#rusalkas

Under the old willow-tree

I grew up with Rusalkas, now that I think about it.

It is well known these days that we take a lot of information for Slavic Paganism from folklore - but in a living culture "folklore" is not just old ethnographic monographies. So the belief in Rusalkas happens to be something I was actively raised with.

The Green Holidays and Rusaliyi were big in our home every year. Now that I am writing this, this is actually the period that begins right about now, so what a good timing with the question!

So, in the modern calendar this is a week celebrated after Pentecost (31st of May this year), or a few days before and after, usually Thursday to Thursday. This way it normally lands on late May or early June. There is a theory that the origins of this holiday can potentially be linked to the Roman holiday of Rosalia, which could have spread with their imperial reach.

Whether it is true or not, but there are a few key features of this celebration now. One is the belief that during this time Rusalkas venture into the land, play and joke -sometimes lethally, - with people, and are essentially celebrating the awakening of the earth and their own coming into full power.

Very simply, it's believed that the earth during this time is rightfully theirs, so they roam freely, and can take a young man of woman they likes with them, and tickle them to death. People take precautions, for example avoiding bodies of water or sometimes even bathing, because these maidens are absolutely in their right to take you under at this time. Lovage and wormwood are thought to be protective. When weaving in the home was more prevalent, women would also leave offerings of cloth hung from the trees for them.

Homes are generally decorated with tree branches and herbs. This custom is alive and well even in apartment buildings, where you will see herbs hung up even in hallways and staircases. The herbs chosen are often fragrant or medicinal.

People also remember their own dead, and youths gather for games.

The Thursday of this week is believed to be a so-called Rusalkas' Easter, or Easter of the Dead. This is their main celebration for the ancestors and Rusalkas, who essentially are also the dead. For example, we have stories of congregations of the dead holding a special celebratory service at local churches, lead by an equally dead priest. In any case, in rural areas it all usually culminated in saying farewell to all these visitors: the community held a festive procession out of the village, after which the domain over the earth returned to the living.

Now, what it seems to show to me - and stay with me here, please - is that in the Slavic worldview existing in the category of "spirit" and "matter" was mutually permeable. Now we tend to think as the physical matter or physical earth as the source of life, then you pass on, and you move on into spiritual existence. But what this interaction I described above demonstrates, really, is that the vital presence of what we see as "no longer with us" is continuous. Spirit circulates like water does. If it is no longer looking like a liquid, it does not mean it is not participating in life.

I will share one belief about water spirits I have held since very small that was not given to me by anyone, and which was definitely not encouraged. So, I grew up in this fairly small town surrounded on three sides by a bend of a river. Lots of water, you know. And I did spend my childhood on the banks of that river with a friend of mine. Even then, starting in elementary school, I had an intimate feeling that the Ruler of this river, the spirits that take care of it, do not have tolerance for being unappreciated. If humans take too much from their home, they see it as their right to take us with them, too. Which should have concerned me as someone who could not even swim, but I had figured water was everywhere anyway, and if they pick someone as their share, they can choke on a spoonful of water as well as drown in a lake.

(a short story)