Red and white martenitzas

Red and white - why are most of the Goddess Embroideries red on a white background?  Is it simply dyed versus undyed fabrics?  But I met someone who went to Transylvania; she said the churches there are filled with red and white embroidery.  That suggests a tradition that sees red and white as sacred...

Remember the story of Snow White and Rose Red?  It's not like the well-known Disney fairy tale.  I'm thinking of the tale about the two girls who entertained a bear at their cottage all winter.  When spring came, the bear left them, but just before he left, they discover that he is a prince.  The whole story is packed with symbols - it's a key to a pagan religion that we don't know much about.  I wonder if there were once many more adventures of Snow White and Rose Red?

Could they represent us, the living?  How similar they seem to Pizho and Penda, the little red & white man and woman from Bulgarian springtime traditions.  You can see thousands of them if you search the word, martinitsa.  I wish that I could just ask a person in Bulgaria!  I would love to travel there.  I see people who know the answers on the internet, but I don't know how to speak to them.

Or-- what if those islands, Lero and Lena, could be another version of Pizho and Penda? They are two little islands near Cannes, France now renamed for saints.  A monastery was built there long ago, probably on an ancient site of pagan ritual.  Now that would be an awesome travel destination, very sweet if I could go.  But unless I do a lot more research, they are just a bunch of rocks in the water.  I want information about pre-Christian cultures.  Maybe I'm just a romantic, hoping to find some noble savages hidden in Europe.

The point is to find the cultures we had before the Agricultural Revolution.

Hidden Berehynia

I've been thinking about leaves and flowers in art.  I started collecting pictures that I call, The Hidden Berehynia.  It's on Pinterest.com, if you want to see.

I'm finding a lot of them.  They are traditional artwork from Slavic countries that resemble the Goddess Embroideries.  By the way, one day I wanted to buy a copy of one of the Goddess Embroidery books by Mary B. Kelly.  All her books were out of print, and old copies were selling for between $600 and 800 USD.  That's terrible.

Well, it seems to me that I'm sitting on a big important thought, like a thought-bomb.

Lots of people would want this thought if they knew about it.  I don't know how to share it.  Not sure how to tell this story.  Maybe it should be a book?   If I were a writer, I'd try to make a living at it.

Idea:  all those leaves and flowers in European art are not just decoration, they represent fertility, abundance, & a happy future.  They are everywhere - in calico fabrics, in wall paper patterns, in architecture, in graphic arts...  These decorations represent the part of European cultures that existed before Christianity - they are pagan, and they connect back to art of the Stone Age.

The Hidden Berehynia pictures prove the connection between the Goddess Embroideries and the decorative flourishes in European art.  So now I'm really curious about Baroque and Rococco art:  what was going on in that time period?  Why did people start using so many flowery designs?  It seems to me that more flowers equals more pagan.  Were they rebelling against the authority of the Church?  Were they trying to show that nature was on their side?

There's more.  If I'm correct, then it explains why we have 7 billion people on earth now.  It's not just because we made a lot of food.  It's also because European thought became dominant, and Europeans are all about fertility.  It might also explain why Catholics do not have women priests.  It might explain a lot of things...

Knitting short row lace

I made some photos of my knitting short row lace.  It isn't blocked, and definitely isn't perfect.