Zorya - Blog Posts
Zorya in an outfit I saw at the museum
Happy New Year, 2025!
Happy new year! For the year of the snake, here's Zorya- a flaming serpent (perelesnyk).
A very very rushed sketch of some sillies for my birthday :3 Left to right is Jupiter Sky and then Zorya from my manga, Dim Bisa (coming soon, trust), and then there's my little Fuji Momozane sona, then Valen and Merlin. The cake is actually my fox skull with Zorya's magic acting as a candle. Because I thought a cake would be boring. Cheers!
The Zoryas✨
What follows is a few insights from years of research and practice within my own culture, as I am entering a Filianic space. Due to the nature of this format and the largely educational goal, it would be impossible to reflect the full image of these folkloric figures as seen by the original peoples; on the other hand, quite obviously, none of the information below was initially intended to be viewed from this perspective, and as such is to be taken as a partial and personal impression of an lived culture that is to be respected in its own right.
The Zoryas are a Slavic folkloric figure group associated with largely love and healing. The most common contexts for invoking them are magical incantations and folk songs.
The name, which is plural, literally means "stars", which is, of course, a potent symbol of hope and reassurance in the Filianic faith. They may be encountered as a group of three, calling to the trinitarian nature of the practice, the Evening, Midnight, and the Morning Star, each assigned a somewhat different character (usually sorrowful, pensive, and joyful), or as a singular being. In many examples there are also parallel texts in active use that either call upon them, or replace them, it seems fully equivalently, with Mother Mary.
Though adorned and certainly involved in what one would assume gentle matters, in many cases they are shown in a knightly form, riding horses across the sky, measuring time and watching over us, sovereign and never paired to a male.
As mentioned before, their presence is welcomed for protection and healing, and love. This once again showcases their general care for universal order, as in a sense healing and safety are just a restoral of harmony to body and life.
Then, of course, young women looking to find love would near universally call the dear sisters to ignite the feeling in another's heart and make themselves irresistibly attractive. Romance being self-explanatory, the love we have in our hearts is a sister to the love that drives particles to motion, spirit to action, and a human being to seek companionship of any kind. Going hand in hand, - and this is where we enter the realm of a personally held belief, - the cultivation of beauty within your own self is a divinely driven desire for joy and pleasure in everything, a way of honouring your person as a divine being. Similarly to this, an artist would generally endeavor to depict a deity or a saint as pleasingly as they can, as as not to idolize but to show respect towards them and grace within them.
Personally, as a Ukrainian and a perennialist, these figures to me speak of the universality of certain principles that reoccur within the human psyche due to experiencing them directly. This is the seed of truth within the image that grows from it.
On the other hand, of course, I am speaking here in a very incomplete manner. Any questions are welcome.
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