by Andrea St. Amand
Fun, easy alchemy for this holiday season.
Like any good Estonian, my husband is a natural pagan. He grew up during Estonia’s last decades behind the Iron Curtain, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union.
In Soviet times, Estonians sought to preserve their language, folklore, rituals, traditional dress, jewelry and music. The recent decades of economic and political freedom have posed the greatest threat to centuries of Estonian pagan practices due to simple neglect.
Understandably, when the Soviet Union collapsed, younger generations of Estonians sought modernization and opportunity, at all costs. They wanted to move forward, out of the stagnation of the Soviet period, away from the old ways. My husband was one of those youngsters in the early 90s.
He’s now fifty-one. I’ve known him for over twenty years. For the first time this Christmas, he suggested we pour the luck for 2018. What?
I guess this year it dawned on him to look back as well as forward.
Witches of Yule, I present a new-to-me, old Estonian holiday tradition that’s fun and reconnects us with our intuition and imagination. Let’s do this!
Ingredients:
- Lead-free solder – purchase at any hardware store
- Large stainless steel spoon
- Heating element (fire, gas or electric burner – we used the front burner of our gas stove on high)
- Bucket of room-temperature water
Snip a piece of solder and bend it into a ball. Large or small, up to you. Just make sure it fits in the spoon and won’t overflow when melted.
Hover spoon over heat until solder is liquefied.
Stand back and pour into bucket of water.
KA-FWUMP!
Your piece should be cool enough to remove immediately by hand.
Repeat.
Voila! There are your pieces for divining 2018.
Hang your pieces on your tree, wreath, whatever makes you merry, along with all of your other wishes and intentions for the New Year.
Check in with your pieces throughout the year. Next December, melt them into something new.
What the piece looks like will depend on the size of your solder ball, how fast you pour – and of course, what you’re divining about the year to come.
My husband’s big piece turned into a fiery dragon, mine into an elongated wave or cliff, with a girl at the bottom and an eagle perched to soar from the top. The smaller ones look like fairies.
Sounds like one hell of a year.
IN CONCLUSION
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Image by Alastair Smith