Eco Biography
Ana Bacic
March 10, 2009: The day of the Full Moon.
The vibrations of the Full Moon last for 2 and a half days, allowing forces of power and energy to spring out. I am reflecting on what this Full Moon circle is bringing to my life. I am entering the classroom with big windows and lots of light with an open view to the garden. There is a professor I’ve never met and the native woman with the big gray feather is telling a story. Jackie has a soft voice, as she light up the holy herbs allowing burning poignant smell of incenses to fill up the room. Slowly I began to shift to another reality, in the dream like state where everything is possible. I remember a Ojibway prophecy of the seven fires that speaks of a time when during the seventh fire, the time we are living now, a new generation would come forward and would relearn the teachings. I am excited to meet one of the few elders who still remembered the ceremonies, the medicines, the songs, the teachings, the languages, the stories and all of the attributes which make Ojibway people who they are. I imagine that the awakening of humanity will perhaps happen someday, when people may learn to understand a different way of living in peace and harmony all of creation. The Native people had the gift of living in harmony with the Earth Mother; thus I pray to reconnect with the gifts of the understanding spirit. Once my grandmothers knew it too. They honored and respected nature by means of living in self-sustainable economies. They shared oneness with land with a sense of grace and contentment, deeply trusting the powers of the Earth, knowing it always provided for their means.
I am venturing on a journey into the past, immersing myself into faded memories of my childhood and early adulthood that occupy a maze-like topography of time and space, intertwined in spirits of this world and the other world. I know that I can’t order events that reside in my mental landscape, but intimately I know if I’d received the guidance and assistance of my ancestors, I could have grasped stories resonating through time and space. Ironically, I continue to be burdened by an enduring sense of dislocation, as are many in the Diaspora experience. I feel I occupy a place “in-between”- my land where my dead lay buried and my existence in the land of my new beginnings.
I was born in Croatia’s inland 37 years ago. My small town was not far from the Croatian capital Zagreb. My country was part of the geopolitical formation called Yugoslavia, which stretched over the Balkan Peninsula, marking a boundary between eastern and Western Europe. Croatia was always at the intersection of various tribes, beliefs, and religions. Unfortunately, it was also a land of conquest, fought over by the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Between the 4th and 7th centuries, Slavic tribes arrived in their new homeland at the twilight of the great migration of peoples in Europe. The slow assimilation had begun; as natives of the Illyrian tribes that were already mixed with Greek and Roman elements, were to be slowly absorbed by the new element. In the late 8th century, Irish priests, on a mission to spread Christianity, arrived in the Balkans. They spread Christ’s teachings to pagans. Nevertheless, the pagan iconography was deeply rooted in the hearts and spirits of the people. It still remains in many forms, such as folk customs, the celebration of seasonal festivals, sacred rituals, honoring trees, burning fires to mark summer solstice, and many other shapes. These beliefs still have significance even in the small town middle class values of my family. The Christian calendar was observed but the elements of pre-Christian religion were mixed into popular Christianity which, in turn, absorbed many pagan influences. For example, the males in my family, my father and my brother, have been named after the pagan god of war – Davor.
The house where my grandmother was born is in the centre of a village, by the church where my great-grandfather was a bellman as well as a farmer. The river was running through their backyard, and once a year it would flood a barn, usually in the early spring when the snow melted. In my early memories I feared rising waters, and my reoccurring dream is the dream of a raging river sweeping everything in its way. Only the soothing sound of a clattering wood mill would bring me back in the present where the waters of my destinies become peaceful and welcoming.
