Kupala Night Wreath Floating for Love Divination

On Kupala Night, the shortest night of the year and the eve of St John the Baptist's feast, young women across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Poland wove wreaths of wild flowers and set them on rivers, sometimes with a candle burning in the centre. How the wreath travelled was read as a sign: carried far and fast, a wedding soon; drifting to the bank, another year at home; caught by a young man downstream, a hint of who might come courting. The custom is still kept as a summer festival, and it makes a gentle, open-ended divination for love in general.

How to do it§

1. Gather flowers in the afternoon. Traditional wreaths used whatever bloomed in the meadows: cornflowers, chamomile, clover, St John's wort, periwinkle, mint, and fern fronds. Pick only common plants, and only where you are allowed.

2. Weave the wreath. Twist a few long, flexible stems or a length of soft wire into a ring that fits your head. Bind in flowers and leaves around it with twine or by twisting their stems, until the ring is full. Many women wore their wreath during the evening's singing before floating it.

3. Set your question. Kupala divination asked about love and marriage in general, not about a particular person. Hold the wreath and form a question such as "What does the coming year hold for me in love?"

4. Add a light (optional). Fix a tea-light in a floating holder or a half walnut shell at the centre and light it at the water's edge.

5. Float it. Kneel on a safe bank, place the wreath gently on the water, and let it go.

6. Read the signs. In the commonly recorded folk readings:

   • floating away steadily: love or marriage in the coming year;
   • circling or staying near the bank: no change yet;
   • candle burning long: a long and happy life or marriage;
   • wreaths of two friends drifting together: friendship that will last.

   Folk tradition also read a sinking wreath as an ill omen; many modern participants treat it simply as "not yet."

7. Close the night. Walk home with your companions, singing if you like, and give thanks for the summer.

Origins and history§

Kupala (Kupalo, Kupaila) is the East Slavic name for the midsummer festival; in Poland it is Noc Kupały or Sobótka, and the wreaths are wianki. Since the Christianisation of the Slavs the festival has been tied to the Nativity of St John the Baptist (24 June), whose name, Ivan, gives the Russian and Ukrainian Ivan Kupala. The word kupala is usually linked to the root for bathing, and bathing in rivers and dew at dawn was part of the festival.

Church writers condemned the night's bonfires and revels from at least the sixteenth century; a letter of 1505 from Pamfil, abbot of a monastery near Pskov, is often cited for its description of women and men dancing and singing on this night. In Poland, Jan Kochanowski's Renaissance poem Pieśń świętojańska o Sobótce (1586) gives a literary picture of village maidens' songs around the Sobótka fire. Nineteenth-century folklorists recorded the wreath divination in great detail, along with the legend of the fern flower that blooms for one moment at midnight and grants luck to whoever finds it — the subject of Nikolai Gogol's story "St John's Eve" (1830).

Older writers, following the nineteenth-century mythological school, often described a god "Kupala"; most modern scholars think no such deity is reliably attested and that the name belongs to the festival. Whether the customs preserve pre-Christian solstice rites is likely but hard to prove in detail. Today Kupala is celebrated as a folk festival in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland and by Slavic native-faith (Rodnover) groups, who treat it as a religious holy day. See what is divination and the wheel of the year.

Variations§

• Fire leaping: couples or young people jumping over the Kupala bonfire; a festival custom best left to organised events with safety measures.
• Herbs of St John's Eve: herbs gathered on this night were dried and kept as protective and healing, among them St John's wort.
• Dew bathing: washing the face in morning dew on St John's Day for beauty and health.
• Sobótka wianki in Kraków: a large public festival of wreaths on the Vistula.

Safety and good sense§

• Water at night is dangerous. Stay on a firm bank, never wade or swim in the dark, keep children close, and go with others.
• Use only natural, biodegradable materials. Do not float wire, plastic or foil; use natural twine, or take the wire ring home and float only flowers.
• A floating candle must never be launched near reeds, boats, dry grass or where fire is banned; in dry weather leave it out.
• Do not pick protected wild flowers. St John's wort is for weaving, not for taking as medicine without advice; it interacts with many drugs.
• Divination of this kind is a festive custom; it does not decide anyone's future.

Sources and further reading§

• The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia — W. F. Ryan, 1999
• Russian Folk Belief — Linda J. Ivanits, 1989
• Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe — Kaarina Aitamurto & Scott Simpson (eds.), 2013
• The Golden Bough — James George Frazer, 1890