#st. stephen

[twilightbeam]

28th of June 2024

[unteriors]

Schurlknight Road, St. Stephen, South Carolina.

[lionofchaeronea]

Title: The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen Artist: Annibale Carracci (Italian [Bolognese, active in Rome], 1560-1609) Date: 1603-04 Genre: religious art (Christianity) Period: Baroque, Counter-Reformation Medium: oil on copper Dimensions: 51 cm (20 in) high x 68 cm (26.7 in) wide Location: Louvre Museum, Paris, France

[dvoeverie-stitches]

After more soul searching than it probably deserved, I changed my tumblr handle a couple of days ago, deciding to wait a couple of days before I also changed my icon so followers wouldn’t be totally confused.

I used the snake witch of Gotland, that I designed and stitched many moons ago, as my icon for over a decade, starting with it on an older tumblr. At the time I was just beginning to explore my ancestral lineages and started with the Anglo-Saxons, as my surname is old English. At the time I was doing a deep dive in Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology.

I rather quickly moved into Western Slavic paganism, pulled by my love of Slavic embroidery and other folk arts toward my Moravian ancestors while still keeping the liturgical English year as a backbone of my seasonal observances. Over the last few years I have learned more and more of the liturgical observances of my Moravian ancestors while also working with pagan elements. This year I had time to do a deep dive into a little booklet I found on the region of Moravia my family is from and went even further down the Moravian folk Catholic rabbit hole.

All this to say that in addition to retiring the pagan-stitches handle, I’m retiring the snake witch as well—though I still love her dearly.

There is no telling for sure what specific birdie this Moravian girl is—if she even is something specific—BUT that tail makes me think of a wren. When I researched birds in Czechia with a pointed up tail the Eurasian wren popped up repeatedly. Other birds with pointed up tails seemed too big to perch on a flower like that.

She is one of the first Moravian patterns I ever stitched. I graphed the pattern off of pictures I found of a Moravian kroj sleeve.

I have chosen her as my new icon because this image has elements of both flora and fauna as well as representing the Moravian part of my heritage and the devotional work I do through stitching. I spend a huge part of my time working with the land and I feel the image of a wren (a personal ally) and what seems to me to be a sunflower (a plant ally this year and symbolic of my relationship with solntse/sunna/saule) represents this relationship perfectly.

The wren also represents the Gaelic part of my heritage as the wren hunt on St. Stephen’s Day is a big winter focal point in my practice. The wren, like Morana (the Western Slavic goddess I work with most closely) is a winter sacrifice.

The wren can also serve as yet another symbol of dual faith as it is tangled up in the folklore of the pagan and Christian customs of St. Stephen’s Day on the British and Irish Isles.

[dyke-for-christ]

First Christian martyr. Deacon. Preacher.

Everything we know about him is only found in the Acts of Apostles. While preaching in the streets, an angry mob who believed his message to be blasphemy dragged him outside the city and stoned him to death. In the crowd, on the side of the mob, was the future Paul the Apostle. Stephen's last words were: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 8:59a).

[cgcosmo]

[physicsgoblin]

Happy Feast of St. Stephen's day! Pour it out for a real one!

[vigilantkilliforniakatholixxx]