Patricia Furstenberg, Author of Dreamland and Other Books
Travel Through Books
Symbolism in Romanian folk pottery, as ancient as the Neolithic period, paints the image of an advance culture with a deep understanding of the nature’s laws and human existence.
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Change is part of life and the catalyst of moving forward, often providing us with invaluable lessons such as How the Tiger got its Stripes, my adaptation of an ancient legend.
A long, long time ago, when animals could talk among themselves much like humans do today, a white, stripe-less tiger, a very young tiger, brave and foolish, tiptoed one morning all the way to the edge of the great jungle where he grew up… although he knew he shouldn’t have. For only a quick peek at the rice fields growing nearby… for he’d heard their song in the wind.
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This tall house, a near lookalike of the one depicted on the 10 Lei Romanian Banknote, comes with a legend about a fire, and about how three villages came to be.
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The good, old bear, or the grizzly ursine, populated Romanian mythology since the times of the Thracians, and tales of its powers and wisdom have left their paw-prints on the Romanian folklore too.
The bear as a totem, as a symbol of one’s ancestry, was an animal revered by ancient Thracian religion, alongside the wolf. Why, it is even whispered in legends that the great Zalmoxix, the god worshiped by Geto-Dacians, was wrapped in a bear’s skin right after his birth. To soak up the power and the strength of the great beast, and perhaps even its endurance.
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Enchanting Solomonars, these Romanian cloud-chaser sorcerers, are also called eagles or hail-gatherers, by their skills; cloud-walkers by their powers; dragon-riders to the welkin and back, by their means of transport.
The Solomonars were revered, yet feared, called upon, yet shunned for their innate understanding of nature’s forces; for their instinctive ability to read the weather, even in its wildest exhibitions; for their solid grasping of what was there, yet not seen, felt, yet intangible, life-threatening towards everyone else, but themselves.
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