Random notes on Berehynia

Just some notes on what I found...

I watched a video from Turkey about how they make those blue-eye beads used as good luck charms.  It was interesting how the glass worker's furnace resembled a dragon.  I swear that I am not raving mad.  Maybe I'm a little crazy, and maybe I see connections that are not really there.  I've been really curious about good luck charms - they fit into this story about apotropaic magic.

https://youtu.be/DR3fpBqnDG8 link to Nazar Koy, Village of the bead makers

I don't remember where I read some folklore that connected blacksmiths with the underworld... Is that right?  I wonder if the furnace had some kind of folklore...?

I found the right page in Russian Wikipedia for Berehynia.  Actually it is spelled, "Berginya" in English (there seems to be several ways to spell this.)  So, Berginya, as I understand it, is the goddess of barley.  But this Russian page associates her with Venus, and does not seem to say anything about being a goddess of grain.  I know that I'm on the right page because it mentions Dodola / Paparuda.

https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Берегиня  link to Berginya in Russian Wikipedia

I really need help with translating this page.  I tried Google Chrome but I could barely make out what it said.  There's a bit near the end of the article that I want to understand.  It says something about a ritual involving a beet.  Now, I recall a fairy tale about a giant beet that they couldn't pull out of the ground.  Hm, next I will reread that tale.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gigantic_Turnip  link to the tale of the Gigantic Turnip on Wikipedia

...

Dragon Questions

I have another idea that I can't prove - about dragons.

All my focus, all my so called research this year has been about Slavic mythology.  I focused on the Berehynia, the central figure in goddess embroideries.  I tried to figure out what the embroidery patterns meant.  I got really interested in the Sun Shallop, one of the common designs in folk embroidery and other arts.

So, who pulls the Sun Shallop through the sky?  Could there be sun horses, or dragons pulling the sled?  I thought about the painting of St. Margaret - is the dragon her pet?  And why was it biting her cloak?  There are so many questions, and I don't have the technology to translate yet.  I'm struggling with a lack of time, or lack of ambition.

I imagined the dragon as St. Margaret's friend, a terrible creature who might represent the future...  Then her son, Jarilo (aka St. George) kills the dragon - everybody always knew the dragon was bad, right...  But what if he kills the bad things in our future?  That would line up well with the rest of the apotropaic folk traditions.  Plus, if you had 2 dragons, one could be good and the other bad...

So, I felt like saying that I have a new explanation for dragons.  I don't have the whole answer, so no point getting excited about it yet.  I have a feeling that we could uncover a connection between dragons, simargyls, and the Willies (sirens, alkonost and gamyun.)  But I'd like to do this work with somebody.  I'd like to share.  Can you please leave me a message if you are interested in helping find the answers?

Two headed eagles from heraldry come into this somewhere, also.  I think the 2-headed eagle is another way to represent the creature who pulls the Sun Shallop... maybe.

Some research questions

Research questions
-  Who are Pijo and Penda?

-  Who is Baba Marta?

-  Why did the opera Semele get written?  What history surrounds these operas and ballets that contain pagan themes?

-  Are Papageno and Papagena (in the Magic Flute) similar to Pijo and Penda?

-  What about Harlequin and Columbine, can we connect them to Pijo and Penda?

-  Looking for the origins of the days of the week in Turkish...  Could Cumartesi mean "harvest day"?  Is there a connection between the Latvian symbol, "Juma" and the Turkish word for Wednesday?  This seems far-out, maybe I'm totally wrong on this one.

-  Curious about Latvian traditional symbols...  why is the snake symbol so common?

-  Curious about pagans:  in the past, would nomadic people have had different religious beliefs than agricultural/settled people?

- Map questions - I need to map all the countries where the Auskelis sun symbol is found in traditional art...  Does this really stretch from Norway to Palestine?  Any further eastward into Persia, and the Stans?

-  Does the cross stitch from the Netherlands carry ancient pagan symbols?  Why am I finding pagans everywhere?  Certainly I'm an amateur, and I could be more careful in my research.  Maybe I'm just finding a lot of different ways people tried to protect themselves in the ages before modern medicine?
I'm not sure why I'm fascinated with old ideas about banishing misfortune.  As soon as I learned the word, "apotropaic" I went off on the quest to find out all about it.

For Republic, Not Empire

Pussy Hat for Barbie

Eglé the Queen of Serpents

I noticed a possible connection between folk tales from Lithuania and Turkiye.  I found these tales thanks to Pinterest.com

There seems to be a strong similarity between the Turkish story of the Shah Maran and the Lithuanian story, Eglé the Queen of Serpents.

Link to the Lithuanian story:  https://europeisnotdead.com/disco/books-of-europe/european-fairy-tales/lithuania-egle-the-queen-of-serpents/

Link to Wikipedia page about the Turkish story:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahmaran

I do not guarantee anything.  I may or may not research this further.  By the way, I am not afraid of snakes.  Well, not very much, maybe just a little.  Now that it is deepest winter, I can explore this subject without any worries.  I'm curious enough to go on with this because the other day I noticed that the Yazidi peoples may still know how to use snakes as medicine ???  It was just a brief mention on a Wikipedia page about Yazidis.

Again, I am not a pagan.  But I study pagan things (including Yazidi beliefs) because they are very ancient.  I want to know what our earliest ancestors thought about.

Fairy tale origins 1000's of years old... BBC

Found an article I like on the BBC:  'Fairy tale origins thousands of years old, researchers say.'

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487

I want to look into the past to a time when humans maybe lived sustainably.

Another page that I find very interesting:  'Unlocking the Voynich Manuscript: Spinning, Hulda, and the Voynich' by Claudette Cohen

http://voynichbirths.blogspot.nl/2015/09/spinning-hulda-and-voynich.html

Today, I do not have anything really new and exciting to offer.  Maybe I can just write about why I spent most of the past year exploring the Goddess Embroideries.  I decided that I am not a pagan.  But I research pagan stuff because I am an environmentalist.

Oh, I'm bogged down with all the things I want to say.  I'm likely to repeat myself because I can not remember what I wrote before.  If you think that I am excentric, weird, then you need this list of books to see where I am coming from:

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The Dancing Goddesses by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Sacred and Healing Beers by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Pharmakopoeia by Dale Pendell
Ornamental Ironwork by Susan and Michael Southworth

But wait, there's more!  I just found something new.  I'm going to blurt it out before checking to see if it is correct.  Yay!  I found somebody on Pinterest who translated pagan symbols from Lithuanian to English (I should credit them by name here.). So, one of the symbols is called Juma and it translates as Harvest.  I remembered that in Turkiye, one of the days of the week is called Cumartesi.  So I looked up the days of the week in Turkish again.  I found that Friday is Cumar, and Saturday is Cumartesi.  The letter C sounds like J in Turkish.  So, Friday might translate as Harvest Day;  which would give us Saturday as Second Harvest Day.

But I do not have a dictionary that can give word origins in Turkish.  I could ask my Turkish friends, maybe on Facebook.