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Walpurga and the Wild Hunt

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By Peter Nicolai Arbo – Nasjonalmuseet, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78150204

Walpurgisnacht is known in the Germanic countries of central Europe as a night when the dead walk the earth, when witches and fairies roam about, and the division between the worlds of living and those of the dead are thin.  Falling six months from Halloween, Walpurgisnacht shares many of its attributes.  

Saint Walpurga

Walpurga was born, and became a nun, in England before traveling to assist her brother, Saint Boniface, in evangelizing the Germans.  When Boniface died, Walpurga became abbess of the Heidenheim am Hahnenkamm monastery he established there. Saint Walburga is often depicted in stone carving and pictures as being accompanied by a dog.  There is little in her autobiography to account for this faithful companion, but there is plenty of historic associations of dogs with other Germanic goddesses like the Norns and Friga, a Goddess of May Day and the Wild Hunt.  This is just one way that the Saint and Goddess have been woven together through time. Saint Walburga’s tomb was also said to start weeping a miraculous healing oil on the first of May. Though the church would try and downplay the association of the oil and saint with Mayday, the connection would remain in people’s minds.

Goddess Walpurga

Walpurga, or Walburga, is all white and gold.  She is a fertility goddess, a forest goddess, and a goddess of springs.  She is associated with grain and the harvest, and like Berchta she has a spindle.  With her she carries a unique three cornered mirror that shows the future. She has been compared to Holda, also keeper of a spindle, goddess of fertility, and sharing a tendency to reward her followers with gifts of gold.  She has also been compared to Brigid, who shares her May holiday and her double life as saint and goddess.

Wild Hunt

When the sun sets on the 31st of April a storm of spirits rips through the sky, making mischief through every town in it’s path.  Is Odin the leader of the Wild Hunt, atop his six legged steed, or was it Perchta, or Holda? In Scotland the Wild Hunt is made up of the Sluagh or Unseelie Court, joined by any restless spirit that did not feel much like leaving the physical world.  

Walpurga has been linked to the Wild Hunt as well.  Yet, different from the many spirits who might do you a trick if found in their path, Walpurga is pursued.  She runs from the tumult, flying from village to village in a desperate attempt to find a hiding place. It is said that if you leave your window open, so she can hide behind the cross of the windowpane grill, she will leave you gold as thanks.

Readings:

  1. Hodge, Winifred (nd) Waelburga and the Rites of May.  https://www.friggasweb.org/walburga.html 
  2. (nd) Pagan Holidays;  Walpurgis Night and how a British lady went from Cathololic saint, to Germanic goddess, to witch and gave us a second Halloween.  Wytchery: a gothic curiosity cabinet. https://www.gothichorrorstories.com/pagans-and-heathens/pagan-holidays-walpurgis-night-and-how-a-british-lady-went-from-catholic-saint-to-germanic-goddess-to-witch-and-gave-us-a-second-halloween/ 
  3. Wikipedia (2019) Wild Hunt.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Hunt
  4. Wikipedia (2019) Saint Walpurga. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Walpurga 

Witches and Demons of Christmas

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Krampus and boy by j4p4n. https://openclipart.org/detail/320772/krampus-and-boy.

Though there is plenty of creepiness about a man who sneaks into our houses after spying on us all year to reward behavior that he deems good, Santa is far from the only holiday spirit to take on the job of keeping us all in line.  Most of the witches and demons of Christmas time share this reward and punish vocation, but they haven’t all been painted as benevolent, harmless, and rosy cheeked as our dear old Claus.  

Let’s begin with the Krampus.  Krampus has been described as a half goat – half demon, and is one of the companions of St. Nicholas.  St. Nicholas’ companions vary by region, share some similar characteristics, and seem to play the part of a shadow self or the evil side of the Saint.  Where St. Nicholas rewards good girls and boys with gifts during Christmas time, the Krampus punishes naughty children by whipping them with bundled reeds, locking them in chains, and/or carrying them away in a woven basket he wears on his back.  Krampus may be a vestige of pagan celebrations that pre-date Christianity; they have at times been forbidden by the Catholic Church.  Lately, there has been a renewed interest in the Krampus that, because of modern humor and consumerism, some worry has been diluting the dark and violent truth of this Christmas creature.

Krampus is far from the only dark creature you might find during the winter holidays.  Several cultures have tales of yuletide witches that both punish and reward as deserved.  In Germany and Austria Perchta keeps an eye out for young women who do not abstain from their spinning on holidays, and those who have not yet finished their work on time.  Individuals not observing the traditional fasting are also likely to be visited by Perchta’s wrath.  This punishment, dear reader, is nothing to sneeze at.  Far from simply whipping or chaining you, Perchta will disembowel you.  After she has ripped your organs from your abdomen she will replace them with sticks, rocks, and garbage before sewing you back up again.  Oddly, this punishment may have a silver lining.  If you mend your ways, as much as you can with garbage inside you, then she may return with your safe and clean innards and undo her previous work.  The lesson, in this case, is if you don’t take care of it you can’t have it anymore.  

