Part 5: Supernatural spectres, Honoring Lugus, Celtic and Iberian traditions of the Wild Hunt
by Sean Jobst
8 March 2022
The Fates have shaped my being a descendant of regions where the Keltoi and Germanen blended. I can recount reminders of this double heritage long before awakening to the truly spiritual path of what it means to be descended from specific tribes tied to specific landscapes. Just one example: While my father was born in Germany (Schwaben), he was also conscious of a Celtic lineage and used to cite it for why he wanted to be cremated. There are innumerable ancestral memories remaining latent within one's Unconscious, withstanding any tests of time and space. Writing this series has been a journey of its own. Like a wandering huntsman, I gather wisdom and experiences walking through the forests of my own monomyth, writing my own story which is also the accumulated memories from generations of ancestors. This current article will focus more on the specifically Celtic and Iberian traditions of the Wild Hunt touched upon in Part 1 which have developed alongside the more well-known Germanic traditions of the Wild Hunt.
At the heart of all indigenous and tribal traditions is Animism, centered as it is to specific landscapes. This was certainly true of native peoples of Europe before we were converted; there are many remnants of this ancient animism despite the turning of centuries. Even the words for "life", "breath" and "soul" reflect this, as in the Latin animus and Irish anam. These convey an airy quality, a sacred mysteriousness that animates all life which has no sharp distinction between spiritual and material. Indeed, the term "nebulous" which describes the esoteric and mysterious, stems from words related to the sky, clouds, fog, and mist. Animism is a worldview of complex interactions between different beings and powers, so its no surprise earth and sky, land and sea, would be linked even through etymology.
Celtic cosmology describes a rich tapestry of realms. The Otherworld contains a celestial, middle, and underworld realm, mirroring the three worlds of shamanic traditions. The middle is similar to the Germanic Mittilgart and Norse Midgard, which is the specific realm of human beings whereas the earth broadly contains other realms and dimensions "beyond" one's senses and perceptions but accessed through natural "openings" (Heide). Such cosmology could be an inspiration for middle earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's works. "In Celtic mythology, 'middle' was a three-dimensional term. It referred not only to the earth that lies between the upper and the lower worlds, but also to the intersection of lines based on the cardinal points" (Robb, 41). Its a symbolic center that cannot be pinned down to a specific place, conveyed in the Gauls' mediolanum, "a term of sacred geography; a holy center....perhaps a central point of reference on the vertical axis of the three worlds - upper, middle and lower" (Delamarre, 221-222).
The underworld is a lower realm, associated with liminal places - where the veil between realms is very thin - such as the seas. Mist itself results from a mixture of the sky with water, so that one perceives the mist as encompassing one's vision upon the earth so that walking towards it would mean to "disappear" into another world, outside one's immediate vision. Such thoughts fueled the imagination of ancient peoples like the Celts, which I felt when meditating at Cabo da Roca, the windiest and one of the darkest places I've ever encountered yet strangely most vibrant with life. This along with Finisterre "end of land" north in Galicia, are the western-most points where the great continental land-mass meets vast expanses of the Atlantic Ocean. No wonder that ancient Iberians and Lusitanians viewed such points as the conduit through which souls entered into the underworld to ultimately be reincarnated back into our middle realm. For the Irish, the otherworld of Tír na nÓg "land of the young" could be arrived at through two ways - one was through water, beneath a lake or the ocean west of Ireland; and the other through an underground passage, such as a sidhe (mound) or cave. These influenced the Celtic-inspired Avalon of the Arthurian legends.
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| Some pictures from my visit to Cabo da Roca, Portugal, 30th June 2017. Meditating upon the sunset, a liminal time at a liminal place. |
The Rise of Supernatural Spectres. Beyond such liminal places as water, mounds and caves were other realms teeming with an "exuberant life and immortality", despite appearing gloomy: "This aspect of a subterranean land presented no difficulty to the Celt, who had many tales of an underworld or under-water region more beautiful and blissful than anything on earth. Such a subterranean world must have been that of the Celtic Dispater, a god of fertility and growth, the roots of things being nourished from his kingdom. From him men had descended, probably a myth of their coming forth from his subterranean kingdom, and to him they returned after death to a blissful life" (MacCulloch, 341). This primal understanding led to the various traditions that describe riders of the Wild Hunt as resembling the various land spirits and beings of folklore, themselves often linked to the dead (Lecouteux, 191-192), such as the sidhe of Ireland or the buena gente "good folk" of Asturias. "The Wild Hunt fell into the vast complex of ancestor worship, the cult of the dead, who are the go-betweens between men and the gods" (ibid., 199). This link is also seen in etymology, sidhe descending from the Proto-Indo-European word *sed "to sit, rest".
As noted by the Scottish Celticist John Arnott MacCulloch (1868-1950), these are the mysterious sidhe or faeries of Gaelic folk-lore, whose various qualities often blur distinctions between deities, human beings, and elemental spirits. He theorized that the sidhe arose out of the Tuatha Dé Danaan ("People of Danu"), one of whose members An Dagda became "king of the sidhe" (MacCulloch, 65). Danu could be connected to the mysterious "Diana" whom Martin of Braga cited as riding at the head of the Wild Hunt in northwest Iberian traditions, with medieval missionaries conflating all with their own Roman bias. "Commingled here are Diana of antiquity and Di Ana, a Celtic goddess who is also called Anu. The existence of a god Dianum speaks to this hypothesis. This deity, who was perhaps the Asturian Dianu, no doubt came from Di Anu, who was taken to be a masculine figure" (Lecouteux, 11). Anu or Danu is mother goddess of Celtic peoples (Sjoestedt, 24-25), lending her name to the Danube and other rivers along which some of the earliest Celtic cultures thrived.
