Knowing your history…

“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”

- Johann Wolfgang Goethe

The Snakes of Abruzzo

The small town of Cocullo in the mountains of the Abruzzo region of Italy is the location for the bizarre Festival of the Snakes – though nominally known as the feast of St Domenico.  The effigy of the Saint is draped in snakes and serpents; and the appearance of his indifference to the venomous serpents gives credence to his potency in banishing poisonous snakes. St. Domenico had obviously been reading up on the exploits of St. Patrick.

The "Festival of Snakes" - The Feast of San Domenico in Cocullo, Abruzzo.

In Abruzzo snakes are common, and in old times their bites were frequent cause of death. The Marsi, shepherds and fishermen who lived on the mountains and the coast of Lake Fucino, worshipped goddess Angitia, protector of snakes.

Near Luco dei Marsi there was a forest called “lucus Angitiae”, sacred to the goddess, and to her in early spring snakes used to be sacrificed. A legend says that Ovid, a celebrated Latin poet born in Sulmona, was desperately in love with a cold-hearted girl, so she took refuge into the goddess’s forest to learn the magic art. In the ancient world the Marsi were renowned for their power on poisonous snakes and in the 1st and 2nd century are recorded as healers and street fortune tellers in Rome. In the course of the Middle Ages the Marsian religion disappeared, but the belief of magical powers on poisonous snakes and on rabid dogs were transferred in the popular culture to healing figures, who were called “ciarauli”, who knew the secrets to capture snakes and heal from their bite.”

The Marsi sound suspiciously similar to the modern day snake-charmers of India; though snake charming also existed in North Africa, especially Egypt. Did the snake-charming tradition of India and South-East Asia make its way as far as the hill towns of the Appennines ?

Not coincidentally  – nearby Cocullo with its snake tradition lies the capital of Abruzzo -  the town of L’Aquila  – “The Eagle”. Snake and eagle imagery are never far apart.

Abruzzo – and in particular the municipality of L’Aquila -  suffered signifcant loss of life and damage in an earthquake in April of this year – nearly 300 killed and 1500 injured.

This is just going to get worse as we get closer.

Earthquake damage in L'Aquila, Abruzzo - April 2009.

St. Patrick’s Day and the modern Bacchanalia

The Irish Diaspora (and those who join in for the fun) mark March 17th as St.Patrick’s Day, Ireland’s national holiday; and an occasion to partake in raucous alcohol- fueled revelry.

Legend says that St. Patrick arrived in Ireland in 432 and died on 17 March 440 – or maybe 461 – but there is no firm record of this exact date. It does however match the date of a more ancient festival, preceding Patrick’s era.

The Roman feast of the Bacchanalia – a homage to Bacchus, the God of wine – was originally celebrated on March 16th and 17th.  Initially attended only by women in a secluded grove on the Aventine Hill, once men were allowed to attend it became notorious as an occasion of drinking, sexual licentiousness and immorality – even by classical Roman standards.

Classical view of the ancient Roman Bacchanalia celebrations

The cult of the Bacchanlia was severely restricted by Roman authorities around the turn of the common era, but it never entirely died out – especially in rural Italy and other far-flung parts of the Empire; and in common with other pagan and ‘old religion’ festivals, went in search of a Christian saint to graft itself onto.

St. Patrick himself was a Briton, not Irish born; though spent many years there as a captured slave tending livestock. The year of his arrival – 432 AD – is curiously significant in that it – or standard multiples thereof – appears in many Middle Eastern numerology texts. The precession of equinoxes occurs over a period of 25,920 years; which is 432 * 60. In the Norse sagas, at the time of Ragnarok, 800 soldiers will issue from 540 gates of Valhalla – a total of 432,000.

Insofar as nobody knows with any certainty exactly when St Patrick arrived in Ireland, the consensus on the date of 432 AD seems to have not been chosen at random, and may have some serendipitious import.

A more contemporary take on the St Patrick's Day Bacchanalia....

Shifting dates and observances..

The original significance of the dates of some feasts and festivals have been lost or obscured due to changes brought in by the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582; and its piecemeal adoption across Europe in the following three hundred and fifty years to comply with an edict of Pope Gregory XIII.

The Gregorian calendar was a well-thought out solution to the  widely-held concern about the “drift” of the Julian calendar from astronomical observations – the calendar was out of sync with the observed length of a year by 9 days by 1582. The Catholic countries of Southern Europe converted first in October of that year – eliminating 9 days in October from their history;  France followed suit in December and the Netherlands a month later.

