Strawberry Birch Bark Talismanic Container

Description

This hand made birch bark container from Russia is perfect to add to your sacred space or altar area. Offerings can be placed inside to venerate your ancestors, or to draw more wealth and prosperity to your household.

Birch is associated with purification, protection and exorcism, and represents renewal, rebirth and beginnings as it is the first tree after Winter to come into leaf. To ward off the evil eye, tie a red ribbon on the branch of one of these lovely trees. To exorcise people and animals by gently striking them with the twigs of this tree. A tree of new beginnings and new view points. Birch rods are used in protection spells and carried to protect from malicious magics (crossing/hexing) or even mundane situations/people.

A young and beautiful girl called Marushka is sent into the cold forest in the winter to perform impossible tasks by her evil stepmother. She must get spring violets, summer strawberries and fall apples in midwinter as presents to give her stepsister for her birthday. The girl ventures out into the blizzard and eventually meets the 12 personified months by a warm fire in the woods. When she approaches and asks politely if she might warm her hands at their fire, they ask why she is there, and when she tells them about her step-family and what she is looking for, the spirits help her. The child spirit of March creates the violets, youthful June the strawberries, and grown September the apples, at the direction of the elderly January. The stepmother and sister take the items, without a word of thanks. When the evil stepsister comes to search for the twelve months herself in the snow, hoping for gifts of her own, the spirits disappear, taking their fire, and leaving the stepsister cold and hungry, searching for eternity. The same fate lay in store for the wicked stepmother. She too let greed run away with her and to this day she still searches in an unfriendly forest for the path back to her home. The kind sister remained in her house, and lived happily ever after.

 Handmade in Russia Perfect for any Altar.