Early medieval "witch mark" from St Cormac's Cave, Eileen Mor, West Scotland...
A witch mark is a "hexafoil" (six-petalled flower) symbol scratched on the walls, beams and thresholds of buildings in Britain to protect them from witchcraft...
There are few things related to the "witch mark" that I would like to talk about in this post. First, why are they called witch marks? I know, I know, to protect against witchcraft, but what witchcraft exactly?
To figure that out we will first look at this same mark and its associated meaning recorded in Spain. In Iberian folk tradition, especially in rural Castile and León, the "flor de seis" (six-petal rosette) has been associated with water, rain, and protection against storms...
This symbol, also called "flor del agua" (water flower) was carved on granaries, barns, stables, and door lintels. In many villages it was thought that it can "llamar al agua" (call water), bring rain during summer droughts or that it can protect harvests from summer storms...
You can read more about this here and here...
In Spain this symbol was also closely associated with transhumance shepherds.
You can read more about this here...
Apparently the reason is "not clear", but I can bet that it was the association of this sign with (bad) weather during the spring ascend to the highland pastures...
In the Pyrenees the livestock are moved to the high mountain pastures for the summer months in May...
The weather in May can be quite unpredictable. This is the time when the thunderstorm season starts in the Pyrenees. But these May storms can quickly change to snowstorms especially at higher altitudes...
These storms can have devastating effect on ascending flocks and herds, and both shepherds and their animals can die if hey get caught in one.
Hence, I think, the water marks all over shepherd related artefacts...
I just realised that this is also the reason for the ubiquity of this symbol among the shepherds in Carpathian mountains...
Axes of the Hutsuls, Carpahian highlanders. Axe was the main weapon and the main symbol of the Slavic Thunder god Perun. Interestingly these Hutsul axes are decorated with Perunika (Perun's flower) another symbol of Perun, also known as thunder mark...
Carpathian shepherd with one of these axes which is also used a walking stick...
Next we look at the Slavic countries where we find this same symbol also associated with storms...
Perunika (Iris), the flower of the Slavic Thunder God Perun, believed to grow from the place struck by lightning, was used as a protection agains lightning under the name "Gromoviti znak" (Thunder mark). Here it is engraved on a wine press in Slovenija....
What is interesting is that the beginning of the Iris flowering season is Apr/May...
Right at the beginning of the thunderstorm season in the Balkans...
What is also interesting is that goddess Iris was "the one who speaks for Zeus"...
Considering that thunder is the voice of the thunder god, who (or what) was she? My post Iris asks this question and few more...
Anyway, we can, I think, pretty firmly establish the link between the hexafoil and the (bad, cold, wet, stormy) weather during the hot half of the year, Apr/May - Oct/Nov, the agriculturally most important part of the year in Europe...
Now did you know that in the past in Europe it was women who were mainly in charge of weather magic, particularly water related magic. And that this weather magic was the main "sin" of which Medieval witches were accuse of...
Two witches conjuring a hailstorm.
Did you know that the sudden climate change which resulted in the medieval mini ice age was blamed on the weather controlling witches and was the excuse for the subsequent witch-hunt?
I talked about this in my post De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus...
I also talked about this in these two articles, Weather stones and The last megalithic ritual in Europe about the use of "weather stones" among Slavs. Like in Belarus, where women (Yin, dark, wet, cold) raise Dabog's stone during drought to get cool and wet weather...The last megalithic ritual in Europe? And could it be that (at least some) standing stones were raised as weather stones during past sudden climate changes?
May Day Eve is across Northern and Central Europe known as Walpurgis Night, the night when everyone is trying to "ward off, scare, witches". Why?
Maybe this has something to do with the old calendar which divided year into winter and summer...And the fact that "The Witch" here is "The Winter Earth"...
Which is why we "burn" (effigies of) "The Witch" (fire of the late spring/summer sun destroys the cold of winter/early spring earth)...
I talk abou this in my post Walpurgis night...
Slavs have preserved the true nature of this ritual, because they don't burn "The Witch". They burn "Marzana" (Frost Goddess, Winter Earth) or "Morana" (Goddess of Death)...
Slavs equated The Goddess of Death, Morana (mor=death) with The Winter Earth, Marzana (marz=frost). She is ceremonially burned (warmed) or drowned (thawed) or both (to be sure to be sure 🙂) during Slavic spring festivals...
This painging called "Maslenitsa" by Simon Kozhin depicts exactly that, people celebrating the burning (ending) of Winter Witch (by the spring sun)...
Here are some articles in which I talk about this ritual and related customs and beliefs in Slavic, Germanic, Celtic Europe: Gryla, Party, Bannock, To kill a witch, Baba's day, Living stone, Baba - cold, winter...
Slovenians preserved the actual origin of "The Witch"...
Originally people believed that it was Mother Earth that controlled the Yin half of the climate (Dark/Cold/Wet) half...
This bedrock outcrop near the village of Rodik in Slovenia is known locally as "Baba" (Grandmother)... Locals believed that "Baba" controls the (bad) weather: Baba’s urine turns to rain, her fart to wind, and when she raises her skirt, the weather gets nice...🙂
And the local shepherds used to leave offerings on "Baba" stones during their spring ascent to the summer pastures...I talked about this in my post "Gryla"...
In Coratia, on Mt Velebit, there are several "shepherds chapel", dedicated to Holy Mary. This is what remains of one of them....
