Ukrainian Pysanka Ritual Egg Decorating Kit

Description

This kit was ritually smoked on my altar and contains 1 traditional kistka, 6 traditional dyes (yellow, orange, scarlet, light blue, light green, black), 1 block of beeswax, 1 beeswax candle, a folklore scroll, instruction sheet, egg designs sheet, a ritual hand embroidered vintage wiping cloth (may come in a multitude of colours all beautiful, all vintage, all hand made & unique), one copy of the book Ukrainian Easter Eggs. The kit comes complete nestled together in a beautiful wood box filled with moss.

In pre-Christian times, Dazhboh was one of the major deities in the Slavic pantheon; birds were the sun god’s chosen creations, for they were the only ones who could get near him. Humans could not catch the birds, but they did manage to obtain the eggs the birds laid. Thus, the eggs were magical objects, a source of life. The egg was also honored during rite-of-Spring festivals, it represented the rebirth of the earth. The long, hard winter was over; the earth burst forth and was reborn just as the egg miraculously burst forth with life. The egg therefore, was believed to have special powers.

Many superstitions were attached to pysanky, they were thought to protect households from evil spirits, catastrophe, lightning and fires. Eggs with spiral motifs were the most powerful, as the demons and other unholy creatures would be trapped within the spirals forever. A blessed pysanka could be used to find demons hidden in the dark corners of your house.

They held powerful magic, and had to be disposed of properly, lest a witch get a hold of one. She could use the shell to gather dew, and use the gathered dew to dry up a cow’s milk. The witch could also use bits of the eggshell to poke people and sicken them. The eggshell had to be ground up very finely or broken into pieces and tossed into a running stream. The cloth used to dry pysanky was powerful, too, and could be used to cure skin diseases. And it was considered very bad luck to trample on a pysanka–God would punish anyone who did with a variety of illnesses.

There were superstitions regarding the colors and designs on the pysanky. One old Ukrainian myth centered on the wisdom of giving older people gifts of pysanky with darker colors and/or rich designs, for their life has already been filled. Similarly, it is appropriate to give young people pysanky with white as the predominant color because their life is still a blank page. Girls would often give pysanky to young men they fancied, and include heart motifs. It was said, though, that a girl should never give her boyfriend a pysanky that has no design on the top and bottom of the egg, as this might signify that the boyfriend would soon lose his hair.