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| August 2000 |
Magical Garments
by Kate Aimson
(An edited version of an article from August 2000)
This is one story of the preparation for ritual. I am using the Seminole Indians of Florida, USA, as my example. This is the story of a living tradition, a tradition that moves with the times, using the new circumstances and tools available, whilst keeping true an important concept or traditional way of doing things. The Seminole Indians had always created new costumes fro seasonal rituals, but as their location, and the times, changed, they used modern techniques.
Ritual Dress
Nowadays, modern writers usually recommend ritual dress, and sometimes writers and pagans go so far as to recommend people should make their own ritual dress. However, I have never read pagan writers saying that people should make their own ritual dress each time for major festivals or rituals. The preparation, as a community, for a festival, is an important part of the ritual.
In our own memories, we can remember such tradition. My Grandma remembered how in East Anglia when they were children, they always had to wear new clothes on May Day. In some parts of the country it was Easter Sunday fro them. My mother-in-law from Manchester remembered having new clothes for the Wakes Week walks. Her mother was a dressmaker, and made new outfits for my mother-in-law and her sister to wear on the Walks. One year, one day after the dresses were finished, she had gone to work and the girls played at shop by displaying the outfits from the house window. When she returned, and saw that everyone had seen the outfits, she then had to stay up all night sewing new outfits for the girls to wear on the walk, as they were no longer new. When I was a child (not that long ago, really) we had Easter Bonnet Parades at school, although they were more like fancy dress than real, new clothes. One of the few dress traditions that still touches us all is wedding clothes, where some old traditions like "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" are still very much alive. It is the act of making the outfits ourselves, or having them made to our designs and choice, rather than selecting from what the consumer world has designed for us, that is important.
The Lakota artist and scholar Arthur Amiotte observes that, in his culture, people have a phrase for fine ceremonial dress - saiciye - meaning, "being adorned in proper relationship to the gods". similar aesthetic principles were widely shared across Native North America. Because of the way in which European Art has developed over the past few centuries we tend to forget the importance that the body can have as a canvas for art. In Native American traditions, however, dress, including body decoration and clothing has been one of the most important vehicles for artistic expression - a tradition which is carried through into contemporary pow-wow dress.
Women's Work - The Sacredness of Making
Beautifying the work by vowing to undertake an artistic project was an act of honour and devotion. As in many Amerindian traditions, the finished object was in some ways less important that the process of undertaking it in a ritually prescribed manner. On the Great Plains, a woman's path to dignity, honour, and long life lay the correct and skilled pursuit of the arts. In European folklore we have women either making their wedding clothes, or a gift of clothing, especially a shirt, for their sweetheart. This is remembered in the song "Scarborough Fair". The woman is instructed to carry out an impossible ritual task if she wishes to marry the man... (I like the versions of the song in which the woman replies with some equally impossible tasks the man can carry out if he wishes to marry her). In the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Wild Swans" or "The Eleven Swans" the European heroine, Elise, takes up a task to release her brothers from a spell. Their wicked step-mother had turned them into swans, and a mysterious woman gives Elise her ritual instructions: "Do you see these sting nettles which I have in my hand? There are many around the cave where you are sleeping and only those that grow there, or on the graves of the churchyard are of use. Remember that! You must pluck them, and with this yarn you must weave eleven shirts with long sleeves. When they are all made, throw them over the eleven wild swans and the spell will be broke. But take heed. From the moment you begin the work you must not speak a word, even if it occupies you for many years. The first syllable that escapes your lips will fall like a dagger into the hearts of your brothers. Their lives depend on your tongue." With this, she fell to her knees, thanked God and went to begin her work. Though the nettle blistered her hands, and her feet as she trampled the yarn, she continued. Frightening trials to her vow of silence are ignored as she makes the shirts, and on the point of being burnt as a witch, she saves her brothers and they rescue her.
The knowledge of the important process, over time, and following magical ways of means, as well as ends, is in our folklore too. I think we would be greatly adding to the richness of women's spiritual lives if we recovered this lost ritual. The making of a ritual garment is an ancient women's mystery, and the memory of this magic is still alive, if you can see the signs of it in our present life.
The Seminole still prepare to celebrate the Green Corn Dance in this way. It is held annually, and all the Seminole clans gather together to celebrate for four or five days. This marks the beginning of a new year. For these events, the women still produce their best work, traditional costumes for their families to wear.
No-one has catalogued all the patterns worked. As in all traditions of patchwork, the women exchange ideas and copy new patters, so no design is exclusive to any one person. Sometimes an individual's work can be recognised simply by the frequency with which a favourite pattern occurs in her work. It has been suggested that years ago the lower band on a woman's skirt indicated her clan, but it is not difficult to see how this association of a pattern with a particular person or family group might have come about. The women who sewed for their families would have made up pattern bands of great length, which would have been used several times for a new garment until the length was finished. This probably gave the impression that a particular pattern was exclusive to one family, without that necessarily being true.
Regional Distinctiveness
Decorative patterns and styles have always been regional in this way, also they have been dictated by the materials available at particular locations. At great gatherings at festivals, it would have been possible to see where someone or some group was from, and whom they belonged to, by these styles.
I went on to suggest the desirability of this, linking people to their land.
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