m sure now.  I have a description of Saint James as Ogun the warrior in the book, Govenors of the Dew.  It’s a novel, a classic from Haiti, where the people practice a kind of double faith.  Christian saints are overlaid with African deities.

I can not remember whether I wrote about this before.  Maybe I’m getting repetitive?

So, I am saying that medieval pilgrims were practicing double faith.  When they travelled to Santiago de Compostella, they were continuing their pagan traditions - traditions that were in place long before Christianity began.

Zalktis - I am not a hater

The Anti-Defamation League has a list of symbols used in hate speech.  Unfortunately, Zalktis is on this list.  I should not have been surprised.  But I was very upset and saddened.  I am also disappointed by those who make horror movies based on pagan themes.  I remind myself that animism has been around for thousands of years so it was a belief system held by both good people and bad... rather like Islam and Christianity.  Personally I refuse hate.

So, the Anti-Defamation League lists Zalktis as “wolf’s angel”, also known as “double haken” (double hook).  They do not seem to know it’s real name or meaning - Zalktis is the snake, typically the good snake who inspires awe but not fear.  My friend [P.R.W.] says that pagans did not worship snakes, any more than Christians worshiped bread and wine.  These things were special, holy, a link to God...

I have no information why it was called wolf’s angel.  Could it be that as pychopomp, the snake was more dangerous than the wolf?  I suspect that they spent a lot of time thinking about the greatest beast in the forest.  I need to explain the lion images in heraldry.  And what if there had been some belief that as a snake may take away life, it may also give life?  This is a very vague guess, but some of the old pictures of dragons focus on the dragon’s mouth - looks like the gate of Mara/ gate between life and death...

...

Ducks and Fruit Baskets

hoping to develop a whole theory, a grand unified theory about European pagans.

Today, I learned that several pagan symbols are listed as hateful white supremacist symbols.  I knew that I was researching something awfully close to the swastika.  But now I know that it’s worse than I thought.  Maybe I can come up with money for a donation to the anti-defamation league.  I’m glad they are keeping track of hate symbols.

My first thought was that the symbols are still sacred.  But I could just give up using the symbols - I don’t want to be anywhere near the haters.  Maybe that first thought was me crossing over from researcher to believer.  No, maybe not.

One time I said, “folk dancing is pagan.” on a public discussion group.  One person was really shocked.  I suspect that people who consider themselves pagan today have no idea - lots of things are left out of Wicca.  If they only knew how many ducks and fruit baskets there are in pagan art!

I’m not too good at expressing myself here.  But what I am saying is that, I think there is a set of ideas that tie together pretty much everything European.  All the things that did not previously make sense...  mythical beasts, fruit baskets, wind mills, sacred islands, snakes, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, circus and carnival, and the Baroque & Rococco styles...  Muletta, mermaids, what a jumble, what a mess!

Extant

extant

I was reading the book, The Lore and Language of Children.  I noticed a section about the winter solstice tradition of “Burying the Wren.”  - The wren, the wren, though he be small, his family is great...

I picked up the idea that the Otherside (afterlife) is a mirror world, everything is reversed.  I think I saw that recently on Magpie’s Facebook page: “ the place from where it is impossible to return in the same form.”

Suppose, they were expecting the wren to come back?  From the smallest bird dying, to the greatest bird being reborn?  The greatest bird might be the Firebird.  I will go take a closer look at the Firebird stories.  -And the Firebird in Russian Embroideries, wood carvings, paintings...

I was thinking about the word, extant.  I’m looking at thousands of photos of folk art on Pinterest.  I’m hoping to figure out what people believed by looking at their art.  This is my theme: Pagans Hidden in Plain Sight.  If we can assume that many of the old pieces of folk art were made with a pagan mindset - I notice, I said assume here.  Everything I’m doing seems to hang on that assumption.  Well, if that’s so, then we can see folkart as a source for recreating the pagan worldview.

Because I’m not interested in esoteric stuff (I had to look it up, esoteric means limited to a small group of people) - I want an understanding of what was widely believed in animist, pre-Christian societies.  Pre-Islamic also.  So, extant means remaining, found, surviving from long ago.  The ideas of a people remain in their art long after they are gone.

I found that the Willies occur frequently next to pictures of dragons.  And dragons seem to be female.  I started to wonder if dragons and Firebird might be the same thing.  I found pictures that seemed to link lions and unicorns to pagan ideas.  Heraldry seems to be loaded with pagan symbols.  Unicorns, I’m convinced are male...  There is a lot to discover in the folkart, but needed a key to open it all.  E.W. Barber’s book, The Dancing Goddesses, was my key.