Tag: King of the Growing Year

The archaic substratum of the end of year celebrations: the traditional significance of the 12 days between Christmas and the Epiphany

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Anthropology, Esotericism, folklore, Middle Ages, Mito, Shamanism, History of Religions

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].

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From Pan to the Devil: the 'demonization' and the removal of ancient European cults

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Anthropology, Esotericism, folklore, Middle Ages, Mito, History, History of Religions

di Marco Maculotti
cover: Arnold Bรถcklin, โ€œPan, the Syrinx-Blowingโ€, 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].

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Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Anthropology, Esotericism, folklore, Mito, History of Religions

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".

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