Светлана Жарникова – The Distaff and the phallic cult (страница 1)
Svetlana Zharnikova
The Distaff and the phallic cult
Svetlana Vasilevna Zharnikova
The Distaff and the phallic cult
Photo. The girl is a pomorka. The village of Umba. The Tersky Coast. The North of Russia. 1910
In the modern world, the urgency of the problems of the ethnic history of the peoples of various regions of our planet is obvious. The growth of ethnic self-awareness, which has been observed everywhere in recent decades, is accompanied by an increase in interest in the historical past of peoples, in the transformations that each of them experienced during its millennium-long formation. It became a spiritual need for a representative of a modern urbanized society to find the roots of his ethnic existence, to know the diverse processes that led to the formation of that ethnocultural environment through which he perceives the world around him.
The book "The Distaff and the Phallic Cult" is devoted to the study of the semantics and symbolism of the most important object of Indo-European life - the spinning wheel. The connection of the spinning wheel with the depths of the phallic cult, Russian and Indo-European mythology is shown.of the most important subject of Indo-European life - spinning wheels. The connection between the spinning wheel and the sewing machine and the depths of Russian and Indo-European mythology is shown.
S. I. Dmitrieva
Mezen spinning wheels
(To the question of the origin of the Mezen painting)
Among Russian traditional murals, one of the most striking, interesting and mysterious is considered to be the Mezen wood painting, called so in the place of its greatest distribution - the Mezen River. However, the area of Mezen painting is wider. In addition to the Mezen basin with Vashka, it includes the Pinega and lower reaches of the Northern Dvina to the Onega Peninsula in the west, and the Izhma and Pechora basins in the east.
Among the objects with Mezensky painting are the butcher spinning wheels made in the village of Palashchely, located in the middle reaches of the Mezen. They were in demand among the population of the north-eastern regions of the European North and were produced in large quantities for sale at famous fairs in Kholmogory, Vashgort, and Mezen. A spinning wheel along with a colored shawl was considered a good gift to a woman; in many houses of the villages of Mezen, Northern Dvina, Pinega, Vashka and Pechora, there were several each. Thanks to this tradition, spinning wheels of spinning work are not uncommon now, especially on the Mezen.
Mezen
The origin of the Mezen painting is still a mystery. The dates found on the Mezen spinning wheels suggest that most of them were made in the years 1870-1930.1 However, the originality of the painting, the graphic art and the primitively conventional interpretation of the images of animals and birds give researchers a reason to look for the origins of the Mezen painting in the art of neighboring peoples and ancient cave paintings. An opinion was expressed about the similarity of the manner in which horses were depicted on Mezensk ware and monuments of Azelin culture of the 3rd-4th centuries. 2 V. S. Voronov, studying the styles of folk paintings on wood in different regions of Russia, singled out the Mezen as mysterious and curious, pointing out its connection with the ancient Greek styles. 3
Mezen
Some modern researchers, for example N. V. Taranovskaya believe that the Mezen painting is the result of the interaction of the decorative art of the Komi and Russians. 4 L. N. Zherebtsov, supporting this point of view, emphasized that the applied art komi played a decisive role in the emergence of the geometric style of Mezen painting. 5 However, painting on Komi products (in particular, on spinning wheels) in composition is quite significantly different from painting on Mezen products. The similarity of some Komi-Zyryan spinning wheels to butcher's, according to, for example, V. N. Belitser, is explained by the influence of the latter. 6 A characteristic feature of the Mezen painting, in our opinion, is multi-tiered (Fig. 1). Three tiers stand out on almost every Mezen spinning wheel, with horses and deer appearing as the main figures in the lower and middle murals, and birds in the upper one. As a rule, in the middle tier (less often in the lower tier), figures of birds were attached to the images of animals, while in the upper tier only birds were depicted. In all likelihood, the tiers we selected in the images of the spinning wheels correspond to images of three worlds: underground, terrestrial and heavenly, known by the art of many peoples of the world. It is characteristic at the same time that the terrestrial (middle) world, as it were, combines the features of the underground and heavenly. We see a similar combination in the middle tier of the Mezen spinning wheels.
Fig. 1. Spinning wheel with Mezensky painting (front and back view). All spinning wheels shown in the figures were made in the village of Palashchelye at the end of the 19th century.
Another approach to the tiers depicted on the spinning wheels is also possible. If we take into account the geometric series dividing the tiers discussed above, we get a seven-tier division. The number 7, as well as 3, is characteristic of representations of the vertical division of the world, known from the materials of folklore and folk art among many peoples of the world. It is enough to recall the Babylonian ziggurats, Asian pagodas, murals on the houses of the Secret Unions in Polynesia, etc.