In front of the house was a linden tree, planted over 150 years ago. My grandmother was a storyteller, and her stories were always exaggerated, as she enjoyed building suspense. The Croatian people, she stated, were called the people of the Sun or the Sun Warriors, as they were always fighting for justice. She told me that when the old Croats came to their country, wherever they settle they planted a tree. For example, a linden tree was a sign of friendship and good intentions. By planting the linden tree, our ancestors were befriending nature through the proliferation of trees. It was illuminating and intriguing to learn how our forbearers supported their new natural environments, whether it was for the purpose of pleasing the gods, or asking for their protection. Part of her “Linden Tree” tale faded from my memory, but she would finish her story with”…and now we name the month of June by the linden tree, which blooms in June[i].” I had to help pick the blooms and dry the leaves of the linden tree in order to save it for the fall and winter months, when grandmother would make a tea mixture of rosehip, chamomile, and linden flowers sweetened with honey produced by my grandfather.
Over twenty years later, my husband, then just a friend, took me to his ancestral village to show me his grandparents’ house. It was empty and abandoned for a few years, since the grandfather had died and the grandmother had been placed in a seniors’ home. Sadly, the three sons immigrated to Canada in the sixties, leaving the old place behind to dwell in their memories. What struck me at the moment was the view of the three big linden trees guarding the house. It felt like coming home again. Although the man beside me was relatively a stranger who had intentions to marry me, I was vaguely assured that he was an extension of the sun warriors’ stories, which transpired in my imagination to new proportions, along with urges to reproduce sons of the land to which we both belonged. What made me believe in our future together was the reassurance offered by the linden tree: common histories, grandmothers who prepared the same tea to sooth colds, bronchitis, and coughs, or just to guard us from bad spirits. Thinking it over, I realized that I have to agree with native beliefs about the memory of a land which takes up most of our memories and experiences.
Creation Story “The World Tree”
Some quests of humanity across all cultures were a search for the source of creation. As we ponder where we are coming from and why we are here, it become natural to explore beliefs of our ancestors in the search of the beginnings of our existence.
In the beginning there was nothing but the Primordial Darkness, the Sea merging to the Dark Sky. The only existing thing was an ancient Egg in which resided Svarog (Daylight), the God of All Creation. Under the influence of the life forces, the egg cracked and created the Light. The powerful forces came forward, creating the world in which two forces existed, the evil one, which was call Crnobog (Black God) the God of pain and suffering. The opposite force belonged to Svarog, (Daylight). They both have power without form, thus the Powerful Force created their counterparts: Svarog’s twin was named Volos, and Crnobog’s twin was called Ert. On the bottom of the sea there was gold dust which was what Svarog used to create the Sun and Moon. From the sky’s heights fell the lower shell of the Egg and it broke into a thousand pieces, creating giants, elves and all kind of magic creatures. From the top part of the shell of the Egg, the World Tree was created, the oak tree which now had separated the Sky from the Earth. In the oak tree’s branches there was the house of Gods.
I was susceptible to colds, and most of my early years I suffered from sore throats and multiple ear infections. As a memento of and early traumatic experience was an episode of being hospitalized for a tonsillitis surgery. I was around 2 and a half years old. I remember a hospital bed, a kind of crib with the net that reminded me of a jail. Out of numerous visitors concerned for my health, my grandfather was the most important one. He came with a message from my cat, saying that she’d have kittens soon. Sure enough, I healed pretty quickly and in the late spring we had four kittens in the shed behind my grandparents’ house where I could walk outside at night and see a sky spilling over with constellations. I was an only child, up to age three, with no other children to play with, so I befriended the mother cat and little kittens. The mother cat was an unusual looking cat, with predominately white fur and little spots of black and yellow. Her fuzzy fur served as a pillow when I needed comfort, but she was also my most reliable playmate. We were running and chasing each other in tall grass with daises and clovers, before my grandfather would cut it all down and store it for hay. I learned to read her eyes: open dark eyeballs meant that she is on the look out for danger, while two narrow lines showed that she was relatively relaxed. However, Mica was a hunter, and she would never completely loosen up while noticing a mouse or a bird or some edible bug that she was ready to catch. The mother cat was proud of her hunting skill. On some mornings in the fall she would leave the dead mouse on the doorstep, which would bring her rewards from my mum who was terrified of the thought that field mice were looking for shelter in our house.
