17/02/2022
Kukerovden
The second appearance of the k***ri is on Kukerovden (simply, ‘Day of the Kukers’). It is a performance piece, a mystery play of sorts in which each player bears a strong, symbolic connection to some archetypal aspect of nature. As such, the ritual is designed to bind the microcosm and macrocosm by telling a human story that echoes the greater, universal drama.
The Kukerovden ritual includes a tsar and a human couple – sometimes old, sometimes young – along with a team of attendant k***rs. In an act of b***y pantomime, the groom (or grandfather) impregnates his bride (or elderly female companion). Meanwhile the k***ri charge and dance; armed with swords and red-tipped, ph***ic staffs, maces and weaving tools. The performers interact with the crowd, jabbing, thrusting, and chasing girls with their long, red poles.
Two of the k***ri are then yoked to a wooden plough, and goaded by a ploughman as they dig / draw a ritual circle in three concentric rings. The tsar follows behind in a chariot, scattering grain seeds to symbolically sow the fields while more k***ri dance in his wake. In a heated climax of the ceremony, the tsar is struck down by a k***r with a weaving spindle. He dies, to represent the waning mid-winter sun; and then the k***ri gather about and raise him from his grave to symbolise the arrival of the spring.
By now the bride (or crone) is ready to give birth, her (his) dress bulging comically large. When the child pops out – usually represented with a rag doll or puppet – the ceremony is complete.
In this ritual, every movement the k***ri make has some part to play in the telling of the story. They roll on the earth to absorb its strength; they jump and reach to encourage the corn to grow tall; they sway with the weight of imaginary sheaves and all the while, those bells keep ringing to ward off evil spirits.
On Kukerovden, and in the celebrations held toward the eastern end of Bulgaria, the masks of the performers typically take on a more colourful aspect. They are sometimes sewn with sequins, beads and shards of mirror, the colours themselves invoking the forces of nature: red for sun-fire and fertility; black as mother earth; and white for the pure, life-giving energies of light and water.
Moreover, the ritual seems to have served as an initiation of sorts for the young k***r; historically these players would be men, young bachelors, and through the course of the ceremony – the ph***ic thrusting and sowing of seeds – the older men would teach these younglings the ways of the world. In some communities this k***r initiation even became a prerequisite for marriage: young men who had never entered the games would be considered a second-class choice for a husband, and often were married off to unhealthy, widowed, or otherwise undesirable brides.
The tsar meanwhile, their tutor and master, was always played by an older man. By tradition he should have a wife and children, and own land or material property in the village… and all of this combined, begins to sound quite a lot like another traditional mystery play.
A man of wisdom, struck down by his apprentices using trade tools only to be later resurrected; the Kukerovden ritual follows more or less the exact same narrative as the central myth of freemasonry.
by
https://www.exutopia.com/the-mystical-origins-of-the-k***ri-bulgarias-strangest-folk-festival/
image: Kukeri from Bulgaria
