The Owl and the Key

EIGHT. DOLLARS????

Edit: They have edited the article to include the following.

But it takes an agent of chaos (the artist) to do something so utterly random as to strip the branch and line up the needles in little rows. That’s bizarre, that’s outside all natural behavior, that destroys the organized systems of life and creates something without purpose or connection.

We think of life, of living organisms and ecosystems, as chaotic and messy because they’re complicated and never wholly predictable. But every piece of them, from the smallest cell to the greatest forest to the deepest ocean trench, are governed by coherent rules where everything happens for a reason. A fox eats a rabbit because it is hungry. A seedling strains its leaves toward the sun. A bird dances to attract a mate. All living things move with purpose, and the changes they wreak upon the world are born of natural impulses.

Except when living things do things just cause. A bird sings to itself under its breath, all alone on a wire. A seal rides the waves that batter the beach for the fun of rolling in the surf. A human strips the needles off a pine branch and lines them up in tidy rows. There’s no natural harmony in any of these things. There’s no order. We do them because we are more than cogs in the great machine of the world. We do them because they bring joy.

as you know, a great part of knowledge we possess about the beliefs of old slavs comes from sources much less educational in nature and more aimed at lamenting and complaining and ridiculing the pagan ways. Adam Fischer gives us a plethora of such wonderful compaints in his 1923 work Fête des morts where he gathers examples from various chronicles and sermons, regarding the slavic beliefs surrounding their dead.

Cosmas of Prague laments in his chronicles regarding old Czechia: “So they would bury their dead in forests and meadows and then organise games in accordance with pagan ways on the crossroads, seemingly to soothe the souls, but they would also play ungodly jokes and call upon the spirits, and having put on masks, they would go wild in celebration themselves: these disgusting blasphemies the young duke (Bretislav I) would have to root out.”

A sermon from Czechia from XII century mentions that people would worship their dead relatives as deities (home deities, a belief spread widely across slavic people) and “call upon angels giving them false names”

Similarly, Al-Mas'udi mentioned that Slavs would burn the bodies of their dead and then venerate them as ancestral deities.

Other Arabic source mentions that Slavs would visit the burial site of their dead on the first anniversary of their passing and offer them 20 jugs filled with honey, and then gather around the grave to have a feast before heading back home.

Sources regarding Rus lamented that people would heat up bath houses for the dead: leave them towels and bowls of food and drink, and pour ash on the ground around the bath house to see whether the dead would leave the marks of their presence in it.

The 1551 Synod laments that people in Russia would still gather at the graves and have feasts in the name of their ancestors, and the custom remained strong for years to come, as in 1634 Adam Olearius had a chance to observe it and describe in detail during his travels. 

A 1497 Polish sermon mentions that people still practiced lighting small fires for the souls of their dead in the belief that the souls would gather around the fire to warm themselves.

The Witch and the Moon

a little comic about kisses and curses. happy halloween!