The altar is actually bedrock, around which the church was built, indicating that this a Christianised pagan holy place, where shepherds originally worshipped Baba, Mother Earth in a form of Mountain Mother. I talked about this in my post "Shepherds chapels from Velebit"...
This is another example of an ancient mountain temple dedicated to Baba, Mother Earth in a form of Moutain Mother, which was later christianised and turned into a monastery dedicated to the Holy Mary...
This is Treskavec (The Holy Mother of God) Monastery, which sits right below the 1270m high Zlatovrv (Golden peak) of the Babuna Mountain, which is located 6.5 km north of Prilep, Macedonia...Pic taken by Geoff Wong in 2009...
Treskavec Monastery is located on Mountain Babuna, whose name was once probably Baba (Grandmother, Mother, Mother Earth) and was turned to Babuna (An evil woman, Pagan woman? Pagan goddess?) most likely by Christians, when the area around (the holy mountain) was Christianised...
Interestingly, the local population preserved the memory of the Christianisation of the area in a folk song recorded in the 19th century. You can find it in the article "Sakralna topografija manastira Treskavca" (Serbocroatian).
The interesting bit is:
...
Angels and saints all came
They all came to Zlatovrv (Golden Peak) Mountain,
They all came to expel the pagans,
From the temple which they built there,
And to turn the temple into a monastery,
For the Holy Mother of God to sit in
...
This confirms that this was (Baba ???) holy mountain which was converted to a holy mountain of Mary...This conversion of holy places dedicated to Baba (Mother Earth) into holy places dedicated to Mary can be seen all over the Balkans...
I talk about this monastery in my post Treskavec...
Here is a traditional folk song from the Šar Planina (Šar Mountain), a mountain range which lies on the border between Serbia (Kosovo), Makedonija and Albanija.
BTW, bedrock is in the Balkans known as "živi kamen, živa stena" (living stone, living rock) because it is believed to be still part of the living body of the Mother Earth which gives birth to all life...
I talk about it in my post Living stone...
This pic is a great illustration of this fact...
It just now occured to me that it is in the transhumance areas of the Balkans where we find all the mountain tops, and bedrock crags called Baba (Grandmother, Mother, Mother Earth)...
Pic: Velika Baba (Great Grandmother) peak, Slovenia. From the post "Baba, mountains and crags"...
Mother Earth has been symbolically linked with women for who knows how long...
They both give birth to living things.
They both produce life giving liquid (water/milk).
Which is why (dark/wet/cold weather and fertility) magic became female magic...
The knowledge how to perform this magic was passed from mother to daughter...
Originally it was all the old women that preserved and performed the weather magic...
In Serbian we have these words: nevesta (ne vešta) = not skilful (knowledgable, wise) = maiden, vešta (the skilful one, married woman, the one who "knows") and veštica (the witch, the old woman, the one who knows everything, the preserver of sacred knowledge)...
And this is how "The Witches" were born...
I talked about this in my post The skillful one and Wrach...
So I can bet, that the witches mark from Britain is called witches mark because it is also associated with (bad) weather and storms. And I think this next thing will confirm this too...
A while back @JohnsWalks, who unfortunately isn't with us any more, let me know that the "witches mark" symbol was also known as "the garlic flower", because wild garlic flower looks very much like this symbol...
In folklore, wild garlic was thought to have magical powers. It was believed to ward off evil spirits and protect against witchcraft...
Why? Plant calendar marker?
Apart from having a flower that looks exactly like the witches sign, the peak flowering season of wild garlic is Ap/May, when woodlands become "awash with the white, starry flowers"...
The main agricultural season in Britain is Apr/May to Aug/Sep. This is the time when grain is growing and ripening and they need the exactly right amount of rain and sunshine...
Unfortunately, Britain's peak thunderstorm and hailstorm season is from Apr/May to Aug/Sep. With the peak in Jul...Right before the grain harvest...If you were a farmer in Britain, you would need all the (magical) help you can get to protect your livelihood from these storms...
Oh, and believe or not, transhumance season in Britain used to start in May, when flocks and herds were moved to high pastures. In Scotland, the practice was tied to the Beltane (May 1st) festival...
Unfortunately, this is also the start of the thunderstorm storm season, and in the Scottish highlands, you can still get snowstorms in May...Right during the ascend of the livestock to the highland pastures...
And as it was believed that it was witches that can cause devastating bad weather during the summer, we ended up with witches marks to protect us from witchcraft, ie, bad, cold, wet, stormy weather...At least I think so...
BTW, in Britain, the main wild iris species, the Yellow Iris (Iris pseudacorus) flowers from May to August...Right during the thunderstorm season...
In my post "The City", I talked about an ancient enclosure in Co Kerry, Ireland which was linked with the veneration of the (D)Anu, the Irish version of Baba, The Mother Earth.
The enclosure was built around an exposed piece of bedrock, which served as an altar.
The City was the place where annual rituals were perform on Bealtaine, 1st of May, the middle of Taurus, at the beginning of the cattle drive into the highland pastures, "for the protection of the cattle"...
From the bedrock standing in the centre of the enclosure, both people and cattle looked towards the two round breast like hills, made even more breast like by giant stone cairns built on their tops. The hills are known as the Paps of Anu (Boobs of the Mother Earth)...
So here in Ireland, just like in the Balkans, we have association between bedrock, Mother Earth and shepherds...
PS: An article about the association of the "witch mark" symbol with Perun, Taranis, and Thor (St Olav). Enjoy...
