Bee in mythology. Dead bees turned honey into the sun. Cupid's arrows - Persephone's honey Persephone's bees myth

Reflections of the image of the Bee in mythological representations are known already in the Neolithic era (images in Çatalhöyük in Southern Turkey) and are apparently associated with the development of primitive beekeeping, primarily in the area of Asia Minor and the Caucasus. the Middle East, Egypt (there were other isolated centers of beekeeping, cf. the testimony of D. de Landa in the “Report on Affairs in Yucatan”). One of the important variants of the fertility motif is associated with the Bee - the “opening” of spring. In Russian stoneflies, the Bee appears in the same contexts (“... You close the winter..., open the summer..., grain-bearing summer”) as other symbols of spring - the lark, the sandpiper, the Most Pure Mother. But the Bee sometimes acts as an instrument of the god, helping to awaken (summon) the deity of fertility.

In the Hittite myth, the fertility deity Telepinus disappears and plants, animals, people and gods die, everything is covered by a cloud of a (bee) swarm. The mother of the gods, Khannahanna, sends a Bee to search for Telepinus, which finds and stings him. God goes berserk. His anger is tempered with special rituals by the goddess Kamrusepa (literally “spirit of a swarm of bees”, corresponding to Hatti Kattakhtsi-Furi, “queen goddess”). When Telepinus's anger subsides, the cloud of the (bee) swarm disappears. Evidence of the connection between Bees and the image of the world tree has also been preserved in the Russian ritual tradition [“A cypress tree grew. Like in this tree there are three gardens: at the top of the tree and the nightingale sings songs, in the middle of the tree and the yar bees (cf. the rage of Telepinus and the connection with the Bee Yarila) they build nests.” According to Scandinavian myth, the Yggdrasil tree is saturated with life-giving sacred honey. In a number of traditions, there is a connection between the Bee and the oak, acting both as the world tree and as the tree of the Thunderer. Wed. the fable of Phaedrus (II 13) about the honeycomb on a tall oak tree or the hymn of Callimachus to Artemis associated with the Bee, which speaks of shooting into a hive and then into an oak tree (a shot or a loud sound is associated with curbing a wild swarm of Bees).

In the Russian tradition, the motive for the appearance of Bees in Rus' from overseas is stable: God sends Zosima and Savvaty to bring “God’s worker” (or Sviridin and Sviridina, i.e. male and female Bees) to Rus' from the land of Egypt (from the mountain, from the cave to country of idolatry or, conversely, paradise); in turn, Archangel Gabriel raises all the “bee power” and orders it to fly to Rus'. According to conspiracies, the transfer of Bees to Rus' is patronized by the Savior and the Mother of God, located on the Alatyr stone. This is reinforced by the presence of a bee holiday in Rus' - April 17, the day of Zosima, whose image represents one of the experiences of the pagan era with its cult of the bee god, whose true name was lost (zosima was the name of the hive with the icon of Zosima and Savvaty, the Solovetsky saints). The Lithuanian equivalent of Zosima is Bubilas. In Dr. Russian texts (songs, spells) associate Egor and Ilya with the Bee (who are one way or another transformations of the Thunderer), as well as fire and water, the elements of the Thunderer’s weapon. A similar connection between the Bee (with the thunderer Jupiter) is also found in the Roman tradition. Wed. the drowning of the first swarm of Bees in water, the birth of Bees from water, from a water one (cf. the story of the Arcadian shepherd Aristaeus, the son of the water nymph Cyrene and the grandson of the river Peneus or - according to another version - Uranus and Gaia, identified with Zeus or Apollo and in charge of protecting the Bees) , the sacrifice of Bees to the waterman, etc. (cf. Bees carrying clean water from a holy spring to Demeter), the motif of the Bees lighting a monastery with the subsequent flooding of the fire (cf. the Romanian idea that a fire caused by Ilya’s lightning can only be extinguished water mixed with honey, or honey itself, blessed on Elijah’s day).

In Blue Freemasonry, the bee is a symbol of hard work. The brothers of the order have sometimes been likened to these industrious insects, and the Masonic lodge to a hive, where their tireless work is constantly in full swing.

Excerpt from the book "Define Your Totem: A Complete Description of the Magical Properties of Animals, Birds and Reptiles" by Ted Andrews

For many peoples, the bee played the role of a mystical and religious symbol. In Hindu art, depending on the context, the bee could represent Vishnu, Krishna, or even the goddess of love, Kama. In Egypt, the bee was a symbol of royalty. In Greece it was part of the complex symbolism of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the Celts associated it with secret wisdom. But perhaps most often the bee was associated with sexuality and fertility due to its sting, as well as its active participation in pollinating flowers.

Bees were once also considered symbols of achieving something impossible. For many years, scientists were unable to understand how bees could fly. From an aerodynamic point of view, their body is too large in relation to the wings. Only recently has science been able to determine that the flight of a bee is possible due to the fact that its wings move at very high speed. However, for many it remains a symbol of achieving what at first glance seems impossible.

Bees are often considered the most industrious and useful of insects. Without their participation, not a single flower would grow, and many fruit plants would not bear fruit. Most flowering plants reproduce through pollination. When a bee lands on a flower to collect nectar, pollen is attached to its legs, which is then transferred to other flowers, and the process of fertilization occurs.

O. E. Mandelstam
"Take the joy from my palms"

Take joy from my palms
A little sun and a little honey
As Persephone's bees told us.

Do not untie an unattached boat,
Can't hear the shod shadow in the fur,
You cannot overcome fear in the dense life.

All we have left is kisses
Hairy like little bees
That they die when they fly out of the hive.

They rustle in the transparent wilds of the night,
Their homeland is the dense forest of Taygetos,
Their food is time, lungwort, mint.

Take my wild gift for joy -
A tatty dry necklace
From dead bees that turned honey into the sun.

Date of writing: 1920

Mandelstam Osip Emilievich - poet, prose writer, essayist.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891, Warsaw - 1938, Vladivostok, transit camp), Russian poet, prose writer. Relations with his parents were very alienated, loneliness, “homelessness” - this is how Mandelstam presented his childhood in his autobiographical prose “The Noise of Time” (1925). For Mandelstam’s social self-awareness, it was important to classify himself as a commoner, a keen sense of injustice existing in society.
Mandelstam's attitude towards Soviet power since the late 1920s. ranges from sharp rejection and denunciation to repentance before the new reality and glorification of I.V. Stalin. The most famous example of denunciation is the anti-Stalin poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us...” (1933) and the autobiographical “Fourth Prose.” The most famous attempt to take power is the poem “If only I would take coal for the highest praise...”, to which the name “” was assigned. In mid-May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested and exiled to the city of Cherdyn in the Northern Urals. He was accused of writing and reading anti-Soviet poems. From July 1934 to May 1937 he lived in Voronezh, where he created a cycle of poems, “Voronezh Notebooks,” in which an emphasis on lexical vernacular and colloquial intonations is combined with complex metaphors and sound play. The main theme is history and the place of man in it (“Poems about the Unknown Soldier”). In mid-May 1937 he returned to Moscow, but he was forbidden to live in the capital. He lived near Moscow, in Savelovo, where he wrote his last poems, then in Kalinin (now Tver). At the beginning of March 1938, Mandelstam was arrested in the Samatikha sanatorium near Moscow. A month later, he was sentenced to 5 years in the camps for counter-revolutionary activities. He died of exhaustion in a transit camp in Vladivostok.
http://www.stihi-xix-xx-vekov.ru/biografia39.html

YURSKY, SERGEY YURIEVICH, (b. 1935), actor, director, writer, poet, screenwriter. People's Artist of the Russian Federation.

