Blessing of the Graves Holy Water

If you look closely at my basket you can see my Rushnyk hiding the water & salt I wanted blessed underneath. This is a ritual cloth embroidered with symbols and cryptograms of the ancient world. They have been used in sacred Eastern Slavic rituals, religious services and ceremonial events such as weddings and funerals.

The cult of the ancestors was a part of the ancient pagan world view of the Ukrainian people. Every feast of the folk calendar commemorated the dead and was believed to serve a practical agricultural purpose. Back in the day the belief was that there was an indivisible whole, consisting of the living, the dead, and the unborn. Death was viewed as a departure or displacement in space, which did not sever the ties between the dead and the living. The ancestors participated in all the affairs and the agricultural work of the family. Commemorative meals or feasts were held at certain times of the year. (winter, spring, summer, fall) The ancestors were invited to all these events and left at the end of the festive cycles. Every commemorative feast consisted of a summoning-invitational ritual, a greeting ritual, a communal ritual meal for the living and the dead, and a farewell.