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Tuesday, 28 January 2014

TSOK-TSOK THE EGG


Today we are going to Ukraine to taste some exotic superstitions. Many of them came to my culture from ancient times together with the pysankarstvo. A pysanka is a Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated with traditional Ukrainian folk ornaments using a wax-resist method. 
It is believed that the fate of the world depends upon the pysanka. As long as the pysankarstvo lives, the world will exist and abandoned evil – a horrible serpent forever chained to a cliff – will not break free.

You must be very careful as a witch can steal your pysanka and use its shell to gather dew to dry up a cow's milk or to poke people and sicken them. The egg shell had to be ground up carefully or broken into pieces and tossed into a running stream. 




Did you know? 
  • Blessed pysanky are still used to find demons hidden in the dark corners of a house;
  •      The older people should be given pysanky with dark colors and rich ornaments as they have already lived long and filled life;
  •      The young people should be given predominantly white pysanky because their life only started;
  •      A girl should never give her boyfriend a pysanka without an ornament on the top and at the bottom of an egg as the boyfriend would soon lose his hair;
  •      Everybody who tramples on a pysanka will be punished by God with a variety of diseases.

 I hope you found something interesting for you. Keep an eye on your eggs and see you next week in Germany. 

Check out this link about pysankarstvo in Canada.

6 comments:

  1. It is interesting to know Ukrainian Easter eggs.

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    1. It's our ancient tradition. I love Easter the most because of pysanky))

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  2. This was a great post Nadia, really great to get some insight into your Ukrainian culture!

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    1. Thank you very much)) We have a lot of wonderful traditions)

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  3. Nadiia, that was a very interesting read and you Ukrainians seem to have a very cool culture.

    One thing I certainly found interesting was when you said, "A girl should never give her boyfriend a pysanka without an ornament on the top and at the bottom of an egg as the boyfriend would soon lose his hair".

    At the time, I thought she was just giving me a decorative Easter egg....if only I had known it was a Pysanka!!

    Well, at least now I know :)

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    1. You made my day Kyle. I hope it's not pysanka's fault. Next time you get some exotic present, check out it's meaning ;)

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