O. E. Mandelstam
"Take the joy from my palms"

Take joy from my palms
A little sun and a little honey
As Persephone's bees told us.

Do not untie an unattached boat,
Can't hear the shod shadow in the fur,
You cannot overcome fear in the dense life.

All we have left is kisses
Hairy like little bees
That they die when they fly out of the hive.

They rustle in the transparent wilds of the night,
Their homeland is the dense forest of Taygetos,
Their food is time, lungwort, mint.

Take my wild gift for joy -
A tatty dry necklace
From dead bees that turned honey into the sun.

Date of writing: 1920

YURSKY, SERGEY YURIEVICH, (b. 1935), actor, director, writer, poet, screenwriter. People's Artist of the Russian Federation.

The use of non-traditional beekeeping products is also very popular, as well as the usual honey, propolis and royal jelly. A striking example is a tincture of dead bees in alcohol: the production, use and reviews of this unique medicine can be found in the information in our article. It is used internally and externally for a wide variety of diseases, as well as for the prevention and strengthening of the body's defenses.

Benefits and features

Hardworking insects are not only distinguished by their enviable diligence in collecting honey, but they themselves are an excellent remedy for many diseases. Chitin shell, melanin and chitosan are the main components of the insect shell. In addition, after death, the famous bee venom and the remains of honey products consumed during life remain.

All this makes up a unique balance of nutrients, which are responsible for the therapeutic effect. That is why in medicine there are many cases of using dead bees - these are dead bees from which the tincture is made.

Effect of tincture:

strengthens the heart muscle;
reduces cholesterol levels;
helps cleanse the liver, gastrointestinal tract and blood vessels;
stimulates metabolic processes in the body;
launches regeneration processes in the body;
relieves the inflammatory process;
cleanses the body of toxins;
used to treat joints;
facilitates the occurrence of colds;
normalizes digestive processes;
helps strengthen the immune system.

Such drugs are useful not only when consumed orally. They can be used as rubs and compresses for many dermatological problems, to heal wounds, burns and cracks in the skin, as well as to reduce pain in problem areas (muscles, joints, venous nodes).

Interesting: you can prepare a medicinal ointment based on dead bees. To do this, crushed particles of dry insects are added to the cream base (usually heated vegetable oil). This remedy can treat burns, inflammation and damage to the skin.

How to cook?

The average lifespan of a little worker is up to forty days. Even after death, the preserved bodies can be put to good use. During the summer season, bees rarely die in the hives; most often you can see them on the territory. When found on the ground and on asphalt, a dead bee is not used, because safety and cleanliness in this case are difficult to control.

It is best to stock up on dead bees directly in the hive, and also install a net near the entrance when the worker bees clear the house of dead relatives.

Tincture from dead bees is prepared only from clean, dry and, if possible, undamaged “raw materials”.

Cooking algorithm:

Collect dead bees.
Sift the mixture from possible dust and debris.
Dry in the oven at a temperature no higher than 45 degrees.
Grind in a coffee grinder.
Place in an opaque glass bottle.
Pour in alcohol and seal tightly.

It is necessary to infuse the medicine on dead bees for at least two weeks, after which the composition is ready for use. The proportions can be determined arbitrarily, the main thing is that they do not exceed 1 tablespoon of crushed bee powder per 100 ml of vodka or alcohol.

During infusion, the container with the medicine must be shaken periodically. It is also important to maintain the temperature regime, avoiding overheating or hypothermia, and also keeping it away from direct sunlight.

Important: collecting raw materials is most useful in the summer. Insects that have died as a result of pest infestation or heat treatment of the hive are not used to prepare the medicine.

How to use?

It is important to use any medicine only after consulting a doctor, therefore it is advisable to use such a traditional medicine as prescribed by a specialist. The tincture prepared with vodka or alcohol has excellent general strengthening properties and will also help get rid of many problems.

Dosage and schedule for taking the tincture:

For prevention purposes, the medicinal composition should be used for at least two months. Drops of tincture (the amount equal to the age) must be dissolved in a small amount of water, which is drunk on an empty stomach.

After the recommended course you need to take a break. During this time, there is an increase in resistance to colds, as well as an increase in vitality, so this treatment is recommended during seasonal colds, ailments and after illness as a restorative remedy.

External use

Preparation of the product for external use is extremely simple. To do this, take dry powder from crushed bees, prepared using the technology described above. For each teaspoon of the mixture you need to take 50 grams of natural vegetable oil. It must be heated without allowing it to boil. In a separate container, mix the two components, shaking the bottle well.

The mixture should be left to steep for 7-10 days, stirring occasionally. Apply to affected areas of the body warm, using a sterile gauze compress. This medicine helps very well with varicose veins, dermatitis of various localizations, wounds and burns. The only caution is to use with caution on the face and scalp.

Video: a recipe for dead bees or an elixir of youth and a cure for cancer.

Contraindications

Due to the high concentration of active components, the use of medicine from dead animals is not recommended in childhood, pregnancy and lactation, or individual intolerance to bee products.

Medicine made with alcohol from dead bees is an excellent remedy for many diseases. Thanks to its unique composition, this mixture will help strengthen the immune system, relieve pain of various localizations and exacerbation of chronic diseases.

/ / / Analysis of Mandelstam’s poem “Take joy from my palms...”

Osip Mandelstam is a sensitive lyricist, prose writer, translator and true Russian philosopher of the first half of the 20th century.

Analyzing the poet's works, one can understand that his life was not easy. Lonely childhood, love experiences, persecution for disobedience to authorities - all this was reflected in his creative worldview.

The feeling of falling in love and at the same time understanding the fleeting nature of everything that exists, the impossibility of overcoming one’s fear, is most clearly reflected in the poem “Take from my palms for joy...”.

The philosopher dedicated it to his beloved Olga Arbenina. She was a beautiful woman, and also a creative person - an actress and artist. She was admired by many poets of that time, and Osip Mandelstam could not resist. As confirmation - a whole love cycle of poems.

It is worth noting that Osip Mandelstam wrote about love earlier, but somehow in a generalized way, not specifically, but his feelings for the beautiful artist Arbenina were reflected in more earthly, frank lines.

The first line of poetry, “Take for joy...” conveys the intimacy of the lyrical hero’s feelings, warmth and complete trust in a loved one, and readiness to bring joy. A man in love offers to take a little sun and a little honey from his palms, thereby promising to warm him with his love and give sweet moments of happiness to his beloved.

Despite the optimistic beginning, the poem as a whole is rather sad. The author understands that a person is not given the opportunity to realize much, to overcome his fears. And there is only one thing left to do - forget yourself, immersed in the wonderful feeling of love. The author says that all they have left is kisses. Small earthly joys are human destiny. But how the poet would like to go beyond the boundaries of the possible!

Persephone's bees are an important symbol in the work. The bee is an important image in many cultures. She brings honey, which has long been considered the nectar of the gods. The bee is also an ambiguous symbol - the origin and completion of everything. According to myth, bees turned honey into the sun at the cost of their lives.

The poetry ends with an offer to accept a “wild” gift - a decoration made from lifeless bees that turned honey into the sun. Such a gift is inconspicuous and even scary, but has a deep philosophical meaning. Our lyrical hero is ready to do anything for the sake of his beloved, to make any sacrifice in order to bring a little sunshine into her life, in other words - love...

Bee products have long been used to treat diseases and strengthen the immune system. Most people not only enjoy using honey as a delicious natural sweet, but also treat numerous diseases. There are many supporters of treatment with propolis, pollen and royal jelly. But not everyone knows that tincture made from dead bees has valuable healing properties. In this publication we will talk in detail about how to prepare it and for what diseases it can be used.

What is podmor?

