Scheibenschlagen

Scheibenschlagen (Disc beating)

The "disc beating" is a fire ritual in which burning wooden discs are hurled into valleys from hill or mountain sides...The ritual is performed on the eve of the first Sunday of Lent. Here is how it's done...

Boys and men climd to the hill, mountain side above the village, town just before dusk. 

They bring with them circular "discs", as a rule made of beech wood with a hole in the middle, long sticks, torches and firewood...

Once on the summit, they light a fire until a large bonfire is brightly burning...

Men then take a disc and stick it on a tip of a long stick which is as a rule made of hazel...

Then they light the disc in a bonfire...

They then spin the sticks with the disc around to make discs burn and glow brightly. This also looks very very cool...

Then they hit a wooden ramp, specially made for disc beating, with the stick with tangential blow. This dislodges the disc and projects it forward at hight speed. The disc flies away into the darkness below spinning widely...

The launch of each disc is accompanied by a loud shout from the launcher, dedicating the disc to a girl or unmarried woman...

On the village square below, a band plays music for the assembled community, which sings the Scheibenschlagen song. 

When the last disc flies into the valley, the boys and men make their way back home with their burning torches...

In the village, they visit the girls and women to whom their discs were dedicated and enjoy savoury carnival tarts...

This custom was once widespread in and around the southern part of the Upper Rhine Plain, in the Markgräflerland, Black Forest, Breisgau, Basel area and Alsace as well as in Vorarlberg, parts of West and South Tyrol and in the Bündner Oberland and in the Chur Rhine Valley...

I love this bit: The disc beating was first recorded in 1090: On March 21, 1090, an outbuilding of the Lorsch monastery was set on fire by a flying burning disc 🙂

Now considering that this ritual was performed in at the beginning of spring, I would venture to guess that there is some kind of solar symbolism of the "launching burning sun discs into the dark" kind...Most likely related to this: rolling of burning wheels down the side of the mountain. 

I talked about this in my pots "Burning rolling wheel"...

Great short film about the custom in Switzerland can be found on this page...

Grýla

This is Grýla, the Icelandic Christmas witch. She lives in a cave in Iceland’s hinterlands, from where she attacks nearby townships, snatches up misbehaving children, and turns them into delicious stew....

Grýla did not get connected to Christmas until around the early 19th c. when poems began to associate her with the holiday...

Prior to that, she was "really a personification of the winter and the darkness and the snow getting closer and taking over the land again. Not only did she represent winter, she was seen as actually controlling the landscape"...

This is very interesting. In Slavic languages, the word Baba today primarily means grandmother. But it also used to mean mother, midwife, and Mother Earth. I talked about this in my post about "Baba's day" which is the celebration of midwives from Bulgaria... 

As Mother Earth, Baba primarily meant winter earth, the time of complete domination of Earth over Sun in the Earth (Yin) - Sun (Yang) system which produces life. The time of the year dominated by Yin aspects (Dark, Cold, Wet). More about it in my post "Yin and Yang"...

What is interesting about this Icelandic legend is that it directly states that "Baba" (Grandmother) Grýla not only "brings cold and winter" but that she "shapes the landscape". She is Earth...Mother Earth...The same beliefs are found in the Balkans...

In the Balkans shepherds used to pray to stones and particularly rocky crags for good weather. These stones were known as Baba (Mother Earth) stones. Interestingly a lot of these stones are now incorporated into chapels dedicated to Mother Mary. I talked about this in my post "Shepherds chapels from Velebit"... 

In Slavic countries people performed megalithic (stone raising) rituals intended to manipulate weather. These were accompanied with prayers to Dabog, Sky Father, but the medium used was rock, body of Dajbaba, Earth Mother. I talked about these rituals in my post "Weather stones"...

The direct link between Mother Earth, Stone (rock), cold is particularly strong in the Balkans. In Serbia the word baba used to also mean stone, rock. Rocky mountain tops are often called Baba as are exposed outcrops of bedrock...Like this one from Slovenia...

