ARTIFACT #7, FABERGÉ EGGS, TESSERACTS 22 ALCHEMY AND ARTIFACTS

BECAUSE OF THE SEASON, I THOUGHT IT FITTING TO POST ABOUT EGGS, in particular those created by the famed jeweller, Peter Carl Fabergé. The egg on the left is one of several kept as part of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' permanent collection. Whenever I'm in Richmond visiting my sister, we always try to see them. The museum also has an excellent website where you can view this particular egg (and others) in a rotating 360 degree view. They're quite beautiful - just go half-way down the page to see them. The link is here: Fabergé Russian and Decorative Arts, VMFA.

History has it that Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family (for whom many of the eggs were designed), were shot by Bolshevics in the summer of 1918. In 2010, a Russian court ordered their murder case to be reopened, as the Bolshevics who were said to have killed them, actually died years before. So a mystery remains - who actually killed the Russian royal family?

The bodies of Nicholas II and his family were re-interred in St. Petersburg in July, 1998.

Eggs have always been symbols of hope and rebirth.

Here's a Tesseracts 22 anthology idea: what if the tsar and his family weren't killed at all, but had found a way to escape their would-be murderers? What if, through some kind of egg magic, they lived their lives in a limbo, or perhaps in an alternate universe - one contained inside an egg?

Maybe I'm also drawn to decorated eggs because of my Ukrainian maternal grandmother who painted pysanky. I never learned the technique, but I do know that many of the designs and colours indicate various things. Red dye represents life and blood, for example. I recall my grandmother drawing eight-sided stars, (small points around a square) which indicate the sun and stars - also indicators of life, growth, and fortune. If you think about it, any symbol found on a pysanky could be seen as a sigil or rune magic. Pysanky eggs may be talismans in their own right, as well as valued and preserved objets d'arte.

On that note, I wish you all a wonderful and magical Easter, full of happiness and good fortune. Also great writing, no matter what you're working on.

- Susan.