Dead bees are called dead bees. Beekeepers collect them at the bottom of the bee house. The greatest decline occurs in the spring. Because not all insects manage to survive the winter. During the summer, bees also die, but not in such numbers. Only fresh dead healthy minke whales are suitable for medicinal purposes.

The calves must be whole, clean and dry. You cannot use material that has mold or a very strong, almost nauseating smell. The collected waste is first sifted to get rid of debris. After this, it is dried in the oven at a low temperature (45°C is sufficient).

The tincture of dead bees smells very specific, but it is difficult to call this smell unpleasant.

The most suitable storage bag is made of natural fabric, which is hung in a well-ventilated area. If minke whale bodies have gone through all stages of processing and were stored correctly, then they retain their healing properties for several years. To date, scientists from many countries have conducted research on the properties of dead wood.

They all came to a common conclusion - dead bees contain a large amount of useful substances. The insect's shell consists of:

chitinous shell,
chitosan,
melanin.

These are substances that are amazing in their composition, capable of adsorbing and removing many harmful compounds from the body, as well as normalizing intestinal flora.

In addition, after the death of a bee, the body of a bee contains the remains of various honey products and bee venom, famous for its medicinal properties.

Podmor is a very effective raw material for the production of a variety of medicinal products - ointments, decoctions, infusions, including tinctures with alcohol or vodka.

When is tincture useful?

Tincture is an effective medicine made from dead bees. It is used both to treat many diseases and to strengthen the immune system of a sick person, which promotes a faster recovery. The product can also be taken by healthy people to strengthen the immune system and normalize the functioning of internal organs.

Podmora tincture should not be used by allergy sufferers, even if there is no allergy to bee products, at all stages of pregnancy, during lactation and by patients under 3 years of age.

The tincture is used as a remedy for many diseases, as well as to improve the functioning of human organs and systems:

In addition, this drug strengthens the immune system, which contributes to a faster recovery after serious illnesses or operations, as well as the occurrence of colds in a milder form. The product is taken orally or used for rubbing or compresses. External use promotes the healing of wounds and cracks in the skin, as well as the relief of joint or muscle pain.

VIDEO: How to get treatment, cure and live

Proven Recipes

Medicine from dead bees is prepared according to different recipes. We bring to your attention several “classic” recipes that have been successfully tested for more than one generation. Glass containers that are hermetically sealed are best suited for making the product.

Recipe 1 - vodka tincture (immune stimulation, against colds)

You will need:

250 grams of dead meat,
0.5 liters of good vodka.

Grind the dead minke whales in a mortar until they form a powder. Pour into a glass container and add vodka. The product is infused in a cool and always dark place for three weeks. Every three days the tincture should be shaken thoroughly to activate the process. The finished product should be consumed one teaspoon before meals in the morning and evening. If desired, you can drink it with water.

Do not drink tea or compote, or other drinks. It is not recommended to dissolve the tincture in water - take it into your mouth, but do not swallow, but spread it across the roof of your mouth with your tongue, and only then wash it down with water.

Recipe 2 - vodka tincture (prostate adenoma - internally, varicose veins - external use)

Another option using vodka. Need to:

15 grams of powdered dead meat,
a glass of quality vodka.

Mix the ingredients and then leave in a dark place for two weeks. Shake the bottle with tincture periodically. Strain the finished product through cheesecloth. The tincture is taken 20 drops three times a day before meals.

The general course of prevention or strengthening of the body is 1 year.

Recipe 3 - alcohol tincture (ARVI, weight loss)

Ingredients:

15 gr. crushed dead bees;
200 ml alcohol

Mix and then leave to infuse in a cool, dark place for three weeks. During the first 7 days, the flask is shaken daily, in the next 14 - every 3-4 days. If desired, you can add eucalyptus leaves in the second week of infusion. There should be only 1.5 grams of crushed leaves (10% of the amount of the main ingredient). Take as in the previous recipe.

Dry dead minke whales can be ground in a coffee grinder, mixed with honey and used to treat wounds. Ointment promotes skin regeneration

Recipe 4 - 70% alcohol (to cleanse the liver, for allergies)

To prepare the drug you will need a half-liter dark glass bottle. The dead fruit, ground to a powdery form, is poured exactly to half the container. Alcohol is poured into the bottle until its level exceeds the level of dead minke whales by three centimeters. The medicine is infused for two weeks with regular shaking of the bottle. The finished preparation must be filtered. Take the tincture 10 drops three times a day an hour before meals. The course of treatment is from one to two months.

Recipe 5 - on the water

This recipe is suitable for those who cannot take drugs containing alcohol for one reason or another. For example:

the patient is still a child;
problems with the gastrointestinal tract that exclude alcohol intake;
the patient is taking medications for which alcohol in any quantity is strictly prohibited;
the patient is a former alcoholic who quit drinking, etc.

This remedy can only heal for five days, provided it is stored in a cold place (a refrigerator is suitable). This recipe will have to be prepared often, but in small quantities. Cooking utensils should be enamel or glass. 30 grams of podmore powder (two level tablespoons) are poured with half a liter of water. You need to mix everything thoroughly.

Next, bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, and then simmer over very low heat for two hours. The finished medicine is filtered through gauze. Store in a glass bottle or jar that closes tightly. Take one tablespoon before meals three times a day, but only when chilled. If it is difficult for a child to take such an infusion, then you can add a little honey.

The corpses should be relatively fresh. In order to get such a harvest, you must first clear the beehives of death. and after 3-4 days open them again and collect

All the recipes we outlined have shown good results in practice. But before starting treatment or prevention, be sure to consult your doctor. Each organism is unique, therefore, treatment must be selected individually. We wish you good health!

VIDEO: Dead bees: treatment, recipes

But P. sometimes acts as an instrument of God, helping to awaken (summon) the deity of fertility. In Hittite myth, the fertility deity Telepinus disappears and plants, animals, people and gods perish, everything is covered by a cloud of a (bee) swarm. The mother of the gods, Hannahanna, sends Telepinus P. in search, who finds and stings him. God goes berserk. His anger is tempered by special rituals by the goddess Kamrusepa (literally “spirit of a swarm of bees”, corresponding to Hatti Kattah-tsifuri, “queen goddess”). When Telepinus's anger subsides, the cloud of the (bee) swarm disappears.
Evidence of P.’s connection with the image of the world tree was also preserved in the Russian ritual tradition [“A tree and a cypress tree grew up. Like in this tree and three lands: at the top of the tree and the nightingale sings songs, in the middle of the tree and the bees of the ravine (cf. the rage of Telepinus and the connection from P. Yarily) they build nests"].

Personal emblem of Napoleon Bonaparte - Napoleon, as we remember, proved his kinship with the Merovingians. - D.W.

According to Scandinavian myth, the Yggdrasil tree is saturated with life-giving sacred honey. In a number of traditions, there is a connection between P. and the oak, which acts both as the world tree and as the tree of the Thunderer. Wed. Phaedrus's fable (II 13) about a honeycomb on a tall oak tree or Callimachus's hymn to Artemis, associated with P., which talks about shooting into a beehive and then into an oak tree (a shot or a loud sound is associated with curbing a wild swarm of P.).

In the Russian tradition, the motive for the appearance of P. in Rus' from the overseas side is stable: God sends Zosima and Savvaty to bring “God’s worker” (or Sviridin and Sviridina, i.e. male and female P.) to Rus' from the land of Egypt (from the mountain, from caves in the country of idolatry or, conversely, paradise); in turn, Archangel Gabriel raises all the “bee power” and orders it to fly to Rus'. According to conspiracies, the transfer of P. to Rus' is patronized by the Savior and the Mother of God, located on the Alatyr stone. This is reinforced by the presence of a bee holiday in Rus' - April 17, the day of Zosima, whose image represents one of the experiences of the pagan era with its cult of the bee god, whose true name was lost (zosima was the name of the hive with the icon of Zosima and Savvaty, the Solovetsky saints). The Lithuanian equivalent of Zosima is Bubilas. In a number of Russian texts (songs, spells) Egor and Ilya are associated with P. (who are one way or another transformations of the Thunderer), as well as fire and water, the elemental weapons of the Thunderer.

