{"id":12697,"date":"2022-02-26T19:34:27","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T02:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12697"},"modified":"2022-02-26T19:43:02","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T02:43:02","slug":"moving-at-the-speed-of-folklore-the-sunflower-curse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12697","title":{"rendered":"Moving at the Speed of Folklore: The Sunflower Curse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The war in Ukraine is a fast-changing affair, but one event from two days ago has already spawn a meme that has folklore scholars (like my friend Sabina Magliocco<\/a>) shouting, “Folklore rules.<\/p>\n

It started with a video (there are two versions) of a confrontation between a Ukranian woman and a Russian soldier in or near the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She starts right out with “What the fuck are you doing here?”<\/p>\n

The soldier tries to downplay it, saying that he is part of an “exercise.” She won’t have it. And she death-curses him, telling him, “You’re occupants, you’re fascists! What the fuck are you doing on our land with all those guns? Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.”\u00a0 (Sunflowers are a national symbol in Ukraine and quite popular in decorative arts.)<\/p>\n

Her video, with her phone slightly hidden, is here (Twitter).<\/a><\/p>\n

An accomplice across the street was also recording<\/a> \u2014 the sound quality is so good that I wonder if it was not mixed in from the first video.<\/p>\n

WIthin 24 hours I saw this on Twitter:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Shortly after, there were other versions, such as this:\"\"<\/p>\n

This conflict has no common name yet, but some are already calling it The Sunflower War.<\/p>\n

Only hours later, Sabina Magliocco posted on Facebook a new meme, for magical work against President Putin. On it, the words of the curse:\"\"There you are, war and magic at the speed of social media. But there might be more to say about putting your magical intentions out on the internet. I will have more to say about that in a short time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The war in Ukraine is a fast-changing affair, but one event from two days ago has already spawn a meme that has folklore scholars (like my friend Sabina Magliocco) shouting, “Folklore rules. It started with a video (there are two versions) of a confrontation between a Ukranian woman and a Russian soldier in or near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[225,415,53,416,122,105],"class_list":["post-12697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-magic","tag-meme","tag-russia","tag-sunflower","tag-ukraine","tag-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3iN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5788,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5788","url_meta":{"origin":12697,"position":0},"title":"New Book on Ukrainian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation by Mariya Lesiv, who teaches in the Department of Folklore at\u00a0 the Memorial University of Newfoundland, has now been released by McGill-Queen's University Press in Canada. From the publisher's site: In The Return of Ancestral\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mqup.ca\/filebin\/images\/products\/main\/9780773542624.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1322","url_meta":{"origin":12697,"position":1},"title":"Pagans, Folklore, and Dogs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Click over to Pagans for Archaeology, where Yewtree interviews Australian Pagan scholar David Waldron, author of Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay: A Study in Local Folklore, about dogs, folklore, and the Pagan revival.I think a key issue for me was that transmission of symbols, images and ideas from the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dogs\"","block_context":{"text":"dogs","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dogs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=095552377X","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=130","url_meta":{"origin":12697,"position":2},"title":"Witchcraft and folklore Folklorist Sabina\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 27, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Witchcraft and folklore Folklorist Sabina Magliocco, an anthropologist at California State University-Northridge and a previous contributo to The Pomegranate, has a new book out, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. From the publisher's catalog: Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12154,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12154","url_meta":{"origin":12697,"position":3},"title":"Joining Folklore: The Electronic Journal of Folklore","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 5, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month I accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of Folklore: The Electronic Journal of Folklore, which is published by the Estonian Literary Museum in the city of Tartu. They have not yet updated the website, but you know how that goes. Because Folklore is government-supported and Web-only,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/estonian-literary-museum-300x174.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6347","url_meta":{"origin":12697,"position":4},"title":"‘Weird Tales,’ Hex Signs, and Folklore","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Joe Laycock examined the mythologies behind True Detective. (I have not seen it, being much the same situation as Jason Pitzl-Waters.) Religion scholar Philip Jenkins has suggested these two sources\u2014contemporary Satanic Panic and the \u201cweird tales\u201d of pulp horror\u2014are connected.\u00a0He suggests that it was the weird tales authors of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13906,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13906","url_meta":{"origin":12697,"position":5},"title":"Does the Pagan Resurgence Start with Folklore?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 10, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Politics is downstream from culture,\" people like to say online -- which is just a re-statement of something that I have long believed, that \"Life imitates Art.\" Maybe I am just reflecting my online environment and the podcasts that I listen to, but folklore is suddenly big. My feed has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"culture\"","block_context":{"text":"culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=culture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Hellebore-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12697"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12707,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12697\/revisions\/12707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}