One day Mica didn’t show up. I was looking around everywhere, asking my granny to help me find her. She wasn’t much consolation, saying that cats are selfish creatures, who mind their own business and are not dependent on anyone. Refuted by my own best friend, I spied through the hole in the hedge that divided our property from the neighbors, to find Nives, an older girlfriend of mine. She wasn’t around, so I kept looking. With my senses sharpened, I entered the neighbor’s basement, passed the pantry section with colorful jars of jam and compote, and strings of dried figs and dates, calling out my cat: “Mica, Mica”. Then I heard the tiny: “Meow” coming from under the barrel. On the rug was my cat with an unusual expression. She looked weak, but she got up to touch me with her wet nostrils. Behind her was a bundle of wet fur, which I figured were her kittens. The cat went back to her pack as soon as I was reassured that the she was alive and well. I was rather disappointed that she didn’t have the kittens in our shed where I made a special nest for her. My grandma had an answer, saying that the kittens feel endangered by the male cats hanging around our house (my grandfather’s favorites). “When the kittens are old enough to protect themselves, she’ll bring them home” my grandma told me -”Be assured that she knows best. She always follows her instincts. You can’t order your cat.” That was a sobering point for me, figuring that I identified with my cat, since as humans we’re just a few evolutionary steps separated from other cohabitants on the Earth. Although our home building skills are rather complex, it was obvious that these were not correlating with a sort of need for a shelter that cats have. In a few weeks the kittens appeared in our shed, waiting for me to bring them milk or some other edible treats.
My grandfather was a bee keeper. After he retired from service in Yugoslav Railways, he spent most of his time with me, my brother and his bees. I was around 6 when he showed me the internal structure of the bee hive, with the queen bee leading the clan. It was hot and sunny in late June when my grandfather had to extract honey for the first time that season, with me as a helper. He took the comb out of the hive, and honey started dripping from it. I saw worker bees jamming around the queen bee, honey leaking. The humming sound would always be reminiscent of the sweetness of early childhood. The sweetness that was strong enough to burst through the walls, the smells which were so alluring to the kids waiting patiently by the oven of the wooden stove where my mum would bake honey bread or honey squares. Even the medicine and ointments made of honey soaked with pine needles were surrounded with dusky memories of sweetness. In my dreams I was a bee, the queen bee precisely. Strong and independent, able to start the new hive, bring the new life and rule those who depended on my fertility. It was quite an empowering fantasy for the 7 year old entering the world of stories, the written ones this time around. I was infatuated by Grimm and Anderson’s tales of cruel and brutal worlds where strong characters and goodness wins over maliciousness, greed and evil.
Back to my grandmother tales, there were myths that she told every year in cyclical storytelling, over a series of festivities that followed changes of nature and seasons. There was a large spring festival dedicated to St. Jure (St. George), in Slavic mythology the deity was called Jare, god of vegetation and fertility. A procession of young men and girls went around the village carrying tree branches of flowers as symbols of new life. They would travel from home to home, reciting songs which blessed each household with sacred words – resonating the belief that words have powers to bring blessings and fertility. Through formulaic expressions, our ancestors were grasping knowledge of vast places and changing seasons, attuning to the rhythm of the Mother Nature. Immersed in the natural world, our predecessors were invested in becoming one with their natural environment rejoicing in to the new cycle in nature. In my days, group of girls would dress in white dresses with crowns of spring flowers on our heads, walking around the church, while boys were singing songs in honour of St. George, waving with green branches.