Saints Zosima and Savvaty are the patron saints of bees and beekeepers.

A similar connection between P. (with the thunderer Jupiter) is also found in the Roman tradition (Verg. Georg. IV). Wed. the drowning of the first swarm of P. in water, the birth of P. from water, from a water one (cf. the story of the Arcadian shepherd Aristeus, the son of the water nymph Cyrene and the grandson of the river Peneus or, according to another version, Uranus and Gaia, identified with Zeus or Apollo and in charge of the protection P.), the sacrifice of P. to the waterman, etc. (cf. P. carrying clean water from a holy spring to Demeter), the motive of lighting the P. monastery with the subsequent flooding of the fire (cf. the Romanian idea that the fire that arose from Elijah's lightning can only be extinguished with water mixed with honey, or with honey itself, consecrated on Elijah's day).

P. participates in cosmogonic myths and legends, speaking on the side of God and against the evil spirit. The Bogomil binary legend combines the motifs of P., arrows, and the wedding of the sun against the background of a duel between God and the devil. In one Romanian cosmogonic legend, P. is partially struck by Satan (which is why P. has a thin cut on his body). But more often it is P. who stings the enemy of God. A reduced version of this motif is presented in an animal fairy tale, for example, about a whipped goat, which climbed into a hut, having survived a hare from it, and did not let anyone in until it was stung by P. (Afanasyev, No. 62). For this scheme, it is possible to assume that the Thunderer, with the help of P., summoned an animal (goat) that embodied fertility. In this case, the immediate precedence of the bee festival to the first spring fertility festival (Yegoryev Day, Yarilsky holiday, etc.) is explained.

“If one of the family members gets married, the bees must be informed about this, otherwise they will fly away from the hives and not return.

If hatched bees land on your property, and the owner does not come for them, then within a year after that someone in your family will die. (Suffolk).
Probably no superstition is so widespread today in the rural areas of our country as the custom of “telling the bees.” In 1945, the Daily Mirror, London's illustrated newspaper, sent its photographer to a country wedding. His best work was a photograph of a bride in a wedding dress, leaning towards a beehive and whispering: "Baby brownies, I'm married." It was explained to the photographer that this ritual was necessary: if a family member gets married and does not tell the bees about it, they will fly away and not return. Thus, this ancient superstition was alive even in 1945. To notify the bees about the death of the owner, they used (and still used in some remote corners of the country) more complex rituals. As soon as the dying man breathed his last, one of the household went to the hives and, bending over them, repeated three times: “Little brownies, little brownies, your master is dead (or: your mistress is dead).” After this, the hives became quiet for a moment. If the bees soon began to hum again, this was a sign that they agreed to stay with the new owner. A piece of crape was then hung on each hive; and then a piece of funeral cake was brought to the hives so that the bees could taste it. In many villages, bees were also invited to the funeral. They were written an invitation, like all other relatives of the deceased: “We invite you to the funeral of __:___________, which will take place in _______________, etc.” The invitation was then pinned to the hive. About fifteen years ago we visited a Cornish farm on the banks of a river rich in salmon and trout. Noticing empty beehives in the garden, we inquired about their purpose. “Alas,” we heard in response, “we no longer need them. The bees flew away and will never return, because they were not notified of the death of their owner.” A similar superstition existed in Devonshire. In the minutes of the Devonshire Association (1876) we found the following dialogue: “All thirteen families died, what a misfortune!” - “What happened, Mrs. E.? Who died?” - “To tell the truth, the bees, sir, when I buried my husband, I forgot to give the bees a piece of mourning crape, and so all the bees died, although the hives were full of honey. What a misfortune to be so forgetful!” Report of the death that followed swarming of bees on a dead tree, is quoted by one of the correspondents of "Notes and Queries" (vol. 6, p. 396). although regretting the misfortune that left several children without a mother, he humbly spoke of the death of the unfortunate woman as the inevitable and destined outcome of her illness. Having questioned him in more detail, I found out that he and his wife were “warned” about the upcoming event, because, going out into the garden two weeks before her death, the deceased saw that a swarm of bees had landed on a wooden post. Gay wrote in “Pastoril, V " (1714): "A family of bees spewed rottenness on the day that Miss Dibson died." A funny story that happened due to the tradition of turning the hives when a funeral procession leaves the house is described in the "Argus" of September 13, 1790." In Devonshire there is a widespread funeral custom of turning the beehives (if the deceased had any) to “face” the funeral procession at the moment when the body is taken out of the house. A funny incident occurred at the funeral of a wealthy old farmer at Cullumton. When the deceased was laid in the hearse and many were already saddling their horses to follow the procession, someone exclaimed: “Turn the bees!” After which the servant, who did not know the local custom, instead of turning the hive around, picked it up and laid it on its side. The worried bees immediately attacked the horses and riders. In vain they galloped away: the bees caught up with them and, demonstrating their indignation, stuck their stings into them. There was general confusion, with the loss of hats, wigs, etc., and the body was left unattended. Only after some time were the guests able to return to the funeral of their late friend." In January 1941, a reader wrote to a Sussex magazine: "In one family there was a woman who loved to look after bees and spent a lot of time near the hives. Soon she died. The gardener told the bees about her death. And for several days after this the bees did not appear from the hives. This story is quite reliable." There is another old village superstition that bees cannot be sold. Bartering is another matter. If a person wants to get a hive of bees, he must bring a pig or something else in return. We can hardly understand what the exchange differs from selling, but superstitious people still believe that these are “completely different things." And in Wales today they believe that only a donated hive can be successful. In Hampshire a few years ago they said that bees are lazy to work if it is close war, and one of the chroniclers of "Notes and Queries" claimed that he was convinced of this by the example of events in France, Prussia and Hungary that had taken place up to the present day. And is the honey shortage that arose before World War II also a mere coincidence? Family 0 "Hirlik, who lives near Ballyrauni (Ireland), owns a copper thing resembling a helmet, which is highly revered by the local peasants. It is believed that a dying person who drinks water from this helmet will go straight to heaven. Kafton Crocker writes that even a priest sometimes uses this water for his relics. Here is the legend associated with this item." About 800 years ago, an Irish chieftain, who had too few warriors, decided to fight with another clan and asked St. Gabriel to help him in this just cause. On the field in Ballyrauni, where the battle was supposed to take place, there was a beehive, and the Saint fulfilled the leader's request, turning the bees into spearmen. Flying out of the hive, they attacked the enemies and put them to flight. After the battle, the leader visited the place again and discovered that the straw hive had turned into a copper helmet." that at midnight before Christmas the bees buzz especially loudly in the hives. After the introduction of the new calendar, for many years there was a tradition of observing the beehives at the “old” and “new” Christmas in order to determine by the hum which Christmas was real. In Cheshire at the beginning of the 20th century. in many areas it was believed that bee stings could cure rheumatism. It is worth noting that “bee” superstitions do not exist only in Britain. In France, Germany and even as far away as Lithuania, bees are surrounded by almost the same legends. But what is the source of superstitions associated with bees? Sir Charles Igglesden in "Those Superstitions" admits that he "could not discover their origin, despite all his efforts." But why? In ancient times, the English called bees "God's birds" and believed that they were associated with the Holy Spirit. Therefore, bees were considered friends and protectors of the home. In Germany they were called "Mars birds". Ancient myths say that as a child, Jupiter was surrounded by bees, and Pindar was fed by bees with honey instead of milk. The Greeks dedicated bees to the moon. Even closer to our subject is Plato's theory of the transmigration of souls. The philosopher believed that the souls of sensible and respectable people, not inclined to philosophy, are embodied in bees. In Kashmir (India), they believe that the life of giants is connected with bees. Mohammed admitted bees into heaven, along with the souls of the righteous, and Porfiry said of fountains: “They belong to the nymphs, or those souls who in ancient times were called bees.” Here is a strange story told by Hugues Miller in the book “My School and Schoolmasters.” Two young men were lying on the mossy bank of a stream on a hot day. One of them fell asleep, having warmed up in the sun. Suddenly his friend saw a bee crawling out of the sleeping man’s mouth. She jumped to the ground, crawled along the dried stalks of grass, across a stream that gurgled among the stones, and disappeared into a crevice in the wall of an old ruined castle. Interested in what he saw, the observer began to wake up his comrade, and he woke up - two or three seconds after the bee, hastily returning, hid in his mouth again. The sleeper was displeased that he was awakened: “I dreamed that I was walking through a beautiful country,” he said, “and came to the bank of a majestic river, and where the clear water roared into the abyss, there was a silver bridge across which I "I went to a luxurious castle on the other side. I was just collecting gold and precious stones, and you woke me up and interrupted such a wonderful dream." Miller adds: “I had little doubt that he and the bee saw the same thing, since souls are known to often take the form of bees.” Similar stories are told elsewhere. The hero of one of them, in a similar situation, dragged his sleeping comrade to another place, and lay down in his place. A few seconds later the bee returned and, frightenedly darting around the room, “looked at” the face of the sleeping man, but could not recognize him. When the joker began to wake up his sleeping comrade, he turned out to be dead. The belief that bees are the souls of dead people is undoubtedly the source of the superstition about the “message to the bees”: after all, the souls of the dead are directly connected with God. And in conclusion, another superstition from Wales . If a bee flies up to a sleeping child, he is destined to live happily. In Russia, “beekeeping in villages is considered the most mysterious, important and, moreover, not accessible occupation for everyone. Wealthy, economic people, with up to a hundred or more hives, always, according to According to popular rumor, they are in friendly relations with evil spirits. The opinions of villagers about the bee business are so diverse that some choose saints as patrons for it, others condemn it to the water grandfather. Beekeepers, adherents of this latter opinion, are called sorcerers, grandfathers, and healers in the villages. ..Sorcerers think that bees were originally formed in swamps, under the hand of a water grandfather. The queen, as the firstborn of these bees, was bought by an evil sorcerer for thirty sorcerer heads and transferred to the hive of one sorcerer, at the behest of evil spirits. This sorcerer, out of hatred for people, taught the queen to sting people, and the queen taught all the bees her craft.When a sorcerer beekeeper sets up an apiary somewhere, then, for economic prosperity and honey abundance, he dooms the water grandfather to the best hive... If they leave the doomed hive in the apiary, then the grandfather only guards the establishment; If this hive is drowned in a swamp, then it [the water hive] not only provides all possible means for the reproduction of bees, but also forces the bees to fly to someone else’s apiary to steal honey. Healers believe that all the bees originally came from a horse that was beaten by a watery grandfather and thrown into a swamp. When the fishermen lowered the net into this swamp, instead of fish they pulled out a hive with bees. From this hive bees spread all over the world. The stinging of bees began from that time, they believe that one of these fishermen wanted to steal the queen. When the criminal revealed his abduction, the healers, in order to heal the tumor and pain, decided among themselves that the kidnapper should eat the uterus. For this discovery of bee stings, the water grandfather handed the bees forever into the hands of healers... To reproduce bees, healers advise the villagers: when they strike for Matins on Great Day, be in the bell tower and after the first strike, break off a piece of copper from the bell. This piece of copper is brought to the apiary and placed in the heart hive. Datura plants are boiled with yarrow, the wattle fence, trees, and buildings are sprayed in order to exterminate neighboring bees and wean their own from flying into someone else's yard." In both the English and Russian traditions, bees They connect with the world of the dead. For example, they say: “There was a village here, there was a grandfather. He had a hundred decks of bees, he didn't die, he didn't die. He had a granddaughter like this (the narrator points to a meter from the floor), maybe bigger. The women went to reap, but he [the grandfather] did not die, he lay there - he was a sorcerer, so he then said to his grandson: “Grandson, go to the bee, stand on a stump and say: “Your grandfather is our bees!” - Say this three times: “Your grandfather is our bees! Your grandfather is our bees!" The women are already coming from the stubble - your grandfather is gone! He's dead!" .It is widely believed that “bees do not like bad people.” In Russian villages even today there are many conspiracies for breeding bees (to plant a swarm in a hive, to take honey, to swarm, to return a swarm that has flown away, etc.).” If during communion you hide the Body of Christ in your mouth and do not swallow it, and then put it in a stump, then bees will come in. If you break it and look, you will see in the stump a small wax altar, a whole church made of wax, and on top - a piece of communion. Just don’t look.” “You shouldn’t take wax out of the house yourself, as this is a detriment to beekeeping.”

