Kickstarter campaign update:
Our Kickstarter campaign for Light Love Rituals is available now for preview. Please take a look and feel free to give us any feedback before we launch the campaign next month.
Unlike other campaigns, we’re not offering digital rewards besides the ebook. We have permission to use the artist’s illustrations for the book and for promotional purposes, but we cannot share them in other ways. Copies are available, however, from the artist’s son through his Facebook site, so we welcome you to visit there.
Today’s article is about the Bulgarian embroidery, shevitza. You’ll see these symbols throughout our updated copy of Light Love Rituals. We hope this brings more understanding to the importance of these symbols.
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When you look at traditional outfits from different nations, what stands out? If the clothing is Bulgarian, you’re likely to notice the colorful embroidery along necklines, sleeves, and hems. These embellishments are more than merely decorations, however.
Bulgarians perform many customs and rituals to keep people safe from evil forces—whether from spells or spirits. Not least among these protective methods are the more than 800 known shevitzi, the symbols embroidered within their clothing. Some are traditional Slavic designs, while others have been integrated and modified from other cultures over the ages.
Symbolism
Each motif serves a purpose, although the meaning of many is now long forgotten or has been changed and re-interpreted by the women who embroidered the symbols. Within the stitches, mothers, mothers-in-law, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers have encoded blessings for health, happiness, longevity, love, abundance, children, prosperity, and spiritual cultivation.
Flowers and plants to this day remain among the most popular symbols, while animals, considered to be among the oldest symbols, are less frequent. Those images that remain are highly stylized, as are images of pests and vermin, which are embroidered into clothing as a means to keep them away. Other motifs may be for tools and common household items.
More recognizable motifs are The Tree of Life (reaching into the three realms of heaven, Earth, and underworld), the Mother Goddess (a fertility symbol representing a woman giving birth, who often is shown with horsemen or the sun and moon on either side), the Celestial Turtle (interlocking infinity symbols that represent wisdom, perseverance, and longevity), Elbetica (for the four seasons), and Kanatitsa (three pairs of triangles that represent the cycle of life).
The motif used and its magical meaning can vary depending on what part of the garment they are embroidered on. Some are used on clothing that is worn only on special occasions, while other motifs are strictly only on either men’s or women’s clothing. Designs also indicated a person’s marital status, social class, or where they lived.
The Wedding Shirt
Shirts have much significance among Bulgarians and are given to people at special occasions, such as weddings, name days, and baptisms. The wedding shirt, in particular, is lavishly ornamented. In the past, it was considered sacred. It was made of linen or hemp because people believed these fabrics held protective power, and linen was associated with the sky. The inability to count the threads in the sleeve was also considered protection against wickedness on Earth, acting as a secure passage to heaven.
Girls began creating their wedding garments around the age of 12. After their wedding, they no longer embroidered their clothing, until the time they taught the craft to their daughters. This wedding shirt was carefully stored until old age as a garment for heaven. It was believed that in paradise, the man and woman would recognize the wedding shirt and so would reunite for eternity.
Embroidered Colors
Red is the predominant embroidery color, with other colors being white, blue, green, yellow, and black or brown. As with the symbols, the colors also have special symbolism.
White and red are the main colors in wedding attire, which symbolize male and female, heaven and earth, connected in a sacred marriage with each other. White is a symbol of the feminine principle, of innocence, purity, and virginity; and red of the masculine principle, of fire and fertility.
Green is the color of nature and new life. It is associated with the Tree of Life.
Blue represents the sky, the sea, the water. It embodies truth and trust, purity, serenity and contemplation.
Yellow is a symbol of gold and the Sun, a source of joy and merriment, fire, light, as well as the afterlife and the dead.
Black or brown is the color of Mother Earth. It embodies stability and security, fertility.
The shevitza is colorful and complex like Bulgarian culture itself and symbolizes the soul of the Bulgarian people.
Sources:
Ganeva, Dr. Radoslava. “Bulgarian Folk Costumes – Symbols and Traditions.” Bulgarian Diplomatic Review, Supplement to Issue 3/2003, Year 3. http://www.protobulgarians.com/English%20translations/Bulgarian%20history%20in%20English/Bulgarian%20folk%20costumes%20-%20Symbols%20and%20traditions.pdf.
MacDermott, Mercia. Bulgarian Folk Customs. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998.
Montiglio, Daniel. “The Secret Symbols In The Bulgarian Embroidery.” https://www.foreigner.bg/the-secret-symbols-in-the-bulgarian-embroidery/.