The Land Dreams in Ceremonies: Reparation Ceremony #4 *Staghorn*

 

 

Gifts for the Land: I was told by an elder, in relation to several dreams and an incident with unearthed medicine, that the gifts for the land would need to include things the ancestors recognized, so that the items that are “foreign” to them (Motanka/ Pysanka) might be accepted and left undisturbed. Spread on the snow (above) are dried herbs, snowberries, and juniper.  They are gifted with prayers before burying the Motanka and Pysanka.  

Land = Individual = Community: Odawa Elder Wilfred Pelletier offered me a teaching 30 years ago – the land, the individual, and the community are “one.” When the health and well-being of the land suffers, so too does the health of the community and individual.  If disease appears in an individual, then it likewise afflicts the community and the land.  All are entwined – suffused within one another. Thus, the health of individuals on the land where we lived informed some of my choices of dye-plants (ex: Hawthorn for heart) for ceremony in this location.

Pysanka, Gift for the Land: Trees encircle the egg in a horizontal band, crowned by 7 full moons linked together on a snowflake.  Beneath the trees are waves representing underground streams and the Koksilah River, both of which spoke to me in a dream.  Eight directions of flames are written on the base of the Pysanka.  These flames (heat, light, spirit of fire) are for the ancestors who live in the winter camp, just down the hill from where we lived, as per their dreamtime request.

Rushnyky:  Each Rushnyk (sacred cloth) in this exhibit is my diasporic exploration of tradition meeting influences of the lands I live upon. Traditionally, the cloth is the width of the loom, woven from linen (and in the past century, also cotton), embroidered by hand, with knotted ends that hang toward the earth (to direct any negativity toward Mati Zemlya, who is entrusted with transmuting those energies).  It is considered “sacred cloth”. In my Baba’s practice of upcycling fabric during the wars and Depression, I have only used upcycled fabric for both Rushnyky and Motanky.

Shadow Walking can be as simple as using shadow-time to pray, burn, and connect to Dukhy Pryrody (nature spirits). Burning herbs and resins is used to “fumigate with smoke” (obkuryuvaty) and carry prayers to the Otherworld; Fire is used to “burn up" and release anything unwanted.

 

 

 For detailed ceremony notes, please see this post in my sister-blog, The Land Speaks.