The Protestant countries of Northern Europe- where the Reformation was in full swing – refused to go along with this Popish scheme, until the clear evidence of the inadequacy of the Julian calendar forced them to make the change. By the time England converted in 1752, there was an 11-day discrepancy with solar observations.

The last Eurpoean countries to switch to the Gregorian calendar were Greece and Russia in the early 20th Century – yet the Russian Orthodox church continues to abide by the Julian calendar to calculate dates for religious festivals. Although they celebrate Christmas on December 25th by the Julian calendar, this corresponds to January 7th by the Gregorian calendar.

Similarly in many parts of Europe – notably Scandinavia – the “Traditional” dates of the solstice and equinox celebrations no longer match the currently accepted dates- even if the latter are more ‘astronomically correct’.  In Sweden, the Feast of St. Lucy on December 15th is partly a relic of this ‘timeslip’ – the festival originally marked the winter solstice, by the old reckoning.

Sources of light…

Helen of Troy was a renowned classical beauty, the casus belli of the Trojan wars.

Depending on which myth you read, she is  claimed to be the daughter of Zeus and Leda, a mortal whom Zeus seduced in the form of  a swan; and who later gave birth to Helen in a swan’s egg.  Other myths describe Helen as the offspring of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis. There is significant evidence that she was also worshiped as a fertility and vegetaion deity.

The name Helen means ‘ Light of the Sun’, ‘the shining one’… and has been adopted across Europe – Helena, Ellen, Elena, all meaning the ’shining one’.  The name Helen itself seems to have Vedic connections, though somewhat obscure. In the Rg Veda, the goddess Saranyu (or Svaranu – ‘the shining one’, ‘the torch’) is abducted in a similar manner to Helen.  Other suggestions are that ‘Helen’ shares a common root with the ancient Greek word for the planet Venus. Either way, the association with light is undeniable.

It is tempting to think that there is a link between the name ‘Helen’ with the term ‘Hellenes’ – the Greeks as “the shining ones”; unfortunately there is no etymological evidence to suggest such a link

In the aftermath of disaster….

Between 1348 and 1351, between one-half and two-thirds of the population of Europe died in the “Black Death”  – an epidemic of bubonic plague and associated diseases spread by fleas carried on rats which had arrived aboard ships from Africa and the Middle East.

Although the plague disproportionately affected cities with their cramped living conditions; the countryside suffered also – whole villages in rural areas were wiped out. It was interpreted as the Biblical End of days, the foretold cataclysm that would mark the end of the world and presage the second coming.

Economically and demographically however, the Black Death was -eventually- a new start for Europe. For the survivors, more land was available, living standards increased, the peasant class found that their labor was in greater demand, and began to flex their political muscle.

Europe had returned to nature,  as it were. In many rural areas, with nobody left to work the harvest;   tree growth and vegetation cover increased significantly. The capacity of the Earth to recover and grow was remarked upon; and a new appreciation for the inherent power of the Earth to began to take hold.  In modern times, tree-ring analysis has shown a significant drop in CO2 levels in the late 14th century, probably due the unchecked forest cover acting as a carbon sink.

Pope Clement VI meanwhile, holed up in his Gothic castle in Avignon -  surrounded by burning torches to ward off the ‘bad air’ – appeared unable to offer any divine explanation for God’s wrath;  and resorted to consulting astronomers to determine a reason.  Imprecations to the Christian God had failed; and in the new prosperity that followed in the next two centuries,  he would never again command quite the same respect.

Thoughts on life energy…

For centuries,  scientists have postulated various ‘mediums’ to explain observed phenomena, from the ether of the ancient Greeks to the ‘luminiferous ether’ proposed during early work on electromagnetism.

In the 1940s,  the Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Reich postulated the existence of what he called orgone energy – a primordial cosmic energy that infused and animated the Earth, the air , the stars and all natural phenomena.  Earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters could be explained – he claimed – by the orgone being out of balance, or disrupted in some way.

After moving to the US to escape Hitler’s Germany,  he built various apparatus which he claimed could concentrate and redistribute orgone energy, as an aid to controlling weather and rainfall, among other things.

Reich’s work attracted the unwelcome attention of the US government – his alleged prior involvement with European Communist groups cited as a pretext. The Food & Drug Administration confiscated his equipment and burned most of his papers – a borderline criminal act of censorship that has never been adequately explained. Jailed for two years for contempt of court, Reich died in prison in 1957.