The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.), 20 Dec. 1940. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060136/1940-12-20/ed-1/seq-7/> 

La Befana is a much more benevolent Christmastime witch.  She travels around Italy during epiphany bringing gifts to good children.  The story goes that the three wisemen stopped by her home looking for direction to the baby Jesus.  La Befana did not know the way and neglected to join the 3 kings on their journey to Bethlehem.  Not long after she regretted her decision and attempted to catch up to the 3 travelers. La Befana now travels in search of the Christ Child and leaving gifts as she goes.  It has been hypothesized that La Befana is connected to the same ancient goddess as Perchta, Mother Holle, the Russian Baboushka, and Gryla.

Gryla, however, isn’t known for her kindnesses.  She is an ogress, troll, or giantess, and the mother of the yule lads, seven (or thirteen) mischievous spirits who wreak havoc during Christmas time. Gryla may have multiple heads, and multiple tails, or she may simply have been an embroidered demonization of a ‘parasitic’ beggar woman.  Whatever her appearance, her raison d’être is eating children who don’t obey their mother.  

So, if you didn’t already think Christmas time was a time of darkness and a time to fear that which lurks in the shadows outside your door, you now have a whole host of new imagery.  To me the ancient fears of demons and witches explain some of the more beautiful aspects of the holiday season, that of banding together with family and helping your neighbors. Krampus, Perchta, and Gryla may get you if you do not.

References

  1. Basu, Tanya (2018) Who is Krampus?  Explaining the horrific Chirstmas beast.  National Geographic online.  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/12/131217-krampus-christmas-santa-devil/ 
  2. Cellania, Miss (2017) 8 Legendary Monsters of Christmas.  Mental Floss.  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/54184/8-legendary-monsters-christmas 
  3. Icelandic Christmas Lore (2019) Wikipedia.  CC-BY-SA.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Christmas_folklore#The_trolls_Gryla_&_Leppaludi 
  4. Krampus (2019) Wikipedia.  CC-BY-SA.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus
  5. Troop, Sarah E. (2013) The Monsters of Christmas. Atlas Obsucra.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/monsters-of-christmas 
  6. Raedisch, Linda (2019) The Old Magic of Christmas:  Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year.  Llewellyn Publications:  Woodbury, Massechusets.
  7. Ridenour, Al (2016) The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas:  Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil.  Feral House:  Port Townsend, Washington.  
  8. Sutherland (2019) Gryla: Cannibalistic, Evil Troll And Her Sons ‘Yule Lads’ – In Icelandic Folklore.  Ancient Pages. https://www.ancientpages.com/2019/12/11/gryla-cannibalistic-evil-troll-and-her-sons-yule-lads-in-icelandic-folklore/ 

Cloacina and Hygeia 

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Cloacina

Cloacina was originally an Etruscan water goddess who was later adopted by the Romans and associated with Venus.  She presided over the Cloaca Maxima – the great sewer of Rome and was linked to purification, cleansing, health, and hygiene.  She kept the pipes clean.

She is a difficult goddess to track down and has been buried by history, her temple relegated to a drawing in an ancient history text.  But perhaps Cloacina has a place with us today. Any homeowner can attest to the stress that a plumbing problem can bring, unless they happen to be a plumber, so why not call upon her to keep the guts of the house running efficiently?

You don’t have to own a home to have digestive issues.  Cloacina can help with your own internal plumbing issues as well.  Some Cloacina seekers have similarly linked her with mental health and keeping the mind tidy.  Offer her sweetened air in the form of incense or candles, bring white flowers into your bathroom, or toss coins into water in her name to win her favor.  

Other than being primarily derived from an Etruscan goddess, Cloacina is also sometimes considered an aspect of Salus, goddess of health, wellbeing, and public welfare, the Roman counterpart to the Greek goddess Hygeia.

Hygeia

Hygeia is the goddess of healing powers and medicine, health, cleanliness and sanitation.  She is protectress from sickness and dangers. As one of the Asclepiadae, the sons and daughters of the Asclepius the god of medicine, Hygeia is the personification of health and hygiene.  She is associated with mistletoe and depicted with a vessel and a snake. Her feast day is May 27th.

Hygeia is easier to find in history and historical studies than Cloacina.  Statues of her seemingly offering a potion to the snake that winds around her torso have been made over the centuries in several different art styles, and can be found at colleges of physicians and pharmacy.  The Bowl of Hygeia has become the international symbol of pharmacy. She has been painted by Klimt and Rubens.  

Similar to Cloacina, Hygeia was linked with Aphrodite (Greek counterpart to the Roman Venus).  As the protectress of mental health, she has been linked with Athena. Also similar to Cloacina, her story is unclear.  She is sometimes talked of as the wife of Asclepiadae, not his daughter, and the two were on near equal footing in terms of veneration and followers.  They represented two aspects of life and health: hygiene and wholeness along with medical miracle.

