Archive for the ‘Historical’ Category

Wassailing – Blessing the Apple Tree

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Wassailing is an ancient tradition of blessing apple trees at Twelfth Night and asking the spirit of the tree for a bountiful harvest of fruit the following autumn. Some wassailers adhere to the Gregorian calendar and mark Twelfth Night on 6th January (although it strictly begins at dusk on the day before), whereas others adhere to the older Julian calendar and leave their wassails until the 17th January.

Wassail is an Anglo-Saxon word and is thought to mean ‘Be In Good Health’. Whilst there is a tradition of wassailing neighbours with songs and good wishes at yuletide (similar to the modern tradition of carolling), apple trees had to wait until Twelfth Night, a time when the world is turned upside down, the Lord of Misrule reigns for a day, and the spirits draw close, including those of trees.

People who cared for an apple tree – and the tradition is still strong in the cider growing areas of England and the marches of Wales – set out with gifts of hot cakes and cider as an offering to the spirit of the tree. Usually, a cider soaked cake was hoisted high and left in the fork of a branch, with more cider splashed on the earth over the roots. Whereas many people think that tree spirits are called Dryads, this word actually only refers to the spirit of oak trees. The spirits of apple trees are called Epimeliads.

In order to drive away any malignant influence, people might shout or bang pan lids together, and some even fire shotguns into the air. Then, all present sing the wassailing song, asking for a good crop of apples the following autumn. If you want to wassail your own apple tree (or, with amendment to the words, any other sort of fruiting tree) here are some traditional words to use.

Old Apple Tree, we wassail thee
And hoping thou wilt bear,
For the Gods do know where we shall be
‘till the apples come for another year.
For to bear well and to bear well
So merry let us be.

Let everyone here take off their hat
And shout to the old Apple Tree:
“Old Apple Tree, we wassail thee
And hoping thou wilt bear,
Hatfuls, capfuls, three bushel bagfuls
And a little heap under the stairs”.

Wassail! Wassail! Wassail!

Following the formal part of the ritual, the ceremony concludes with sharing cider and cakes among all those present. Traditionally, a single bowl of cider was passed around the company so it became a ‘loving cup’ binding all there in fellowship and community.

It is interesting that in Nordic tradition, the Goddess Idun held the apples of immortality that kept the Gods young and the world cared for. To people of the time, including the Anglo-Saxons who probably began the wassailing tradition, apples may have been more than fruit; they also kept the Gods in the heavens and the world on its course. No wonder such an effort was made to respect the spirits of these trees and to ensure a healthy supply of apples. If you wassail your trees this year, maybe you should also dedicate a little of the crop for Idun and her invaluable store.

But however you celebrate, Wassail and be in good health!

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Cabeza de Vaca: From Conquistador to Shaman

Friday, December 16th, 2011

Cabeza de Vaca was a man of his time. Born in Spain around 1490, he sailed to the New World during his teens. It was not long before he joined an expedition from Cuba to Florida to look for unchartered lands and, God willing, a fortune to plunder. It was a typical Conquistador plan that had already seen the fall of the Mexica (Aztecs) and would later see the collapse of the Inca empire. Cabeza de Vaca thought only of fortune; in fact, he was the expedition treasurer.

Within months of landing, and following a pointless trek through the swamplands of Florida, the men were exhausted and starving. Their ship lost, they decided to construct rafts and make a desperate bid for home. It was a fatal mistake; all bar Cabeza de Vaca and three others would either die in the attempt or would perish shortly afterwards.

Cabeza de Vaca was lucky; his raft washed up on Galveston Island, where the local Indians took him in. To his surprise, the Conquistador received compassion from the people he had set out to rob and kill. After regaining his health, Cabeza de Vaca found that previous experience as a Spanish gentleman left him with nothing he could offer the Indians and he found himself falling lower and lower in their esteem before becoming a virtual slave. After several years of hardship, Cabeza de Vaca and his companions broke free and decided to walk through Texas into northern Mexico before following the country south to reach the Spanish towns. It was an audacious plan.

Putting into practice survival techniques learnt from the Indians, Cabeza de Vaca endured by eating anything he could catch – worms and spiders got him through many days. He also developed genuine sympathy for the Indians he met, learning their language and ways. Slowly, the Spanish Conquistador was changing into something more.

Cabeza de Vaca also witnessed healing performed by local shamans, driving out illness through prayer and cleansing the body with plants. Although Cabeza de Vaca never understood why, people took him to be a shaman himself. Perhaps they thought his pale looks were symbolic of the otherworld or perhaps they acknowledged his profound hardship and suffering. For whatever reason, the Indians brought people to Cabeza de Vaca for healing and he obliged them. He and his companions made the sign of the cross over patients and commended them to God. Their ministrations worked and people reported miraculous healing from the hands of the Spaniards. Cabeza de Vaca was given food and other items in exchange and more people arrived to be healed.

On one occasion, Cabeza de Vaca saw that his patient had already died and so he prayed that God would accept the dead man’s soul, breathing over the body several times before making the sign of the cross. The local people probably recognised this as a form of psychopomping and gave Cabeza de Vaca the dead man’s belongings in token of gratitude.

Although Cabeza de Vaca had developed deep sympathy with the Indians and had forged a recognised position in their society, his aim was always to return to his own people and, eventually, he did just that. First reaching Mexico City, he then sailed for Spain, a full ten years after beginning his extraordinary journey.

Cabeza de Vaca did not forget his experiences upon his return and he wrote a book about his journey, still in print today and entitled “The Shipwrecked Men”. Unlike his contemporaries, compassion and respect tempered his attitude towards the Indians. When he became Governor of a region of Argentina, his benevolent attitude towards the native people interfered with the nobles’ desire to enslave them on plantations. Cabeza de Vaca might have been ahead of his time but, with the lack of support from his nobles, his governorship was to be short and he eventually died, ruined and in poverty back in Spain.

