(Start from the beginning of this series here.)
Erna Liddik Koosberg, an Estonian woman from São Paulo, told the newspaper Folha de São Paulo in 2008 about her parents’ flight from the Soviet Union and settling in São Paulo as a land of opportunities. “They never stopped loving Estonia,” she says of parents who pass away without ever returning to their homeland or seeing it regain independence. Roberta Laas, a young Estonian from Santos, told the Novo Milênio de Santos portal in 2013 about the destitution she witnessed experienced by Estonians under the foreign yoke: “People had nothing, they needed to reinvent everything.” And in these conditions, my great-great-grandparents—the Helju, the Ummus, the Hendriksons, and the Rombergs—arrived on the island of Santo Amaro in the South Atlantic exactly one hundred years ago.
I was born on June 13, 1993 in the largest metropolis in Latin America, São Paulo, the steel and asphalt monstrosity of Brazil, of a Mediterranean mother and a Balto-Slavic father, but with eyes lowered and too submerged in emergencies more immediate and in elementary aspects of common life to learn how to lift them and teach me how to do it, too; to raise them to the legitimacy of our origins, the dignity of our names, the truth of our hearts, and the height of my own destiny. A destiny long ago chosen by the strong hand of the Old God, the Vanaisa Ukko, the sage Taara, and the great ancestor Rod, the forger Svarog, my two original Fathers, but whom I honour and love as One.
Like all heroes who ignored their real provenance, I faced a solitary adventure, while naturally alien to the cultural milieu in which I grew up. Over the years I received a call, but I didn’t know how to interpret it correctly, both because I lacked the mentor, the initiator, and the knowledge, the book, the map. I wandered between values, arts, religions, histories, and cultures, always in search of superior knowledge, the broken compass, the broken jewel, the fragment of the sword, until that call became clearer.
I did not find the magical artifact or receive the magisterial initiation, that is true, but I was granted something of greater dignity: encounters with heroes of the past, direct instructions from the Gods and omens in unforgettable dreams-visions. One day I walked, in a golden dawn, between the marshes of Harjumaa, before I knew them, when the figure of my own father in traditional clothing showed me a path across the sea. In another, I discovered ruins of an ancient civilization. In still others, sometimes I walked through the halls of Persian palaces. Sometimes I was in the entourage of great sages. Sometimes I was at festivities in ancient India in the presence of avatāras. Sometimes I witnessed magnificent military marches. Sometimes I heard old songs like the Russian “Pod rakitoju zelenoj” (“Under a Green Willow Tree”). Sweet is the melody that is heard, but “those unheard are sweeter”, taught Keats when contemplating a Greek urn. “Therefore, ye soft pipes, play on, not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone!”
(to be continued)
About the author:
Born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1993,of Balto-Slavic origin, Jonas Otávio Bilda is a graduated Psychologist and Philosopher. He works as a free-thinking writer, translator, and proofreader.
He is the author of the books O Alvorecer das Artes do Ser (The Dawn of the Arts of Being, 2016), Cartas de um solícito acompanhante (Letters From a Solicitous Companion, 2018), A Civilização Eterna (The Eternal Civilization, 2020), O Livro de Veles (The Book of Veles, 2020), Kalevipoeg, o épico da Estônia (Kalevipoeg, the Estonian Epic, 2021), A Instrução de Amenemope (Instruction of Amenemope, 2021), Coreia, história e cultura da estrela do Oriente (Korea, History and Culture of the Star of the East, 2023). Bilda is also co-author and a pseudonymous author of more than ten other books, and a founding professor of the Curso de Filosofia Universal (Universal Philosophy Course).
Discover his work on his website BildaEscritor.com and on Instagram ( @jonasbilda ).
