EDITORIAL: The power of the pysanka (04/30/00)

EDITORIAL

The power of the pysanka

Guest editorial by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

Take an egg - a plain, white, raw perfect egg. Add patience, skill, a steady hand, millennia of tradition, simple tools, time, and more patience - and you have a pysanka, a Ukrainian Easter egg.

The egg has always been the symbol of fertility, potential, rebirth, but these are secondary. For ancient civilizations, the sun was the primary force, a god. The egg symbolized the sun, its rebirth and therefore nature's rebirth. There are numerous legends of the egg as the embryo of the earth and the universe. Indian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Polynesian, Scandinavian, Slavic and other legends all have the egg as the central point of creation. In prehistoric times the people inhabiting the territory of present-day Ukraine also believed in the sun. Theirs was an agricultural society, and its god was the sun, Dazhboh (the god who gives). The whole calendar year revolved around the cult of the sun, its departures and returns. The most important festivals centered around the spring and autumnal equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices. The spring equinox was happiest, celebrating the sun's return and nature's rebirth.

The Ukrainian word for Easter is Velykden (Great Day). This name has not changed from those ancient pre-Christian times when Velykden, as the feast of the spring equinox, celebrated the lengthening day. Celebrations included ceremonial songs and dances, special foods, rituals surrounding fire and water - and eggs.

The pysanka (from the Ukrainian verb "pysaty," to write) was decorated with ornaments symbolizing the life-giving force of the sun, reinforcing the power of what was within the shell. The egg itself and the designs written upon it were good - therefore, they could bring good fortune and turn away evil. The pysanka was believed to have extremely powerful magical properties. Stepan Kylymnyk, a prominent Ukrainian ethnographer, wrote that as a child at the beginning of this century he remembered very old women regarding the pysanka "as a holy object ... [that] brings luck, wealth, health and protects a person from all harm ... but ... one must know how [and when] to write [it]..., how to pray over it, and to give it to the right person."

On Velykden pysanky were exchanged among family and friends. But the pysanka's powers were not merely seasonal. Depending upon its ornament and colors, the pysanka protected people from various specific illnesses, and safeguarded the house and other buildings from lightning. It was buried in the soil to ensure a good harvest, was placed into nests and mangers so that farm fowl and animals would multiply, and was left under the main beehive for a good honey crop.

Pysanky were buried with those adults who died during the Velykden period, and with children who died throughout the year. This practice, carried into the beginning of this century, can be traced to its origin in prehistory, when eggs were placed into burial mounds as talismans to ensure the deceased's rebirth. One week after Easter, during Provody (Velykden for the dead), pysanky and special foods were left on the graves in the cemeteries so that the living could commune with their ancestors.

The pysanka has survived through centuries of cultural and political persecution. Thus, it is a thread connecting the extremely distant rich past of a people to its ultra-modern present. And so our beloved pysanka's power continues to this day.

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