One in the Same?

I am not a historian of Greek or Roman culture or religion.  I am an eager student, but I have noticed in decades of reading about the gods and goddesses of the ancient world, in semesters of college history classes, that the tendency of gods to have near mirror counterparts in other countries was and is a reliable happenstance.  The way I first learned it, is that the Roman’s adopted a kind of copy of the Greek god and goddess pantheon, but I have since come to know that it is more complicated than that. To me, Hygeia and Cloacina strike amazingly similar profiles even though they have only tenuously been linked.  Could they be two aspects of the same goddess? True counterparts?

Melusine

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Long ago I was often inspired to do crazy research on passing thoughts and ideas. Smelling Books and Chromolithography and the mystery of Henri and Anita LeRoy, on why certain books smell the way they do and who was really the artist behind common chromolithography prints, respectively, are past products of my ardent desires to answer a question. It’s been a long time since I’ve given myself time to fall down that rabbit hole, but I am feeling the inclination once again. I have a list of curiosities I wanted to return to. Melusine is on that list. For better, or worse, I’ve only geared up to capsule research. The ridiculously extensive posts may still come.

By Heinrich Vogeler – http://www.worpswede.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Heinrich_Vogeler_Melusine.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23490529

The story of Melusine is a fairy tale legend wherein a fairy queen and the king of Scotland had a daughter. Melusine angered her fairy queen mother by imprisoning her father and was cursed to turn into a half-snake beast on Saturdays. Her beast form is often depicted as a two tailed mermaid or something more akin to a naga, a creature from Hindu mythology that has the bottom half of a cobra.

I could not find any more food to feed my passing thought that Melusine is a rogue Naga Kanya, if the Naga Kanya are in fact an entire race of fairy creatures instead of one. I did find that several pinterest boards have noticed the similarity in the two tailed stone depictions of Melusine and those of the fertility goddess Sheela Na Gig. These similarities intrigue me. While poking around in the easily locate-able online sources, I did find that stories of a half serpent, half beautiful woman can be found across Albania, Germany, and France.

In the most well known story from France, Melusine married a nobleman and brought agricultural advances and fortune to the people over which he ruled. But, curiosity became too much for her husband, leading him to break the promise he made to leave her in seclusion on Saturdays. He spied on her, witnessing her changed form. Upon learning of this, Melusine sprouted wings and flew away, never to return (British Library – European Studies Blog).

Most interesting is how, before her husband’s transgression and her disappearance, Melusine bore several sons, making her a founding mother of European nobility. This fairy lineage would eventually be referred to as dragon blood, referencing Melusine’s final winged form. Of course, her split serpent tales has become familiar to many of us as an image of the commercial depiction of Starbuck (Ancient Origins).

Baba Yaga and her izbushka

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It’s no surprise that I am enamored of the witch.  I have drawn her in all her incarnations, back to her most powerful mothers.  I have studied her, gorging myself on sociological studies of the ‘child stealers,’ and the female trinity.  Yet, I haven’t written much about her, so here is my first look at the witch.  As much as the internet is great, it is also not always the best place to get substantive information on ancient things.  There are plenty of sites regurgitating the same information and descriptions of Baba Yaga (Wikipedia) with reference to the folktales that originally sketched her visage and character.  I needed to be sure; I looked for those folktales, the most famous of which is Russian Fairy Tales from the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library, by Aleksandr Afanasev, translated by Norbert Guterman and illustrated b Alexander Alexeieff.  It just happened to live on the shelf of my personally library, a relic of my childhood (I spilled milk on it when I was six or so).

Baba Yaga the boney legged, or, in one story, the golden legged, is one of three sisters.   She has three daughters, sometimes beautiful and sometimes deformed.  She has claws and a nose that hits the ceiling of her ‘little hut’ where she often lies stretched from corner to corner.  She is sometimes helpful to youth on a quest, mostly devious towards young women, and often devising ways to eat her visitors.  She sharpens or ‘whets’ her teeth for these chow downs and can gnaw through whole forests.  Her ambiguous intentions to people make her stand out in folklore where characters are usually only evil or only good (Johns, 1998).

Baba Yaga has servants; sometimes these are youth who take on temporary servitude in order to get something from her, and sometimes these are maids who have been given to her for some other favor.  She commands oxen, eagles, and magical mares.  And her primary, if not only, mode of transportation is folded up in a mortar which she goads along though the sky with a pestle and sweeps her tracks away with a broom.  I have not yet figured out how she could fly in such a thing and still need to sweep her tracks away, though these tools also allude to other, older, things like the potions ancient wise women mixed up, winter winds, and a the sweeping of the oven after eating (Cooper, 1997).  Like many evil spirits, Baba Yaga is driven to count things and cannot cross a river or other running water.

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