The very basic rushnik is colloquially called the utyralnyk or wiper. The utyralnyk is a basic towel that is used to clean up the home. The towel either has no designs on it or it has very narrow strip on the edges. In contrast, a nabozhnyk is a highly decorated towel composing of embroidery and of lace. Nabozhnyks, also called nabraznyks or nakutnyks are used to decorate icons.
Rushnyks are widely used in rituals of the Slavic religion and many of these ancient customs have been incorporated into modern observances. The rushnyk is used during various ceremonies, including weddings and funerals. During a Ukrainian women marriage, the bride and groom are standing on a towel called a pidnozhnyk, which translates as step-on towel. What happens to the pidnozhnyk is that the bride will drag the towel behind her, and her bridesmaids follow behind her. Tradition has it that when the bridesmaids follow behind the pidnozhnyk, they are following the path of the bride and hopefully be married themselves. The rushnyks were widely used to dress an icon corner in Ukrainian huts, which was called Krasny Kut (compare to the city of Krasny Kut (Russia)).
Colour plays a very important symbolic role in traditional Slavic embroidery. Red is the colour of life, the sun, fertility and health. The most of rushnyks is embroidered with red threads. The very word “red” means “beautiful” and “splendid” in Russian: a red girl, a red sun or a red spring. The diamond-shaped design of the rushnyk is an ancient agricultural symbol, which means a sown field, or the sun, and expresses the idea of fertility and protection against anything evil. Ducks, in the centre of the rushnyk, symbolize the element of life-giving water. In wedding folklore a duck and a drake symbolize a bride and a groom, in other words a pair of ducks is a symbol of family life.
Archive for the ‘Antique Cultures’ Category
Ukrainian Rushnik
Ancient Brotherhood of Acta Arvalia
In Ancient Rome the Acta Arvalia recorded protocols of the priestly brotherhood (sodalitas) of the Arvales fratres, who emerged from obscurity at the end of the Republican period as an elite group, to judge from the status of their known members in the Augustan period. Though their rituals were conducted outside the pomerium that demarcated the official confines of the city in earliest times, their acta were inscribed in marble tablets fastened to the walls of the Temple of Dea Dia, goddess of the grove, near the Roman Forum. The protocols, the earliest of which are testimony of the early Latin language, were mentioned by M. Terentius Varro, De lingua Latina v.85.
“The transcription of the records of this priesthood onto stone provided possibly the biggest coherent complex of inscriptions of the Roman ancient world,” Jörg Rüpke has observed. The documentation was restricted to the presence in routine rituals and special occasions (vota) of participating members, the name of the place where sacrifices occurred, and specific dates. The Acta Arvalia are an important source for ancient Roman prosopography and a useful one for the study of Roman religion and cultus. Actual liturgies are lacking: the first instance of a hymn text, the famous Carmen Arvale in incomprehensibly archaic Latin was not entrusted to publication in a stone inscription until the beginning of the third century CE, when few could have deciphered it.
Fragments of the inscriptions were first recovered by Prof Wilhelm Henzen, 1866-69. Further fragments subsequently came to light.