Walpurgis Night

Illustration by Bernard Zuber for Maurice Garçon’s La Vie Execrable de Guillemette Babin, Sorciere, 1926. 

May Day Eve (April 30) 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 Celtic calendar which divided the year into two halves:

Winter (Samhain, 1st of Nov - Beltane, 1st of May)

Summer (Beltane, 1st of May - Samhain, 1st of Nov)

I talked about this in my post "Two crosses"...

This division of the year, is btw based on the old transhumance shepherd calendar:

Lowland grazing and lambing Oct/Nov - Apr/May

Highland grazing and milking Apr/May - Oct/Nov

I talked about this in my post "April"...

In Serbian Orthodox calendar, the beginning and the end of the "Time of Dragons", the hot sunny half of the year, is marked (guarded) by Two Georges, Summer and Winter St George('s day)...I talked about this in my post "Two Georges"...

This is important to know as a lot of old traditions linked to Beltane were migrated to the Summer St George day...

Where do witches come into the picture here?

Remember this: Hey, you Halloween witches, dressing up in black on the first day of winter...You know that The Witch here is The Hag, Winter Earth, Baba, Cailleach, The Dark, Veiled One...Here she is, all in black, with bare branch, on the four seasons Roman mosaic from the Bignor

The witch here is the Old (Winter) Mother Earth. 

In the Polish Carpathians we find this saying:

"Baba (Grandmother) is already frozen" meaning "The mountain tops are covered with frost or the first snow". 

I talked about this in my post "Gryla" about Winter Hag, Winter Earth...

Baba Dochia was an old woman who insulted the month of March. So, while she was going up the mountain with a herd of goats (symbols of winter), March borrowed frosty days from February and froze her to death...

I talked about this legend from Romania in my post "Baba, cold, winter"...

Slovenian folk play called "Baba (grandmother) and Ded (grandfather)": "As they get older he gets weaker and she gets stronger. At one point she takes over him and rules until spring".  

This makes a lot of sense if Baba (Earth, Yin, Cold) and Ded (Sun, Yang, Heat)...

Ever changing Yin-Yang symbol is most likely description of the ever changing daily amount of light and darkness and the effect this change has on Earth's temperature...

More about it in my post "Yin and Yang"...

The winter earth is actually depicted as a witch in the Snow White. 

Crab apples are the last fruit to stay on the branches in Continental Europe, well into winter. 

Winter, which was imagined by our ancestors as "an old hag, and old witch" veiled in black, the bringer of death...

The one Slavs called Morana (the goddess of death) and Marzana (the goddess of cold). From my post "Snow-White"...

Some Slavs performed burning of the witch of winter/goddess of death at the beginning of spring (Jan/Feb)...

"Maslenitsa" by Simon Kozhin. 

As I said, 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 de sure to be sure 🙂) during Slavic spring festivals...

Here are some posts in which I talk about this ritual and related customs: "Gryla", "Party" "Bannock", "To kill a witch", "Baba's day", "Living stone"...

And some Slavs performed burning of the witch of winter/goddess of death at the beginning of summer (Apr/May)...

Like Sorbs (Slavs) from Germany, who at the end of April perform "Chodojtypalenje" (the witch burning). A large stack of branches is piled and a straw witch effigy is placed on top. The whole thing is then set ablaze symbolically "killing winter" (witch=hag=winter) 

As I said above, in Serbian and Celtic calendar, year had two seasons: winter Samhain (start of November) to Bealtaine (start of May), and summer Bealtaine to Samhain. Hence Sorbian witch burning at the end of April, just before the start of summer...  

Here is a picture of one of these "witches" (hags) being burned. 

Christianised version of this custom is Walpurgis Night. "As a result of Saint Walpurga's evangelism in Germany, the people there converted to Christianity from heathenism. Saint Walpurga was also known to repel the effects of witchcraft..." 😉

I think that by now you can all see that what was burned on these bonfires was not a witch but the Hag, Ugly, Evil, Winter earth, The Goddess of Death. Who is transformed, every spring, by the fire of the sun into Beautiful, Good, Summer Earth, The Goddess of Life...This "burning" is not destruction but transformation by fire...

