Tag: Winter crisis
"Santa Claus executed", or the eternal return of an immortal rite
With an essay with a provocative title, "Santa Claus executed", Claude LΓ©vi-Strauss is inspired by a bizarre news event at his time - the hanging and holocaust of a puppet of Santa Claus by the Dijonese clergy - to arrive to the understanding of the "true meaning of Christmas", based on the reciprocal relationship between the world of children and that of the dead. The method used for this purpose is a synchronic and confrontational approach with non-European societies.
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].
Cernunno, Odin, Dionysus and other deities of the 'Winter Sun'
It would seem, indeed, that all these numinous powers, as well as a certain chthonic-telluric and chaotic-wild aspect of nature, are also symbolically connected to the Winter Sun, or rather to the "Dying Sun" in the coinciding final days of the Year. with the "solstitial crisis", during which the heliacal star reaches its annual nadir.
di Marco Maculotti
cover: Hermann Hendrich, "Wotan", 1913
[follows from: Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'].
In the previous publication we had the opportunity to analyze the ritual complex, recognizable everywhere among the ancient Indo-European populations, centered on theimmolation (real or symbolic) of the "King of the Old Year" (eg. Roman Saturnalia), as a symbolic representation of the "Dying Year" that must be sacrificed to ensure that the Cosmos (= the order of things), reinvigorated by this ceremonial action, grants the regeneration of Time and of the 'World' (in the Pythagorean meaning of Kosmos like interconnected unit) in the new year to come; year which, in this sense, becomes a micro-representation of the Aeon and, therefore, of the entire cyclical nature of the Cosmos. Let's now proceed toanalysis of some divinities intimately connected with the "solstitial crisis", to the point of rising to mythical representatives of the "Winter Sun" and, in full, of the "King of the Waning Year": Cernunno, the 'horned god' par excellence, as far as the Celtic area is concerned; Odin and the 'wild hunt' for the Scandinavian one and Dionysus for the Mediterranean area.
Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'
di Marco Maculotti
Mircea Eliade wrote that "the main difference between the man of archaic and traditional societies and the man of modern societies, strongly marked by Judeo-Christianity, consists in the fact that the former feels solidarity with the cosmos and cosmic rhythms, while the second is considered in solidarity only with history "[Eliade (1), p.5]. This "cosmic life" is connected to the microcosm by a "structural correspondence of planes arranged in hierarchical order" which "together constitute the universal harmonic law in which man is integrated" [Sanjakdar, p.155].
Archaic man especially took into consideration the solstices and equinoxes, as well as the dates between them: it was believed that in these particular days, which marked the passage from one phase of the cycle to the next of the "wheel of the year", the energy of the cosmos flowed more freely, and therefore they chose such dates to perform their own rituals. Here we are especially interested in certain dates between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, that is to say the calendar phase in which the Sun appears die: the so-called "solstice crisis" or "winter crisis".
