From Western Europe and Scandinavia from the 11th century
onwards until the early twentieth century come some vivid and
frequently lurid written accounts of the Wild Hunt through the
skies.
The
huntsmen and women are identified variously as newly deceased souls
of the ungodly, discarnate spirits who never lived on earth; fairies
and dark witches, led by former pagan gods and witch goddesses or by
folk heroes such as Robin Hood or King Arthur.
Even
disaffected deceased noblemen unwilling to give up the pleasures of
the hunt in death, might according to local legend lead a pack of
demonic howling hounds either through their former home forests or
the skies over them. The prey of these Satanic hordes were the souls
of the living who had lived wicked lives or innocents who saw the
Hunt passing overhead and did not take shelter fast enough to
prevent their souls being sucked out and their bodies tossed
lifeless from the skies miles from where they were captured.
The Sluagh or Unseelie Court
The
Wild Hunt most closely associated with fairies is the Sluagh
or Unseelie Court of Scotland, believed to be composed of the
spirits both of the ungodly dead and evil fey folk who were cast
from the Seelie or noble fairy court for misdemeanours.
Accounts of the Sluagh
appear as late as the beginning of the 20
th century
recorded by the scholar WY Evans-Wentz who travelled through Wales,
Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany from
1908–1910, obtaining first hand accounts of people’s experiences
with the fairy folk. These accounts Wentz reproduced in his book
The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1). Wentz gives a
description from Barra in Scotland of a child apparently taken by
the Sluagh, whose lifeless body was found at the back of the house
with the palms of his hand in the holes of the wall next morning. It
was believed the lifeless body was dropped down from a great height
after the spirit of the child had been taken. Contemporaneous
descriptions of the Sluagh also recorded by Wentz were of the Sluagh
swarming together like a vast swirling cloud of black or grey birds
(and they could have indeed been flocks of migrating birds such as
geese that can pass overhead for an hour or more).
The
fact that the dead body of the child was returned by the Wild Hunt,
though usually the bodies were left many miles away, would suggest a
more earthly hand at work. In this case it could have been a child
abductor who had perhaps abused the child, murdered him and returned
him home under cover of darkness, blaming the Sluagh. If the child
was unwanted by a new parent or was disabled, a parent or stepparent
might have murdered the little one or by hitting him too hard and
accidentally killing him and used a paranormal scapegoat.
Often however, it was told that the Unseelie Court kidnapped less
desirable humans to swell their numbers. Many disappearances of
minor criminals and vagrants may have been attributed to this rather
than earthly elimination processes, but this was no doubt of social
benefit to communities.
The Sluagh were also
said to fly in from the west to capture a dying soul before it was
shriven or forgiven of sin in the Last Rites; for this reason, doors
and windows on the west side of the house were kept closed if there
was a sick person in the house, even until the early part of the
last century in Scotland, to keep the huntsmen away. In the Orkneys
the Wild Hunt, was apparently composed of trows, Scottish trolls who
live in hollow hills on the Shetland and Orkney Islands who hate
sunlight and are said to try to eat mortals unless they can escape
by crossing a stream.
Leaders of the Hunt
Perhaps not surprisingly since the majority of written accounts come
from Christianised times recorded by monks that former powerful
pagan gods and goddesses loom large as the leaders of the demonic
hosts. One of the most famous and enduring Wild Hunt mythology
strands comes from Germanic folklore from Germany, Norway, Sweden
and Denmark, recounting how at Yuletide, Woden or Wotan in the
Anglo Saxon tradition or Odin in Scandinavian lands led the Wild
Hunt through the heavens. In pre Christian oral traditions it would
seem, however, Odin chased wood elves or, sometimes, beautiful
maidens at the Midwinter Solstice around December 21, one of the
main times the Hunt was seen. Some accounts say he dropped gifts at
the foot of his sacred pine for the faithful, possibly one of the
origins of Christmas presents. Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir
was the source for the legend of the eight reindeer of Santa Claus.
Santa himself was the old Holly King/Odin and Saint Nicholas rolled
into one.
When
Odin was demonised (he can still be seen in his devilish persona as
Black Peter or Black Rupert in St Nicholas Day processions in
Europe) Odin’s huntsmen and women became the ungodly dead, who
unable to gain admission to heaven, were released from hell to hunt
for—what else but souls?