If bees are transported on Good Friday, they will soon die. (Cornwall).

If a swarm of bees lands in your yard, this is not good.

If bees swarm on a fence, on a dry tree or on a dry branch of a green tree, this foretells the death of one of the family members.

If the head of the family has died, the hives should be turned at the moment when the deceased is taken out of the house.

If one of the family members has died, the bees must be informed about this, otherwise they will die or fly away.

If the owner wants to transport the hives, he must warn the bees about this, otherwise they will get angry and sting him.

Many bees fly into the hive, few fly out, which means it will rain. (Somersetshire)

Stolen bees do not live long: they wither and die of melancholy.

Benefits and features

Effect of tincture:

strengthens the heart muscle;
reduces cholesterol levels;
helps cleanse the liver, gastrointestinal tract and blood vessels;
stimulates metabolic processes in the body;
launches regeneration processes in the body;
relieves the inflammatory process;
cleanses the body of toxins;
used to treat joints;
facilitates the occurrence of colds;
normalizes digestive processes;
helps strengthen the immune system.

How to cook?

It is best to stock up on dead bees directly in the hive, and also install a net near the entrance when the worker bees clear the house of dead relatives.

Tincture from dead bees is prepared only from clean, dry and, if possible, undamaged “raw materials”.

Cooking algorithm:

Collect dead bees.
Sift the mixture from possible dust and debris.
Dry in the oven at a temperature no higher than 45 degrees.
Grind in a coffee grinder.
Place in an opaque glass bottle.
Pour in alcohol and seal tightly.

Important: collecting raw materials is most useful in the summer. Insects that have died as a result of pest infestation or heat treatment of the hive are not used to prepare the medicine.

How to use?

Dosage and schedule for taking the tincture:

External use

Video: a recipe for dead bees or an elixir of youth and a cure for cancer.

Contraindications

Due to the high concentration of active components, the use of medicine from dead animals is not recommended in childhood, pregnancy and lactation, or individual intolerance to bee products.

O. E. Mandelstam
«»

Take joy from my palms
As Persephone's bees told us.

All we have left is kisses
That they die when they fly out of the hive.

Their food is time, lungwort, mint.

A tatty dry necklace
From dead bees that turned honey into the sun.

