Sorcova [EN]
Beginings
Paper flowers on a stick. You tap it against a window or on someone’s shoulder. Those rhymes are sung like an incantation.
Sorcova, the merry one, May you live, may you grow old,
Like an apple tree, like a pear tree, Like a strand of rose.
Strong as iron, Swift as steel. Strong as stone, Swift as an arrow.
Until next year and for many years!
Before plastic flowers and colored paper, colored wool threads were tied to the stick. Before the wool threads, in early December, apple and pear twigs and others were placed in water to bud, and then the caroling would begin with a bundle of budded or even blooming twigs. These could be the same twigs that children receive from Saint Nicholas if they haven’t been good. Perhaps if we reverse the Christian meanings of these stories, there was nothing wrong with receiving twigs to put in a vase. But initially the Sorcova wasn’t a single twig. It was a bundle. Like in Aesop’s fable. Strength in unity. The Soviet Yakov Perelman calculated that six sticks are 80 times more resistant than one alone. Perhaps not just syncretistically, it’s also related to the fasces. Sticks bundled together for punishment. The power that delivers beatings.
The Sorcova is a manifestation of ritual beating. Just like tapping on the shoulder, like beating a stake into the ground before building something. It marks the beginning, it starts the year, the house, the village, the country, the grave, just as a child’s home is founded through the sexual act. Once again, “beating” is a euphemism. It’s a placeholder in stories to be easily understood by children.
It fertilizes the space, just as the priest goes from house to house at the beginning of the year to bless them.
Magic. Sex and violence. Punk. Techno. 4/4.
The theme for January 1st is E(1,4). [x . . . ] Four to the floor. Something so familiar that it’s become the norm. The fact that such a mechanical rhythm has become standard for most modern music says something. I don’t know what. A good starting point. Familiar but with deep roots.
In Coliere V1, the equivalent was PYROBOLVS, The Bomb. Something artificial. In a dyad with IGNICVLVS, Sparky, the natural. The Sorcova is the bomb. A bundle of dynamite sticks that drives away evil spirits, through warmth, friendship, attachment between people. Nothing is what it seems anymore. Often it’s exactly the opposite.
We are Sex Bob-omb and we are here to ritually beat you into the New Year!
Homework:
Beat! Keep the rhythm. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Rare and emphatic. That’s how it all begins.