The Sacred symbolism of straw gardens in local and cross-cultural contexts
ENSodai or straw gardens are one of the most impressive types of Lithuanian traditional decorative art, still practised today. They are volumetric folk art objects with strict geometric shapes made of straw. In Lithuania, the predominant forms are the foursided pyramid structure and the more complex sodai that are created from it. The most popular sodai are octahedral, i.e. double pyramids with a common square base and symmetrically oriented points on opposite sides. Such crafts with straw are not only known in Lithuania, but are also widespread in Belarus, Latvia, Estonia and north-eastern Poland. The interpretation of the symbolism of traditional cultural crafts requires a complex approach to the various aspects of analysis. When considering the semantics of artifacts, it is important to identify key archetypal or universal aspects, which may be far removed from the specific appearance and customary functions of the object and may lead to a broader context of mythopoetic connections. It is this view that allows us to see in the objects created by man not only a practically useful or aesthetically pleasing object, but also to understand these artifacts as expressions of mythopoetic thought and mythological concepts. Our folk culture lacks texts directly explaining the symbolism of straw gardens, so we have to use the cultural context in which the phenomenon of sodai itself exists. Comparing the symbolic artistic elements of sodai with similar manifestations in other cultures, where their symbolism is clearly defined in the tradition, can help to reveal the universal mythopoetics of straw gardens. [p. 55].
