postcard challenge

week 19 Bulgaria..

I am full of cold, and only have mine half done this week..no page yet, but I will get to it.

Here is the front of the card, it is the legendary hero Krali Marko and his magical horse, Sharkoliya.

They thunder through a mythic landscape where fierce women ride the whirlwinds, children ride on dreams and nightmares, and sparks fly from Sharkoliya's hooves.

This is a Bulgarian ritual song for a young unmarried man..


Dawn is breaking
But such a dawn as you've never seen.
The dawn is a young man riding on a horse.
The horse breathes and makes the dawn.
The moon is a ring on the young man's finger,
And his weapons are small stars.

Once upon a time horses were sacred. They were the companions of heroes, and galloped between the worlds bearing the gifts of life and death. 

The cult of the horse was deeply rooted in Bulgaria’s ancestral Thracian, Slavic and Proto-Bulgarian cultures, and has left a rich legacy in the country’s traditional tales and folklore.

The ancient Thracians practiced horse burial and sacrifice and revered the Thracian Horseman god, Hero, son and lover of the great mother goddess, Bendis. He was both the sun and the ruler of the nether world, bringer of life, death and fertility.

The horse was sacred to both the Slavs and to the nomadic Proto-Bulgarians, who founded the first Bulgarian kingdom in the Balkans under Khan Asparuh in 681 AD. The Proto-Bulgarians drank mares’ milk, divined with horse’s entrails, and their banner was a horse tail upon a spear. The horse was sacred to their sky god, Tangra. 

After the adoption of Christianity in the 9^th century, the Thracian Horseman god was reincarnated in the Christian figure of St George, the dragon slayer, seen as the bringer of summer and fertility. St Dimiter, another warrior saint, is St George's twin brother and the bringer of winter. On 26th October (Dimitrovden) he rides his red horse across the sky, heralding the start of winter. When he shakes his beard, snow falls. 

The medieval hero, Krali Marko on his horse Sharkoliya is also a mythological descendent of the Thracian Horseman. King Marko - Krali Marko or Marko Kraleviti - was a real historical figure living around the 14th century AD, who later became overlaid with earlier mythologies. 

Marko was a Serb, son of Vulkashin. He ruled from the fortified town of Prilep, now in Macedonia, over a kingdom then inhabited by ethnic Bulgarians. The tales about him contain elements that go back to Thracian times. 

and the back..

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