Alatyr brass necklace pendant,Vintage jewellery,octagonal brass necklace pendant,traditional ukrainian jewellery,ukraine

Beautiful Alatyr brass necklace pendant was made in Ukraine.
Alatyr in Slavic mythology is a harbinger of God's good, the eye of the Rod. That is why the caroling gangs used the eight-pointed star as their main talisman and attribute of Christmas, dressing up in festive masks and skins of totem animals, glorifying the newborn Bozhich-Kolyada.
Many archaic cultures and antiquities preserve the memory of this symbol. Octagonal signs are depicted on ancient Ukrainian medallions of princely power. Many octagonal stars can be seen on the ceilings and walls of the luxurious palaces of the Ukrainian nobility of the past - Vyshnevetskyi, Groholskyi, etc. The sanctuary of Perun in Kyiv was surrounded by eight fire pits, located in the directions of the four main sides of the horizon and four intermediate ones. The iconic Indo-European symbol of rain - the thunderbolt - was also eight-rayed.
Among the Sumerians, the eight-pointed star was a symbol of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar in Akkadian mythology), served as a hieroglyph for the concepts "god, sky, star"; in Akkad and Babylon, this ideogram expressed the concept of "god, sun, star, year". In the medieval symbolism of Western Europe, there was a combination of straight and oblique crosses, forming an eight-pointed star. In ancient India, the eight-pointed star was a symbol of the union of male and female principles, creative life. Also in ancient India there was a reverence for the eight directions of the horizon; they contacted eight gods, who were called "guardians of the world". In the Scandinavian tradition, the world had eight directions.

Dimensions of the octagonal brass necklace pendant is 40x40 mm (1.6" x 1.6"), Weight about 10.5 g