A young girl, all dressed in white, is rides a white horse and sings. Her name is Morana, which means Death. She is goddess of Winter and daughter of the Sun. She has many powers, one of them being the ability to change shape and deceive people with her appearances. Morana has a brother Jare, and both of them are the children of Perun, born on the night of the New Year (Great Night). The same night he was born, Jare was snatched from the cradle and taken to the Underworld, where Veles raises him on his own. At the spring festival of Jare/Jurjevo, Jare returns from the world of dead (from across the sea), bringing spring from the ever-green underworld into the realm of living. He meets his sister Morana and courts her. At the beginning of summer they have wedding. This sacred union of Jare and Morana brings the plentiful season of summer fertility and abundance to earth. Also, since Jare is a stepson of Veles and his wife daughter of Perun, their marriage brings peace between two great gods. In such a way, crops are protected through divine union of gods, meaning there will be no storms which could damage the harvest. After the harvest, however, Jare is unfaithful to his wife, and she vengefully slays him (returns him into the Underworld), renewing the enmity between Perun and Veles. Without her husband, god of fertility and vegetation, Morana – and all nature with her – withers and freezes in the upcoming winter; she turns into a terrible, old, and dangerous goddess of darkness and frost, and eventually dies by the end of the year.
Around the same time, I had experienced brutality in the nature for the first time, losing the creature which was my closest friend and confidant before I started school. The mother cat had another nest of kittens. They were about three weeks old when she was concealing them from my brother, a bratty little three-year-old who didn’t learn the cat’s language quite yet. Overnight, the mother cat was attacked by an owl, preying on her kittens. I found her in the morning under the hazelnut tree squeaking in pain, with only one kitten tucked under her belly. She couldn’t move, or get on her feet. She hissed at me, when I reached out with my hand to touch her head. The alarm bells went off in my head, knowing that Mica was behaving weirdly. I called out for my grandfather, who was diagnosed a spinal injury. “Good Mica” he said, “you were such a hero.” He explained that Mica had to fight an owl but she was helpless because the little ones were easy prey to the bird with a strong beak and sharp claws. The worst was to come when my grandfather called an uncle with a gun to stop Mica’s suffering. “Do you mean to kill Mica?’ I asked. Shortly after, he delivered a lesson on survival skills in animals, reassuring me that a circle of life will continue despite Mica’s death. “She had many kittens in her life, and she was good to us, catching mice, and saving our crops from scroungers. She was also preying on little creatures, and now she has become the victim of the stronger animal higher up on the food chain than cats” He didn’t convince me quite easily about fairness in nature, so we just cried together.[ii]
Much later in life I was overcome with the same feeling of inescapable loss when my dog, a year-old German Sheppard was killed or my father died, followed by my grandfather. Being raised as Catholic, we’d listen to the stories of angels in heaven who would console our loved ones in the afterlife. A belief in eternal life as a promise and reward for one’s earth living always remained superficial and unbelievable, while the inexorable loss provided no consolation. I craved different stories, new beliefs, and unlike certainties.
This event marked the end of innocence of an early childhood. A year after, we moved to a new house, leaving our grandparents’ home behind, along with a protective net that such an environment provided for my brother and me. In the new house we were only walking distance from the grandparents’ place, but also closer to the woods, open fields, spring water and the creek where we’d spend much of our time inventing games, building mills, catching fish and butterflies, killing snakes and chasing frogs. The new home for our family was built over four years. It had many rooms, but it felt empty and cold.
My dad and I planted three birches, a few apple and plum trees, and the place started feeling as home. My mum cultivated a vegetable garden, keeping up her mother’s legacy of being quite a skilled grower, aside from being passionate about gathering berries and other products of nature. In the early eighties, my family turn to vegetarian food, we ate organically and sustainably all along, but my father found vegetarian food more ethical and healthier. I remember him preaching about ecological disasters which would bring the end of civilization. That was a painful realization of a new movement in central and east Europe which had a handful of followers who became conscious about the environment after the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl. Sure enough, my dad’s philosophy affected our eating habits, although in the context of today’s supermarkets when even Wal-Mart is selling food in huge refrigerators filled with processed or frozen food from Mexico and other remote corners of the world, our food was “virgin” food already. To illustrate, we ate seasonal food at all times. In winter we would preserve vegetables naturally; carrots, beets and other root vegetables used to be buried in the sand in grandmother’s cellar. Another means of preserving food was to prepare a big barrel of sour cabbage and a smaller barrel of sour turnip. Over the month of two, the cabbage would be the best source of vitamin C for winter months. The delicious stews cooked from barley, beans, peas, along with preserved vegetable were my favorite suppers. Even today, just the smell of the stew brings comforting memories of my grandmother and mother’s cooking. We stored apples wrapped in newspaper to preserve freshness. Walnuts and hazelnuts, with some dry fruit made up a perfect sweet treat in the winter. Other fruits were cooked up into flavorful jams or compotes. It would take a book to describe how imaginative our grandmothers were in inventing a new combination of jams, some with rosehip fruits, wild strawberries and blackberries, plum and pears, figs or apples. A little meat we had eaten originated from the local farms, or wild-life. Namely, we would eat a piece of deer or wild boor, whole rabbit or wild duck, but mostly over the seasonal festivities or on Sundays. Then, we stopped eating meat all together.
