The Doll Guide
Vasilisa, her magic doll, and the White Horseman of Dawn
(Courtesy of Russian Sunbirds)
When you set out to Baba Yaga's, via the Gypsy Camp, you were told you had a doll guide. You also had a bag with various things that the le Enchanteur felt you needed for safe passage within this realm. Items include magical spectacles, a candlestick, a tiny anchor, a compass, a medallion with the imprint of the Unicorn and a set of wings. The bag also contained a map showing where the Gypsies are currently camped.
Le Enchanteur's ventriloquist doll Stanley is a bit of a worry and keeps giving poor directions and generally distracts Sibyl. Hopefully your guide is more useful. Vasilisa, pictured here, found her doll to be a very reliable companion and indeed, the doll regularly comes to the rescue.
Many doll folktales were published in collections from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, from the 1830s through at least the 1970s. Slavic tales feature dolls which aid, comfort, and advise the heroine. In most of the tales, the dolls open up the earth to enable the heroine to sink through to the underworld and escape an impending incestuous marriage to her father or brother. These tales are analyzed as stories of initiation. The heroine grows up through the course of the tale, performing various initiatory tasks, acquiring adult attributes, and subsequently marrying. The heroine's magic doll is an East Slavic variant of the fairy godmother. She is a talismanic incarnation of the heroine's dead mother, who provides life, nourishment, care and advice from the next world. The doll also embodies the "fairy" or sacred aspects of ancient Slavic earth goddess-spirits by acting as a guide in the crossing between the perceived worlds of the living and the dead.
An investigation of the heroine's descent leads to the hypothesis that the doll tales are related to narratives from agrarian rituals held between the winter and summer solstices. In these rituals, the burying of a vital female leads to her symbolic rebirth in spring, as evidenced in crop growth, marriage, and human fertility. On another level, the tales articulate the history of the Christianization of the East Slavs during the second millennium. The descent of the heroine into the earth depicts the submersion and subversion of pagan traditions under the influence of the newer religion. With the introduction of Orthodox Christianity in the tenth century, the use of dolls as votive objects literally went underground in the East Slavic lands, while the image of the female helper transformed and came to be represented instead from within the gilded frames of Christian icons.
As you travel down the Silk Road the doll is just one guide who will look after you. Some travellers have actually made dolls to accompany them and the creative results have been fascinating.
source: Doll FolkTales of the East Slaves
Make dolls inspired by the Baba Yaga mythology.
Le Enchanteur's ventriloquist doll Stanley is a bit of a worry and keeps giving poor directions and generally distracts Sibyl. Hopefully your guide is more useful. Vasilisa, pictured here, found her doll to be a very reliable companion and indeed, the doll regularly comes to the rescue.
Many doll folktales were published in collections from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, from the 1830s through at least the 1970s. Slavic tales feature dolls which aid, comfort, and advise the heroine. In most of the tales, the dolls open up the earth to enable the heroine to sink through to the underworld and escape an impending incestuous marriage to her father or brother. These tales are analyzed as stories of initiation. The heroine grows up through the course of the tale, performing various initiatory tasks, acquiring adult attributes, and subsequently marrying. The heroine's magic doll is an East Slavic variant of the fairy godmother. She is a talismanic incarnation of the heroine's dead mother, who provides life, nourishment, care and advice from the next world. The doll also embodies the "fairy" or sacred aspects of ancient Slavic earth goddess-spirits by acting as a guide in the crossing between the perceived worlds of the living and the dead.
An investigation of the heroine's descent leads to the hypothesis that the doll tales are related to narratives from agrarian rituals held between the winter and summer solstices. In these rituals, the burying of a vital female leads to her symbolic rebirth in spring, as evidenced in crop growth, marriage, and human fertility. On another level, the tales articulate the history of the Christianization of the East Slavs during the second millennium. The descent of the heroine into the earth depicts the submersion and subversion of pagan traditions under the influence of the newer religion. With the introduction of Orthodox Christianity in the tenth century, the use of dolls as votive objects literally went underground in the East Slavic lands, while the image of the female helper transformed and came to be represented instead from within the gilded frames of Christian icons.
As you travel down the Silk Road the doll is just one guide who will look after you. Some travellers have actually made dolls to accompany them and the creative results have been fascinating.
source: Doll FolkTales of the East Slaves
Make dolls inspired by the Baba Yaga mythology.
posted by Heather Blakey @ 8:42 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Dear Enchantress,
What a beautiful illustration! It looks like Vasilisa the Brave.
It is Vasilisa the Brave Luna. I must put a link to the image itself. It is very beautiful.
Magnificent pic.
Indeed this is beautiful and the actual fairy tale is even better than the box! I found some more nice boxes with Vasilisa the beautiful at Russian Lacquer Boxes check it out.
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