Seeing the demonic Host became in Christian times an omen of death
within the year, an effective way of ensuring good folk were tucked
up in their beds on the old pagan festivals. For the first
appearance of Odin’s hunt was traditionally recorded as occurring on
the Scandinavian pagan festival of Winternights in mid October, a
little earlier than Halloween when the fairies were traditionally
out riding to their winter quarters and would also capture
unsuspecting mortals.
The Hunt myth
continued through Europe as a very useful deterrent by the clergy
into Victorian times to prevent superstitious people frolicking
illicitly after dark on pagan pursuits. The last appearance of the
Wild Hunt each year was documented as coinciding with the major and
most sexually riotous pagan fertility festival Beltane or
Walpurgisnacht on the night of April 30, May Eve. What could be more
off putting to making love in the fields and woods to fertilise
people, cattle and corn than to risk your soul being snatched away
by devilish huntsmen and evil fairies on their last ride before they
were banished by the growing light?
A Saxon version of the
Wild Hunt mythology in England identifies the leader as Herne the
Hunter, a form of the ancient Horned God, especially in the area
around Maidenhead and also Windsor Great Park in Berkshire, UK,
where the Hunt took place in the wild woods rather than in the
skies(2).
The Christianised
twelfth century Anglo Saxon Chronicles (3) describes the black
hunters and hounds, the hunters mounted on black horses and goats,
blowing their horns of doom. Not surprisingly the old antlered gods
became associated with the Devil (see p00). These Christianised
accounts therefore were an awful warning to those who continued with
the old ways.
In
British mythology another pagan survivor cum Hunt leader was Gwyn ap
Nudd, who became by mediaeval times reduced to the status of a fairy
demon figure. He was associated with both Wales and Glastonbury Tor,
with his red eared white hounds, the Caun Annwyn. In Celtic myth
Gwynn was the mighty Lord of the Dead, the guardian of the entrance
to the Celtic Otherworld, who would lead the deceased to the land of
gold apples and ever flowing fountains for healing and rebirth.
Red-eared hell hounds are also found in northern England,
where they were known as Gabriel Hounds. Their appearance was also
considered a portent of doom. Both hounds like others associated
with different wild hunts became known as the hounds of hell owned
by Satan.
The Witch goddesses and the Hunt
The witch goddess
leaders were also strong contenders as hunt leaders and as with the
pagan gods may have been a way of demonising the old religion where
it was still popular among people in spite of Christianisation.
Scandinavia particularly Sweden was not Christianized until the 11
th
century and the old pagan ways were still prevalent because of the
vast and remote nature of the land until well into the twelfth
century.
The
Norse and Anglo Saxon Hulda /Mother Holle was also called Berchta,
goddess of winter and snow. In the myths of Germany and the
Netherlands, as she shakes her bed and the feathers from the
eiderdown, snow falls. The Crone/Winter aspect of the Scandinavian
Mother Goddess Frigg, Frige in Anglo Saxon, Hulda cared for unborn
children and those who died young in her cave and fed them on the
first berries of summer. She was considered a patron of magick gave
flax to mankind and taught them how to hunt and so was generally
revered. However by Christian times she had become leader of her
train of ungodly souls and accused of stealing the children in death
she once cared for.
In pagan Scandinavia
and the Anglo Saxon world too Freya was the fertility and love
goddess who with her Valkyrie maidens, once chose the worthy slain
from the battle field. By the 12th century she was
downgraded into a demonic witch, associated with the Brocken
Mountain, the highest of the Harz range in North Germany; from here
on Walpurgisnacht, April 30, later dedicated to the chaste St
Walpurga herself a Christianised goddess, Freya and her demonic
witch band, now hunted rather than saved souls.
But
the most dramatic female Hunt figure was Diana, former Graeco- Roman
Goddess of the Hunt and the moon who became the ultimate witch
goddess and a consort of the devil (see p00 and p00). Diana was
considered to lead the wild hunt of people who had died before their
time, either in the flower of youth or by violent means. During the
witchcraft persecutions of the 15th -17th
century she was the goddess most of interest to the Inquisitors as
they tortured her apparent band of witch devotees (though it is
doubtful most of the peasant women accused had ever heard of her.