In his surviving writings, he describes orgone energy as being observable as a blue light, which radiates from all things, is present in the air; and which  forms “a protective shield around the Earth”.  A decade after his death, pictures of the Earth from orbit showed the atmosphere glowing with a halo of blue light.

Nymphs & Satyrs

Satyrs and Nymphs – with all the connotations of illicit couplings if not outright rape -  were favorite subjects of classical greek artists; and later for the renaissance artists who looked to classical mythology for inspiration, but preferred to tone down the sex to something only slightly furtive.

Nymph and Satyr by Alexandre Cabanel

The Satyrs represented the sources of fertility, often depicted as having the lower half of a goat;  while the Nymphs represented trees, streams, flowers, valleys – elements nature that had to be fertilized and impregnated – on a regular basis.

A faint echo of this fertility tradition survives today on the western fringes of Europe. The annual ‘Puck Fair’ – a festival held in County Kerry on the southwest coast of Ireland,  elects a goat as “King” and a young girl as his “Queen”. Although the suggestion of illicit behavior has been removed to the point of the meaning being interpreted as a child’s fairytale, the link is unmistakable.

The "King" and "Queen" of Puck Fair

The "King" is crowned...

Centrepoints of the World

Ancient and modern religions alike frequently venerate sacred rocks or stones, which often turn out to be meteorite fragments – ‘sent down from heaven by the Gods’. Examples are the Black Stone in the east wall of  the Kabaa at Mecca, and Jacob’s Pillow, referred to in the Book of Genesis.

Other stones are man-made, and their location – rather than the stones themselves – are of primary significance. The Greek Omphalos stone at Delphi was originally placed in the heart of the sanctuary to Apollo; the spot where it was positioned was believed to be the center of the world (the word omphalos means ‘navel’ or ‘belly-button’).

Omphalos 'Navel-stone' from Delphi

The location was decided upon when Zeus sent two eagles from each end of the Cosmos and the two then met at this point. The stone originally had two golden eagles attached to its top to commemorate this tradition. In addition, the Greeks believed that the omphalos stone marked the spot where Apollo first established his oracle by driving the serpent- monster Python into the Earth.

According to ancient accounts, the stone shown here is a 4^th Century-BC replacement of an original stone of meteoritic origin, which was draped in a woven cloth; the effect designed to resemble a beehive – bees were a symbol of death and resurrection.

It may also have borne some resemblance to an (Indian??) snake basket – note that Python was a giant serpent. Such imagery was surely evocative of the stone’s importance as a sacred marker of Apollo’s victory over the terrifying serpent..

Similarly-styled ‘navel-stones’ exist in Ireland, notably the Turoe Stone, the Lia Fail and the Killycluggin Stone; the latter showing signs of deliberate damage in antiquity; and perhaps indicative that many others were completely destroyed in early Christian times. (Indeed the legends of St. Patrick attest to many pagan stones being ‘swallowed up by the Earth’ at the saint’s instigation).

Turoe Stone

Killycluggin Stone - showing signs of ancient damage

Echoing the Greek myths, St.Patrick himself did battle with – and overcame -  a serpent-demon on the summit of the mountain now known as Croagh Patrick; but in ancient times as Cruachain Aigle – ‘Eagle Mountain’.  Although no navel-stone has been recorded as existing on the mountain (and an early 20^th-Century catholic oratory now occupies the central part of the summit) archaeological excavations have shown traces of an extensive pre-Christian settlement on the peak. This is a bleak, isolated location which would be difficult to explain except in the context of a ritual centre.

Aerial view of the summit of Croagh Patrick, showing the modern chapel and traces of previous structures

Ex Tenebris Lux

One of the few religious-based holidays celebrated in Lutheran Scandinavia is the feast of St. Lucia, celebrated on December 13th.  Bizarrely, St. Lucia is better known as St. Lucy of Syracuse  – a Sicilian.

In Sweden and other Nordic counties, a girl is chosen to become the ‘Lucia’ – the festival Queen, as such.  She is crowned with a ring of lights – traditionally a tiara of candles; or more prudently these days -  electric lights.

Lucia Festival in Sweden

How did an Italian saint survive the Lutheran reformation to become a central focus of a light festival in Northern Europe?  Taking Sweden as an example, the answer appeared to be that in the period of christianization, St. Lucy’s story was easily grafted on to an existing tradition – that of the Lussiferda, a host of witches called ‘Lussi’ who are believed to take to the skies on the night of the winter solstice, seeking out and making mischief.

St.  Lucy’s motto is “Ex Tenbris Lux” – “Out of Darkness, Light”