The fire lit at these ceremonies is supposed to ignite the reproductive fire of the mother earth. We don't want frigid winter hag, we want hot spring maiden 🙂 burning with desire for her young sun lover. Without this fire there is no life...

In the Balkans they also performed the scaring of the witch of winter

As part of end of winter, beginning of summer rituals, men and boys in Bosnia blew willow horns to scare the witch (winter) away...As I said, the old Serbian year, just like the old Celtic year, was divided into summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and winter (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

I talked about this in my post "May horns"...

This link between Mother earth and Yin, dark, wet, cold weather, resulted in the women being the ones who in Slavic tradition performed Yin, dark, wet, cold magic. 

I talked about this in two posts, "Weather stones", about the use of "weather stones" among Slavs and "The last megalithic ritual in Europe", which talks about a ritual from Belarus, where women (Yin, dark, wet, cold) raise Dabog's (sun and rain god) stone during drought to get cool and wet weather...

And in the post "Thunder book" where we read about the prosecution of female witches in medieval Serbia for performing weather magic...

The association between (Yin, dark, wet, cold) magic and women seems to have been common in the past in the rest of Europe too. 

Two witches conjuring a hailstorm, an illustration from the 1489 book "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus" by Ulrich Molitor which talks about weather altering magic (witchcraft) performed by women...

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"...

Now that we know who witches were, I think it is interesting that witches seem to have liked riding on two things which are both associated with storms and winter: brooms and goats...

Broom...Remeber my post "Donderbezem" about Donderbezem (thunder broom), a protective symbol used in Holland and northern Germany as a protection from lightning strikes and evil spirits.

Goat...Goat is universally associated with dark, cold, wet half of the year (Oct/Nov - Apr/May) in Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, Western Asia, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Iran...This is because ibex goat mating season starts in Oct/Nov and the ibex goat birthing season finishes in Apr/May...

I talked about symbolism of ibex goats in many of my posts, like 

Europe:

"Pitys", "Goat in European culture", "Patera of Rennes", "Gotland sun stone with horses and ibexes"... 

Levant:

"The tree of life/light", "Lachish animal calendar"...

Mesopotamia:

"Feast plaque from Louvre", "Green pastures", "Problems with Abzu", "Relief from Dur Sharrukin", "Goatfish"...

Iran: 

"Flamingos from Susa", "Goat carrier", "Iranian goat of rain", "Strider", "A vessel from Tepe Hissar", "Rhubarb and ibex"...

Interesting, right?

Anyway, don't just sit there. Go burn a witch. We all had enough of winter...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which were the key to deciphering all this, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Thunder book

In the Annals from 1605, the Dubrovnik writer Jakov Lukarević says that Serbian kings Stefan Nemanja and Dušan "persecuted witches", whom he calls "evil women from Mount Hemo", and burned their book of magic, which was in Slavic tongue called Grominjak (Thunder book)...

That book probably had spells and rituals for affecting meteorological phenomena. St. Sava, in the "Zakonopravilo", condemns the magical summoning of hail, although he himself summons hail, in the story about the Hungarian king.

St Sava from Serbian folktales basically replaced Dabog, the old Serbian supreme god and took all his magical powers, including weather control...I talk about Dabog as both sun and rain god in two article "The last megalithic ritual in Europe" and "Weather stones" about the use of "weather stones" by Slavs to manipulate weather. Like here, where women raise Dabog's stone during drought to get cool and wet weather...

Another interesting bit here is that it is women who were always associated with rain (hail) storm rituals. 

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 article "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus" about the 1489 book "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus" by Ulrich Molitor which talks about weather altering magic (witchcraft) performed by women...

This is an illustration from the book depicting "two witches conjuring up a destructive (hail) storm"...

In South Slavic folklore, cold, wet weather is "feminine"...Yin...