In Croatian and Serbian folklore "baba" (Grandmother) is directly linked to winter, cold, damp:

baba (grandmother) - late snow which falls in spring

babura (grandmother) - hail, ice that falls from the sky

babura (grandmother) - dark sky with drizzle

baba (grandmother) - changeable weather at the beginning of March when snow is likely to fall

bаbini dni (grandmother's days) babini jаrci, kozlići (grandmother's goats) pozаjmenci (borrowed days), ukovi (noise, storm, wind) - cold stormy snowy days in March or April

baba Marta (grandmother Marta, March) - Month of March which can have very changeable weather with snow

babina nedelja (grandmother's week) - the last week in March

baba Korizma - lent, seven weeks of great spring fasting
baba Korizma - a man dressed as a woman representing winter during the Bele Poklade (lent) carnival 
bаbin kut, budžаk (grandmother's corner) - the north west part of the sky from which storms and cold weather come
babje, bablje, bа̏bаčko leto (grandmother's summer) - late hot days in the autumn, indian summer

In Polish folklore we find

babinmróz (grandmother's frost) - October frost

"baba chłóduna (grandmother cold) is sitting somewhere on an oak tree, incubating eggs, and until they hatch, the drought will continue" - when drought lasts too long

In the Polish Carpathians we find

"the baba (grandmother) is already frozen" - the mountain tops are covered with frost or the first snow

In Bulgarian folklore we find 

babin proso (grandmother's millet) - hailstone 

baba Marta (grandmother Marta, March) - a mythical figure who brings with her the end of the cold winter and the beginning of the spring. Celebrated on the March the 1st.

In Romania, where Serbs once lived in huge numbers, we find

babe (grandmothers) - first 9 days of March when snow can fall again

baba Dochia (grandmother Dochia) - an old woman who insults (teases) the month of March either by badmouthing Him or by going up to the mountain with a herd of sheep or goats (way before she should, in May). March then steals frosty days from February to punish her. See "babini jarci" (grandmother's goats) and "pozаjmenci" (borrowed days), both meaning "cold stormy snowy days in March or April" from Serbian folklore... 

Among Kashubians in the Carpathian mountians we find

old baba (grandmother) - rain

"the old baba (grandmother) went to dance" - when the weather suddenly changes and it starts to snow

The reason why Baba (Mother Earth) was identified with rocks is because everything above rocks, everything alive, plants, animals, humans... was seen as "what Mother Earth gave birth to"...

This is Babno polje (Grandmother's field), a valley in Slovenia. This is the coldest place in Slovenia...

Babinjača (Grandmother's place), Pešter (Sjenica). Pester is the largest plateau (1150m on 63km²) in the Balkan Peninsula and one of the largest in Europe. The area of Sjenica (Babinjača) is the place where the lowest temperatures in Serbia are recorded every winter...

Bjelašnica, Babin do (Grandmother's valley). The area experiences some of the lowest winter temperatures in Bosnia, down to -41 °C. Also known as Mokra gora (Wet mountain, forest)...

All of these places were called Baba's place deliberately because they were the coldest spots...

The Cold old hag, Winter Earth, gets transformed into Hot young maiden, Spring Earth, with the arrival of her future husband, young Sun. Just in time, as all the last year's wheat was used up. Milling grandmother into maiden, Slovenia...I talked about this in my post "Babji mlin"...

Baba (Old Hag, Winter Earth) is found all over Europe under different guises.

In Gaelic lands of Ireland and Scotland she is Cailleach...

In Italy she is Befana...

In the mountains of Central Europe she is Perchta to Germans or Peruehty to Slavs...

In the North of Germany and in Scandinavia she is "Mother Holle (Hulda) or "Old Mother Frost"

Mother Holle is very interesting indeed. Marija Gimbutas thought that Holle was originally an ancient Germanic supreme goddess who predated most of the Germanic pantheon. She was right about Holle being old Mother Goddess. Not right about her being in any way exclusively Germanic

Officially, the name is thought to originate from German "huld" (gracious, friendly, sympathetic, grateful), Middle High German "hulde", Old High German "huldī" (friendliness). Weird root for the name of the Old Hag, right?

Then we read this: The name "Hludana" is found in five Latin inscriptions: three from lower Rhine, one from Münstereifel, one from Beetgum, Frisia, all dating from 197 AD-235 AD. Many attempts have been made to interpret this name...How about "hladna" Slavic for she who is cold?

That would be the perfect root for The Old Hag Winter, right? But who would be speaking Slavic languages in parts of Germany occupied by Romans in the 2nd and 3rd century AD??? Well Slavs of course, but that completely contradicts the official history of Europe...

