The Wild Hunt

Miguel Serrano collected works https://archive.org/details/miguel-serrano_202312

The Wild Hunt

Part 1: Introduction; various cosmic and natural symbolisms; timing and relation to holidays

by Sean Jobst

There is an undercurrent of ancient wisdom deeply embedded in folklore and traditions. This is a basic truth I have come to recognize these past few years, leading me on a journey I can only describe as enlightening. It was a task I took up in my past examinations of folklore, identifying remnants of the ancient Germanic goddesses Zisa and Ostara, and the various traditions and legends around the auspicious time of Walpurgisnacht. Using that same basic format, I will now examine traditions, folklore, and legends about the Wild Hunt - a pan-European motif with its regional variants. I will focus more on the Swabian and Alemannic, Flemish, and Iberian traditions of my ancestral lands, with parallels in nearby cultures so as to gain a deeper picture of what this mysterious Hunt symbolizes. As I have examined with those other three articles, there are many layers of meaning - each one has lessons for us about our ancestors, our selves, our psyche, our environment, and the cosmos.

The Wild Hunt gradually evolved from a mythological theme with obvious roots in the Pagan European past, to a mysterious Christianized folkloric trope filled with dark imagery. Common themes remained throughout, including a balance of various forces - the unseen with the seen, the "good" with the "bad", the living with the dead, natural and cosmic. The great German folklorist Jakob Grimm described it as a "solemn march of gods" who visited "the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people" but also floated "unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes: an array which, less tied down to a definite time, explains more the natural phenomenon." It was degenerated by the Christians into "a pack of horrid spectres, dashed with dark and devilish ingredients"(Grimm, 947).

Such an "infernal host" is a departure from the original Pagan lore where it involved individuals with actual bodies rather than incorporeal ghosts, as well as traveling more over the ground than the air. Perhaps this is part of the Christian (and Abrahamic) drawing away of spiritual forces from the Natural world into a distant Cosmos - yet there is a place for a balance of the two within the original folklore. Yet even the Infernal Hunt has an ancient origin: "This is the sign of an imminent death, and this motif has a long history"(Lecouteux, 102). Its a rite binding together the perceivable realm of Nature with its darker, more esoteric aspects that are as real but less quantifiable. The Wild Hunt "primarily concerns an initiation into the wild, untamed forces of nature in its dark and chthonic aspects"(Greenwood, 195), hence we "Wild" is combined with "Host, Hunt, Army" in its regional names.

I perceive it as a "host" of supernatural elements which simply means a mysterious realm that coexists within our own but is the matter of legends; a "hunt" involving an "army" insofar as what is "hunted" is either an impending death, trying to "ride" the chaotic forces within Nature or the Psyche so as to facilitate the ultimate self-growth, or seasonal connotations involving the liminal times when the most changes occur on all those levels. In its most ancient roots, the French scholar Claude Lecouteux saw the Wild Hunt as a merger of fertility and agricultural rites and ancestor veneration, with Georges Dumézil's third function of common folk within Indo-European societies: "That this kind of kinship appears from the northern to southern extremes of the Germanic area and poses a challenge to the law of ecotypes cannot be a coincidence. Instead it shows that what we find here are beliefs of a venerable antiquity, from a time before the various Germanic ethnic groups went their separate ways. What we have here supports the hypothesis of an Indo-European origin for the Wild Hunt"(Lecouteux, 192).

Who leads this mysterious Wild Hunt? Given the regional variations as well as the multiple layers of meaning, its not surprising there are various figures given. The two most common ones though are the Germanic god Wotan (Wodan) - seen for example in the Alemannic name Wuotis Heer (Wuodan's Army) of Schwaben and Schweiz - and his wife/consort, the continental goddess Frau Holle, whose name varies in more northerly regions to direct correlations to Wotan's name (i.e. Frau Holda, Frau Gode, etc.) to the Perchta or Berchta "bright one" of Alpine regions. Her qualities are multifaceted, to be unraveled as our story continues, but suffice to say the two aspects - masculine and feminine - balance these natural forces: "not only Wuotan and other gods, but heathen goddesses too, may head the furious host: the wild hunter passes into the wood-wife, Woden into frau Gaude"(Grimm, 932).

Its no accident the common theme of Wild Hunt folk traditions are "constantly driven by continuous natural processes"(Bächtold-Stäubli, 632), invested with supernatural qualities to symbolize the mysteries inherent within Nature, that remain regardless of the social changes occurring in the life of a people: "Another class of spectres will prove more fruitful for our investigation: they, like the ignes fatui [will-o'-the-wisps], include unchristened babes, but instead of straggling singly on the earth as fires, they sweep through forest and air in whole companies with a horrible din. This is the widely spread legend of the furious host, the furious hunt, which is of high antiquity, and interweaves itself, now with gods, and now with heroes. Look where you will, it betrays its connexion with heathenism"(Grimm, 918).

Throughout Europe's Wild Hunt traditions, there is the leadership of either a masculine or feminine figure, both combining airy and earthly qualities. The masculine usually personifies wind or ecstasy, and is a psychopomp who has specific relations to death. The feminine usually personifies the earth's fertility, and has a more general relation to the Otherworld. A Flemish fairy tale associates the Wild Hunt with an old woman who has a large eye on her forehead and lives in a castle with her souls (Bächtold-Stäubli, 635), which calls to mind some Alpine lore about Perchta or Slavic tales of the Baba Yaga. Given the common use of an eye symbol to ward off the "evil eye", it could be that she not only ushers souls into the Underworld but also wards off death from the living. We will see this same meaning later with the Wild Hunt's association with liminal times between the Winter Solstice (midwinter) and leading up to Spring, with all the seasonal and esoteric connotations that entails. Perchta holds healing qualities as much as her deathly connotations.

Frau Holle and Wotan had their parallels in Celtic lands like Gaul and Celtiberia, with similar imagery of hunter and otherworld archetypes. Aside from a horned wild huntsman, there is a female figure who rides across the night skies. The Wild Hunt is known in various Spanish regions as the Galician Estantiga or Hoste Antiga "the old army", the Asturian Güestia "host", Leónese Hueste de Ánimas "troop of ghosts", Castilian Estantigua, and Extremaduran Hueste de Guerra "war company" or Cortejo de Gente de Muerte "deadly retinue" (Risco, 389-395). Its no accident the folklore survived most in those regions with the strongest Celtiberian connection. Here too we find a goddess who joins the fertile earth with the deadly realm. In the sixth century, archbishop Martin of Braga described legends among the peasants of northwest Iberia about a goddess "Diana" at the head of a troop traversing the night skies. Rather than being the Roman goddess of the hunt - medieval missionaries conflated all Indo-European goddesses with her given their own Roman bias - "commingled here are Diana of antiquity and Di Ana, a Celtic goddess who is also called Anu. The existence of a god Dianum speaks to this hypothesis. This deity, who was perhaps the Asturian Dianu, no doubt came from Di Anu, who was taken to be a masculine figure"(Lecouteux, 11).

Sea connotations. Could this Asturian goddess Di Anu relate to the Irish river goddess Danu? The common element of "dan" relating to rivers, such as in the Danube which nurtured many of the earliest Proto-Celtic cultures. At first glance this appears unrelated to the Wild Hunt with its airy, forest, and underworld qualities. Yet all are connected to the interplay of forces within the rich animistic tapestry of ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes, as we can see in the etymology of related words. Nebulous which describes the airy, esoteric and mysterious, has this pedigree: Latin nebulosus "full of mist, foggy cloudy, Old High German nebul "cloud, fog", Proto-Germanic *nebulaz "fog, mist, darkness" -> Proto-Indo-European *nebhos "cloud, vapor, fog, moisture, sky". Water being seen as conscious, containing a spiritual essence, can be seen in the water-sprites (neck, nixe - literally "to cleanse") of Germanic mythology, for example in the great Neckar River of Swabia, which itself comes from the Celtic nikros "wild water, wild fellow" and Proto-Germanic *nikwus -> Proto-Indo-European *neig "to wash". All conjure up images of not only a physical but also a spiritual cleansing.

As part of the animism at the heart of their worldview, Celtic and Germanic tribes saw water as living consciousness, many containing sprites while more prominent bodies of water were often personified as goddesses. In Celtic cosmology, the Otherworld contains a celestial, middle, and underworld realm. Ours is the middle, equivalent to the Germanic middle-earth. The underworld is the lower realm, associated with water, minerals, and fire - like the distant southerly realm of fire called Mudspelli or Muspilli in continental Germanic sources. Water, mist and fog were viewed as liminal places, where the veils between worlds was very thin. Mist itself resulted from a mixture of the sky (cosmos) with water, and one perceives the mist as encompassing one's vision upon the earth and can seemingly walk into mist to "disappear" into another world (i.e. outside our immediate realm of vision). No surprise then that Celtic peoples would invest such places with the mysterious - the Iberians saw Finisterre "end of land" overlooking the Atlantic as the conduit through which souls entered into the Otherworld to ultimately be reincarnated back into the middle realm. For the Irish, the Otherworld of Tír na nÓg "land of the young" could be arrived at through one or two ways - one was through water, beneath a lake or the ocean west of Ireland; and the other through an underground passage, such as a sidhe (mound) or cave.

Both elements are contained within the Germanic folklore about Frau Holle, who appears in the Grimm fairy-tales as a figure whose realm is reached by descending down a well. The link to the ancestors can also be seen in her association with mounds. Its been my contention that our southern Germanic tribes absorbed much from previous Neolithic people and Celtic cultures of the Alpine regions, seen in our cosmology compared to the later conceptions of the Norse. South Germanic tribes believed "the souls of the dead returned to certain sacred lakes from which they were incorporated into new human beings. This is strongly suggested at least by the derivation of the word soul (from proto-Germanic *saiwa-lo, 'belonging to the lake, deriving from the lake') from a term for 'lake,' or 'inland sea' (*saiwaz), together with the fact that the word soul is indigenous only to the South and East Germanic linguistic areas, whereas in the north there were originally other designations for it"(Hasenfratz, 72). The "sea" here refers to a landlocked water source, not the open ocean.

Relation to Nerthus and the Meadow. Could Holle be linked to the mysterious goddess Nerthus described by the Roman Tacitus in Chapter 40 of Germania? Holle travels on a wagon accompanied by a man, while an image of Nerthus is described as wheeled on a wagon by a priestly figure to a sacred grove on an island somewhere around the North Sea. A sea goddess like her would have little relevance to our southern tribes, so she was simply given more land qualities - but the symbols remained the same. Rather than the Valhalla of Norse sources, continental Germanic sources refer to an otherworldly realm alongside that of Hel, called "the Meadow". Whereas Hel was closely tied to mounds and just chthonic forces, the "Meadow" - known as Waggs to the Goths, Uuaga in Old Saxon, and Vangr to the Norse -> all stemming from Proto-Germanic *Wangaz - was given forest imagery and thus related to more primal forces on the earth, exactly those active most on the Wild Hunt. It survived in the Alemannic topographical names Wangen "green field, meadow", a realm for the "glorious dead" (ibid., 73) first chosen by Frija rather than Wodan.

Cosmic connotations. This link of the Meadow with a celestial deadly troop can be seen in the cosmic symbolisms given to the goddess Frau Hulde or Frigg in the Low Countries. A Middle Dutch term for the Milky Way was Vroneldenstraet "the highway of Frau Hulde". As noted by the pioneering work of the Flemish-French scholar Louis De Baecker (1814-1896), the Flemish knew Orion's Belt as Friggiarocken "Frigg's Distaff", later Christianized as Marienspinrokken "Mary's Distaff". Many Germanic goddesses were portrayed holding a distaff, and many were Christianized as the Virgin Mary so as to appropriate their worship into the Christian fold, such as I found when I studied traditions about Zisa and Ostara. The Norse also associated Orion's Belt with the goddess Freyja, who appears to be the same goddess known to our continental tribes as Frija, Frigg, Holle, Hulda and other regional names. The distaff also relates to the spinning connotation, as we will see more later in relation to Perchta. De Baecker also noted how the Flemish name for Ursa Major was de Woenswaghen "the Chariot of Wodan", thus the close association of Wotan with this Goddess. In Galicia, the Camino contains cosmic symbolisms such as following the pilgrimage routes to the Campus Stellae (Star Field): "Santiago is associated with the Milky Way as the road of the dead"(Lecouteux, 138), perhaps remnants from the ancient Celtic traditions of Galicia.

Dates of the Wild Hunt. There is no set date for the Wild Hunt across all areas, because these "corresponded to a pre-Christian cycle of movable feasts, which depended on lunar phases. Furthermore, the Celtic and Germanic calendars were most likely superimposed on two ancient apportionments of the year: two large seasons - summer, which runs from May 1 to November 1, and winter, which runs from November 1 to May 1"(Lecouteux, 199). As noted by Philippe Walter, a professor of medieval French literature at the University of Grenoble, notes these apportionments "have undergone a more or less marked Christianization by virtue of being fixed to specific periods in the calendar," original movable feasts fixed so as to be "integrated in to the Christian calendar"(Walter, 74).

Contrary to the fixed celebrations of the Roman calendar and later Christianity, Celtic and Germanic calendars were lunisolar, harmonizing the phases of the sun with those of the moon. Both had two seasons - Summer and Winter - each divided in a quarter. Celtic months began with each full moon, and the Germanic on each new moon. Celtic and Germanic holidays were both marked by full moons. There is evidence the Celts celebrated the Winter Solstice - unlike the Germanic tribes - although not the Equinoxes or Summer Solstice. Wild Hunt traditions in Celtic and Germanic lands were connected to Winter, beginning sometime in mid-late October. For the Germanic, it was the full moon that was called Winter Nights; for the Celts, it was Lughnasa, either the ninth or tenth moon of the year dependent on a lunar leap year.