Date of writing: 1920

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891, Warsaw - 1938, Vladivostok, transit camp), Russian poet, prose writer. Relations with his parents were very alienated, loneliness, “homelessness” - this is how Mandelstam presented his childhood in his autobiographical prose “The Noise of Time” (1925). For Mandelstam’s social self-awareness, it was important to classify himself as a commoner, a keen sense of injustice existing in society.
Mandelstam's attitude towards Soviet power since the late 1920s. ranges from sharp rejection and denunciation to repentance before the new reality and glorification of I.V. Stalin. The most famous example of denunciation is the anti-Stalin poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us...” (1933) and the autobiographical “Fourth Prose.” The most famous attempt to take power is the poem “If only I would take coal for the highest praise...”, to which the name “” was assigned. In mid-May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested and exiled to the city of Cherdyn in the Northern Urals. He was accused of writing and reading anti-Soviet poems. From July 1934 to May 1937 he lived in Voronezh, where he created a cycle of poems, “Voronezh Notebooks,” in which an emphasis on lexical vernacular and colloquial intonations is combined with complex metaphors and sound play. The main theme is history and the place of man in it (“Poems about the Unknown Soldier”). In mid-May 1937 he returned to Moscow, but he was forbidden to live in the capital. He lived near Moscow, in Savelovo, where he wrote his last poems, then in Kalinin (now Tver). At the beginning of March 1938, Mandelstam was arrested in the Samatikha sanatorium near Moscow. A month later, he was sentenced to 5 years in the camps for counter-revolutionary activities. He died of exhaustion in a transit camp in Vladivostok.

/ / / Analysis of Mandelstam’s poem “Take joy from my palms...”

Osip Mandelstam is a sensitive lyricist, prose writer, translator and true Russian philosopher of the first half of the 20th century.

Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio Venere e Cupido. 1565. Palazzo Colonna. Roma

Any text, poetic or prose, which mentions bees or honey as the main product of their activity, even if they are a simple metaphor or allegory, can be called “bee”, such as this charming scene by N.F. Ostolopova Wounded Cupid. Theocritus' idyll:

Once upon a time Cupid
Stung by a bee
For attempting
Take honey from the hive.
The little one was scared
That the finger is all swollen;
He hits the ground out of frustration
And he runs to his mother.
"Oh! mummy! take a look -
In tears he says, -
How small and evil
winged snake
She bit my finger!
I really could bear it a little.”
Venus, smiling,
This was the answer:
"Amur! you look like yourself
To the daring bee:
Although small, you produce
You are a terrible pain.

But this, perhaps, would be too broad an understanding, since the bee is present in the above text not by itself, but exclusively as a function of the main object, i.e. Cupid, who is compared to a bee, and his arrows with a bee's sting. The meaning of honey in this metaphorical system of “bee” and “sting” remains somewhat unclear, unless one considers honey “the food of the gods”, which they must obtain for themselves by “stealing”, which would be very strange. And therefore, if the bee is correlated with Cupid, and its sting with the arrow of the god of love, then honey, one might think, should be a metaphor for love and its sweet pleasures, which, however, cause, as Mama Venus says, terrible pain. But here the sting, like an arrow, is directed against the very pathogen-producer of love-honey.
If we relate these metaphorical bees to real ones, then the metaphor takes on additional meaning. By releasing its sting, the bee dies, unlike the daring Cupid, who releases his arrows with impunity. But let’s imagine how the whole meaning of the poem would change if the author made a complete comparison with real bees, and Cupid would die from his own arrows, like bees from their stings. In this case, the bees would go beyond mere metaphor and take on the meaning of a symbol relating to the relationship of love and death.
Creator of the "bee text" stricto sensu Maeterlinck should be considered, and not because his essay is called Life of bees. Unlike all the poets who wrote about bees, Maeterlinck knew everything there was to know about bees from his own observations and scientific literature. But first of all, he was a poet-thinker, and therefore the observation of these amazing creatures that accompany man from his very first steps became for him an image of paradoxical relationships that determine the fate of every living creature. One description of the mating flight of the queen bee would be enough to classify this “popular science” work by Maeterlinck as one of the highest poetic examples of the “bee text”: the event on which the existence of the species depends rises, together with the queen bee, to the azure heights of metaphor - symbol.
Maeterlinck’s influence on Sologub is obvious, who can be called the creator of the “bee text” in Russian literature ( Gift of the wise bees). And although bees are not present here directly, but through their products - honey and wax - they become symbols of life in its unity with death, equally producing vital substance (honey) and mortal matter (wax). In this dual aspect, bees symbolize the sun-Apollo, who produces the honey of existence, as well as the dead Dionysus, who closes the honey substance of life in his waxy interior:

We saw the grave
Dionysus.
The death of God was announced
Night voices for us.
Juice of life poured
Herbs,
They became full of the juice of life
The veins of the beast
The wind breathes the poison of life,
Filled with the poison of life
Arrows of the Golden Serpent, ‒
Only he, the source of life,
The field is colorfully colored,
Who gave the beast something to drink,
troubled the sea,
Poisoned Arrows,
Only he is in a damp grave,
Drunk on my own poison,
The dead man sleeps.

Sweet honey is carried to Gimeta
Arrows of golden Phoebus, ‒
Dionysus, source of life,
Giving freedom to the seeds,
Raising the beast,
Taming the sea
Honey and wax giving, ‒
He got drunk on grapes,
Cheerful, sweet juice
And he sings.

Oh Persephone!
You know, you know
impossible path
Because of Lethe
You know, you remember
Golden-haired god.
You know, you know
Whose strength
In the melting wax.

Oh Persephone!
Do you remember, do you want
Quiet pleasure
Kiss.
You know, you remember
Death of the victorious god.
Do you want, do you want
Have fun,
Sweet honey.

No matter how dubious these identifications or rapprochements may be from the point of view of classical mythology, they became quite common and even obligatory within the framework of symbolist aesthetics or the “symbolist text.” The connection of Dionysus with honey and bees is especially indicated: “Dionysus (the moon), after he was torn to pieces in the form of a bull, according to initiates of the Dionysian Mysteries, was reborn in the form of a bee.”
Much has been said about the chthonic character of bees, although without understanding the exact meaning of this definition, which comes from the Greek χθών (earth). From this side, all creatures - even gods and heroes - are chthonic, but then we would have to call the heavenly gods chthonic as well: after all, they all come from a single mother earth, Gaia. Here, however, we are talking about chthonic as a designation of connection with the underworld of death. The bee collects honey, in which the energy of the sun is concentrated, but she puts it in a wax honeycomb, which becomes the image of the chthonic kingdom of the dead, where the solar substance that revives souls (ψυχαί) is forever locked. Therefore, Persephone, who could be considered a bee goddess, becomes equally the mistress of death and life. Apollo, in turn, turns into the golden Serpent, who, with his arrows filled with the poison of life, kills Dionysus ( Gift of the wise bees):

Poisoned Arrows,
Only he is in a damp grave,
Drunk on my own poison,
The dead man sleeps.

This connection of bees with the world of death, translated to the level of a symbol, is first indicated by Sologub; in this case, it does not matter what elements this symbol was composed of, ancient, folklore or poetic, borrowed from old or new poets. The “elements” themselves that scientists catch from Derzhavin or Vyach. Ivanov, they do not add up to a symbol: each element in a new context takes on a different meaning.
Sappho in Vyach's translation is indicated as one of the sources of Mandelstam's bee poems. Ivanova. Actually, Sappho speaks about honey in only one passage, consisting of one line: LXX. There is no honey for me, no lungwort. Words honey And lungwort Mandelstam, we believe, knew without referring to Ivanov’s translations and works. Let's quote the opening and closing lines of the poem Turtle, as well as a commentary on them from the “classic” article by K. Taranovsky Bees and wasps in Mandelstam's poetry: On the question of the influence of Vyacheslav Ivanov on Mandelstam:

On the stone spurs of Pieria
The muses led the first round dance,
So that, like bees, the lyre players are blind
They gave us Ionian honey.