The sevenfold division of the world was especially pronounced in the representations of the Ob Ugrians. The division of the world into three - heavenly, earthly, and underground - is characteristic of Finno-Ugric folklore, in particular, Komi (the heroes of their fairy tales travel to these worlds).7 Similar representations are noticeable in products of the Perm animal style.8 The image of a shaman traveling across three worlds is often can be seen on the “miraculous” shamanic plaques from the Urals. 9 It would seem that the vertical division of the spinning wheels is easily explained by the influence of the Komi neighboring with the Russian Mezen. However, this is hindered by the existence of such ideas, although not as pronounced as those of the Finno-Ugric peoples, in folklore and the fine arts of many regions of the Russian North. Heroes of Russian fairy tales also travel to different worlds. The division into tiers, though not as obvious as on the Mezen spinning wheels, can be seen on some Severodvinsk spinning wheels and spinning wheels of the Yaroslavl-Kostroma type, although these spinning wheels are not very similar to the Mezen ones in the subject of images and performance technique. A fairly clear vertical division can be traced in the Pomeranian spinning wheels and in the Mezeni rubels (ironing sticks) close to them.
B. A. Rybakov, having shown the cosmogonic symbolism of the shamanistic representations of the Urals in the art of the northern Russian, Finno-Ugric and Samoyed peoples, considers that the sources of such representations should be sought in the worldview of the primitive hunters of the Mesolithic. The hunting ideology of the Mesolithic and Neolithic was not preserved due to any ethnic peculiarities, but was a sign of the stadia to the extent of this stadia more fully manifested in the materials of the 19th century, the Samoyed-Ugric tribes, preserved among the Finno-Ugric and Russian northeastern Europe.10 It is also possible that the similarities are considered in the representations reflected in the art of various peoples of Eastern Europe, which is explained not only by the convergence of these representations, but also by the common substrate included in the Russian Mezen, Komi and peoples of the Urals. It is appropriate to recall the point of view of N. Ya. Marr, who found a common substrate not only in the Caucasus and the Mediterranean, and almost throughout Eastern Europe.11 In addition, according to tribute to archeology, paleoanthropology and linguistics, the migration of tribes from Eastern Europe to countries The Mediterranean and in the opposite direction have taken place since ancient times.12
Almost all the images on the inside of the spinning wheels, known in the research literature as “everyday scenes”, in our opinion, are variants of the so-called “world plots” that are widespread in the art of different peoples. For example, in a bird-hunting scene that usually sits on top of a tree, a “world tree,” or “tree of life,” is guessed. A tree with birds on branches is one of the favorite subjects in folk art not only of the Slavic, but also of other peoples of Eastern Europe (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Fragment of the painting of the butcher spinning wheel (hunter and bird on top of a tree).
In particular, the tree motif with several branches rose upwards and birds sitting on them is widespread in the embroideries of the Karelians of the Kalinin Region and the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic13. The “world tree” in the form of an oak tree with birds upstairs or a birch tree with a “sun bird” in the branches is one of vivid images of the Karelian epic 14. In the fine arts of the Russian North, such a tree was reflected in a three-part composition with the Mother Goddess and the figures of people or animals that were to her, surrounded by birds. The figure of the goddess was often combined or replaced by the image of tree15. On the Mezen, this composition is present in paintings on the gables of some houses, where on the sides of the tree there are figures of opposing lions. On the Mezen spinning wheels, the tree is most often depicted with a large bird on top. Probably, such an image of the "tree of life" is not accidental. It is connected with the custom, widespread in the recent past, among neighboring Komi to put carved wooden birds on poles near houses16. Although researchers on the question of the origin of such images did not always associate them with the “tree of life," this connection seems undeniable in the light of comparative ethnographic material. For example, the Yakuts have “shaman trees” in which L. Ya. Sternberg sees the “world tree”, were depicted in the form of high poles, on the top of which birds - eagles were placed. In turn, the "shaman trees" of the Yakuts17, like similar images of all the Ural-Altai peoples, have a whole complex of features associated with the ideas about the "world tree" among the peoples of the Mediterranean cultures, as well as among the peoples of Scandinavia and Western Finno-Ugric peoples. The plot of the “world tree” and the eagle as a hypostasis of the supreme god Odin, who lives on top of this tree, is very vividly developed in Scandinavian mythology. The connection between the “tree of life" and the bird as the embodiment of a deity can be traced in the folklore of the Slavs.18 The motif of a bird on the top of a tree, bringing good news or gifts, takes place in the calendar and wedding poetry of the Western and Eastern Slavs19. The bird on top of the tree can be seen in the drawings on the Mezen birch bark tues. Obviously, it is necessary to associate such ideas with the well-known in the Russian North wooden chip birds, which in the recent past were customary to hang in the red corner of the house. The village of Selishche, where the craftsmen who carved birds lived, is located not far from the village. Palaschel is the place where Mezen spinning wheels were made. A relic of the same motif (birds at the top of a tree) can be seen in the very custom of northern peasants to hang wooden birds in the red corner, since a revered tree was often associated with the latter.20