The dates generally appear between Martin's Day (November 11), to Advent (the four Sundays before Christmas), Winter Solstice, the Twelve Days of Christmas, Epiphany, and leading up to the end of Winter. "In the Palatinate, for example, the Wild Hunt was abroad during Advent, but in Swabia it appeared precisely on the day of St. Thomas (December 21)"(Lecouteux, 193). Even the Christianized days were taken as personifications of previous deities: "The Westphalian name for the Wild Hunt leader [Goi] could quite conceivably be a recollection of the past. This would not be the first time that the name for an important festival was anthropomorphized - for example, the Befana is the personification of Epiphany and Perchta personifies Christmas"(ibid., 195).

Samhain. The recurring theme throughout all these differing dates are their liminal and transitory nature: "All the year's transitional passages have the distinctive feature of permitting communication between the otherworld and our world, evidence for which is provided by the invasion of the undead and spirits during these times"(ibid., 197). These include Celtic Samhain, a time when the boundaries between worlds was at its thinnest and the Army of the Sidhe left the Underworld to roam the earth: "In the Intoxication of the Ulstermen, several festivals were organized for Samhain. Following the feast arranged by Fintan, all the nobles, who were already fairly intoxicated, engaged in a wild race across Ireland, following Cuchulain, and at the passing of this furious troop, hills were flattened , trees were uprooted, and the fords and streams were emptied of their water"(Jouet, 104). Around Hallweijn in the Netherlands, there is a corpus of ballads that are connected to Samhain and the ancient Celts of the Low Countries (Smedes, 70-94). Not exactly our modern fixed Halloween, Samhain was marked the tenth or eleventh full moon of the year, dependent on a lunar leap year and usually sometime in November.

11/11. Christianized as St. Martin's Day, November 11th marks the beginning of the Carnival season throughout Germany and the Low Countries. That social norms would be "released" during this time harkens back to the Roman Saturnalia more than an actual Christian day, so its not surprising there would be supernatural legends associated with the Wild Hunt: "Some experienced hauntings on all of these days. St. Martin's Day (November 11) was the occasion for the passage of the bird of St. Martin, a kind of fire dragon; the wild herdsman; and the Kasermandl (Alps), a kind of demon that took possession of chalets after the livestock had been taken down to the lower valleys for the winter and that often bore the features of dead cowherds who were condemned to return, because they abused the livestock in their keeping. In Burgenland, Austria, Lutzl (Lucy) passed at this time. She was the woman of the solstice, who roamed with veiled face. She was also armed with a kitchen spoon that she used to beat people in their houses and a knife for opening their bellies (the gastronomy motif, which is also common in traditions concerning Percht). Clad in black and white, she was accompanied by monstrous figures, and her trajectory was a quest in which she begged for the deceased foodstuffs, the 'bread of all souls'"(Lecouteux, 198)

Other auspicious times before Christmas. In Silesia and Austria, the twelve days spanning the time from St. Lucia (December 13th) to Christmas "prefigured what would take place in the twelve months of the new year, and numerous divinatory practices took place at this time"(ibid., 198), including various prohibitions related to spinning - a symbolism that figures prominently within stories about Frau Holle and Perchta, as we will see later. In Switzerland, the three days before Christmas were called bolster nächt "noisy night" and "hunt of the sträggele": "The sträggele was the equivalent of the Howler (Schrat), a kind of dwarf that was sometimes combined with a nightmare (mar)"(ibid., 194). This term is also used for the masks used in Carnival processions, and this time roughly coincides with the Winter Solstice.

Midwinter and the Winter Solstice. Despite contrary belief, including held many modern Pagans, Yule is not the same time as either the Winter Solstice or Christmas. As noted by the Swedish ethnographer Andreas Nordberg, backed up by early medieval sources describing the actual traditions of Germania, Scandinavia and England, Yule was originally three full moons after Winter Nights (mid-late October), thus usually sometime in January. It was only fixed to the Winter Solstice and Christmas to align it with the Roman Christian calendar under converted kings such as Hakon of Norway. It was also a three-day celebration and not the "12 Days of Christmas" some link it to. Likewise, according to the Julian calendar then prevalent the Winter Solstice itself was around 14-15 December, coinciding with the Christianized feast of St. Lucia, which Scandinavian folklore still considers the longest, darkest night of the year. Midwinter, midpoint between Winter and Summer, would have been around 14 January in the Julian and 20 January in the Gregorian calendar (Nordberg, 102, 148-150). The timing of Christmas has more to do with Roman Saturnalia than Germanic Yule.

Nevertheless, as a season this time represents something auspicious so its no surprise Wild Hunt traditions abound. They looked at the winds and storms "howling" over the land and sweeping through the forests, the darkness and cold reigning supreme during this time, as a symbolic playing out of spiritual forces in the physical realm - the Wild Hunt. Being outside during this time might lead to being swept up in this cavalcade, while others of a more magical and shamanic inclination openly sought it out (Lecouteux, 187-188). It was naturally a more contemplative time, as one prepared to survive the winter one would also reflect more on the ancestors. The realms of the living and dead were especially permeable during midwinter according to the ancient Germanic peoples (Simek, 373), while many traditions describe the riders as resembling the land spirits, who were themselves often linked to the dead (Lecouteux, 191-192), such as the link of the sidhe in the Irish Wild Hunt, or the buena gente "good folk" of Asturias. "The Wild Hunt fell into the vast complex of ancestor worship, the cult of the dead, who are the go-betweens between men and the gods"(ibid., p. 199).

Raunächte. Also known as "between the years", these are the Twelve Nights between Christmas and 6th January (Epiphany). It seems to be remnant of a memory before the lunisolar conception of time was overturned and the Church/Imperial successors of Rome forced a fixed calendar upon Germanic tribes to more easily control them; when the "missing" twelve nights were added to the end of the lunar year to reconcile it with the solar, making these transitory days outside of normal time. Just as with other auspicious times, laws of Nature are temporarily suspended, so various divinatory practices were common. There were folk legends throughout Europe of people engaging in magic who then "turned" into werewolves around this time. Aside from the "shape-shifting" Perchten of Alpine regions, there were also legends in the Ardennes (Wolf, 615-616), a forested region of eastern Belgium whose name comes from Arduinna, the ancient Belgae goddess of the Hunt. More on this later in a section about the shamanism within the Wild Hunt, but suffice it to say these were allegorical not literal transformations.

In Switzerland and Alsace, a mysterious figure named Hutata - who receives his name from the scream he unleashes - is on the move during the twelve days of Christmas (Lecouteux, 194). Throughout the Balkans, Anatolia, and Greek lands, the Kalikanzari are goblins residing in the underworld who come to the surface for two weeks after the Winter Solstice to wreck havoc (Puchner), their name coming from kalos-kentauros (centaur) conveying the same idea about a shamanic transformation (Ginzburg, 169). They thus resemble the Perchtenlauf processions of people dress in costumes and goat and other animal masks, around this same time in the Alpine regions. There is a tradition of ushering in the New Year with noise and clamor, seen in our own modern fireworks and general celebratory atmosphere for New Year's. It was believed that the Wild Hunt should start in the exact middle of the Raunächte - New Year's Eve - so that the Wild Hunt with its symbolism sets the tone for the next year.

The Twelfth Night (5th January) was associated with Frau Holle/Perchta, which Grimm traced in its Old High German name Perahtun naht "the luminous night". This time would coincide more or less with the actual historically-attested Germanic Yule than the Winter Solstice or Christmas. Grimm further writes in his Teutonic Mythology (Volume 1, Chapter 13): "Her annual progress, which like those of Herke and Bertha, is made to fall between Christmas and Twelfth-day, when the supernatural has sway, and wild beasts like the wolf are not mentioned by their names, brings fertility to the land....At the same time Holda, like Wuotan, can also ride on the winds, clothed in terror, and she, like the god, belongs to the 'wutende heer'. From this arose the fancy, that witches ride in Holla's company; it was already known to Burchard, and now in Upper Hesse and the Westerwald, Holle-riding, to ride with Holle, is equivalent to a witches' ride. Into the same 'furious host', according to a wide-spread popular belief, were adopted the souls of infants dying unbaptized; not having been christain'd, they remained heathen, and fell to heathen gods, to Wuotan or to Hulda."

These Nights finally culminated on January 6th in the day known to Christians as the Epiphany - but here too there were deep remnants of ancient Celtic and Germanic heritage - joined as the two were in the Alpine regions of Swabia, Bavaria, Switzerland, Austria, Piedmont, Tyrol and Northern Italy. Closely associated with Epiphany was Perchta as a mother goddess ruling over "the fairy women who enter houses on certain nights to grant their inhabitants prosperity if they find a meal prepared for them"(Lecouteux, 150). The night troop of Corteo della Berta traveled on the night of Epiphany in the Haut-Adige region, and the Redodesa passed through midnight on Epiphany accompanied by her twelve children in the Cadorino and Belluno regions, although they were more silent than the Wild Hunt (ibid., 150-151). In South Tyrol, a child's dragging shirt tails are tied and he is called Zuserbeutlein, "a made-up term of endearment that is possibly a compound word of zuserl, meaning 'waxwing,' which is considered a nuisance bird in Schwabia, and beutlein, meaning 'little sack.' The bird reference likely refers to the cries uttered by the child as it stumbles in his large shirt, falling farther and farther behind, and the little sack is likely his clothing"(ibid., 151).

Part 2: Frau Holle and Perchta; seasonal symbolisms of the Wild Hunt

by Sean Jobst

Continuing from Part 1 concerning the Wild Hunt, special attention should be made about the Germanic goddess variously known under her regional names as Perchta/Berchta in Southern Germany, Frau Holle in Central Germany, and Frau Herke/Freke/Gode/Wode in Northern Germany (Heath, 5). She is Vrouw Holle in Flanders and the Netherlands. All share such close associations with Frija, the wife of Wodan, that we can hypothesize they're one and the same - as is most pronounced with the Wild Hunt: "Frau Holle, elsewhere called Perchta, rushes through the airs at the head of her procession, and the people below either put some food on their roofs, or set a special place at the table"(GardenStone, 110). She is mentioned in many fairy tales and folklore. Jacob Grimm conceived of Holle as originally a sky goddess associated with weather forces, highlighting patterns with other mythologies:

"Frau Holle is represented as a being of the sky, begirdling the earth: when it snows, she is making her bed, and the feathers of it fly. She stirs up snow, as Donar does rain: the Greeks ascribe the production of snow and rain to their Zeus; so that Holda comes before us a goddess of no mean rank. The comparison of snowflakes to feathers is very old; the Scythians pronounced the regions north of them inaccessible, because they were filled with feathers. Holda then must be able to move through the air, like dame Herke. Her annual progress, which like those of Herke and Berhta, is made to fall between Christmas and Twelfth-day, when the supernatural has sway, and wild beasts like the wolf are not mentioned by their names, brings fertility to the land. Not otherwise does 'Derk with the boar,' that Freyr of the Netherlands, appear to go his rounds and look after the ploughs. At the same time Holda, like Wuotan, can also ride on the winds, clothed in terror, and she, like the god, belongs to the 'wutende heer'"(Grimm, 267-268).

Whereas Mutter Erde (Mother Earth) personifies the landscape, Frau Holle is that aspect which is the seasonal and weather change. For Paganism knew the deities as allegories for various forces of Nature, the Cosmos, and the Psyche, but also very real entities since there is a power and consciousness within everything. Frau Holle unites both the upperworld and underworld, the weather being an interplay of both upon the landscape. She is said to live in a cave, which represents inside the earth. She was a goddess of healing, much like the healing connotations of Wodan in the continental sources (such as the Merseburg Charms). Her close link to Wodan can be seen in her names of Frau Gode or Wode, as there was a time when "G" and "W" were used interchangeably. Another variation is Frau Herke, a female version of the Old English Herla whose own named derived from a Proto-Germanic word meaning "host leader" and thus referred to Wodan: "This would place Frau Herke in the same category as Frau Gode/Wode, as being names that appear to have come from the custom of married women being known by their husband's first name. However in the case of Herke, not only does she potentially take Wodan's name, but in some places she's also believed to take his role as leader of the Wild Hunt"(Heath, 6).

Who is Perchta? Her name means "the bright one", deriving from Old High German beraht, bereht -> Proto-Germanic *brehtaz. The feast of Epiphany is called Berchtentag in her honor. The Austrian mythologist Lotte Motz saw Perchta as the South Germanic equivalent of Holle, while Grimm notes Perchta was known "precisely in those Upper Germa regions where Holda leaves off, in Swabia, in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Bavaria and Austria"(Grimm, 272). Both share the role of "guardian of the beasts" and oversee spinning during the Raunächte, which connect them with goddesses of fate, the Norns - and the act of spinning an allegory for both "weaving" ones deeds into the Web of Wurt and magical-shamanic qualities: "That a godhead visits humans and intervenes in their concerns is indeed a rare and characteristic phenomenon. Just such a divinity is encountered, even in modern times, in the regions of German speech. Folk traditions have preserved the features of this female deity so that, with minor variations, she emerges as a well defined and vivid creature. Though she belongs to widely separated geographic areas and is designated by many names we cannot doubt that the many individual spirits had arisen from one basic form"(Motz, 1992, 11).