My father’s job took him to villages where he roamed in search of stories (he was a journalist), or intact natural surroundings. Often, he would be asked to help people either to ensure that smart village kids have secured spots in the dormitory when they continue schooling in the city, or to assist elderly people to get medical care. He would be given crops, or a hunter’s catch in exchange for these small favours. From some people he would get a sack of potatoes, or a fresh catch of fish, usually trout. Over time we developed deep friendships with villagers, build on the appreciation my parents had for simple life in the remote townships. I remember joining in welcoming peasant families in arcadic setting for the holy day of St. Ivan, worshiped in early summer, marking the beginning of the splendid summer season. After a whole day of working in corn fields, people would gather in a backyard around crackling bonfires (Kres). The song would follow along with dance. I remember running freely in wet grass, chasing fireflies up and down the hills.
In the midst of the self sustainable quazi-vegetarian movement in my family, we had our own goats, because my dad decided to follow in the footsteps of Kazaks people in Russian plains, living off goat milk and kefir. My mum also baked bread daily, using rye, spelt and whole wheat flour. My father would ask the miller to prepare the right mixture for our needs. Sometimes the bread would be made of corn flour, with a brown crispy crust, another of my favorite treats. The little meat we ate was always grass-fed, pasture-raised beef, pork or lamb and the eggs were picked from neighbours’ free range chickens. It was a kid’s duty to collect glass bottles of rich and creamy milk supplied daily from the old lady Jana. Once a week we would have some cottage cheese and sour cream supplied from the same farm. In spring, women in my family always ventured to the bush to pick fiddleheads growing in the shady places closer to the wetlands. Dandelion leaves were another gift from nature in early spring, which would be eaten for 3-4 weeks before Easter, to feed us in the Lenten season of fasting.
Departing from my Roots
Finally, Perun had succeeded in his attempts to kill Veles. Perun, the God of all Living, exiled Veles from his kingdom, to The Underworld, or the land of dead, where birds would fly in the winter and return from in spring. Perun restored order in the world, inhabiting the crown of the tree. After Veles was exiled in the Underworld, he lived in the roots of the same tree. Veles still had some power. He continued sending messengers to the world of living. Towards the end of the year, as days got shorter and shorter, Veles had gained more power, blurring the boundaries between the world of living and the Underworld. In the longest night of the year, the spirits of dead travelled across the land, returning to life to visit their relatives among living. In the night of winter solstice, or the Great Night, villagers dressed like shamans, wearing grotesque masks and coats of sheep wool, with animal horns, roaming around villages. They were wet and dirty, cheering the roots of the three, where their deity / protector lived. They were making noise going from the house to house where the master of the house would present gifts. Those gifts were sacrificial gifts to Veles, who was revered as god of fertility, after he stole life-giving waters of the world. Veles was both ambiguous and notorious, the shape-shifting God of Underworld, representing the Water of Life and Death at the same time.
It was the coming of war and destruction in former Yugoslavia that brought chaotic transition to this democratic society. A new phase of the free economy caused a middle class disappearance, by the greed of unbridled capitalism in the country that emerged in the map of Europe, my new country, Croatia. The events that follow represent a black hole in my personal history, years of losses and struggles in my personal life, which coincided with dissolution of Yugoslavia. It was 1990, a historical year in Eastern Europe, marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was growing into adulthood turning, 18 when the war broke out, proving my grandmother’s rule that every subsequent generation must endure war in Balkans.