Which is why, in South Slavic folklore, it is a female dragon, ala, that brings hailstorms and unseasonably cold, wet weather during summer months, which destroys crops...I talked about this in my article "Pozoj"...

While male dragon, zmaj, brings hot, dry weather which brings drought, which destroys crops...Yang...I talked about this in my articles "Scaring off the dragon" and "Letnitsa treasure"...

Blinged goddess

Ceramic figurines with bronze necklaces, found in the Durankulak settlement of the  Late Neolithic Hamangia culture, which flourished in Dobruja (Romania and Bulgaria) during the period 5250-4500 BC. The people of this culture seem to have been immigrants from Anatolia...

The figurines were found together as a group...

Archaeologists also found figurines with bracelets...

And women buried with lots and lots of jewellery...BTW, all the figurines with jewellery were female...

Here are some examples of the jewellery found in the Hamangia culture graves...

Durankulak settlement on Golemija ostrov in Bulgaria consisted of rectangular wattle and daub houses with stone foundations...Not huts...

The same kind of houses (barns, cowsheds) which were until the 20th c still built in the Balkans, except the roof was covered by thatch...

Sources: "Hamangija culture", "Durankuluk"

ARCHAEOLOGICAL COMPLEX DURANKULAK (Regular Excavations on Golemija ostrov Tell in 2018)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL COMPLEX DURANKULAK. Regular Excavations on Tell Golemija ostrov in 2020. (Presentation 2021)

NEOLITHIC SETTLEMENTS ON BALKAN a comparative study between Durankulak and Sitagroi

PS: These Neolithic Venus figurines are again faceless, with exaggerated sexual characteristics. Basically depicting the idea (goddess) of fertility. Just like Palaeolithic Venus figurines.

Pic: 17,000 years old Venus of Piatra Neamț, discovered on June 21, 2019, in the area of Piatra Neamț, Romania. 

Talked about this in my posts "Palaeolithic Venus figurines", "The faceless one", "Motanka". 

At the same time when Durankulak people made their faceless goddesses, a gynomorphic (woman like) figurine was made of "soil mixed with chaff and grain seeds" in Grčac, Serbia. by the people of the farming Proto-Starčevo culture, 6200-5500 BC. Direct symbolic link between earth, grain and female fertility. Basically, "Mother of Grain". 

Articles about the Mother of grain in Europe, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Levant: "Mother of grain", "Altyn Tepe mother of grain", "A person in a little boat", "Sabi Abyad venus", "Arjoune venus", "Mother of grain from Yarim Tepe", "Hathor grain pendants", "Cup of Nestor", "Sacred marriage on the threshing floor",  "Mother of grain from Mari", "Baba, last sheaf of wheat"...

The fact that the people from Durankulak who made these Fertility (Mother Earth) figurines and then put necklaces and bracelets on them, the same type of jewellery worn by the local women, tells me the they have also already symbolically linked the the Earth fertility and female fertility. This symbolic link is still found in Europe, particularly in farming communities in the Balkans and Eastern Europe...

I talk about this in my article "Baba, last sheaf of wheat" and the linked articles...

Whipping fresco

5th c. BC Etruscan fresco, Tarquinia, Tomb of the whipping...Depicting...Well you can all see the obvious bit that it is depicting...

I will not talk about that. I will talk about the things "hidden in plain view", that most people who look at this fresco don't see 🙂

Do you see the guy on the left who is ... the woman from behind and also whipping her?

What's with the green branches (growing out of) on his head? Are these willow branches? They look like willow twigs to me...

This insignificant detail 🙂 indicates, at least to me, that this is not just a depiction of an ordinary "fun with friends"...I think this is a ritual, a fertility ritual...

Whose traces, a believe, we can still find among Slavs...As part of willow related spring, rebirth (resurrection) of nature, fertility folklore...

Here is why I think that:

Saturday before Palm Sunday is in Serbia known as Vrbica (Willow day). On that day kids and young women make and wear wreaths made of willow twigs and flowers...