........................................ ............

ABOUT, Where you, holy islands,
Where do not eat broken bread,
Where only honey, wine and milk,
Creaking labor does not darken the sky
And does the wheel rotate easily?

« Honey, wine and milk- these are not only food items, but also ordinary libation items, i.e. bloodless victims. Mandelstam should have learned about them while still at school... Or maybe Maykov’s lines from the poem were also deposited in Mandelstam’s creative memory At the temple(1851):

They are going with altars to Bacchus!
Rose, milk and wine young
They carry honey and drag a baby goat..."

Mandelstam's poem speaks with all possible certainty about honey, wine and milk as food: after all, even those living on the “islands of the blessed” need food. The source of this “diet” is in Zhukovsky’s translation Odyssey. It is told about the daughters of Pandareus, who were left orphans: The goddess Aphrodite fed them / With milk, sweet melting honey, fragrant wine(Od. XX, 68-69). Holy Islands(ἱεραί νῆσοι), do not necessarily mean islands of the blessed(μακάρων νῆσοι). If Mandelstam remembered anything at all, then most likely these lines are from Zhukovsky’s translation:

Where Man's light-hearted days pass by,
Where there are no snowstorms, no downpours, no colds of winter;
Where Sweetly noisy flying Zephyr blows, Ocean
Sent there with a slight coolness to the blessed people

(Od. IV, 565-568)

It tells about the Elysian Fields, where, according to the word of Proteus, Menelaus will be transferred by the gods: You will not die and you will not meet fate in the many-armed Argos(Od. IV 562). The words of Proteus have, it seems, the closest relation to And the wheel turns easily. In the context of the "holy islands" wheel should matter wheels of fate, and therefore it is rotated here not for the sake of phonetic effect, but denotes twist of fate, the pressure of which becomes heavy and unbearable in opposition to its light and natural movement, when the Bee Muses led their round dances on the holy Ionian islands.
At this point we can move on to the most mysterious poem in this Greek "cycle" ( A stream of golden honey flowed from the bottle...; Turtle; ...; When Psyche-life descends to the shadows...; Martin), marked not only by honey, but primarily by geographical and related mythical realities:

Take joy from my palms
A little sun and a little honey,
As Persephone's bees told us.

Do not untie an unattached boat,
Can't hear the shod shadow in the fur,
You cannot overcome fear in the dense life.

All we have left is kisses
Hairy like little bees
That they die when they fly out of the hive.

They rustle in the transparent wilds of the night,
Their homeland is the dense forest of Taygetos,
Their food is time, lungwort, mint.

Take my wild gift for joy,
A tatty dry necklace
From dead bees that turned honey into the sun.

Whether Mandelstam knew the ancient Greek language or not is absolutely irrelevant. And even if he knew, it would not bring him any closer to understanding his “Greek” poems. Let us turn to the specific realities - geographical, mythical and historical - from which the poem is built. This primarily applies to “Persephone’s bees.” The verb “ordered” clearly indicates that we are not talking about “bees”, but priestesses Persephone, who, like the servants of Demeter, were called μέλισσαι (bees). But Persephone herself was called honey (μελῐτώδης), and honey cakes were brought to her. If we translate the poem into a ritual plan, then we receive an offering to the goddess of the land of death, made at the word of her servants, the bees - μέλισσαι.
Also, the mention of Taygetos is directly related to Persephone and her underground kingdom. In any dictionary of classical antiquities, you can read that Taygetos is a mountain range covered with dense forests and reaching Cape Tenar (Ταίναρον) in Laconia. Here, according to legend, there was a cave, which was the entrance to the land of the dead and from which Hercules brought the hellish dog Kerberus. At Tenar, as Herodotus reports (I, 23), Arion was carried on a dolphin, who “was the first to compose dithyrambs,” that is, songs in honor of the gods. If you follow mythological logic, then it is not at all by chance that Arion was carried out precisely at Tenar, where the entrance to the land of death was located: after all, he had to die, thrown into the sea, and was saved by a dolphin, i.e. creature chthonic, involved in the lower world, which included the water abysses and their inhabitants.
It is no less interesting that Psyche, sent by Venus to Proserpina, enters the underground country through Tenar. The tower, from which the desperate Psyche intends to throw herself, says to her: “Listen to me Psyche: the famous Achaean city of Lacedaemon is not far from this place, go to it and near its borders, moreover, in places hidden and remote towards the detective Tenar, who has nothing other than the hole in hell and the gate to Pluto, you will see there an impassable and narrow path that will lead you directly to the kingdom of shadows. However, know that you cannot go into this dark dwelling without stocking up, but you must have in both hands one barley cake baked with honey” (Apul. Met. VI, 17-18: trans. Ermila Kostrova).
Psyche's descent into the land of death was, it seems, a model for When Psyche-life descends to the shadows, written in the same year, Take for Joy. Honey is also present here, although through honey cakes, which, presumably, were very popular with the infernal inhabitants. These honey offerings indicate the immediate relationship of the honey producers, i.e. bees, to the underground land of death, and therefore dead dried bees are strung on a thread, making a necklace. It's very simple and visual. But behind the visuality and concreteness there emerges ritual scheme: Demeter gave ears of wheat to those initiated into her mysteries as a symbol of life, and Persephone (if we restore the second member of the opposition) - threads with dead bees strung on them as a symbol of life that has exhausted itself, which nevertheless must come to life again and be filled, thanks to what it contains the energy of the sun honey.
We are talking here, I think, not about a “mirror” operation in relation to the natural one, but a very specific one even from the “natural” point of view. In Sologub, bees are likened to the golden arrows of Phoebus-Apollo, i.e. to the sun's rays: “Oh, golden-haired one, who gives birth to wise bees! Golden bees buzz like golden arrows. And honey in earthly blossoms smells sweet to bees,” from which, however, it does not follow that they turn honey into the sun. The image of honey turned into the sun comes, I think, from Maeterlinck, where it is clearly present in contrast to the listed poets:

“This mysterious spring is now pouring out from wondrous honey, which itself is nothing more than a ray of previously transformed solar heat, returning to its original form. It circulates here like beneficent blood. The bees that cling to the full cells pass it on to their neighbors, who, in turn, pass it on. In this way, he moves further and further until he reaches the limits of mass. A single thought and a single destiny bind thousands of hearts here into an indivisible whole. The ray emanating from honey replaces the sun and flowers until his elder brother, sent by the actual sun of the coming spring, penetrates the hive with his first warm glance and until the violets and anemones that have blossomed again begin to wake up the workers; they will be told here that azure has again taken its rightful place in the world and that the continuous circle connecting life with death has turned around itself once again and came to life again” (Part VI, III: hereinafter translated by N. Minsky).

Honey, therefore, in itself is the sun, but the sun of another world - the world of death. And in this sense, we can talk about “mirrority” as an inverted relationship. This honey-sun, I think, is what Sologub and Mandelstam are talking about. This is not surprising: after all, the theme is one - life and death, but everyone experiences it in their own way and expresses it accordingly. Line Their food is time, lungwort, mint is directly related to the same topic. Lungwort as the middle member of this semantic series, only one is directly related to honey due to its natural honey-bearing properties. As far as mint, these honey-bearing properties fade into the background, and the values specified with mythological structure poems:

Take joy from my palms
A little sun and a little honey
As we were told Persephone's bees.