She would receive flax from shepherds in the Summer and bless their flocks. She traveled through the countryside, inspecting for any signs of laziness in spinning; failure to fulfill this task in a timely manner would lead to Perchta cursing with bad luck for the next year. "People also say that Dame Holle begins to move about during the Christmas period. This is why serving women replenish their spindles or roll large amounts of yarn or fabric around them, and leave them there over night. They say if Dame Holla sees this she will say, 'For every thread there will be a good year'"(Praetorius, 403). Folklore identifies snow as occurring whenever Frau Holle or Perchta makes her bed. Even the clouds were taken as symbolic: White, fluffy clouds were her hanging her clothes out to dry in the sun; more elaborate clouds were her "weaving" - its not for nothing that Grimm noted the Wild Hunt being "perceptible in cloudy shapes". A Munich manuscript from the Alderspach Monastery alludes to those who "garnish their table for Percht"(Lecoteux, 18), a remnant of the ancient Pagan practice of libations and setting aside food for one's ancestors at the table.

Perchta is dual-natured, alternately appearing as a young maiden or an old "hag" depending on what is reflected back at you through your own deeds. The term "hag" was a Christianized term used to describe an old woman, often in the medieval context of accusing her of "witchcraft", often being the herbalists and midwives with knowledge of natural lore and herbalism. Even in the term "hag" Perchta's ancient healing abilities were evident: The Hagal Rune meant "all-protecting" and Germanic warriors would inscribe it upon their shields. Conversely, her violent qualities include cutting open the stomachs of those not using their time wisely and the symbolism of those standing in the way of her Wild Hunt with their entrails trailing behind them is a visceral allegory for what we can call Shadow Work or a profound examination of the self. In their fairy tale, the Grimm Brothers stress Frau Holle's dual role as benevolent to the girl who willingly helped and as a "hag" to the girl's lazy half-sister. This represents the Yuletide rewarding those who have been good and punishing those who have been bad, later Christianized as Saint Nicholas giving either gifts or coal in a child's stocking. Perchta is thus an example of syncretism and survivals of pre-Christian Alpine Paganism within ostensibly Catholic traditions.

Celtic Origins. Noting the distinct differences between Perchta and her more northern cousins, German linguist Erika Timm made a compelling case that Perchta arose from an amalgamation of Alpine Celtic traditions with the Germanic Migration Period. Among other qualities, her association with iron, including in her "eiserne nase" (iron nose), could harken back to the advanced iron works of the Alpine Celtic cultures such as Hallstatt that the Suebi, Alemanni and Bavarii absorbed. Rather than just from Germanic Beraht, Timm proposes a Celtic etymology for Perchta's name in Brixta, a Celtic goddess linked to healing wells (Timm, 317-318), which would lend further relevance to Perchta's healing qualities and her association with wells and other water sources. Such water sources as wells, springs and swamps could be seen as "cauldrons" of Frau Holle or Perchta, betraying Celtic imagery: "The Celtic gods who emulated the Great Goddess Cerridwen also had cauldrons, including Dagda, the benevolent Sky God, and the Lover of Dana (Dea Ana), the Earth Goddess, who had a cauldron 'that would never empty and go dry'"(Storl, 46). The latter is especially tantalizing if we recall the Wild Hunt in Asturias was led by a goddess named Dianu.

Conflation with Diana. We have already seen how medieval authors tended to conflate all the Pagan goddesses to the Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana. This was due both to their own Roman bias and their associating all with what they defined as "devilish" qualities - celebration of the female form, the primal power of the forests, and practicing witchcraft. Written between 788 and 800, the Passio Minor describes Irish "Saint" Killian's attempts to convert the people of Franconia to Christianity. Locals told him about the worship of a "Diana of Würzburg": "We want to serve the great Diana, as our fathers did and in doing so, have prospered well to this day"(Timm, 208). Noting how the Roman cult of Diana had never appeared in that region, Grimm suggests this "Diana" was Frau Holle: "As it is principally in Thuringia, Franconia and Hessen that Frau Holda survives, it is not incredible that by 'Diana' in the neighbourhood of Würzburg, so far back as the 7th century, was meant none other than she"(Grimm, 286). Timm further identified her with Frija.

Remnants into the Christian era. Horrified by her beloved place within the Germanic memory, Christian missionaries lamented continued reverance for Frau Holle. In his Dictionary of Superstitions (Aberglaubensverzeichnis), written sometime between 1236 and 1250, the Cistercian monk Rudolf observed: "In the night of Christ's nativity, they set the table for the Queen of Heaven, whom the people call Frau Holda, so that she might help them"(Heath, 11). Even the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, warned in his Exposition of the Epistles at Basel (1522): "Here cometh up Fraw Hulde with the snout, to wit, nature, and goeth about to gainstay her God", a phrase that Martin Bucer translated into Latin as "verenda nostra hera" (Our Venerated Lady), a term confined to the Virgin Mary (ibid., 12). The Church tried to stamp out the folklore about "Frawen Percht", complaining about locals who preferred to chant "Domina Perchta" than say prayers to Mary. People would also leave food out for Perchta during these nights leading up to Epiphany, seeking her blessings for the next year.

As was common for various goddesses elsewhere, with the coming of Christianity the figure of Mary often took on the roles and qualities of Frau Holle or Perchta. We know at least two that were not in original Christian tradition: Her association with snow and overseeing spinning and sewing. "If, independently of the christian calendar, there was a Holda, then neither can Perahta be purely a product of it; on the contrary, both of these adjective names lead up to a heathen deity, who made her peregrination at that very season of yule, and whom therefore the christians readily connected with the sacredness of Christmas and New Year"(Grimm, 282). There remained festive days honoring Holle, alongside the Christian ones (Motz, 1984, 152-153). Finally, there is evidence from the 6th century that Holda was also given the title "Queen of Heaven" alongside Mary (Timm, 23) during that century defined by syncretism as a step towards Christianization.

Ostara and the Coming Spring. Just as Frau Holle or Perchta seemed to personify Winter, the Spring season was associated with the Germanic goddess Ostara, who represents "the transition from the death of winter to vernal life, and the Christian celebration integrated many pagan rites, such as the din intended to drive off the demons of winter"(Lecouteux, 197). The 19th century German folklorists Wilhelm Mannhardt and Friedrich Liebrecht both expressed the view that the Wild Hunt was connected to rituals for expelling Winter (ibid., 178). The Romanian scholar of comparative mythology, Mircea Eliade, cited an 8th-century text that spoke of how "the Alamans sought to expel winter during the month of February"(Eliade, 268-271). Ancient Alemanni lore has survived in Fastnacht traditions, with the various masked "witches" and "forest spirits" in processions symbolic of either Winter itself or forces of Nature seeking to drive Winter out with their presence while ushering in Spring.

This motif can variously be seen in the Perchta masquerades of Germanic Alpine lands, the Calends of March masquerades in French areas of Switzerland, and the parades of Lombardy, Venice and Piedmont to "burn the old one" (brusar la veccia), the "one" meaning the "year", "which can be likened to the ancient Roman festival of Anna Perenna that fell during the Ides of March"(Lecouteux, 178). The Lithuanian-American anthropologist Marija Gimbutas identified the goddess Holle with the duality of Winter/death and Spring/life: "[Holle] holds dominion over death, the cold darkness of winter, caves, graves and tombs in the earth....but also receives the fertile seed, the light of midwinter, the fertilized egg, which transforms the tomb into a womb for the gestation of new life"(Gimbutas).

Cycle of Death and Life. Even in the darkness of Winter there would be symbolic expressions of Spring, such as in the Wild Hunt candlelight processions of the Spanish Campaña. Here we see another lesson of the Wild Hunt: the boundary between death and life is not always clear, both operating as part of a cycle. There was the idea of the dead forming a processon and reentering their old villages for warmth and food, guided by a fire left specifically for them. This liminal time between Winter and Spring was taken as symbolic of the dead, such as in the Roman cult of the Lares. "In France and the Germanic countries this setting took the form of the fairy feast, the table set for Dame Abundia, Percht, or the Parcae"(ibid., 179), the "fairies" perhaps being a loose allegory for Ancestors and not the Sidhe of Ireland. The Wild Hunt in Asturias was associated with the buena genta, "the good folk", similar to the Sidhe. The theme here was expelling the "demonic" dead spirits and inviting the "good" ancestors. The Dutch fairy tale of "The Legend of the Wooden Shoe" contains interesting Druidic themes:

"In years long gone millions of good fairies came down from the sun and went into the earth. There, they changed themselves into roots and leaves, and became trees. There were many kinds of these, as they covered the earth, but the pine and birch, ash and oak, were the chief ones The fairies that lived in the trees bore the name of Moss Maidens, or Tree 'Trintjes'. The oak was the favorite tree. Under its branches, near the trunk, people laid their sick, hoping for help from the gods. Even more wonderful, as medicine for the country itself, the oak had power to heal the oak, with its mighty roots, held the soil firm"(Griffis).

Frau Holle represents the motherly, love-energy the nurturing aspect of the atmosphere. She and her Wild Hunt brings forth life as much as death. Fertility depends on precipitation from the sky, hence the link between storms, Wild Hunt, and fertility. The dead also have power over the elements. Georges Dumézil identified these legions of the dead roaming the earth under the guidance of their leader as connected to the third function of fertility. "The passage of the Wild Hunt, which, in the traditions after the Middle Ages, was closely connected to food and drink, is perfectly logical to us once we grasp the role played by the dead. They presided over the fertility of the soil and the fecundity of livestock. Thus it was necessary to propitiate them if they were regarded as neutral or well-intentioned or to drive them away and send them fleeing if they were seen as wicked. In one way or another, the Wild Hunt fell into the vast complex of ancestor worship, the cult of the dead, who are the go-betweens between men and the gods"(Lecouteux, 199). Eliade makes a similar point:

"Agriculture as a profane skill and as a cult touches the world of the dead on two quite different levels. The first is solidarity with the earth; the dead are buried like seeds and enter a dimension of the earth accessible to them alone. Then, too, agriculture is preeminently a handling of fertility, of life reproducing itself by growth. The dead are especially drawn to this mystery of rebirth, to the cycle of creation, and to inexhaustible fertility. Like seeds buried in the womb of the earth, the dead wait for their return to life in their new form. That is why they draw close to the living, particularly at those times when the vital tension of the whole community is at its height - that is, during the fertility festival, when the generative powers of nature and of mankind are evoked, unleashed, and stirred to frenzy by rites and orgies....As long as seeds remain buried, they also fall under the jurisdiction of the dead. The Earth Mother, or Great Goddess of Fertility governs the fate of seeds and that of the dead in the same way. But the dead are sometimes closer to man, and it is to them that the husbandsman turns to bless and sustain his work"(Eliade, 295).

Part 3: Wotan as archetypal leader of the Wild Hunt; folkloric figures relating to him

by Sean Jobst

In the previous post, I examined the qualities of Frau Holle or Perchta as leader of the Wild Hunt. Yet other traditions cite the Germanic god Wodan as the One who leads the Wild Hunt. This is not surprising given that Holle/Perchta seems to be the same as his wife, Frija - the different names depending on the region and time period (much like Wodan gradually became known as Wotan due to developments in the German language) . Their roles would be complementary towards each other, making the Wild Hunt a balance of the masculine and feminine power forces that exist within Nature. "Not only Wuotan and other gods, but heathen goddesses too, may head the furious host: the wild hunter passes into the wood-wife, Woden into frau Gaude"(Grimm, III, 932). He is identified so much with the Wild Hunt that in Swabia and Switzerland (the lands of the ancient Suebi and Alemanni), the Wild Hunt itself was often called Wuotis Heer (Wodan's Army).

Wotan or Wodan is a multifaceted god we can relate to and emulate in many different ways as varied as individuals. His 'Wode' being the personified wind or divine breath, the battle frenzy of warriors, comes from the same "inspiration" as the words of a writer or a poet. His ordeal on the World Tree was truly about "killing" himself to himself so as to discover the enlightenment within, the immortal command to "Know Thyself". The Runes are not only letters and symbols but each laden with deep esoteric meanings about the psyche, cosmos, nature and memories - thus related to the Unconscious. Wotan's healing abilities, such as with Balder's horse in the Merseburg Charms, can be emulated to "heal" both physical and spiritual maladies. His great "shamanic" abilities offer general ways to sense there is more than just one physical reality; his leadership over the Wild Hunt in some folklore showing the "veils" between life and death, physical and spirit worlds, can be thin and obscure within the overall cycle of life, death and rebirth.

He often contrasts with the god Ziu (known as Tiw to the Anglo-Saxons and Týr to the Norse, all from Proto-Germanic *Tiwaz), the Germanic Sky Father whose iconography shows balance of the Sun and Moon (solar and lunar energies), represents values such as order and courage, the North Star, and other natural and cosmic symbolisms. Whereas Ziu is a god of war, Wotan is more specifically tied to those who died in battle or otherwise a violent, traumatic death. In the tripartite functions he applied to Indo-European mythologies, French philologist and mythologist Georges Dumézil identified Ziu with Sovereignty - the "light" aspect of society, exoteric values such as justice and order for all the tribe - and Wotan as representing the "dark" aspect of society - the esoteric, mysterious, shadowy realms, and inspiration. The two deific power-forces are to be balanced so one may truly know themselves. The "dark" for me conveys imagery of the Unconscious and the Shadow which are essential for any growth. Those qualities as personified by Wotan are most at play in the Wild Hunt.

Ziu is more concerned with rules and principles guiding war, while Wotan is with the state of mind achieved through acts of battle, the warrior's fury and ecstasy. Continental Germanic sources, such as bractaetes like those found in Schwaben and charms like that of Merseburg, stress his ecstasy and healing abilities more than many functions he had in Scandinavia as Óðinn (where he absorbed the functions and qualities of other deities). There is no evidence for a Valhalla in continental sources, there being more of a stress on the Underworld such as the mounds. Folklore speaks of people's spirits being pulled away while asleep to join the Wild Hunt or being "abducted" or "guided" to the Underworld, recalling the psychopomp archetype who is also leader of the Wild Hunt. Aside from Wotan, the Welsh psychopomp Gwyn ap Nudd is associated with both the Wild Hunt and the Otherworld.

