Tag: Wild Hunt
"Weird" Far West
On the occasion of presentation of the book tomorrow in Turin, we publish the preface edited by us exclusively for our readers.
βThe Walking Deadβ: an attempt at esoteric deciphering
Our film analysis column is back: this time we deal with the esoteric aspects of the famous TV series created by Frank Darabont and inspired by the comic by Robert Kirkman.
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 Marvelous in the Middle Ages: the "mirabilia" and the apparitions of the "exercitus mortuorum"
An overview of how the Marvelous and the irrational survived the advent of Christianity in popular culture, with a particular focus on the apparitions of the dead and above all of the "furious army", the discussion of which will continue in second part of this comprehensive study
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")
Β«Un old cowboy went out on horseback on a dreary windy day / rested on a ridge as he went for his roadΒ».Β Thus begins one of the most beautiful and famous country songs of all time:Β (Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend.
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].
Divinity of the Underworld, the Afterlife and the Mysteries
di Marco Maculotti
We continue the discussion previously developed, taking it from the connection that we have seen to exist, in ancient traditions, between the period of the "solstitial crisis" and the belief in the return of the souls of the dead to the living. The connection with the underworld / underworld and with the Kingdom of the Dead seems, as we have seen, to be recurrent for these deities that we have defined as 'of the Winter Sun' [cf. Cernunno, Odin and other deities of the 'Winter Sun'], at the same time gods of fecundity and also linked to the underworld and, therefore, to the deceased.
We have already seen that the Celtic Cernunno, in addition to being a god of nature and time, is also considered an underworld deity, especially as regards his psychopomp function, as a companion of the dead in the afterlife: a mercurial aspect that in tradition Nordic is also found, as we have seen, in Odin / Wodan, from which in fact derives the day of the week which Latin belongs to Mercury (Wednesday= βWodan's days"). Likewise, in many traditions from all over the world there are numinous figures connected both with fertility and with the Underworld and the Underworld, starting with the Mediterranean Lord of Hades Pluto, among whose symbols there is theΒ cornucopia (*krn), conveying abundance, fertility, wealth.
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.
The Friulian benandanti and the ancient European fertility cults
di Marco Maculotti
cover: Luis Ricardo Falero, βWitches 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 workΒ 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 byΒ 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. "
βCarlo Ginzburg, "IΒ benandanti.Β Witchcraft and agrarian cults between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesΒ», Pp. 7-8