The journey Cabeza de Vaca made on foot, although impressive, pales in comparison to the journey he made in his heart. From Conquistador to Shaman, Cabeza de Vaca found his humanity and compassion in the desert. If only there had been more in his mould.

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Oseberg Shamans: Sailing to Eternity

Friday, March 25th, 2011

In 1903, Norwegian archaeologists made a staggering find: an enormous Viking longboat buried at Oseberg, just south of Oslo. Tomb raiders had beaten the archaeologists to the finest treasure but the boat and remaining contents are still spectacular and the reconstructed vessel, with silver-inlayed stern and towering mast, forms the centrepiece of the Norwegian Ship Museum. Buried within the ship were two women. After cursory analysis, excavators initially reinterred them back into the burial mound, but they were recently exhumed and have now revealed more of their secrets.

Both women were elderly for the time at 70 and 50 years old. Bone analysis showed they had a good, meat-based diet and the younger even picked her teeth with a silver tooth-pick. These were clearly women of status. Archaeologists initially thought that they were wives of farm-owning gentry and some the objects in the grave not filched by the tomb raiders would not look out of place on a farm. But other objects, including the boat itself, were surely too valuable for mere farmer’s wives. So just who were these women and how did they earn their status? A small leather purse gives a clue.

Opening the purse, archaeologists found cannabis seeds. When burnt, they induce trance, famously used by the Scythian shamans recorded by Herodotus. Another item also hints at ritual: a rattle. It was discovered fastened to a post fashioned into an animal head and covered with sinuous knotwork. The tapestries accompanying the women may have illustrated the shamanic rituals in which it was used.

In ancient Norse society, shamanism or seiðr was the preserve of women. Practtioners were known as seiðkona or völva and they entered trance through drugs or by chanting. Whilst in trance, they obtained prophetic visions of the future. In the case of the Oseberg women, the cannabis seeds and rattle would have facilitated the journey.

Interestingly, seiðr was always closely associated with women and the female gender. Its practice was considered ergi or unmanly and male practitioners were reviled and sometimes even sentenced to death for their traoubles. Even the God Odin was taunted by Loki over his use of seiðr and, as a result, he has become important to the GLBT community due to his shifting gender roles.

The burial of the Oseberg women in a ship may also relate to trance journeys to the otherworld. Throughout prehistory and even into historic times, ships were seen as vessels to enable shamans to reach the otherworld and the dead to reach the afterlife. People were buried in graves shaped in the keel of a ship, images of ship keels were inscribed beneath burial mounds, and, in the far north, people engraved images of shamans onto rocks, banging their drums and sailing in ships to the otherworld.

The Oseberg ship had been securely tethered to the earth with an enormous boulder and it seems clear that it was not designed to sail anywhere in this world. But maybe its purpose was to take the two women, possibly seiðkona – practitioners of Norse shamanism – on their final journey beyond this world and into another. It was a route they had probably followed many times through their lives except, this time, it was to be their last.

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Death and Rebirth in Byzantine Sicily

Friday, February 25th, 2011

Death and rebirth is a common theme of many religions, often with a God dying and being reborn at certain times of the year. In shamanic communities, death and rebirth also alludes to the shamanic journey and the physical state of the shaman as he or she enters and returns from the otherworld.

Death and rebirth is also central to the Christian faith, with Jesus dying on the cross on Good Friday to be resurrected two days later on Easter Sunday. Within Christianity, such a cycle of death and rebirth seems entirely limited to Jesus, however, with the only hope of rebirth for ordinary mortals being in the afterlife. In fact, having the ability to die and be reborn may even be viewed as heretical and against the natural order determined by God.

It is on this basis that recent discoveries at the Byzantine village of Kaukana, on Sicily, are so interesting. Between AD 580 to cAD 640, a house within Kaukana was built, occupied, and finally abandoned when wind-blown sand engulfed the interior. Within the confines of the house, and probably constructed after the occupants had moved out, is a tomb, built above ground in the style usually reserved for high-status individuals. Inside were a woman and her daughter. Finding such a tomb within a house, at this date, is highly unusual.

Evidence around the tomb – a hearth for cooking and copious food remains – suggests that people were returning to the tomb to feast with the dead spirits that lay within. This was frowned upon by religious authorities, and they would have been horrified to learn that there was also a small hole in the covering of the tomb to allow libations and other choice morsels to be passed to the dead woman inside.

We know that the occupants of the tomb were Christian since there are many symbols with alpha and omega signs; clearly those burying the woman thought that they were important to include. So, the question is: why did people – probably Christian themselves – defy their own tradition and bury a woman in a high-status tomb, in a house (possibly her own), and then continue to visit the site to cook and share food with the deceased? A strange mark on the woman’s cranium might provide the answer.

A small dimple at the back of the skull, as well as signs of water-on-the-brain, suggests meningocele, a condition leading to headaches and frequent fainting fits. It is the fits that are significant. A woman who regularly faints with seizures, only to rise again a few minutes later, may have been thought to be divinely touched, even replicating the death and resurrection of Jesus himself. In Renaissance times, St Catherine was venerated for precisely these qualities.

At Kaukana, was the posthumous treatment of the woman because people revered her power or did they fear her reach, even after death? Or did they think that she might possibly rise once again and kept her tended and fed for this possibility?

The dig, led by Professor Roger Wilson of the University of Columbia, returns to Sicily this year and will attempt to uncover more about this remarkable woman and her powers of resurrection.

More information on the University of British Columbia website.

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