In recent years I have been drawn to the big city, The City Where Young Souls Are Lost, to study languages at the Faculty of Arts. I mark that year a cornerstone marking a departure from the roots I was bestowed at times when I was living in my small town on the edge of the big country. I mourned loss of the communal lifestyle, the support network of my family and friends, and the absence of natural environment.
February 4th 2004: The night of Full Moon in Leo, Georgetown, Ontario
I felt first spasms in my round big belly, a sign of the coming labour. I started a prayer to the Queen of Heaven, which is what I call Virgin Mary. The goddess traditionally associated with the Moon, Virgin Mary was honoured by all women in my family. There was a long line of widowhood in my family. Since no one knows when that phenomenon became part of my family legacy, the women were quite capable of dealing with various troubles, from famine to illnesses, enslavement to the persecution of Catholics. What was commonplace in their experiences was the fact there were no certainties unless for the land that they belonged to and their faith. Countries were changing, as well as armies, regimes, and governments. To illustrate, my great-grandmother’s husband never returned from the Russian front in the World War I. Her brother died of tuberculosis he contracted in the same war. Their sons were suffering as slaves in the Nazi-work prisons, and son of their sons were prosecuted in the comuninist regime. As far as the stories were told, I remember countless instances of terrible suffering, injustice, and social breakdowns. [iii]
Women in our family placed their hopes to the Queen of Heaven, their protector, the Great Mother with the aura of twelve stars above her head which connected her to the astral powers of the moon. Ever since my grandmother told me a story of when to plant the seeds or pick the crops based on the phases of the moon, I’ve started to believe that the Moon had a major role to play in the drama of life on Earth.[iv] When I had irregular periods, Granny told me to sleep outside on the patio in the light of the full Moon. As we stepped outside on the warm starry night, she revealed secrets of the Moon. Grandmother talked about powers of the full Moon, which causes tides to ebb and flow, making many animals to become restless and aggressive, and similar behavior can be seen in people under the Full Moon. “As the Moon grows, it causes round and watery membrane to rupture. The hatching of the baby turtles, for example, happens on the Full Moon. A similar thing happens to the female placenta. Many babies in our family were born during the phase of the full Moon.”
“Alleluia!” I thought as the contractions got stronger, closer to midnight: “Grandmother was right; the babies are born on the night of the full Moon.” In the absence of a female support network, I delivered a baby boy with assistance of the good vibrations from the Universe, in the early hours of a cold February morning. Luka was a little Aquarian, with his Moon and Mars in Leo, born in the same night with five girls, in the small local hospital where the yearly average is less than a baby per day. When I shared the news with my grandmother, telling her about Luka’s birth, she quickly foretold that he would have one woman on each finger later in life. Aside from grandmother’s machoistic prophecy, I could envision a baby of the Age of Aquarius, a strong persona that will exemplify a mix of Aquarian freedom and demonstration of strength that Leonine power will give him. It would not be an easy balance to maintain, I knew, all along. I was born with Sun in Leo, and Moon in Aquarius. My boy and I were two counterparts with inverted lunar and solar principles; one an extension of the other, both fighting against injustice, both altruistic and loving but self-centred and strong at the same time. Hence, we continue to struggle with contradictions of our own characters. I knew it would be difficult for Luka, as it was for me, to maintain integrity fighting in a small way for ideals inherent to the very core of our being. However, I keep the vision of bringing light and illuminating places where darkness and suffering abide. Just as the Slavic ancestral creation story goes, it is a legacy of the Sun Warriors, to fight divine battles. [v]
I have the fundamental belief of relying on guidance of the Spirit, which had different shapes and forms over the course of my life. In early days, as a child, I imagined “sweet Jesus” surrounded with angels on puffy clouds. As the word around me became crueler, along with reality I lived in, I had imagined the Almighty God, powerful father figure to guide me through the hardships. Surprisingly, time came when my relationship with my father broke loose for whatever reason. At the same point, I departed from a vision of the strong and powerful God that I feared, and had nothing to rely on or to believe. I was a hollow person, cut from the roots.