Similar to "wode" also conveying the power of the wind and fury, French sources identified the leader of the Herlathingus (Furious Army) as Herla, whose name seeks like a combination of Old French herler "make a racket" and herle "tumult, noise" (Lecouteux, 171). Could this be remnant of an earlier Gaullic equivalent to Wotan? A saying from Ottenhöfen in the Schwarzwald states: "Der Wind isch e altes Männle" - "The Wind is an old man"(Meyer, 370). That all these qualities are combined in the Wild Hunt's leader is no accident. "It was natural that the ancient god of the dead who rode through the air should keep a place in this way in the memory of the people, and it reminds us of the terror which his name must once have inspired"(Davidson, 148). Grimm expands on this theme (with various references):

"This wind's-bride is a whirlwind, at which our mythology brings the highest gods into play. Even Wuotan's 'furious host,' what is it but an explanation of the stormwind howling through the air? The OHG. ziu, turbines, we have traced to Zio, pp. 203. 285; and the storm-cloud was called maganwetar (p. 332 last l.). But the whirlwind appears to be associated with Phol also (pp. 229. 285), and with an opprobrious name for the devil (schweinezagel, säuzagel, sûstert, sow's tail), to whom the raising of the whirl was ascribed (Superst. I, 522) (102) as well as to witches (ibid. 554). It was quite natural therefore to look upon some female personages also as prime movers of the whirlwind, the gyrating dancing Herodias, and frau Hilde, frau Holde (p. 285). In Kilian 693 it is a fahrendes weib; in Celtic legend it is stirred up by fays, and the Irish name for it is sigh gaoite (O'Brien), sighgaoithe (Croker III, xxi); in a whirlwind elvish sprites can steal (Stewart p. 122). It is a popular belief in Sweden, that the skogsrâ (wood-wife) makes her presence known by a violent whirlwind which shakes the trees even to breaking. The Slav. polednice (supra, p. 478n.) is a female daemon, who flies up in the dust of the whirlwind (Jungmann sub v.). According to a legend of the Mark (Kuhn no. 167) the whirlwind was a noble damsel who loved the chase above everything, and made havock of the husbandman's crops, for which she is doomed to ride along with the storm to all eternity; this again reminds us of Diana and the huntress Holda (see Suppl.)"(Grimm, II, 632-633).

Much like Irish folklore about someone being "away with the sidhe (fairies)", the Wild Hunt conveys much imagery of people being swept up in its furious winds. One of these may be the medieval German Emperor Friedrich der Barbarossa, about whom Grimm cites a 14th century folk legend: "Yet some have seen him awake: a shepherd having piped a lay that pleased him well, Frederick asked him: 'fly the ravens round the mountain still?' the shepherd said yes: 'then must I sleep another 100 years'(Grimm, III, 955)." The shepherd was then led into Friedrich's armory, where he was "presented with the stand of a hand-basin, which the goldsmith found to be sheer gold"(ibid., 956). This is interesting given the folklore throughout Europe that the one who helps the Wild Hunt may be given gifts such as gold.

It also carries on the ancient Indo-European archetype of the hero who will ultimately awaken after a prolonged slumber, conveyed in such varied legends (even if in thinly-veiled Christian or literary veneers) as the Portuguese Sebastianismo or the Upstate New York tradition of Rip Van Winkle (possibly a remnant of an old Dutch tradition and not merely Washington Irving's creation). In the Germanic context, it ultimately stems from Balder, whose life personifies this cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Its no accident that the leader of the Wild Hunt (Wotan) is his "father" and heals his horse, placing the Wild Hunt within the never-ending cycle of life. This theme survives within German folklore through the "undead nobleman" Count Hans von Hackelberg, cursed to hunt eternally due to bad actions during his lifetime. To me this manifests the ancient Germanic worldview that included multiple incarnations to "resolve" one's problems (reincarnation rather than just one lifetime), so that the dead may have some kind of unresolved "business" in this world. A variation says he died by a boar's tusk, and upon his death his soul shunned the Christian heaven, preferring to eternally join the company of the Wild Hunt across the night sky.

Wild Huntsman of Death. As the guider of dead souls into the Underworld (in addition to his many other qualities), Wotan "was most generally known as the Wild Huntsman, and when people heard the rush of the wind they cried aloud in superstitious fear, fancying they heard and saw him ride past with his train, all mounted on snorting steeds, and accompanied by baying hounds"(Guerber, 30). Conveying the "chaotic" forces of Nature, the Wild Hunt had such names as the Furious Bond in Schwaben and Muetiseil in Switzerland. What is "hunted" here is death, which is why supernatural images of a ghostly knight were introduced. Grimm saw this "knight" as Wotan, downgraded by Christianization to a ghostly figure who "lost his sociable character, his near familiar features, and assumed the aspect of a dark and dreadful power....a specter and a devil"(Grimm, III, 918).

This Hunter Archetype was innate to indigenous European tribal faiths, part of the animistic worldview held by our ancient Ancestors. He was not only a guardian of the primal forces within Nature, but so often was also a god of the "threshold", going beyond boundaries of the physical and perceivable world into the supernatural and unseen. Examples include the Gaullic god Cernunnos, or Herne the Hunter and the Green Man within English folklore. The Celtiberians had various localized gods with horns or antlers, allegorical of "aggressive power, genetic vigor and fecundity"(Simón, 310) - expressions within the Wild Hunt. In German folklore, a hunter figure variously called Waul, Waur, Waurke, Wod, Wode, Wolk or Wuid (according to region), clearly comes from Wotan and his "wode" energy. The victims of a figure called the Wild Huntsman include "unjust judges, cruel castle custodians, Sunday violators, passionate hunters who have to ride as punishment for their offenses in the wild 'Hunt'"(Bächtold-Stäubli, 633). One story describes "four sons" of the Hunter, named after the four cardinal directions (ibid., 634), which could be symbolic of the Wind from all directions and allegory for different manifestations of Wotan.

Eckhart and Tannhäuser. A closely related figure to the Huntsman is the "faithful" Eckhart, a heroic knight most associated with the forests of Thuringia, where he helps Holle in the Wild Hunt. "In Frankhausen Holda moves at the head of the fellow hunters. In Schwarza (Thuringia) she is accompanied by 'the faithful Eckhart', in Hassloch and Gruneworth her horse carries little bells and the villagers shout: 'Listen, the Rollegaul (Holle's horse) moves around!'"(Gardenstone, 105). He warns people of the Hunt's approach and to keep their distance from the various supernatural forces in the Thuringian forests. He is the male protagonist in the story of "Venus and Tannhäuser", about an obscure Swabian Minnesinger and poet; the Minnesinger were traveling musical poets of the Age of Chivalry whom several scholars have proposed carried on the Old Ways - minne itself meaning "memory" in the sense of ancestral memories. Upon entering the Thuringian forests, Tannhäuser discovers the Venusberg (Mountain of Venus), presided over by Lady Minne who was none other than Frau Holde, dwelling within the mountain with many heroes and minnesänger (Rahn, 95).

From Venusberg come the howls and lamentations of souls and spirits, creating a thin veneer between worlds of the living and dead. Its a story of a human hero undertaking a shamanic journey into the Otherworld, where he experiences various supernatural events and beings, but ultimately yearns to return to the earth only to find out that many years had passed in earthly time. Eckhart and these occurrences are closely associated with the Ember Days that roughly correlate with Germanic Yule. A "Furious Army" leaves from the Venusberg, consisting of unbaptized infants, warriors fallen in battle, and ecstatics, the latter according to the 16th century Bavarian historian Martin Crusius being those "whose personality splits but whose traveling soul has not returned to the body"(Lecouteux, 146). Eckhart carries a staff and is "an old man with a white beard"(ibid., 147), according to Zuanne della Piatte, a shaman from Altrei (Anterivo) in South Tyrol who carried "many signs and diabolical formulas in the German language". During his 1497 "witchcraft" trial, he told stories about travels to the "beyond", being snatched away to Venusberg, where he met Holle and Tannhäuser, in whose company he traveled around the world on black horses in what appeared to be five hours in earthly time (Behringer, 56). All of these accounts and qualities make Eckhart/Tannhäuser allegories of Wotan.

Jung on Archetypes of the Wild Hunt. Among the pioneering work of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was uncovering the Wotan Archetype whose remnants he identified in the memories and dreams of his patients of Germanic descent. From the northeast Swiss canton of Thurgau, a region that was inhabited by the Alemanni and later part of the Duchy of Swabia, Jung resonated with highly specified traditions of the Suebi and Alemanni. In one of his later works, he described a dream he once had of a large ghostly wolfhound hunting a human soul. He interpreted the hound as his mother's psychopomp guiding her into the Otherworld, a remarkable synchronicity since he discovered soon after his dream that she had indeed died. He saw the soul as her soul being "reclaimed" by the god of their Alemanni ancestors (Jung, 313). This god he interpreted as Wotan, presiding over the army of the dead which was sälig Lüt (selige Leute) "the blessed folk" in his Alemannic dialect (ibid., 230-231). In 1956, Jung wrote in a lengthy letter to Melvin J. Lasky, an American publicist then resident in Germany:

"Wotan is a restless wanderer, an ancient god of storm and wind, unleashing passion and frenzy. His name means literally 'Lord and Maker of Fury.' Adam of Bremen wrote in 1070 or thereabouts: 'Wodan id est furor.' His essence is ecstasy; he is a turbulent spirit, a tempest that sets everything in motion and causes 'movements.' Among these were the orgiastic midsummer's day dances mentioned by Dr. Schmitz-Cliever; the religious movements of the Middle Ages named by H. Scholz also bore the mark of this perturbing spirit. The exodus of the children from Hamelin comes into this category. It should be noted that music is a primitive means of putting people into a state of frenzy; one has only to think of the drumming at the dances of shamans and medicine-men, or of the flute-playing at the Dionysian orgies.

"Leibniz mentioned St. Vitus's dance as a possible cause of the events at Hamelin. In this connection I would like to draw attention to a related, though far more dangerous, manifestation of collective frenzy upon which Wotan has likewise left his mark. This is the 'going berserk' of Wotan's followers, a regular seizure that drove them to madness and gave them supernatural strength. Not only single individuals were seized in this way, but whole crowds were swept along and infected with the 'berserker rage.' It was a mass frenzy, to which other people gave the expressive name furor Teutonicus. The exodus of the children from Hamelin may be conceived as a less brutal movement activated by the same 'ecstatic' spirit. The rat-catching Pied Piper himself must have been possessed by the spirit of Wotan, which swept all those who were liable to such transports - in this case children - into a state of collective frenzy.

"As to the disappearance of the children in the mountain, it should be remembered that legends often banish into a mountain certain heroes in whose death the populace cannot or will not believe, and whose return is expected, with fear or hope, in the distant future. For the psychologist this is an apt way of saying that though the forces represented by the banished and vanished children have momentarily disappeared from consciousness, they are still very much alive in the unconscious. The unconscious is perfectly symbolized by the dark, unknown interior of the mountain. It scarcely needs mentioning that a reawakening of these forces has actually taken place.

"Another aspect of this disappearance is the state of 'being lost to the world' which is frequently reported in connection with ecstasy and more particularly with 'going berserk.' According to legend, the hero becomes invisible or is transported to another place, or occasionally his double appears, as when he is seen in battle, while in reality he is sunk in trance-like slumber....From a psychological point of view the motif of the rats, which seems to have been added afterwards, is an indication of Wotan's connection with the daemonic and chthonic realm, and with evil. Wotan was banished by Christianity to the realm of the devil, or identified with him, and the devil is the lord of rats and flies"(Jung, 1990, 331-332).

Part 4: Krampus, Perchtenlauf, Warrior Initiations, Werewolf and Other Shamanic Symbolisms

After nearly a year, I resume my Wild Hunt series which generally ties in with other themes of folklore, mythology, and spirituality. I ended Part 3 with some insights from Carl Jung on the Wild Hunt and fairy-tales like the Pied-Piper of Hamelin as allegories for "ecstasy" and "going berserk" that connected to Wotan. He connected that fairy-tale to Wotan as the "unleasher of frenzy and passions" (Entfeßler von Rausch und Leidenschaften), whose "essence is ecstasy" (Sein Wesen ist Ekstase)(Jung, 75). We now know from anthropologists and folklorists that fairy tales have ancient origins going back thousands of years, so its only natural they preserve those traditions.

Such is the Wild Hunt, whose furious sounds and supernatural spectres could be symbolic of the primeval forest of the Unconscious as much as the physical forests. I maintain that myths have multiple layers of meaning, preserved within folk traditions long after conversion. Underlying meanings of the Wild Hunt carried over into the winter processions throughout various towns and villages of Europe, up to the present. These have common elements of figures wearing masks and costumes, representing various animal-men hybrids or demonic beings, accompanied by noise-making and other festivities, such that we have to wonder about a single origin. All the elements are interwoven with the various holidays throughout Winter, forming certain patterns that speak to our psyche as much as tell us about our past.

We are in the rauhnächte ("rough nights"; "smoke nights"), a liminal time between 24th December and 6th January (Epiphany) during which various ghostly and "demonic" figures appear. Each of the twelve days are symbolic of a month, so there is alot of reflection and shadow work that was to be done. "Smoke nights" because herbs were burned to cleanse the house, symbolically casting out the "bad spirits" of winter as much as the bad parts of your own personality or habits. The riders of the Wild Hunt are said to hunt for such spirits but sometimes living people. Yet, the Wotanic energy of the Wild Hunt is of no harm to those who don't stand in its way, which could be symbolic of not going against cycles, accepting their place within this world vis a vis the otherworld.