In Slavic countries she is Baba Marta. Normally this is believed to mean Grandmother March, as in month of March. But why would Slavs name the Old Hag Winter Earth using Roman month name, which by the way was in many Slavic lands the first month of Spring?

The original Slavic name for the Old Hag Winter Earth was Baba Mora, Baba Morana. Name Mora, Morana is based on the root "mor". This root is found in most Serbian words with diminishing, reducing, negative meaning...Morana was also Slavic goddess of death...

The word "mori" means "kills", so Morana is literally "She who kills". The word "mraz" (moroz) means "frost" so Marzanna is literally the frosty, the cold one. They both come from the same root "mor"...

And it is Morana (Morena, Marzanna) whose effigies are made at the beginning of every Spring, and 
are then burned or drowned (or both, to be sure to be sure 🙂). This is done to make sure winter doesn't return. Burning - warming of Mother Earth, Drowning - showing of Mother Earth

Gaels also used to ceremonially burn the Old Winter, Cailleach.

That Morana and Baba are one and the same can be seen from rituals preserved in South of Serbia and Bulgaria, performed during "Babinden" (Grandmother's day), the annual celebrations of "birth givers"...

In Bulgaria, the climactic moment of the day is the ritual bathing of the midwife in the river or a well. Actually ritual drowning.

This custom was until the 1980s preserved in the village of Dikanci, in Gora region in South of Serbia.

I will finish this post with this Roman mosaic depicting The Spirit of winter...

Ear

Pulling kids by the ear was one of favourite school punishments the world over. But was this done just out of cruelty or was there originally another deeper reason for pulling kids ears which was over time forgotten?

In Serbia in the past, a teacher would ask kids a question, and would go through the class untill he found someone who knew the answer. That kid would then be told to go and pull the ears of all the kids who didn't know the answer. 

The licking clean of ears by snakes was a common theme in Greek mythology. The snake licked clean the ears of Asclepius, allowing him to learn knowledge and skill that had previously been hidden to man...

During Roman time, in court, a witness would be pulled by the ear by a person saying "memento!" to help the witness to remember what happened better... 

Babrius (Greek: Βάβριος) was the author of a collection of Greek fables. In one of them, while dying father is telling his son what he is leaving him, he is pulling the son by the ear, so he doesn't forget what he is being told. 

Pliny the elder wrote that people believed that the memory was located in the earlobes...Hence pulling the earlobes in Roman courts to stimulate the memory... 

While writing about kings and wars Virgil was pulled by the ear by Apollo. Servius says that this was because "ear is the seat of memory, just like the forehead is the seat of genius"...

The reason why Buddha has big earlobes is because big earlobes are the sign of knowledge and enlightenment...

This is why in India school kids are "punished" by "thoppukaranam". You pull your earlobes by opposite hands and you squat 10 times. By the way this is the same ritual performed in front of Buddha, the enlightened one. 

The latest research data from India says that this ear pulling yoga exercise balances the left and right hemispheres of our brains. Interestingly, ears contain acupuncture points that affect to all the other parts of the body. The earlobe corresponds to the head🙂 

Now where did this "belief" that pulling your earlobes will stimulate your memory originated? Maybe in India and was brought to Europe during various westward migrations? Serbs have preserved the memory of "motherland India" in their epics. I wrote about this in my post "Triglav, Trojan, Trinity, Trimurti, Agni"

But maybe it originated in Europe during Bronze age and was brought to India during one of many eastward migrations? After all, the earliest possible acupuncture evidence comes from Europe. The so called "Ötzi the Iceman" is the  5300 years old body found frozen in the German Alps. The Iceman's tattoos align with classic acupuncture points, and the plants found amongst his belongings have well-known medical applications .

Or maybe it originated in ancient Sumer. In "Ancient Near Eastern Gods Enki and Ea: Diachronical Analysis of Texts and Images from the Earliest Sources to the Neo-Sumerian Period" by Peeter Espak we read that:

The quality most often given to a king by Enki starting from the Early-Dynastic royal inscriptions is "geštu". The word means "ear(s); hearing; understanding, intelligence" and is in relation to Enki used to denote capability to receive through the ears,  practical skill, understanding, and cleverness. This feature is repeated in relation to Enki throughout the history of Sumerian texts. It seems that for Sumerians, the human ear was considered as the seat of intelligence. In the same sense the Akkadian uznu (ear, wisdom) was used.