June 15, 1995: New Moon, Medugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina
I visited Medugorje for the first time in 1995, but would return many times. Medugorje is a holy site where it was believed the Holy Mother visited six sheppards in the mountain of Herzegovina, then part of former Yugoslavia. Although claiming that I was converted on the hill Krizovac (The Mountain of the Cross) might sound cliché, the change came slowly. It crept in with being subtly attuned to the Force of Power; a higher benevolent force that I envisioned was flowing through reality. I saw the powerful tide creating a perfect wave, and myself moving forward with tremendous power. I felt the vibration of that place aligned with the vibrations of the Universe. The Stone is Burning on The Hill, a hill I would call Krizovac, contemplating about it in present moment that somehow reminded me as a surface of the moon. It was empty and desolate, barren, void of life, white with the shades of gray, strong winds howling through the rugged landscape. Similarly, my daily existence in post-war Croatia continued to be like a reflection of that hill. My social self was resisting a change, craving to fit in, struggling for a high income job and all forms of “deceptive appearances.” I abandoned teaching, and went into marketing and publishing business, lured by the sirens’ song of “corporate career”. It was a career suicide, a life of quiet desperation, I realized much later.
Nevertheless, my grandmother taught me that new beginnings should follow the New Moon phase. I watched the thin narrow Moon recede along the horizon, the tops of the big rocks turning green and gold and purple in the encroaching twilight. “Thanks,” I told the thing that is part God and part Ocean. “That was just what I had in mind.” I was ready to turn a new page on my spiritual path.
In Slavic mythology, similar to the Nordic lores, the word was shown as a holy tree, usually an oak tree. Its crown represented the sky, the realm of heavenly deities and celestial bodies, while the trunk was the realm of mortals. Finally, there were the roots of the tree, which represented the Underworld, the realm of dead, which was quite surprisingly a lovely place, a green and wet world of grassy plains and eternal spring. [vi]
December 24, 2000: Toronto
Unlike my gloomy mind-set in late 1999, a story of the World Tree sees the Underworld as a lovely place, green, wet and abundant. The new millennium passed new optimism, somewhat unusual for my battered self. On Christmas Eve of 2000, I followed in the footsteps of my husband’s family and moved to Canada. As the old saying suggests, that it was darkest before the dawn, so was in my life story. In the night of winter solstice, on the cusp of the millennium, I came to the new world and experienced serious separation anxiety, culture shock, depression, loss of vocation and career, and loss of voice and identity. It was an astounding change for which I was unprepared.
A birth of my firstborn son, Niko under the New Moon of February 2002 got me back on track providing me again with a sense of purpose. I named him Niko after St. Nicolas who was patron saint of sailors in Croatian maritime tradition. I often meditated about the ship with big white inflated sails crossing the quiet sea. Only the azure colors of the sea were now replaced with green stillness of the lake, my new land entering slowly ecology of my mind.[vii]
[i] Lipanj is the month of June in Croatian, which originates from Lipa – linden tree
[ii] According to B. Betlemiems, idea that the folk tales supply children’s minds with the fear necessary to withstand life’s inevitable rigors is implies through my autobiography. It was crucial that I had stories my grandmother told me, and that I continued with reading folk tales, to be equipped for tough time ahead of me, when dying became part of my daily reality.
[iii] In Basso: Conveying these worlds to the next generation through stories produced expanded awareness, feelings of relief and fortified ability to cope, knowing that there were higher powers which could be trusted instead.