Fighting against evil spirits to save the community, the Benandanti,
the good huntsmen and the benign werewolves
An
ongoing conflict against evil was waged by the Italian shamanic
Benandanti, members of an agrarian fertility cult called the
good walkers,
or good doers, in the Friuli district of
Northern Eastern Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. They claimed
to leave their bodies on the four Ember days, religious days at the
beginning of the four seasons, associated with prayer and fasting
that were originally pagan celebrations of nature. It is told how in
their astral forms they fought sky battles against the Malandanti,
local evil witches, demons, and spirits to ensure the safety of the
harvest and their villages. The best account of their activities
come from the research of the historian Carlo Ginzburg who has
written a book based on the evidence collected during their
trials(4)
They
believed themselves to have been marked from birth to join the ranks
of the Benandanti, by being born with a caul (the amniotic sac)
covering their face, a rare event that in many cultures has
identified the possessors as having magical powers. The caul carried
as talisman identified a potential Benandante to his or her
recruiters who around the age of twenty came to them in spirit
during the night. Every Benandante insisted they travelled out of
their bodies. Unlike the men who travelled to fight in the shape of
mice, cats, rabbits, or butterflies and so undetected, Benandanti
women in contrast claimed to travel to a great feast. Here they
claimed to have danced, ate and drank with spirits, animals and
faeries, and learned who amongst the villagers would die in the next
year. There may have been some goddess worship as one account
described the feast as being presided over by a woman sitting in
splendor on the edge of a well (associated in many traditions with
the granting of fertility by a water goddess).
Ginzburg has identified other similar fertility cults in Italy and
Sicil
y but most intriguingly he described an isolated case in 1692
in Jurgenburg, Livonia, an area near the Baltic Sea when an old man
named Theiss, tried for being a werewolf; claimed his spirit and
that of unnamed others were transformed into werewolves. This was to
prevent demons from stealing grain from the village.
Between 1575 and 1675 the Benandanti were tried as heretics under
the Roman Inquisition, but the inquisitors had huge problems because
the largely illiterate Benandanti insisted they fought evil witches
for the faith of Christ since only they could save their villages.
They were mainly punished by paying penance and temporary banishment
from the town or region. However, the attention the cult received
led to its decline, because some members used their claimed power
over witches to sell cures to villagers for illnesses apparently
caused by witchcraft and in the process denounced local people often
connected with the sick person’s family as being guilty of
witchcraft. This made them unpopular locally and some Benandanti
for the first time under torture not surprisingly confessed to
consorting with Satan and the evil witches.
Hallucinogens or shamanism?
The
Benandanti caused a great deal of confusion since they claimed to
meet only in spirit and apparently many independently described the
same leader in detail and would also name the same bad witches in
villages other than their own. Of course they all were recruited by
another Benandante apparently in spirit, but since they wore their
cauls as talisman the recruitment was probably direct and there
could have been some connections directly at regional markets and
fairs or through family visits. In this way information could easily
have been shared. Indeed, though they were said to be a secret
organization, there was probably a lot more common local and
regional knowledge about Benandanti practices than was ever
admitted. They were considered so important to the communities and
must have shared knowledge with their families. Therefore at least
some of the secret practices may have entered local folk lore so
leading to common descriptions of apparently paranormal events.
But
is out of body, astral travel or remote viewing where the mind can
experience places beyond its eye range possible? Benandanti style
astral travel is often associated with the state of lucid dreaming
where a subject is aware of being asleep. Experiments have been
carried out on out of body or mind travel for many years from the
1940s with and without the use of mind altering drugs; however, none
of the studies have prove conclusive, except spontaneously through
near death experiences. This is when people who have momentarily
died during an operation or accident, have later reported leaving
their bodies during the mini death state and in doing so seeing
items well out of eye range (5).
The
most promising new research on Near Death experiences and so on
possibly verifiable examples of out of body travel was started in
autumn 2008, coordinated by Dr. Sam Parnia of the University of
Southampton, UK. Twenty five UK and US hospitals are participating
in a three year study of 1,500 cardiac arrest survivors to determine
whether people without a heartbeat or brain activity can have
documentable out-of-body experiences. The results could shed light
on the Benandanti claims, who may though they denied it, have taken
mind altering drugs on the particular nights when they were
apparently roaming the skies.
(the old ways af hunting replaced by the new ways more insructions here wildanimalsandhunt.blogspot.gr/)
Samhain, the
ancient Irish festival that became Halloween as we know it, was an
important date in Irish lore.
Photo by: Thinkstock