These processions date back to ancient initiations around the Winter Solstice, "some of which allowed the participants to go into a trance, leave their bodies, and transform into the entities whose masks they wore - in other words, the dead" (Lecouteux, 204). It was a healthy reflection on death and awakening to your true self: "The theories of German scholars can be summed up in a few key words: beliefs connected to the soul and ancestor worship, to the elements, and to dreams are the source of what initially appeared as a myth, then as a legend (Sage). They were crystallized in the form of rites of which processions of masked men would be one form. Two essential elements emerge from all this: the importance of the dead for the well-being of human societies, and the role of ecstatic practices that carry with them vestiges of shamanism" (ibid., 206).

Perchta and the Perchtenlauf

Frau Perchta is a uniquely South Germanic Goddess whom I discussed in Part 2, so I will only touch upon some of her symbolisms. Given both her direct link to Old High German giberahta naht ("night of shining forth") and her earliest representations being medieval, I think she is a later Christianized folkloric personification of Frau Holle, reflecting certain uniquely Alpine traditions from both the Celts and Germanic tribes. The "bright" connotations proposed by Jakob Grimm were also seen in her association with "witches' brooms", often made from birch bark which crackles and pops when burned and creates a "brightness" even during the darkness of Winter. The Rune Berkano "birch" is symbolic of rebirth of both the year's cycle and the individual's growth for the coming year.

She is only one of the many female leaders of the Wild Hunt in various regions, giving rise to the female witches' counterpart to the male warrior-initiates who underwent shamanic journeys. "If the initiation is a rite of rebirth, the female aspect would clearly be missing from a cult practice limited to the all male Männerbund. The solution to this gap will probably lay in the witch phenomenon of the late medieval and early modern era" (Iwobrand). Both the Perchtenlauf processions and Wild Hunt have connections to agriculture: Ghostly figures that roam the fields making a lot of noise, preparing the soil for a good harvest in the coming year in a fertility magic rite according to the Austrian ethnologist Lily Weiser (ibid.). Perchtenlauf processions were regarded as Pagan, so that even up until the 18th century, participants had to do penitence afterwards, and those who died during such processions would not be buried by the Church in their hallowed grounds.

Perchta is dualistic in her appearance: appearing like a beautiful young maiden in the front, but an ugly "hag" in the back. Symbolisms of the closeness of life and death being part of the same cycle in our traditional worldview. In regions like the Austrian Pongau, alongside the Schiachperchten ("ugly perchten") whose masks are worn to drive away bad spirits, are the Schönperchten ("beautiful perchten"), who encourage prosperity in the upcoming year (Gallon). These Schönperchten appear dressed in red and white (two colors with their own shamanic connotations as will be discussed in a future part of this series), performing festive dances. The Austrian philologist Richard Wolfram, a member of the Vienna Ritualists group of the early 20th century whose leading members (Lily Weiser and Otto Höfler) will be cited throughout, linked such folkloric dances to ancient warrior-shaman brotherhoods (Corrsin).

Alemannic Switzerland has a tradition of the Totageigl ("fiddler of the dead"), a passing of the dead accompanied by music. Violins accompany the Wild Hunt throughout South Germany and Switzerland, while the musical cacophony of the French Charivari likewise "emphasizes the demonic aspect of the troop, whose only thought is to misbehave" (Lecouteux, 173). Bells worn by the Perchten are symbolic of "cleansing" negativity, sending out a certain vibration that could ward off bad "spirits" or energy. There is the Aperschalze "cracking in the spring" tradition of Salzburg in Austria and Goaßlschalzen in Bavaria, whereby such spirits are chased by clinking on pots and pans. There are also folk traditions of people going across the fields, their whips symbolic of the harvest being released from the frozen death of winter. Such rituals have broader social connotations: "This type of cultic amplification of existence did not signify debauched gratification but a duty for the dead. In this ecstasy the boundaries of the individual are broken down - but not to detach it from boundaries of order; rather, it should take part in the meta-individual community of confederation with the dead" (Höfler).

Krampus and Werewolf Traditions of the Perchtenlauf

Krampus is the ferocious goat-man counterpart to the generous fatherly figure of Christmas, Saint Nicholas or Father Winter (about whom there will be more in Part 6), who delivers gifts while Krampus carries a stick to hit naughty children and a large sack to capture them into the Underworld. Krampen means "claw" and he was viewed as son of Hel, the Germanic Goddess who presided over the Underworld (Peterson, 125-126). Krampusnacht is celebrated overnight on 5th/6th December, on the eve of St. Nicholas Day, and during the processions Nicholas lets Krampus loose on the streets (ibid., 7, 47). In Jungian terms, Krampus represents his Shadow side - integrating his darker aspects lest they go unresolved; the processions could be part of a collective ritual to process the aspects of one's Unconscious "untamed" by the Conscious, to bring what is hidden into the light. Nicholas as the Conscious side, uses this wild surrogate so as to not get his hands "dirty" while achieving a healthy balance.

Both are later traditions: St. Nicholas only became popular in Germany around the 11th century (Honigmann, 264). Ethnologist Hans Schuhladen demonstrated that Krampus' earliest origin was with the processions in Diessen (Bavaria) in 1582, even though these referred to "hunting the Percht" (Schuhladen). From these Perchten - male villagers exploring their "wild" side, wearing furs, bells and horns during this liminal time of the year - the personified Krampus was born. His name comes from Austrian postcards that originated in 1897 and were sent the weeks leading up to Christmas, often depicting him as a goat-man hybrid with scantily-clad women. And from Vienna, it spread across Austria into Southern Germany (Rest and Seiser, 45). Krampus has parallels throughout Europe, with folkloric figures such as Zwarte Piet (Dutch and Flemish), Père Fouettard (French and Walloon), and Kallikantzaros (Greek), fawn and satyr figures associated with the winter.

Despite his late origins, Krampus could exhibit some deep residue of ancient Germanic shamanism via the story of Donar restoring sacrificed goats to life. Donar has been identified as one of the leaders of the Furious Army in many folk traditions (Wolf, 135). There are Alpine legends of a night feast involving a resuscitated bull, which is sacrificed and eaten after which the hide is placed over correctly-arranged bones, and the troop leader restores the bull to life (Lecouteux, 221). Could Krampus be related to these traditions? "Metamorphoses, cavalcades, ecstasies, followed by the egress of the soul in the shape of an animal—these are different paths to a single goal. Between animals and souls, animals and the dead, animals and the beyond, there exists a profound connection" (Ginzburg, 1990, 263).

Such traditions could be a source for many werewolf legends: "In the Perchten, the werewolf culture of pagan antiquity, the pagan Dark Ages, could survive into the modern world. The adults recognized who were behind the masks, and yet there was a sinister suspicion that the neighborhood boy, whom they thought they knew well in everyday life, became another person when wearing the specter's disguise" (Hellstatt). They are closely identified with this season: "The time favored by the werewolves for their forays in the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic countries - the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany - corresponds to that in which the souls of the dead went roaming" (Ginzburg and Lincoln, 74). Within Flemish folklore, donning such furs was an astral body initiation: "In ancient times there were many young men who had to put on the magic fur at special times to become a werewolf. Usually they were like all the others, maybe even better; they were good and friendly and harmed no one. But if they were werewolves one had to beware of them. Many of these poor men wished to get rid of this disastrous fur" (Goyert and Wolter, 129).

Initiatory and Rebirth Rites

The various processions portraying the Wild Hunt are initiation rites involving a symbolic death of the physical body, followed by rebirth into one's true self. Its an appreciation of life coming from a healthy reflection upon death. Fifteenth and sixteenth century accounts of the Schembartlauf in Nuremberg show remnants of ancient Germanic views about reincarnation. "Some of the young men taking part in this public Carnival procession were also dressed up as wolf-men. One of their floats was called ‘hell’ and had the shape of a ship. Since the sun ship is often seen as a symbol for the descent and rise of the sun from the underworld, we are reminded of the stone ships and ship burials of northern Europe, as well as the mythical ship Skíðblaðnir, belonging to the Norse fertility god Freyr. Direct links are hard to make, but all these things seem to tap into the same archetype: Going into the underworld, in order to retrieve the solar powers that allow both the sun and man to be reborn with the coming new year" (Iwobrand).

The ship-float called "Hell" could be an ancestral memory of Helheim, with solar elements based on the Germanic word Sunna relating to the Soul as much as the personified Sun. Even though they share a similar name, Hel has absolutely no relation to the Abrahamic hell which only developed later: Its a place for reflection and waiting for one's next incarnation, not any kind of "punishment" although there is a lowest level where souls do not reincarnate. While South Germanic traditions did not include ship burials, we would have seen rivers, lakes and other water sources as conduits into the Underworld, a view shared with our earlier Celtic ancestors. This recognition of the cycles of life, death and rebirth, of being one with ancestors, is an important theme within various initiatory traditions. As noted by the Dutch folklorist and occultist Frans Farwerck: "The initiant by life became a member of the community of the dead. He became one with his deceased forefathers" (Farwerck, 15).

Lily Weiser was a member of the Vienna Ritualists, students of the University of Vienna Germanist Rudolf Much, who advocated a Germanic Continuity Theory where ancient traditions survived within modern folklore. In her book, Altgermanische Jünglingsweihen und Männerbünde (1927), she began studying the most primal rites of passage among tribes and how these later matured into complex initiatory rites. "After reading Theodor Reik on puberty rites among primitive peoples, she identified the 'conflict between two generations' behind the initiation ceremonies. Oedipal tensions charge relationships between fathers and sons with ambivalent feelings, a combination of hate and love; the initiation expresses symbolically, through terrifying rituals, the bridling of youthful energies" (Ginzburg, 1989, 122). These rituals involved a period of separation from the tribe and asceticism, leading to a changed psyche that involved a memory loss of persona, waking up to true personality.

In Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (1934), Höfler concluded that "legends about the wild army are not simply nature allegories, but are mainly reflections of the ancient cult of secret societies" transmitted through initiation. These played out in processions where initiates dressed up and had ecstatic experiences. He postulated "the priority of the ecstatic worship over the mythic legend" while the Furious Army "is the reflection of secret German ecstatic cults." Initiates challenged themselves through courage, camaraderie, ambition, and discipline. They were reborn into a "stronger" and "truer" life than when they were uninitiated. He drew parallels with the Mithras cult where initiates of certain degrees wore masks of ravens and lions. Donning masks are symbolic of changing your identity, whether its for dark reasons, or in this case positively for one's own growth. Another part of these rites involved the taking of psychoactive substances to induce furor teautonicus, an ecstatic state shared with similar initiatory traditions elsewhere.

Indo-European Warrior Brotherhoods and Ecstatic Rites

Long after these real initiatory brotherhoods ceased, mock initiations survived within various folk traditions associated with the Wild Hunt and winter processions, which will be discussed in Part 6 with an emphasis on Dutch and Flemish folklore and the Männerbunde. While Höfler drew parallels with the masks of Mithraism, Weiser pointed to the presence of female leaders of the Wild Hunt to suggest a link between the Germanic Perchta and Hellenic Artemis, with their initiations including a literal hunt in the woods. Through a heightened consciousness, warrior initiates would reach ekstasis, dissociation of spirit and body, as a precondition for shamanic metempsychosis, as seen with the Germanic Berserker (bear-skin) and Ulfhedinn (wolf-skin) warriors (Iwobrand). Their unbridled ecstasies (raserei) can be compared to that of Eurasian shamans to suggest a common Indo-European origin. "The existence of secret male societies of a ritual type, accepted by many scholars of Germanic areas, has also been discovered elsewhere, for example in Iran" (Ginzburg, 1989, 124).

Associated with the Proto-Iranian Srubnaya Culture (1900-1700BCE), a winter initiation ritual site was found at Krasnosamarskoe on the Volga Steppes, involving taking on the qualities of wolves and dogs by consuming them; we must not be influenced by modern sensibilities, as it was an animistic respect of the animal within the broader cycle of life. "It was a place of inversion, as is the eating of wolves, animal symbolic of anti-culture (a murderer 'has become like a wolf' in Hittite law; 'wolf' was used to refer to brigands and outlaws, people who stand outside the law, in many other Indo-European languages)" (Anthony and Brown, 100). Another element of developing werewolf mythos. Wolf warriors appear within Indo-European, Turkic, Mongol, and Native American cultures (Speidel, 10), with the Hotamétaneo'o ("Dog Men/Soldier") warrior society of the Cheyenne being just one famous example. Iranian elite warriors were called mairyos "wolves" following their initiation.

Among the Ossetes, wolf warriors formed a k'war "herd" after an initiatory spring feast (styr Tutyr) dedicated to Wastyrgi, god of wolves and warriors (later Christianized as St. George) during Varkazana "month of men-wolves" (mid October-mid November) (Ivančik, 314, 319). In the Vedic tradition, special warriors were initiated during Winter Solstice rituals (ekastaka) presided over by vratyas "dog-priests", during which they went into states of ecstasy to be reborn as "dogs of war" and unleashed into the forests to live for themselves (Kershaw, 203-210, 231). The initiation of the Hellenic ephebos, young men aged 17 to 20, included isolation in the forests, having to hunt and rely upon their senses before being reintroduced to their families and society. They were seen as under the personal patronage of the god Apollo, associated in many myths with wolves and carrying the epithet Lykeios (Cebrián, 352).