On that day, willow twigs with young leaves and flowers, like these, known in English as Pussy Willow are brought to the church where they are blessed the next day, Palm Sunday, which is in Serbia known as Cveti (Flowers day)...

According to the church, this whole willow business is the consequence of the fact that there are no palms in Serbia, and people replaced palm branches with willow branches...Move on, nothing so see here...

There are few problems with this explanation...

Vrbopuc (Willow burst) is an expression which in Serbia means "part of spring during which willow starts growing new green shoots"...

Vrbopuc is also a term used in Serbia for the period of sudden surge of sexual hormones in teenage boys and girls...

Basically willow was directly linked with human fertility...Which is why in the past in Serbia, girls used to make belts from willow twigs (wrap willow twigs around their bellies), and wear them going to the rivers to perform ritual baths performed during this time...

Among Slavs, willow was directly linked with water, water divination....Dodole, young women which took part in rain bringing magic rituals performed during hot summers also wore willow twig belts...

Mother Earth = Yin = Winter, Cold, Wet, Night, Down = Female fertility

Father Sun (Sky) = Yang = Summer, Hot, Dry, Day, Up = Male fertility

Which is why rain, water magic is female magic...

And which is why willow, the tree which grows next to water, is associated with rain, water and female fertility, female sexuality...

Hence ritual whipping of teenage girls by teenage boys using willow whips, performed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia on Easter Sunday...

The teenage boy first sang a a ritual song about spring, bountifulness and fertility, and "the young woman then turned around and got few whacks on her backside with the willow whip"...

Sounds familiar?

This was done "so girl would be healthy, beautiful and fertile throughout the following year"...They would also splash each other with water...

Cause it is water that makes land fertile...And Slavs directly linked female and land fertility...

I talked about Slavic willow folklore in my post "Willow in Slavic folklore"...

Sooooooooo...What do you think? Just a casual threesome or a fertility ritual?

For those who ask if there is a link to Lupercalia?

These are symbolically similar rituals. During Lupercalia, young men whipped women with sacrificial goat skin thongs. Dead goat was, and still is in Europe, symbol of spring...Goat being the symbol of winter. I talked about this in my posts "The birth of Romulus and Remus", "Goat in European culture"...

That's that. Interesting? I think so. 

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind... 

Baba - Last sheaf of wheat

Among Slavs, the last sheaf of wheat was commonly called Baba. This word means grandmother, mother, midwife, birth giver...In some places the woman binding the last sheaf the last sheaf of wheat is also called Baba...

In the Balkans bаbičiti means to make, to tie grain sheaves. I wonder this is symbolically linked with the swaddling babies cause bаbičiti also means to deliver babies...From the meaning of the word Baba in diminutive form Babica which means midwife...

All kinds of rites and beliefs are connected to the Baba, the last sheaf of wheat, including the  dance of the oldest female reaper, accompanied by banter and jokes...

In Prussia, the woman binding the last sheaf represented the Corn-Mother; After she bound the last sheaf, she would lie down in the field and cry like a woman in labour, while an old woman acted as the midwife. Finally, the "midwife" would announce that a child was born...

In Northern Germany, the woman binding the last sheaf was told: "You are getting the child!" In Bohemia, people believed that the woman binding the last sheaf will have a child in the next year...

The Swabs called the one binding the last sheaf "the Old Woman" (basically Baba, Grandmother) and she was said to be married in the next year...

In East Prussia, the female reapers strove to be the one tying the last sheaf, called "the Grandmother". Whoever  got it, would be married in the next year, but her spouse would be old...

Baba (Grandmother) here is Mother Earth in her role as The Mother Of Grain...Talked about this originally in my post "Mother of grain"...

Mor articles about the Mother of grain in Neolithic Europe, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Levant: "Altyn Tepe mother of grain", "Mother of grain from Yarim Tepe",  "A person in a little boat", "Sabi Abyad venus", "Hathor grain pendants"...

Sumerians knew here as Inanna. 

