Tag: Christianization
Lussi, the "Luminosa": the double pagan and "obscure" of Saint Lucia
Although many know the Christian tradition of Saint Lucia and celebrated it as children according to the most recent customs, most of the time the pre-Christian substratum from which this holiday, and the numinous figure used to it, derives, is ignored.
The archaic substratum of the end of year celebrations: the traditional significance of the 12 days between Christmas and the Epiphany
di Marco Maculotti
article originally published on Atrium on 21/12/2016,
here revised and expanded
Here we aim to deepen the folkloric beliefs that have led to the configuration of two figures intimately connected to the liturgical-profane calendar of Europe in recent centuries. The two figures that interest us are those of Santa Claus (Italianized in Santa Claus) and of the Befana, figures that - as we will see - owe their origin and their symbolism to an archaic substratum, anthropologically recognizable in all those practices and beliefs (myths and rites) of the volk European (or rather eurasian), which elsewhere we have defined as "cosmic-agrarian cults" [cf. Cosmic-agrarian cults of ancient Eurasia].
From Pan to the Devil: the 'demonization' and the removal of ancient European cults
di Marco Maculotti
cover: Arnold BΓΆcklin, βPan, the Syrinx-Blowingβ, 1827
We have previously had the opportunity to see that, in the first centuries of our era and even during the medieval era, the cd. "Rural paganism" it kept its diffusion unchanged, especially in the areas further away from the large inhabited centers. St. Maximus noted that "in the fourth century (...) the first missionaries passed from city to city and rapidly spread the Gospel over a very large area, but they did not even touch the surrounding countryside", Then adding that" even in the fifth and sixth centuries, when most of them had long since been converted, in Gaul and Spain the Church, as shown by the repeated canons of the councils of the time, encountered great difficulty in suppressing the ancient rites with which peasants from time immemorial averted plagues e they increased the fertility of the flocks and fields"[AA Barb, cit. in Centini, p.101].
Metamorphosis and ritual battles in the myth and folklore of the Eurasian populations
di Marco Maculotti
The zoomorphic metamorphosis topos is widely present in the folkloric corpus of a large number of ancient traditions, both from archaic Europe (on which we will focus mainly in this study), and from other geographical areas. As early as the fifth century BC, in Greece, Herodotus mentioned men capable of periodically transforming themselves into wolves. Similar traditions have been documented in Africa, Asia and the American continent, with reference to the temporary metamorphosis of human beings in fairs: bears, leopards, hyenas, tigers, jaguars. Sometimes, in some historically documented cases of the ancient world (Luperci, Cinocefali, Berserker) "The paranormal experience of transformation into an animal takes on collective characteristics and is at the origin of initiatory groups and secret societies" (Di Nola, p.12).
Guido von List and the magical-religious tradition of the Ariogermans
Wotan's wisdom is knowledge, magic and poetry at the same time. He not only knows the mysteries of the Nine Worlds and the order of their lineages, but also the destiny of men and the fate of the universe itself. Perhaps this is why He, unique among the Ases, was able to give a spiritual conscience to the human being: because, by accessing the supreme communion with the Great Mystery, and learning the secrets of the alphabet of the cosmos, He was able to synthesize all and seven spirits of the Aesis in a single spiritual entity, what the ancient Greeks called pneuma. With this magical act Wotan, according to Logos, originated from himself the third Logos, the one who has the power to give spiritual Life to the human being, just as the second Logos self-generated from the First.
At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using an approach halfway between the anthropological and the occult, the Viennese scholar Guido von List attempted a reconstruction of the Germanic Urgrund, analyzing the more esoteric aspects of the cosmogony and pre-Christian religion of the ancient Central European peoples .
di Marco Maculotti