The Irish Fenian Cycle describes fianna, warrior bands who lived outside in the woods and hills from May to October, returning to their family farms from November to April (Sergent, 15). During his initiation, the Irish hero and son of the god Lugh, Cúchulainn, changed his youthful name from Setantae to "hound (cu) of Culainn" (Ivančik, 313). The Proto-European *kóryos "army, people under arms, detachment, war party" survived in Old Iranian kāra "people, army"; Lithuanian karias "war, army, regiment"; Latvian kars "war, army"; and Greek hybristes. Through Proto-Celtic *koryos "troop, tribe", there derived Gaullic corios "troop, army"; Middle Irish cuire "troop, host"; and Welsh cordd "tribe, clan" (Matasović, 218). Through Proto-Germanic *harjaz "host, troop, army, raiding party", there derived Old High German hari "army, crowd"; Gothic harjis "army"; Old Saxon heri "army"; and Old Norse herr "army" (Kershaw, 22). Long after these initiatory warrior societies ceased, they survived in folk traditions about ghostly riders of the Wild Hunt, such as in the archaic Dutch words Wilde Heir "wild army" and Dodenheir "army of the dead" (Farwerck, 112).

Representation of the Suebi Gutenstein Scabbard.

Picture taken during my visit to Landesmuseum

Württemberg, Stuttgart, 8 July 2016. The original

scabbard was looted by the Soviets and displayed

in Moscow. It shows a warrior wearing wolf skins.

Continental Germanic warrior societies

Germanic Berserkers and Ulfheddin originated from hunting magic and took the form of three animal cults: the bear, wolf, and wild boar (Jones and Pennick, 154-156). The wild boar was closely linked to fertility, going back to the Proto-Celtic funerary gifts during the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. In Norse mythology, the Vanir goddess of fertility Freyja often appeared atop her boar, Hildisvini "battle swine". Freyja's name meaning "lady, mistress", coming from Proto-Germanic *frawjon "lady, mistress", reveals hers was an epithet: She was the Mother Goddess variously known among our Continental tribes as Frija and Holle. Perhaps she was unconsciously portrayed by Lucas Cranach the Elder in his painting "Melancholy" (1532), which shows a wild boar ridden by an emaciated naked woman who carries a spear, a ram mounted by a Landsknecht (pikes-man), and a cow carrying a naked man and woman (Lecouteux, 215-216).

Both Hellenic and Roman sources referred to warriors known for their battle fury and ecstatic rites among Celtic and Germanic tribes, often semi-naked and armed with light weapons (Cebrián, 344). These harkened back to the ancient Indo-European past, with the Yamnaya culture's Kernosovsky idol from the mid-3rd millennium BCE, showing a "power belt" and similar elements as later Celtic findings. These included the 6th century "Warrior of Hischlanden", found in Ditzingen (Württemberg); and Celtiberian statuettes from the 5th-3rd centuries discovered in Spain. Continental Germanic wolf-warriors are portrayed on Relief 36 of Trajan's Column in Rome, left their traces by captured shields and standards displayed in the Roman armilustrium, and as late as the 10th century, Gothic wolf warriors were described by the Emperor Constantine VII at Constantinople (Speidel, 15).

Whether lupine (wolf-like) or ursine (bear-like), elite warriors donned its skins in battle to symbolize merging its power with his own. Both Germanic and Celtic lore gave the bear solar connotations based around hibernation, allegorized as a rebirth. Warriors wearing their skins carried the Germanic concept of inherited luck (Norse: hamingja) and the guardian spirit (Norse: fylgja) which was often a totem animal (Simek, 129). The 7th-century Gutenstein Scabbard, discovered inside a grave during construction work at the St. Gallus Church in Gutenstein (Württemberg), shows an Alemanni warrior wearing a wolf skin, holding a large sword and spear. His Vendel-style helmet reveals trade links between the Alemanni and the Norse in Sweden. As with the closely-related Bavarians, wolf-based names were common among the Alemanni and these warriors dedicated themselves to Wodan; indeed "Gutenstein" means "Wodanstone" given the linguistic shift from "g" to "w", so this could have been an initiation site to Wodan. As noted by the German military historian Michael Speidel:

"A clue to the meaning of the Gutenstein scenes is the right-facing wolf-warrior who bows his head, drops his spear, and (with outsize thumb) offers his sword to Woden. The god, if one may judge from the way he holds the spear, dances the war dance, spurring on the warrior....It is nevertheless unlikely that the Gutenstein wolf-warrior following Woden and offering his sword is a fallen warrior who joins the god of death, for it seems untoward for a leader to advertise on his helmet that death is in store for his men. Self-dedication to Woden by no means meant imminent death....However they moved, one may say, with Mircea Eliade, that 'he who...could rightly imitate the behavior of animals - their gait, breathing, cries, and so on - found a new dimension of life: spontaneity, freedom, 'sympathy' with all the cosmic rhythms...ecstasy could...well be obtained by choreographic imitation of an animal.' This may be one roof of the wolf war dance, the other being representation of wolf-warrior ancestors. From such twin ecstasy it is but a small step to mad attacks" (Speidel, vii-ix).

Part 5: Supernatural spectres, Honoring Lugus, Celtic and Iberian traditions of the Wild Hunt

The Fates have shaped my being a descendant of regions where the Keltoi and Germanen blended. I can recount reminders of this double heritage long before awakening to the truly spiritual path of what it means to be descended from specific tribes tied to specific landscapes. Just one example: While my father was born in Germany (Schwaben), he was also conscious of a Celtic lineage and used to cite it for why he wanted to be cremated. There are innumerable ancestral memories remaining latent within one's Unconscious, withstanding any tests of time and space. Writing this series has been a journey of its own. Like a wandering huntsman, I gather wisdom and experiences walking through the forests of my own monomyth, writing my own story which is also the accumulated memories from generations of ancestors. This current article will focus more on the specifically Celtic and Iberian traditions of the Wild Hunt touched upon in Part 1 which have developed alongside the more well-known Germanic traditions of the Wild Hunt.

At the heart of all indigenous and tribal traditions is Animism, centered as it is to specific landscapes. This was certainly true of native peoples of Europe before we were converted; there are many remnants of this ancient animism despite the turning of centuries. Even the words for "life", "breath" and "soul" reflect this, as in the Latin animus and Irish anam. These convey an airy quality, a sacred mysteriousness that animates all life which has no sharp distinction between spiritual and material. Indeed, the term "nebulous" which describes the esoteric and mysterious, stems from words related to the sky, clouds, fog, and mist. Animism is a worldview of complex interactions between different beings and powers, so its no surprise earth and sky, land and sea, would be linked even through etymology.

Celtic cosmology describes a rich tapestry of realms. The Otherworld contains a celestial, middle, and underworld realm, mirroring the three worlds of shamanic traditions. The middle is similar to the Germanic Mittilgart and Norse Midgard, which is the specific realm of human beings whereas the earth broadly contains other realms and dimensions "beyond" one's senses and perceptions but accessed through natural "openings" (Heide). Such cosmology could be an inspiration for middle earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's works. "In Celtic mythology, 'middle' was a three-dimensional term. It referred not only to the earth that lies between the upper and the lower worlds, but also to the intersection of lines based on the cardinal points" (Robb, 41). Its a symbolic center that cannot be pinned down to a specific place, conveyed in the Gauls' mediolanum, "a term of sacred geography; a holy center....perhaps a central point of reference on the vertical axis of the three worlds - upper, middle and lower" (Delamarre, 221-222).

The underworld is a lower realm, associated with liminal places - where the veil between realms is very thin - such as the seas. Mist itself results from a mixture of the sky with water, so that one perceives the mist as encompassing one's vision upon the earth so that walking towards it would mean to "disappear" into another world, outside one's immediate vision. Such thoughts fueled the imagination of ancient peoples like the Celts, which I felt when meditating at Cabo da Roca, the windiest and one of the darkest places I've ever encountered yet strangely most vibrant with life. This along with Finisterre "end of land" north in Galicia, are the western-most points where the great continental land-mass meets vast expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. No wonder that ancient Iberians and Lusitanians viewed such points as the conduit through which souls entered into the underworld to ultimately be reincarnated back into our middle realm. For the Irish, the otherworld of Tír na nÓg "land of the young" could be arrived at through two ways - one was through water, beneath a lake or the ocean west of Ireland; and the other through an underground passage, such as a sidhe (mound) or cave. These influenced the Celtic-inspired Avalon of the Arthurian legends.

Some pictures from my visit to Cabo da Roca,

Portugal, 30th June 2017. Meditating upon

the sunset, a liminal time at a liminal place.

The Rise of Supernatural Spectres. Beyond such liminal places as water, mounds and caves were other realms teeming with an "exuberant life and immortality", despite appearing gloomy: "This aspect of a subterranean land presented no difficulty to the Celt, who had many tales of an underworld or under-water region more beautiful and blissful than anything on earth. Such a subterranean world must have been that of the Celtic Dispater, a god of fertility and growth, the roots of things being nourished from his kingdom. From him men had descended, probably a myth of their coming forth from his subterranean kingdom, and to him they returned after death to a blissful life" (MacCulloch, 341). This primal understanding led to the various traditions that describe riders of the Wild Hunt as resembling the various land spirits and beings of folklore, themselves often linked to the dead (Lecouteux, 191-192), such as the sidhe of Ireland or the buena gente "good folk" of Asturias. "The Wild Hunt fell into the vast complex of ancestor worship, the cult of the dead, who are the go-betweens between men and the gods" (ibid., 199). This link is also seen in etymology, sidhe descending from the Proto-Indo-European word *sed "to sit, rest".

As noted by the Scottish Celticist John Arnott MacCulloch (1868-1950), these are the mysterious sidhe or faeries of Gaelic folk-lore, whose various qualities often blur distinctions between deities, human beings, and elemental spirits. He theorized that the sidhe arose out of the Tuatha Dé Danaan ("People of Danu"), one of whose members An Dagda became "king of the sidhe" (MacCulloch, 65). Danu could be connected to the mysterious "Diana" whom Martin of Braga cited as riding at the head of the Wild Hunt in northwest Iberian traditions, with medieval missionaries conflating all with their own Roman bias. "Commingled here are Diana of antiquity and Di Ana, a Celtic goddess who is also called Anu. The existence of a god Dianum speaks to this hypothesis. This deity, who was perhaps the Asturian Dianu, no doubt came from Di Anu, who was taken to be a masculine figure" (Lecouteux, 11). Anu or Danu is mother goddess of Celtic peoples (Sjoestedt, 24-25), lending her name to the Danube and other rivers along which some of the earliest Celtic cultures thrived.

The Tuatha defeated the Fomorians at the Second Battle of Maige Tuired ("plain of the standing stones"), whose allegories of internal conflict transposed upon a battlefield parallel Krishna's dialogue with Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita. Their order contrasts to the Fomorians as "powers of nature in its hostile aspect" (MacCulloch, 60), like the jötnar and winter spirits left behind with the new year. Chaos is necessary for balance - it only needs to be checked, so the Fomorians were driven into the sea and not eradicated. The goddess Badb (whose name means "crow") appeared in the battle as a crow and made an astounding prophecy. Corvids carry symbolism of transformation and immortality, such that the hallucinogenic drink she gives to Cú Chulainn inspires him to engage in heroic deeds to "live" beyond the confines of his mortal existence (Sheridan, 147-149). He overcomes his past to be initiated to his hero's journey. Badb, who personifies sovereignty and life, makes up the triad Morrígna along with Macha and Morrighan. This is the Maiden-Mother-Crone motif, seen also in the continental Matronae. The Morrighan corresponds to the valkyries, not bringers of death but only appearing to the war fallen. Badb lends her name to "supernatural beings who haunt the battlefield (Badba)" (Sjoestedt, 32), as souls and trauma linger over the landscape.

In the Irish mythological cycle, the Tuatha were followed by the Milesians, ancestors of the modern Irish. The Milesians allowed the Tuatha to recede back into the earth, residing in the hills, mounds, and other liminal places (MacCulloch, 63). "The concept of the Sidhe being still present within the Irish landscape - albeit, within a different reality - ties in well with the legend of the Tuatha De Danaan being banished into the otherworld following their defeat at the hands of the Milesian Gaels" (Sheridan, 168). Their agreement to divide Ireland between the world above and below, could refer to the division between consciousness and the subconscious (ibid., 110-111). The link to the sidhe persisted long after Christianization, such that even many saints and bishops became known as fir side "men of the sidhe" after their deaths (MacCulloch, 64). "Other mounds or hills had also a sacred character. Hence gods worshipped at mounds, dwelling or revealing themselves there, still lingered in the haunted spots; they became fairies, or were associated with the dead buried in the mounds, as fairies also have been, or were themselves thought to have died and been buried there" (ibid., 66).

The Sidhe, Elves, and Trolls. The sidhe inhabited different liminal places as mounds, thus their other title Aos Sí "people of the mounds". The mound's chambers were important, channeling the sunlight on solstices and equinoxes, to which they were often aligned. They channeled the wind, being a passage between this "breath" of life and the Underworld of deceased souls, part of an eternal cycle where life and death operate on the same continuum. As elemental spirits, the sidhe were thought to move through the Air, with such natural phenomena as leaves carried up in spiral wind patterns seen as among their signs. One of the ground-breaking studies of sidhe folklore was The Secret Commonwealth (1691), by the Scottish minister and Gaelic scholar Robert Kirk (1644-1692), who collected Highlands folklore and personal experiences about fairies (how the sidhe were known across the Irish Sea), witchcraft, and other paranormal phenomena. Kirk described fairies as astral-body beings similar to congealed air, paralleling beings in other cultures. Despite his Christianity, he was not dismissive of this folklore, but promoted it as proof of the supernatural against the rigid, reductionist scientism increasingly in vogue.

