Vyriy

According to the pre-Christian beliefs of Ukrainians, vyriy is a warm country on an island across the sea, where the souls of the dead and the unborn live, where birds fly away for the winter, and where the Tree of Life, the cosmogonic centre of the world, grows. The tree expresses the golden trinity of life, the eternal, living and bright trinity of the Sun god. An important place in the vyriy is occupied by the alatyr (altar) - a stone on which the Tree of Life grows and the eternal fire burns. Many green shoots and rivers flow from under the stone. Our forefathers believed that the cuckoo, which has the keys to it, is the earliest to fly to the nest, and the latest to return from it. The wooden cross is the most common primitive form of the Tree of Life. Birth is impossible without death, as the future impossible without knowledge of the past. The names of those who died in the war with russia for the sake of our lives are engraved on the altar. Thus, the ancient myth finds a tragic reflection in the present.