A Magic Breakfast

I recite a spell from the book "Mythic and Magic Songs of the Estonians" by Friedrich Kreutzwald, 1848. It bans the snake so it will not harm humans and also conjures healing power.
The video is shown here in a very reduced quality. You can see it on YouTube alternatively.
And here is a video of an American learning Estonian. Respect! He is doing very well.

I speak the words in the way that Estonian was spoken in exile in my childhood.
I made a mistake in the end. So you better not use the spell.

We took this video in Berlin, in the café where we had breakfast. This explains the voices and noise in the background.

And here is the -- corrected -- spell, integrated in the reptile quilt.

The excerpt from the book shows an old-fashioned spelling. Estonian was based almost entirely on oral transmission.

Preparing for vacation in a few weeks

I won't take a computer with me, and I don't think I will visit an internet café. Just as I did during my vacation in past years, I'll start an embroidery project. Among the things I got from my Mom, I found an old towel, I presume it is linen. I tried a bit to embroider it with wool. Hm. Not as regular as I was hoping, but that's the challenge of the material. I started sketching patterns from my old Estonian folk art book from 1957. My plan is to make a geometrical border and an inner border with flowers. It is a bit of a guessing game how much crewel wool of each color I should take with me. Well, if I can change my own patterns, I can meet the demand in case I run short. But maybe I can buy crewel wool in Turkey more easily and cheaper than in Germany. Women in Turkey are very skilful with crafts like crocheting and embroidery. My sisters in law had a little case with a glass window where they kept their collection of head scarves with crocheted and seed bead embellished edges.

Try something new again

Not satisfied with the printed letters, I bought stencil paint. It is oil-based and buttery. I cut letters out of a transparent foil which works very well, because the letters are clear and crisp, as I wanted them. I finished the first spell which is to give a person appetite and well-being.

The other one is more a kind of epic poem and describes how someone is carried away by a crow who keeps the speaker under her wing and takes him (her?) to the Golden village to the Golden Chamber of Happiness.


Vares oli vaga linnoke / võttis mind teise tiiwa alla/viis mind ilo külasse/viis mind ilo kuldatuba/ilo kuldakamberisse.

If you'd like to know what this language sounds like, here is Estonian rap.

Fusing the spell

The letters are fixed by ironing and dyed with diluted acrylics. Not as brillant as I was hoping they would be. Then I fused them onto WU, cut the spell in stripes and fused them onto the gown.






I had considered to cut the gown up and resew it into a t-shape like the Joseph's Coat, but it did not allow me to.


So I fixed the spell along the edges. And I will have to sew all this because fused parts tend to separating from the base.
I let the spell run around the space, so it is turnt upside down at the lower edge and makes a 90°-turn like it was used on ancient inscription stones in Scandinavia.

I wrote that tradition in Estonia was oral. There was an exemption of wood cut runes, the calendar system; it went back more than 10200 years, back to the time when the land emerged from the water through postglacial events similar to those happening in Canada.

Root printing and a new project. And: Stealing back "forbidden" signs

This is a rutabaga. I cut it into pieces with smooth edges. These letters are runes.









Why this? Right wing ambitions? Oh, no. I just feel that these traditional letters must be taken back into culture. The only way to free them from evil traditions is to start new ones, hopefully for the better.

I start printing an Estonian magic spell. This one was written down by the ethnologist Fr. Kreutzwald and published 1854. It is about subdueing anger and envy from others. Some of these spells were to make the dough rise well and help making butter; others were to protect the rural serfs from being beaten by their owner. -- These magic spells were not written in runes. They weren't written at all, because Estonians traded them by oral transmission. To use these letters is my own idea.

This is part of a new project. I used black thick textile paint which can be fixed by ironing, and plan to cut it in stripes and sew it onto the "Witches Gown". This is the name of my new project. As a base I want to use a piece of black cotton with kawry shells and a little embroidery which I made for myself as a thing to wear; then I did not really. This piece had other plans with me.

An unbelievably rich source on traditions is this Estonian online journal.