Secrets of the ancient Aries. Digest of articles. S. V. Zharnikova

new breads (note that in the Lithuanian tradition, Sauvius is the founder of the tradition of corpse burning and the guide of souls).

      Everything returned to the eternal mother’s beginning. And the women who gave birth, raised and married their daughters, represented this Universal and Eternal Mother in the world of people, calling her by the most ancient name Mother-in-law.

      Great Mother Avina

      Even in the era of Paleolithic proto-farming, people already clearly realized that the straw burnt in the fields, remaining after grain collection, increased soil fertility.

      This is probably the very source, the starting point from which the widespread straw cult subsequently grew. On straw (in the Russian folk tradition): they gave birth to children, danced on Christmastide and Shrovetide, the bride had to stand in front of the crown, washed, washed the dead, laid them on the table for Christmas and only after that they laid the table with an abusive tabletop, and it was supposed to die on the straw. Sheaves of straw and a straw effigy that were burned on Shrovetide, in this context, were symbols of fertility, happiness, abundance – the very «dead body» of last year’s harvest, which was given to the elements of fire and, having turned into soot and ashes, gave rise to new life, a new harvest.

      And since in the Paleolithic antiquity, the collection, storage and processing of grain «were occupied by women -" girls, young men», and the earth itself was associated with the image of a woman -" Mother Earth "– there is nothing surprising in the fact that the Maslenitsa straw effigy was given female features. And this rite does not at all testify to the «bestial manners» of our ancestors, as some modern «intellectuals» claim, being horrified at the burning of a scarecrow and believing that its place before, before the adoption of Christianity, was occupied by a living woman, during the burning of which everyone around her people sang, danced and rejoiced.

      Such a terrible picture could only be born in a very sick imagination. Indeed, even during the numerous auto-da-fe (burning of heretics) in Christian Western Europe, there was nothing like this (songs, dances and violent fun).

      During Shrovetide, participants in the ritual sprinkled ashes and soot from a fire on each other and even on the floor in the huts, thus joining in fertility, abundance, happiness, wealth.

      And here’s what’s interesting. In the ritual songs of Christmas fortune-telling (submarine songs), we meet the image of the Owl precisely in connection with smoke, ash, soot or a hole in the barn through which the sheaves were transmitted. So in a sublime song (recorded by P. V. Shein at the end of the 19th century), predicting poverty and widowhood, it says:

      «Sitting owl

      Over the boot.

      Wonderful or lyadu!

      Who sang

      Good for that!».

      But almost the same song foreshadowed the wedding:

      «And the owl sits

      Before the dry

      The falcon has arrived

      He tore off the crest!».

      Here «sapushka, sopuha» is:

      1) an air vent near the stove;

      2) soot in the pipe;

      3) a carved hole in the wall, which throws hay;

      4) smoke in a chicken house.

      And, what is no less interesting, «sipukha» is the North Russian dialect name of the owl itself.

      Among the songs foreshadowing death, one of the attributes is the barn (or threshing floor):

      «A woman sits on a barn

      The canvas tears.

      Ilea, Ilea!».

      Or:

      «I walk around the humenets

      I lay a towel.

      Holy evening!».

      In turn, the girls complain in sacred songs that they are forced to «ram the sheepskin» or «threshing floor» (Notes of P. V. Shein in the Oryol and Simbirsk provinces).

      Where does such a more than strange attitude to the barn (threshing floor) come from and what does it have in common with the stove (soot, ash, ash) and, ultimately, with the owl?

      Let us turn for the answer, first of all, to the «East Slavic Ethnography» by D. K. Zelenin, which says that: «In the swamps and forests where the North Russians and Belarusians live, the drying of the sheaves in the barn is still preserved, although now this is rarely done. Until the beginning of the 20th century, barns existed here everywhere, and only the widespread use of threshers led to their rapid disappearance… The simplest variety of barn for drying sheaves is called Shish… A real barn… it’s a rough log building. According to popular beliefs, in the pit of the barn lives the barn or the barn, the barn’s father. His appearance is uncertain».

      It is worth emphasizing that the archaic form of Shisha is a cone made of poles or logs, under which a hole is dug, where a fire is made to dry the sheaves, and extremely resembles the shape of a grave mound, mound or pyramid.

      B. A. Rybakov noted that the Northern Russian barn is a place of the cult of fire – Svarozhich, which in various forms survived until the beginning of the 20th century everywhere.

      «Fire Svarozhitsu pray.» Fire is called «god», «holy fire»; while blowing up the fire, prayers were recited. The fire is transferred from the old dwelling to the new… «We honor fire as a god,» said the inhabitants of Podolia. Ancient sources speak of the cult of Svarozhich under the barn, where a fire should burn, drying the sheaves. The Belarusians, making a fire under the barn, threw an unmilled sheaf of rye at it as a sacrifice to the fire.» In one of the sermons of the 12—13th century those who pray «fire under the barn» are sharply condemned. Very often, the «barn» (or Ovinnitsa) was perceived in the early 20th century as a spirit of fire. It should be noted that in the Vilnius province the Belarusians washed in barns, and in the Russian provinces they gave birth in barns. The barn was also directly related to the wedding ceremony. So there is evidence that on the first day of the wedding they drank beer in the barn. Then, during the wedding, the bride’s parents «drank the barn.» And, finally, at the end of the wedding, the ceremony of «pouring the barn» was performed, when a fire was lit in the barn, shouted «fire» and ran to fill the fire with beer (information of L. A. Tultseva).

      The deceased was brought to the barn to be put on straw (wheat or pea). The idea that the souls of the dead (navi) leave bird tracks was widespread until the early 20th century. Therefore, on Thursday of Holy Week, in the bathhouse or barn (which served as a bathhouse), the floor was sprinkled with ashes so that the «navi» left a bird trail. In Bulgarian folklore, the «navi» have left a trail of birds. In Bulgarian folklore, «navi» are the birdlike souls of the dead, flying at night and frightening with their cry. But mostly only owls and eagle owls fly at night, i.e. representatives of one family.

      In the folk tradition, there were special holidays in which it was forbidden to heat Riga.

      They were called «the name of the barn.»

      These included:

      Exaltation (September 14),

      Thekla Zarevnitsa day (September 24),

      Feast of the Most Holy Theotokos (October 1).

      It is interesting that at the end of the threshing process, pancakes are baked, brought to the barn and put on the oven there. Pancakes, as you know, in the Russian folk tradition are associated with the cult of ancestors and the moon – «the sun of the dead», and in the archaic version they are unleavened cakes baked on hot stones in ancient hearths.

      Ovinnik (or barn) seemed to our peasants the most powerful