One of these parallels are the elves of Germanic and Norse folklore. Like the sidhe, these complex beings were associated with the Otherworld, inhabited liminal places, and were turned into grotesque creatures after Christianization. The two sometimes overlapped, such as in the Scottish Lowlands where "witchcraft" trials of the 1570s and 1580s often described journeys to Elfame, realm of the elves. Old English medical texts ascribe various ailments to elves, to be cured through incantations. The legendary elf Alberich was identified with various magical exploits in the Continental poems Nibelungenlied and Ortnit. One incantation identified them with deception: "die elben trieget mich" (the elves are deceiving me), but like the sidhe they weren't necessarily "evil" and all beings existed for balance. The separation between "light" and "dark" elves was Snorri transposing his own Christianity upon Norse lore (Edwards). Some traditions identify the elves with ancestors, although Old High German and Old Saxon compared elves to land wights, having separate words for ancestors (Sass).

Given their own link to burial mounds and the Underworld, they came to be identified with ancestors similar to how the sidhe lore evolved. In Welsh folklore, Gwyn ap Nudd, the underworld god who became "king of the fairies", rides alongside his hounds and the night crone Matilda, chasing lost souls into the underworld (Annwn) in his Wild Hunt (Trevelyan, 49). Folk traditions speak of the elves leaving the mounds to interact through nature, perhaps to remain in the memory of the living, and a reminder that elementals persist through the Earth's energetic fields. These "memories" persist in Yule traditions where elves are evoked to "banish" the trolls, or the winter "spirits" of the old year. The Scottish New Year's Hogmanay, which was originally tied to the Winter Solstice and not the current New Year's, as reflected in its possible roots from the Norman French hoguinane "last day of the year". Yet there is a play-on words here, reflected in the Old English hoghmen and Icelandic haugmenn "hill-men", referring to the supernatural beings personifying the spirits of winter.

A rhyme spoken on that day states: "Hogmanay, Trollolay, give us of your white bread and none of your gray." This is an incantation asking the elves to drive the trolls into the sea, olay "to the sea" and "away" (Repp). Could this relate to Gaelic lore of "away with the fairies" and the Fomorians being driven into the sea? Beowulf portrays trolls as residing under the water, paralleling the Fomorians and thus the sidhe. A similar English invocation goes: "Trolle on away, trolle on awaye, Synge heave and howe rombelowe trolle on away" (Percy). These can be allegories for coming prosperity, free from trolls who personify forces of blemish and must be balanced. The Gaelic storm goddess Cailleach or Beira determines winter's harshness and length similar to Frau Holle or Perchta in Germany. Cailleach "captured" Brigid, making her clean a fleece all winter long until she is "saved" by Father Winter, who represented positive forces of Winter. She could be the Gaelic Earth Mother Degom, making her consort An Dagda, a sky father who became chthonic when "deposed" from his sovereign position. He was later personified as a "Father Winter" archetype.

Honoring Lugus. The most widely revered Celtic deity was Lugus, known as Lugh in the Gaelic lands. His name means "lightning flash", "bright", and "shining one" (Green, 135), symbolized by his spear. As a deity of oaths and contracts, he ensures order through the sworn word (Olmstead, 110, 117). His mythic "killing" of some even while forgiving them is an allegory for our being subject to the natural order no matter how much we try to escape our fate. Yet its not static, as Lugh inspires Cú Chulainn to connect with his subconscious intention in engaging with the outer world (Sheridan, 208). Lugus is a "mysterious figure linked with fertility, seasonal change, and the underworld." After the Roman conquest, his shared traits with Mercury included "one-eyedness, raven as cult animal, spear-bearing prophet stabbed by a spear, sacrifice by hanging and stabbing, disguised appearance, dedication of a hostile force by spear-throw, leadership of a band of warriors sworn to die for him, association with a prophetess with ties to a cult of the dead" (Enright), all close associations with Wodan.

He led "riders of the sidhe" in the Wild Hunt in a common link to initiatory warrior brotherhoods. One of his Gaelic epithets was "raging fury", as his shamanic dance inflamed the fire of battle and inspired the same type of war frenzy as Wodan. Other shared qualities include an ordeal involving the World Tree and symbolic loss of an eye. In Welsh sources, Lugh was killed with a special spear, returned to the World Tree in the form of an eagle, and Gwydion (another manifestation of him) resurrected him to be king. In Gaul and Celtiberia, Lugus was called Solutamaros "the great seer", portrayed with wide eyes to symbolize the extent of his perception. Celtiberian inscriptions show his eyes turned towards his enemies, perhaps an example of sympathetic magic or averting back the evil eye. Similar Gaelic myths describe Lugh closing one eye to do battlefield magic, perhaps to change his perspective of the battle. Conversely, Lugh killed the one-eyed Balor at Maige Tuired - a possible allegory for overcoming one's own limited perception. Some identify Lugus with the Wind Wolf, a Proto-Indo-European archetype associated with wind, storms, the harvest, wolves (whose howling simulated the wind), and leadership of the war band.

Animism ties in through Irish and Welsh myths of Lugh "animating" trees to "fight" alongside him; the wind also being symbolic of the divine "breath" or consciousness that resides within all Nature. Lugh was "born" beyond the sea and adopted by the "three mothers" of Earth, relating him to the same motif as the Matronae. The sea could be an allegory for the subconscious, while being born of the earth subjects him to the same natural cycles as all other living beings. He was fostered by an Irish queen and goddess named Tailtiu; a Celtiberian euphemism for the Underworld was Taltiu. He began Lughnasadh "assembly of Lugh" by remembering Tailtiu, who died from exhaustion after clearing the lands for sowing. This is a mid-August harvest festival, marking an auspicious lunisolar mid-point between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. Although Gaelic, there are attestations to Lughnasadh throughout the Celtic world. A Celtiberian inscription from Peñalba de Villastar thanks Lugus for fruits harvested at a festival held in the month of Equos, which according to the Gaullish Coligny Calendar extended from mid-July to mid-August. The term nasadh or eenach relates to two of Lugus' Celtiberian epithets, Unaeco and Cossus Beneaco.

Lugus was a triune god whose three Gaullish forms were Esus, Toutatis and Taranis, each undergoing a specific death ordeal. Such aspects could have been moulded into the Proto-Germanic *Wodanaz via the lands where Celts and Germanic tribes interacted (Rübekeil), with Wodan undergoing his own symbolic death that is also an initiation. Lugh alluded to an esoteric "death" when he said in the Conn Cetchathach: "Some have said that I died, but here I am - I am not dead." The Celts subdivided a deity most often in three forms, while retaining the deity's name. It could be an allegory for the different parts of the psyche that together shape the personality. The sacred triune, such as Lugus' frequent symbolism of three faces transposed upon one head, was used by Christian missionaries to explain their trinity, but is an esoteric theme deeply embedded within native European cultures. Other shared traits of Lugus and Wodan included being psychopomps, wandering across multiple worlds, and shamanic, magical abilities. One historian theorized that the legendary Merlin was based on a historical priest of either Lugh or Wodan in the Scottish Lowlands (Tolstoy).

The raven is a shared symbol of their shamanic and divinatory abilities. "In his Gaulish form, Lugos sent ravens to guide his people to found the city of Lugdunensis (Lyon)" (Paxson, 11). In the medieval Irish Lebor Laignech, the mysterious figure Fitheach "raven" encountered by Laegaire Mac Crimtham during his visit to the sidhe realm, seems to be Lugh: Appearing in "the mist of morning", wearing a mantle of five holds, and carrying two "barbed darts" much like Lugh's five-pronged spear. Lugh is the "master of death" whose "eyes" are the raven, much like Wodan's two ravens personify "memory" and "thought". Lugdunum came from the Gaullish Lugdunons "fortified hill of Lugus", containing a sacred "hill of the crows" that was a place of battling warrior initiates and observing omens. His reverence included processions to a mountaintop (Meid, 11-12) and festivals have been found there corresponding to Lughnasadh (MacNeill). Extensive inscriptions to Lugus have been found throughout the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region (Koch, 2-3), and the Iberian Peninsula. Aside from Lyon, his name survives in such far-flung toponyms as Lugo (Galicia), Lugones (Asturias), Luton (England), and Lucerne (Switzerland).

Lugus is "master of all the arts", associated with skill and mastery in multiple disciplines (Monaghan, 296-297). These are magical symbolisms: manifesting will and imagination to create something in the physical world. One of Lugh's epithets is samildánach ("skilled in all arts"), whose functions were listed by the Cath Maige Tuired: "bricklayer, blacksmith, champion, harpist, warrior, poet, historian, sorcerer, doctor, cupbearer, bracerer." The Romans compared Lugus to Mercury, whom they called "inventor of the arts"; inscriptions of both were often interchangeable in Gaul and Celtiberia. One of his local forms was the smith god Gobniu or Gobbanus, who shaped fire and other elements into physical form. Gaullic coins from the 3rd century name Lugus as Sutur Augustus "Divine Shoemaker", and inscriptions in France and Spain associate him with the guilds of shoemakers. Shoes are a metaphor for crossing the boundaries between different worlds (such as with Hermes); and their creative process was elaborate, binding multiple elements together. Some theories suggest that leprechauns - often represented as shoemakers - derive from the same etymology as Lugh (Hemmi); Christianized perceptions of various beings were very different from how they were viewed in Pagan times. Under the Welsh name Lleu, he was described in the Welsh Triads as one of the "three golden shoemakers of Britain".

As Lugh Lámfada ("Lugh of the long arm"), he represents sovereignty and priestly kingship, as seen in his many functions and leading the sidhe in the Wild Hunt. In Roman Gaul, Lugus was portrayed with the consort Rosmerta ("great provider"), a fertility goddess who bore the ritual drink conferring such kingship. This is the same esoteric symbol as the mead through which Odin uncovered the Runes; the magical drink he shared with Saga (Odin's feminine counterpart in the poem) in Grímnismál; or the elixir of immortality in different mythologies. As an "immortal" youth, the Tuatha Lugh defeated his Fomorian grandfather, the monstrous Balor, whose venomous eye represents primal energies that must be checked and averted lest they overtake the balance; he is the generative force with Nature which has gotten out of control. Lugh personifies this duality as a Tuatha descended from the Fomorians. Within Irish folklore thunderstorms were seen as a "battle" between these two opposing forces. These are all interpretations and as with all the other myths, it would be as much a mistake to see them as only allegories of Nature as to read them literally. There are multiple layers of meaning, both esoteric and exoteric.

His spear is another symbol of his sovereignty as well as celestial meanings. Irish mythology names the Spear of Lugh as one of the four magical treasures brought by the Tuatha to Ireland, the others being the Stone of Fál, Núada's Stone of Light, and Cauldron of An Dagda. The spear may have inspired the legend of the Celtiberian war chief Olyndicus receiving a silver lance sent to him from the sky, as recounted by the Roman poet Florus. An ancestral memory of this past could have inspired medieval legends of El Cid's two magical swords, Tizona and Colada. His spear may also represent the lightning bolt, with the Gaullic thunder god Taranis likely one of Lugus' forms. These are the storms of Autumn, ending the heat of Summer in time for the harvest represented by Lughnasadh. His killing of Balor could be an allegory of "winning" the harvest from control of chaotic nature spirits. Although the Celts personified the Sun itself as feminine, its brightness and heat was controlled by a masculine force such as Lugh/Lugus. One of his names in Roman Gaul was Apollo Belenos, with belenos meaning "the bright, brilliant". Balor describes Lugh as looking down from behind his "cloak" of the sky, the clouds. Lugh also means "small, diminishing" in Gaelic, symbolic of solar decline in Autumn.

Celtiberian alphabet

Iberian Traditions. One of my bloodlines is Spanish, through my paternal bisabuela who was descended from a family that settled in Ellwangen sometime in the 1800s and blended with my Swabian line from nearby Baldern (Bopfingen). From the fragments of family lore I was told by both my oma and father, tracing the Germanized surname of that line (Vaas) back to its original Spanish (Vázquez), and the mantilla in one of my oldest family pictures (my great-great-great grandmother of whom I know very little), I've traced this bloodline to northwest Spain, either Castilla y León or Galicia - the surname is of Galician origin, which further explains why I feel a Celtic blood connection as much as Germanic. It was in that region where the Suebi founded a kingdom, so as with Swabia the history of the Suebi is intertwined with the Celts. My trip to Stuttgart and Madrid in 2016 was the main catalyst that started my spiritual journey, as I put the Abrahamic religions behind me and realized we had our own rich, indigenous tradition and spiritual worldview tied to our landscape. Since then reconstructing Celtiberian Paganism has been an interest of mine alongside continental Germanic Heathenry - and the way both survive within folklore even to this day.

The Wild Hunt is known by various names in Spanish regions: Galician Estantiga or Hoste Antiga ("the old army"), Hostia, Santa Compaña ("holy troop"); Asturian Güestia ("host"); Leónese Hueste de Ánimas ("troop of ghosts"); Castilian Estantigua ("apparition"); and the Hueste de Guerra ("war company") or Cortejo de Gente de Muerte ("deadly retinue") of Extremadura (Risco, 389-395). Some of these words derive from Latin hostis antiquus but the imagery and traditions are indigenous to exactly these regions that retain the strongest Celtic roots. Other folkloric names in Northwest Iberia include the Rolda, As da nuite ("the night ones"), Pantalla, Avisóns, and Pantaruxada. All of these terms express the thin boundaries between the worlds of the dead and living. The beings associated with these traditions closely parallel the Irish banshee and Breton ankou (Paredes). Such parallels led Ramón Otero Pedrayo (1888-1976) and other Galician thinkers to link Galicia with the Atlantic Celtic cultures more than the Mediterranean. This is backed by the castro culture, local folklore, etymology, and origin myths of the Irish.