Persephone here is the Mistress of honey, and also of mint, since mint is a flower that belongs to her. Strabo reports: “Near Pylos in the east there is a mountain named after Mintha, who, as the myths tell, became the concubine of Hades and was trampled by Kore (Persephone), and then turned into garden mint, which some call fragrant mint(ἡδύοσμος). In addition, near the mountain there is a sacred site of Hades, revered by the Macistians, and a grove dedicated to Demeter, which is located above the Pylos plain” (VIII, III, 14: trans. G.A. Stratanovsky).
Even more interesting is Ovid’s version, which is included in the story about the death of Adonis and his transformation into a flower:

But not everything in the world obeys
“Your rights,” he says, “will remain an eternal monument
Tears, Adonis, are mine; your death repeated
He will pretend that no matter what, my crying over you is inconsolable!
Your blood will turn into a flower. To you, Persephone,
Wasn’t it also possible to turn into fragrant mint
Women's body? And they will envy me if I am a hero,
Will I transform Kinirov’s son?” Having said so, fragrant
The blood sprinkled him with nectar. The one touched by moisture,
Foamed. So on the surface of the water in rainy weather
A transparent bubble is visible. Not a full hour has passed, -
And from the blood arose a blood-colored flower.
Pomegranate flowers similar to them, which have grains
They melt in the soft peel, but they bloom for a short time,
Weakly holding on to the stem, their petals do not turn red for long,
They are easily shaken off by the winds that gave them their name.

(Met. X, 724-739: trans. by S.V. Shervinsky)

And although the flower (anemone) that Aphrodite grows does not live long, it is contrasted with the mint (menta), into which Persephone turned the nymph Mintha, who was killed by her: life, symbolized by the flower-Adonis, although short-lived, nevertheless renews itself with an amazing consistency . In this sense, the rapidly blooming anemone is likened to a bee, and therefore its food is time, but this time is the time of death, which is constantly overcome, leaving behind “necklaces” of dead bees. This connection of bees with time, transience, death and tireless renewal also comes from Maeterlinck. It is not a simple “borrowing”, but a continuation of reflection on same topic, in the center of which stand these mysterious creatures, equally involved in the mysteries of life and death:

« A small, determined and deep tribe, feeding on warmth, light and everything that is most pure in nature, the soul of flowers, that is, the most obvious smile of matter and the most touching desire of this matter for happiness and beauty, - who will tell us which problems you have solved that we still have to solve? What reliable knowledge have you already acquired that we still have to acquire? And if it is true that you solved these problems, acquired this knowledge not with the help of reason, but by virtue of some primary and blind impulse, then the question arises: are you not pushing us towards an even more insoluble riddle? Little monastery, full of faith, hope, secrets, why do your hundred thousand virgins accept a task that no human slave has ever accepted? If they would spare their strength a little more, forget about themselves a little less, be a little less ardent in their work, - they would see another spring and another summer; but at that beautiful moment when the flowers call them, they seem struck by the mortal intoxication of labor, and with broken wings, with an exhausted and wounded body, they all die in just five weeks"(Part II, XI).

Also from Mandelstam dying bees– not “image”, but reality, which rises to the level of the symbol, making you think. Again: to Maeterlinck, not to Vyach. Ivanov, furry, like little bees, kisses:

“Most living beings vaguely feel that only something extremely fragile something like a thin transparent membrane separates the region of death from the region of love and that the deep law of nature requires the death of every living creature precisely at the moment of the birth of a new life. In all likelihood, this hereditary fear gives such serious meaning to love. But in the described case it is realized in all its primitive simplicity precisely that fatal phenomenon, the memory of which still lingers over the kiss of a person. As soon as the mating act ends, the male’s abdomen half opens, the mass of his entrails remains with the female, and he himself, with drooping wings and an abdomen devoid of entrails, as if struck by marital bliss, quickly falls into the abyss” (Part V, IV).

Here we could complete our discussion, having reached the limit of the possibilities given to us by the muses, but there remain three lines in which, it seems, lies the deep meaning of the poem:

Do not untie unattached boats,
Not to be heard in fur-shod shadows,
Can't overcome the dense life fear.

They do not need to appeal to any specific mythological character, such as the boatman Charon: even without him, the shadow of the terrible Persephone passes through the entire poem. The best commentary on them would be the conclusion of Odysseus’s story about his stay in the land of death:

Having gathered in a crowd of countless souls,
They raised an unspeakable cry; I was seized by pale horror,
In thoughts that the monster wants the head of the terrible Gorgon,
Send Hades out of the darkness against me Persephone:
I ran to the ship and ordered that, without delay,
My people gathered for it and the rope was untied.
Everyone gathered on the ship and sat on the benches near the oars.
The ship calmly went along the flow of the ocean waters,
First on oars, then with a balmy fair wind.

(Od. XI, 633-640: trans. by V.A. Zhukovsky)

Unlike Odysseus, Mandelstam did not even have a boat on which he could sail away from this gorgonian kingdom of horror, in which he found himself by the will of fate, uncontrollable like a boat that cannot be neither untie nor tie, and therefore there is no deliverance from fear, hanging like a silent shadow, dense as the forest of Taygetus, hiding within itself the entrance to the underworld, from which, like from a hive, dead bees fly out - the servant-messengers of Persephone.

Edward Burne-Jones The Sirens.1875

Mikhail Evzlin

The article is reprinted with abbreviations from the collection of Voronezh University “Universals of Russian Literature. 6. 2015.”

O. E. Mandelstam
"Take the joy from my palms"

Take joy from my palms
A little sun and a little honey
As Persephone's bees told us.

Do not untie an unattached boat,
Can't hear the shod shadow in the fur,
You cannot overcome fear in the dense life.

All we have left is kisses
Hairy like little bees
That they die when they fly out of the hive.

They rustle in the transparent wilds of the night,
Their homeland is the dense forest of Taygetos,
Their food is time, lungwort, mint.

Take my wild gift for joy -
A tatty dry necklace
From dead bees that turned honey into the sun.

Date of writing: 1920

YURSKY, SERGEY YURIEVICH, (b. 1935), actor, director, writer, poet, screenwriter. People's Artist of the Russian Federation.

The bee is one of the oldest symbols related to the cults of female “mother” deities; the oldest images of bees are found in Çatalhöyük, Lerna, Egypt, and Minoan Crete. You may have seen the famous Minoan gold pendant in the shape of two bees carrying a drop of nectar.

The priestesses of Demeter and Persephone participating in the Eleusinian mysteries were called bees or lungworts, whose images go back precisely to the cult of mother earth. One of Persephone’s epithets is “Melitodes”, “Honey”, and the priestesses were called “melissai”, “bees”. There are also indirect indications that those initiated into the mysteries were called bees, because their pure souls, just as a bee knows the way back to the hive, know the way in Hades to their divine abode.

It is also interesting that one of the most important semantic components of the Eleusinian mysteries, which undoubtedly originated in Crete and came to mainland Greece from the Minoans, was the idea of the revival of nature, renewal, awakening of life. The winter hibernation of bees was sympathetically equated with death, which means their spring awakening was a symbol of resurrection.

Thus, the “Persephone bees” from Mandelstam’s poem are priestesses. And then there is the American group Persephone’s Bees, whose leader, Angelina Moisova, by the way, was born in Russia, in Pyatigorsk.

What does Mandelstam have to do with this? :D Persephone's bees, as far as I understand, are a much more widespread image than one poem by the great Acmeist poet.

it’s a little strange when it’s not initially about Mandelstam. The myth is original, the poet was simply incredibly in awe of antiquity - the cradle of culture

Moreover, in the context of the poem “take it from my palms for joy,” the myth of the bees elevates the lyrical hero’s attitude towards a woman to the level of divine connections. The connection is so strong and platonic that there is no better way to express it than through an appeal to myth.

Answer

Comment