[iv] P. Sheppard explains the shift in attention that happened along with transition from hunter gatherer lifestyle to planters’ society. As planters, people were attuned to the weather and calendar, an awareness that would become meteorology and astronomy. The change to the cultivation of annuals was critical in reshaping of attention, for the seasonal pattern of birth, growth, death, and rebirth of crops
[v] Basso contemplates on how does one understands claims that one makes about himself, parallel I wondered about dynamic that is present in forming one’s view about the essence of ones being. Why people call themselves sun warriors, where such notion was coming from and how people view their relationship with the cosmos, land and forces in nature?
[vi] As for my ancestral creation story I’ve decided to interpolate myth I’ve studied during my undergraduate years in an autobiography assignment after reading Kane’s book “Wisdom of the Mythtellers”. I grasped the creation story in the new light, understanding new layers of meaning in it. I attempted to categorize “The World Tree” story according to Kane, I saw it as a “conquering mythology” which sets stage when the membrane boundaries of hunter-gatherer myth are replaced by the fence of
horticulturalist. Kane affirms It was often the case when speaking through myth served as a form of expropriating the environment, the invaders in new land had formed alliances with gods of fertility, and gods who gave them rain and sun and thunder. These deities are able to reach inaccessible and subterranean realms of earth, and intersect on people’s behalf. Which was particularly striking was the fact that mythical layer resisted Christianity for next two thousand years continuing to influence generation through folk tales and even entering literature.
[vii]What was profound realization over the period of writing my eco-biography was interconnectedness of a landscape and people. In Egan’s work in the mythological phase of human development, one sees no division with the natural surroundings. I felt yearning through the phases of development to go back to mythological phase, to feel oneness with vast landscapes of Ontario plains, lakes and forest. I felt connection with the environment in my new land, which was able to necessitate my primary connection to mother earth.
[i] Lipanj is the month of June in Croatian, which originates from Lipa – linden tree
[ii] According to B. Betlemiems, idea that the folk tales supply children’s minds with the fear necessary to withstand life’s inevitable rigors is implies through my autobiography. It was crucial that I had stories my grandmother told me, and that I continued with reading folk tales, to be equipped for tough time ahead of me, when dying became part of my daily reality.
[iii] In Basso: Conveying these worlds to the next generation through stories produced expanded awareness, feelings of relief and fortified ability to cope, knowing that there were higher powers which could be trusted instead.
[iv] P. Sheppard explains the shift in attention that happened along with transition from hunter gatherer lifestyle to planters’ society. As planters, people were attuned to the weather and calendar, an awareness that would become meteorology and astronomy. The change to the cultivation of annuals was critical in reshaping of attention, for the seasonal pattern of birth, growth, death, and rebirth of crops
[v] Basso contemplates on how does one understands claims that one makes about himself, parallel I wondered about dynamic that is present in forming one’s view about the essence of ones being. Why people call themselves sun warriors, where such notion was coming from and how people view their relationship with the cosmos, land and forces in nature?
[vi] As for my ancestral creation story I’ve decided to interpolate myth I’ve studied during my undergraduate years in an autobiography assignment after reading Kane’s book “Wisdom of the Mythtellers”. I grasped the creation story in the new light, understanding new layers of meaning in it. I attempted to categorize “The World Tree” story according to Kane, I saw it as a “conquering mythology” which sets stage when the membrane boundaries of hunter-gatherer myth are replaced by the fence of horticulturalist. Kane affirms It was often the case when speaking through myth served as a form of expropriating the environment, the invaders in new land had formed alliances with gods of fertility, and gods who gave them rain and sun and thunder. These deities are able to reach inaccessible and subterranean realms of earth, and intersect on people’s behalf. Which was particularly striking was the fact that mythical layer resisted Christianity for next two thousand years continuing to influence generation through folk tales and even entering literature.
[vii]What was profound realization over the period of writing my eco-biography was interconnectedness of a landscape and people. In Egan’s work in the mythological phase of human development, one sees no division with the natural surroundings. I felt yearning through the phases of development to go back to mythological phase, to feel oneness with vast landscapes of Ontario plains, lakes and forest. I felt connection with the environment in my new land, which was able to necessitate my primary connection to mother earth.