Praying Hands Vintage Slavic

Description

People often wonder why I collect and have so many religious “curios”, since I was a child I was always obsessed with saints and churchy stuff. When I found my Slavic witchy path it all started to make sense. Dvoeverie is the double faith within medieval and early-modern slavic history. It is the people embracing both the new and old. Or more specifically – your average person accepting the new Christianity (baptism, masses, feast days/Christian holidays) but also keeping their old pagan beliefs (worship and sacrifice to gods, ancient rites, etc). This even persisted past when the old mythology was forgotten. And thus you get superstitions and folk practices that held on past the time anyone living could remember why they did something.

Lots of the common people (i.e. peasants) probably saw Christianity as an addition to their existing beliefs and traditions; not a new religion to supplant the old. Might as well keep the best of what you had and add on the good of the new. It’s rather practical and pragmatic–definitely my kind of belief system.

In any case, this particular belief system was extremely strong, in in the slavic lands, and so it’s a fascinating concept to study. Given the studies done into the phenomenon, and the sheer volume of information we have about–it’s pretty obvious that the church was never able to fully eradicate dvoeverie during the Christianization of Slavic lands.

This beautiful vintage piece was handmade in Alberta, Canada and has the lords prayer written on it in Ukrainian. I think it is just lovely and perfect for any and all altars.