Our knowledge of pre-Christian Iberian traditions have expanded since then and should most include awareness of the pre-Roman. The Church expanded through the earlier Roman institutions that conquered and occupied the Peninsula. Contrary to the centralist narrative, it was a gradual process especially in the Northwest regions where move survived longer due to remnants of the Celts and Suebi. Throughout the 6th century, the bishop and missionary Martin of Braga lamented the Pagan traditions stubbornly surviving in the countryside. One Catholic source admits that in the 580s, the "Pauci" - as the Christian faithful were called - were exceeded by the "idolatriae sacrilegium" that spread throughout the Peninsula (McKenna, 112). In 681, Church canons recommended death sentences for recalcitrant peasants. "By then, most of the Peninsula had long reverted to Paganism" (MacMullen, 68). I contend that the Islamic Moorish invasion, the Church and central authorities exploiting the natural yearning for liberation (Reconquista) from a foreign occupation for their own power, and the social and economic infiltration by Jewish Conversos, together solidified Abrahamism within the Peninsula and further eroded Iberian Pagan traditions that nevertheless survived as fragments in rural folklore that could only outwardly present a Christian veneer.

La Reconquista and the following centuries forged a common Spanish identity that nevertheless preserved unique regional distinctions. Great works of art, literature, and other aspects of higher culture were produced, despite what advocates of the hispanophobic Black Legend, apologists for the Moorish occupation, or false claims about the effects of the 1492 expulsions may assert. A consistent theme in many of these works is the ghostly processions of the Wild Hunt. Celtic Samhain traditions survived in the Leónese Hueste de Animas, described in the Auto de los Esposorios de Moysen, written in Salamanca around 1570. This güeste was also expressed by Francisco López de Úbeda (1560-1606) in La Pícara Justina (1605). One expression of the genius of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was his portrayal of real life and use of common speech instead of the "vain and empty" chivalric romances (Close, 39), including the reality of folklore. Don Quixote and Sancho mistook the twelve men they saw accompanying a coffin on the night road from Baeza to Segovia, as ghosts; their large candles for the axes of Grim Reapers. In his novel El Buscón (1626), Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645) personifies Estantigua as an apparition who dresses in mourning and hides his face with a cape. This same figure is the feminine La Estadea in Zamora region. The Cortejo of Extremadura are two ghostly horsemen who cause panic at the liminal time of dawn.

Camino, Compaña, and Purgatory. The mists of this magical landscape meeting the vast expanses of the Atlantic led to its name Costa da Morte "Coast of Death", where finisterre is only the end of one landscape and beginning of an imaginal world. Its inclusion in the Camino pilgrimage harkens back to Celtic processions of the dead who traveled to the symbolic edge of the world, as was the tradition in both Galicia and Brittany. The pilgrimage routes are symbolic of following the stars back into the cosmos: "Santiago is associated with the Milky Way as the road of the dead" (Lecouteux, 138). Similar processions whose stations align with the Great Bear constellation exist in the Languedoc and northern Catalonia, historical regions of the Cathars. Like the Irish morrigan and Germanic valkyries, the Celtiberians believed in excarnation - souls of slain warriors would be carried up to the skies by vultures rather than ravens, while all others were cremated (Freeman, 74). Could the Camino be re-enacting this soul journey through its cosmic symbolism?

Finisterre follows the mysterious place where the Sun set, possibly related to the Dawn Goddess whose Iberian form is Ataecina. Compostela could originate from a word-play between campus stellae "field of stars" and a burial place, compositum. This city and other stations of the Camino contained pre-Christian sites like the Crouga, stone mounds and cairns containing the bones of excarnated warriors and other elevated ancestors. There were ancient processions to these stone structures, and these places were associated with supernatural beings called the Fes, night spirits similar to the sidhe. These are likely a holdover from the earlier Megalithic past, where beings such as the mouras encantadas of Portugal are associated with stone circles. Churches were built upon earlier sites, because the Church knew the power of their sacred energy. The veneration of Santiago reveals more roots within the local landscape than a religion originated from the Middle East and based in Rome.

The Camino is the setting of one of the earliest works of nocturnal horror, Julián de Medrano's Silva Curiosa (1583). Medrano refers to desierto, a barren world devoid of the Christian god's "divine presence", where prevailed instead beings of the animistic, Pagan past - whose existence wasn't denied but simply recast as "demonic": "Even the relics of Saint James, which were supposed to mark the end-goal of the pilgrimage, the place where the spiritual quest of the protagonists would be satisfied, are revealed as a carcass devoid of miracles; nothing but an empty crypt, another curious epitaph. Julio continues his journey beyond the sacred tomb (now just a ruin of antiquity) to the very end of the ancient world, the Northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula known as Finis Terrae (today Finisterre, Galicia) where an undead witch, who sustains herself on the blood of innocent children, lays dormant deep inside the bowels of the Earth. Unlike the relics of Saint James, which are no longer significant (they have no miracles left in them), the undead witch reveals herself as a real presence in the world, capable of inflicting suffering and pain, and even causing the death of unsuspecting travelers" (Castillo and Egginton, 122).

Anthropologist Carmelo Lisón Tolosana (1929-2020) traced the Compaña to the Church's introduction of Purgatory in the 13th century, because it embraced the notion that most souls remain in a liminal realm between Heaven and Hell for an indeterminate period of time. This realm is closer to our own, allowing those souls to interact with the living - fitting ancient traditions about the Otherworld and that the souls of people who met traumatic deaths (battlefield and suicides) would linger on earth, suspended between worlds (Pérez Cuervo). This is a remnant of animism, the complex tapestry of souls and beings interacting through all levels of Nature, expressed in two traditions: The estantigua, estadea and güestia where ghostly riders hunt souls as prey to be snatched into the Otherworld; and the Compaña where grieving spirits wander for living souls to assist. The latter rode in search of a dying person's spirit to merge it into the community of the parish dead (Pérez de Castro). Not only is dying just another cycle of life, but this theme of the parish dead is part of the natural inclination towards venerating the tribe's ancestors; regional expressions of a "folk Catholicism" at odds with the official Church which ultimately incorporated it through Purgatory.

Generally, the Compaña is any mass and procession in honor of the deceased, whose souls are in Purgatory but nevertheless able to attend those gatherings - perhaps an homage to ancient views about astral traveling where the soul and body are in two different places. Its traditions were described by the Galician folklorist Xesús Rodríguez López (1859-1917): "The company is the gathering of souls in Purgatory for a specific purpose. At twelve o'clock at night the deceased get up, go out in procession through the main door, a living person goes ahead with the cross and the cauldron of holy water, and cannot, under any pretext, turn his head. Each deceased carries a light that cannot be seen, but the smell of burning wax is clearly perceived. The procession can not be seen either, but the air that its passage produces is perceived. The unfortunate director can only dispense with such a gloomy task by finding another person and giving him the cross and the cauldron, before he makes a circle on the ground, thus leaving him free to direct the company" (Rodríguez López, 224).

Santa Compaña graffiti in Pontevedra, Galicia.

Photo not taken by me. Despite the Christian cross,

the Compaña is a remnant of the Iberian Wild Hunt.

Timing and Boundaries. These processions of souls appear variously in October, from December to March, or on certain days such as Saturday between midnight and 1am (Lecouteux, 144). These are liminal times where boundaries between worlds are thinnest, such as Bealtaine (around May 1st) and Samhain (early November). Certain people are more sensitive to these experiences, those already having the second sight or those who were accidentally rubbed with consecrated oil for anointing the sick instead of holy water during their baptism (Lisón Tolosana). Others lacking psychic abilities will see it when the procession comes to take them to the Otherworld, revealing its secret on their deathbeds (Pérez Cuervo), a liminal time whose effects are similar to that between wakefulness and sleep (hypnagogia) when more lucid and shamanic experiences are recorded. Many can detect the scent of wax through the breeze, feel a shiver or shudder as the Compaña passes, or otherwise detect the light of their candles through certain images, a possible recognition of certain primal symbols that were the original form of human communication before elaborate speech developed.

Midnight often starts these processions, that "twilight" time when one is less affected by the Earth's magnetic field, thus making one more open to deeper perceptions beyond the brain's typical cognition. Stepping outside normal consciousness is expressed in traditions that the living leader cursed to walk with these night processions has no conscious memory of it during the day. The procession warns the living: "Andad de día, que la noche es mía" ("Walk in the daytime, for the night is mine") (Llano Roza de Ampudia), similar to the German Wild Hunt whose leader warns people to stay in the middle of the road: "Mitte den Weg!" (Pérez Cuervo). This is a recognition of the liminal importance of crossroads, and stressing how both worlds are supposed to be separate by Nature. The legend of the Misa de las Ánimas ("mass of the souls") underscores how one should not speak with or interact with these spectres, lest they never return to the living world (Pérez Cuervo). There is a trickster element, as the Compaña entices the living with food or drink; one should reject it or only pretend to accept (Vaqueiro).

Curses, Protection, and Other Magical Elements. Called Bearer of the Cross, the living leader can only be released from the procession by passing it on to another living soul on its route (Lecouteux, 144-145). Unless he does so, his health will rapidly deteriorate and only upon his death can the curse be passed on. Nor should the living person turn around to face the dead souls, similar to Orpheus losing the living Eurydice forever when he glanced back at the last crucial moment. The living soul loses their own mortality staring death in the face. The ghostly procession offers anyone it encounters a candle; accepting means one's flesh will decay and be turned into a skeleton, forever condemned to follow them (Pérez Cuervo). Children were advised to carry some breadcrumbs in their pockets to offer them to these spirits, with bread being symbolic of life in Celtic tradition (ibid.). Bread being "a sacred life-sustaining staple" through which "the gods and spirits passed their blessings" when it was consecrated on certain days and occasions (Storl, 274), a tradition surviving in the Catholic Eucharist. The allegory here is that by offering something back to the animistic cycle, one can ensure that such spirits will remain in their balance.

The Compaña is active at unprotected crossroads, "traditionally regarded as thresholds where the Otherworld encounters the physical world just as the roads meet" (Pérez Cuervo). For that purpose, many cruceiros - stone or wooden cross signs - were constructed throughout the countryside. Folklore holds that one can escape the procession by stepping onto the base of a cruceiro. This tradition of wayside shrines is common throughout rural Europe, a mainstay of folk Catholicism present in many of my family pictures. These were constructed on the groves and sanctuaries (nemetons) of our Pagan ancestors, fulfilling something in our Unconscious that instinctively knew the sacredness of such sites. Another protective measure from the Compaña is drawing a circle or sigil like a cross, and then step into it until it passes. In the Asturian Güestia, "the spirits walk three times around the house of the doomed, who will become ill and die shortly afterwards" (ibid.). Protective circles and walking around three times are common magical rituals throughout many cultures, innate to the natural cycle. One can ward off the procession with hand gestures like the horns or "fig" sign, two gestures now viewed as vulgar but traditionally protective signs to ward off bad luck and the evil eye.

Initiation and Society of the Bone. As I expressed in a writing last year, initiation is an innate bond within all cultures that has been lost in many of our modern societies to much detriment. The Compaña and other Wild Hunt traditions served such an initiatory ritual between life and death: "The living and the dead help each other in the transit to the great beyond: the living pray for the dead to find their way, the dead come back to guide the dying. The underlying concept is clear: the journey to the Otherworld is not easy, and we must be prepared for it" (Pérez Cuervo). Dismissal of the paranormal and folk traditions as "superstitious" are mere symptoms of our "modern" world being disenchanted; its myths such as "progress" and happiness through consumerism furtively filling the void of deeper initiation rites. Yet true Myths are profound truths expressed in words beyond the senses. Its seen in the traditional Galician saying: "Eu non creo nas meigas, pero habelas, hainas" - "I don't believe in witches but they do surely exist" (ibid.).

Having crossed the threshold of death, the riders possess secrets that cannot be revealed to the living, except those few more sensitive to other worlds or who undergo shamanic journeys. The word "shamanic" is used here as a process, knowing the specific word is Siberian whereas they are known under various cultural names. All cultures worldwide had such a shamanic tradition - including European cultures. The shamanic journey is not a pleasant experience of "love and light" but one grounded in traumas, descending to the lowest depths of one's own psyche and soul, and confronting and integrating one's Shadow to obtain the deepest spiritual truth. Its to cut through the lies and bullshit not only of society, but the personas adopted to deceive oneself. Unable to explain their experiences that modern society dismisses as "insanity", in alter centuries many people with such experiences coalesced in initiatory groups. One such group is the Galician Società do Oso (Society of the Bone), masked members whose processions acted out their astral travels during which their souls left their physical bodies:

"This gathering of souls into a group, often the dead of a parish, ancestors, and relatives, transformed into a secret society made up of living individuals, a society whose functions appear to be similar to that of any other pious fraternity or brotherhood....All the members of this society possess the ability to foresee the death of individuals and announce them with certainty. This death premonition seems to be the privilege of those who are members of the Società do Oso" (Risco, 423-425).

The members' divinatory premonitions could be the living transmission of Galician Druids whose practices would have been similar to what has been recorded of Druids in other regions. This meditation of living individuals upon death is also a reminder of their own mortality, and a recognition that death itself can be transitory in the cycles of life. Going to the precipice of death, if even only mentally, can be a profound rite of spiritual transformation. People as varied as the Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome advised Momento Mori - reflection upon death - to better appreciate life and not take our every moment for granted. Modern society's refusal to confront and integrate their Shadow on both the individual and collective levels, has resulted in many inversions. The unhealthy attitude towards death, to be shut away as a taboo and not seen properly within the holistic cycle of life, has only projected itself into death cults - various "doomsday" fears and hysterias manipulated by the same elites who have a sick desire to "transcend" the humanity (and their own human-ness) they so despise. That will be a theme in some upcoming articles as I take a break from the final conclusion of this Wild Hunt series.