Inanna/Ishtar, was in "A song of Inanna and Dumuzid" described as: "Maiden, glossy mane, lovely beauty...colourful as a pile of grain, fit for the king, fit for Dumuzid! Maiden...a stack of...barley, fully developed in loveliness"...

This is Inanna speaking:

"Before my lord, Dumuzi,

I placed grain before him,

I poured out grain before him,

I poured out grain before my womb..."

I talked about this in my post "Inanna and dove"...

Greeks knew her as Demeter...

I talk about Demeter in my posts "Demeter with dove", "Demeter riding panther", "Sacred marriage on the threshing floor"...

Demeter, the goddess with beautiful golden hair...Here she is as Ceres emerging from the ground holding grain, opium poppies and snakes... 

I explain why in my post "Who are Persephone's parents"...

Hippolytus says that during Eleusinian harvest rituals, the priest raised a freshly cut ear of wheat with the loud cry: "The exalted goddess bore a holy boy, the strong one bore a strong child!" Sounds familiar? 🙂 I talked about this in my post "Iacchos"...

The reason why the last sheaf of wheat is called Grandmother is because all these people believed that last sheaf of wheat contained the "grain spirit", basically the spirit of The Mother of Grain...

The "grain spirit" is in European folklore usually preserved as female "corn dolly" made from the last harvested sheaf of wheat...I talked about this in my post "Corn dolly"...

In Romania the grain from the last sheaf of wheat was used to make the wreath that was then used to crown the most beautiful maiden reaper...

A living corn dolly from Romania. From my post "Wheat cross" about grain harvest rituals from Romania...

In Poland and Ukraine too...

Wheat wreath, worn by the "corn maidens" and made from the last sheaf of wheat, was the first batch of grain to be threshed on the threshing floor. This grain was then set aside for next year's sowing and was the fist grain to be sawn. 

I talked about this in my post "Wheat wreath"...

The same symbolic link between Old Woman (Grandmother), Last sheaf of wheat and mother earth is preserved in the Gaelic culture...

In Gaelic, the word Cailleach means both an old woman and the last sheaf of wheat and the corn dolly made from it. Corn dolly which represents Mother Earth, the life (grain) giving mother...

I talked about this in my post "The old woman of the mill dust"...

The symbolic linking of female reapers with The Mother of Grain and of tying the last sheaf of wheat with delivering and swaddling a baby is just another example of the believed link between female and earth fertility...Which we find in Europe since Neolithic...

A gynomorphic (woman like) figurine made of "soil mixed with chaff and grain seeds" from Grčac, Serbia. Proto-Starčevo culture, 6200-5500 BC. Direct symbolic link between earth, grain and female fertility. Basically, "Mother of Grain"... 

This symbolic link was still at the core of Slavic agricultural magic in the 20th century. As is shown by this Russian harvest custom:

In the past in Russia, after the last sheaf of grain was cut, women harvesters would lie down on the ground and roll around the field "to return the strength to the earth"...

In Ireland too we find this symbolic linking of land (grain sheaves) and female fertility (bride). These are Strawboys who used to call at the home of the bride on her wedding day. Co Sligo. Ireland. Early 1900s. (National Museums of Northern Ireland).

I talked about this in my post "Walking sheafs of wheat"...

This belief in the direct link between female and land fertility might have had some pretty dark implications in the past. There is an indication that in the past Serbs sacrificed girls to the Corn Spirit in exchange for good harvest...

At the end of the harvest, when only the last sheaf of wheat was left standing in the field, Sorbs would sacrifice a rooster by killing it with a flail...

I talked about this in my post "Cock bashing"...

There are actually many indications that sacrificing a cockerel was among Serbs a replacement for a human sacrifice...I talked about this in my post "Third death"...

Add to that that in some parts of the Balkans Serbs ritually "tied the housewife to the central pole of the threshing floor until she promised them roast cockerel for the end of harvest dinner"...Or the next harvest would be bad...

And you have to ask yourself a question: is this a ritual replacement for the real human sacrifice which once used to take place?