Tag: Arthur
JRR Tolkien and the fall of Arthur
Discovering the unfinished poem by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, published posthumously in 2013, and its link with the Arthurian cycle.
Hellequin's Masnada: from Wotan to King Arthur, from Herla to Harlequin
Second and last part of the overview dedicated to the "mirabilia" in the medieval West, to the mythology of"Army of the dead" and the "Wild Hunt"
The "Ghost Riders", the "Chasse-Galerie" and the myth of the Wild Hunt
It seems that in the nights following the winter solstice of 21 December, the curtain that separates the world of the living from that of the dead becomes more impalpable and that it is possible to run into a terrible and noisy horde, which crosses the sky with great roar: in it there are barking dogs, galloping horses, emaciated hunters with haunted eyes, intent on chasing deer and game in an eternal and desperate escape at the same time. Seeing this terrifying sight is an omen of catastrophes and doom.
(image: Henri Lievens, "Wild Hunt")
ยซUn old cowboy went out on horseback on a dreary windy day / rested on a ridge as he went for his roadยป.ย Thus begins one of the most beautiful and famous country songs of all time:ย (Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend.
Apollo / Kronos in exile: Ogygia, the Dragon, the "fall"
di Marco Maculotti
cover: Ferdinand Keller
Here we aim to bring to a conjunction some cycles of articles published so far in this first year of activity ofย AXIS world: the cycle concerning iย Cosmic-agrarian cults of ancient Eurasia, the one focused on the question ofย Time and cosmic cyclesย and finally the series of lectures by M. Ruzzai on the Myth of the polar and hyperborean origin of humanity.
The Friulian benandanti and the ancient European fertility cults
di Marco Maculotti
cover: Luis Ricardo Falero, โWitches going to their Sabbath", 1878).
Carlo Ginzburg (born 1939), a renowned scholar of religious folklore and medieval popular beliefs, published in 1966 as his first workย The Benandanti, a research on the Friulian peasant society of the sixteenth century. The author, thanks to a remarkable work on a conspicuous documentary material relating to the trials of the courts of the Inquisition, reconstructed the complex system of beliefs widespread up to a relatively recent era in the peasant world of northern Italy and other countries, of Germanic area, Central Europe.
According to Ginzburg, the beliefs concerning the company of the benandanti and their ritual battles against witches and sorcerers on the Thursday nights of the four tempora (Her hand, imbol, Beltain, Lughnasad), were to be interpreted as a natural evolution, which took place far from the city centers and from the influence of the various Christian Churches, of an ancient agrarian cult with shamanic characteristics, widespread throughout Europe since the Archaic age, before the spread of the Jewish religion - Christian. Ginzburg's analysis of the interpretation proposed at the time by the inquisitors is also of considerable interest, who, often displaced by what they heard during interrogation by the benandanti defendants, mostly limited themselves to equating the complex experience of the latter with the nefarious practices of witchcraft. Although with the passing of the centuries the tales of the benandanti became more and more similar to those concerning the witchcraft sabbath, the author noted that this concordance was not absolute:
"If, in fact, the witches and sorcerers who meet on Thursday night to give themselves to" jumps "," fun "," weddings "and banquets, immediately evoke the image of the sabb - that sabb that the demonologists had meticulously described and codified, and the inquisitors persecuted at least since the mid-400th century - nonetheless exist, among the gatherings described byย benandanti and the traditional, vulgate image of the diabolical sabbath, evident differences. In these cEverywhere, apparently, homage is not paid to the devil (in whose presence, indeed, there is no mention of it), faith is not abjured, the cross is not trampled, there is no reproach of the sacraments. At the center of them is a dark ritual: witches and sorcerers armed with sorghum reeds who juggle and fight with benandanti provided with fennel branches. Who are these benandanti? On the one hand, they claim to oppose witches and sorcerers, to hinder their evil designs, to heal the victims of their hexes; on the other hand, not unlike their presumed adversaries, they claim to go to mysterious nocturnal gatherings, of which they cannot speak under pain of being beaten, riding hares, cats and other animals. "
โCarlo Ginzburg, "Iย benandanti.ย Witchcraft and agrarian cults between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesยป, Pp. 7-8