The Tuatha defeated the Fomorians at the Second Battle of Maige Tuired ("plain of the standing stones"), whose allegories of internal conflict transposed upon a battlefield parallel Krishna's dialogue with Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita. Their order contrasts to the Fomorians as "powers of nature in its hostile aspect" (MacCulloch, 60), like the jötnar and winter spirits left behind with the new year. Chaos is necessary for balance - it only needs to be checked, so the Fomorians were driven into the sea and not eradicated. The goddess Badb (whose name means "crow") appeared in the battle as a crow and made an astounding prophecy. Corvids carry symbolism of transformation and immortality, such that the hallucinogenic drink she gives to Cú Chulainn inspires him to engage in heroic deeds to "live" beyond the confines of his mortal existence (Sheridan, 147-149). He overcomes his past to be initiated to his hero's journey. Badb, who personifies sovereignty and life, makes up the triad Morrígna along with Macha and Morrighan. This is the Maiden-Mother-Crone motif, seen also in the continental Matronae. The Morrighan corresponds to the valkyries, not bringers of death but only appearing to the war fallen. Badb lends her name to "supernatural beings who haunt the battlefield (Badba)" (Sjoestedt, 32), as souls and trauma linger over the landscape.
In the Irish mythological cycle, the Tuatha were followed by the Milesians, ancestors of the modern Irish. The Milesians allowed the Tuatha to recede back into the earth, residing in the hills, mounds, and other liminal places (MacCulloch, 63). "The concept of the Sidhe being still present within the Irish landscape - albeit, within a different reality - ties in well with the legend of the Tuatha De Danaan being banished into the otherworld following their defeat at the hands of the Milesian Gaels" (Sheridan, 168). Their agreement to divide Ireland between the world above and below, could refer to the division between consciousness and the subconscious (ibid., 110-111). The link to the sidhe persisted long after Christianization, such that even many saints and bishops became known as fir side "men of the sidhe" after their deaths (MacCulloch, 64). "Other mounds or hills had also a sacred character. Hence gods worshipped at mounds, dwelling or revealing themselves there, still lingered in the haunted spots; they became fairies, or were associated with the dead buried in the mounds, as fairies also have been, or were themselves thought to have died and been buried there" (ibid., 66).
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| "Riders of the Sidhe" (1911), by the Scottish Symbolist painter John Duncan, who was inspired by Celtic folklore and the Arthurian Mythos |
The Sidhe, Elves, and Trolls. The sidhe inhabited different liminal places as mounds, thus their other title Aos Sí "people of the mounds". The mound's chambers were important, channeling the sunlight on solstices and equinoxes, to which they were often aligned. They channeled the wind, being a passage between this "breath" of life and the Underworld of deceased souls, part of an eternal cycle where life and death operate on the same continuum. As elemental spirits, the sidhe were thought to move through the Air, with such natural phenomena as leaves carried up in spiral wind patterns seen as among their signs. One of the ground-breaking studies of sidhe folklore was The Secret Commonwealth (1691), by the Scottish minister and Gaelic scholar Robert Kirk (1644-1692), who collected Highlands folklore and personal experiences about fairies (how the sidhe were known across the Irish Sea), witchcraft, and other paranormal phenomena. Kirk described fairies as astral-body beings similar to congealed air, paralleling beings in other cultures. Despite his Christianity, he was not dismissive of this folklore, but promoted it as proof of the supernatural against the rigid, reductionist scientism increasingly in vogue.
One of these parallels are the elves of Germanic and Norse folklore. Like the sidhe, these complex beings were associated with the Otherworld, inhabited liminal places, and were turned into grotesque creatures after Christianization. The two sometimes overlapped, such as in the Scottish Lowlands where "witchcraft" trials of the 1570s and 1580s often described journeys to Elfame, realm of the elves. Old English medical texts ascribe various ailments to elves, to be cured through incantations. The legendary elf Alberich was identified with various magical exploits in the Continental poems Nibelungenlied and Ortnit. One incantation identified them with deception: "die elben trieget mich" (the elves are deceiving me), but like the sidhe they weren't necessarily "evil" and all beings existed for balance. The separation between "light" and "dark" elves was Snorri transposing his own Christianity upon Norse lore (Edwards). Some traditions identify the elves with ancestors, although Old High German and Old Saxon compared elves to land wights, having separate words for ancestors (Sass).
Given their own link to burial mounds and the Underworld, they came to be identified with ancestors similar to how the sidhe lore evolved. In Welsh folklore, Gwyn ap Nudd, the underworld god who became "king of the fairies", rides alongside his hounds and the night crone Matilda, chasing lost souls into the underworld (Annwn) in his Wild Hunt (Trevelyan, 49). Folk traditions speak of the elves leaving the mounds to interact through nature, perhaps to remain in the memory of the living, and a reminder that elementals persist through the Earth's energetic fields. These "memories" persist in Yule traditions where elves are evoked to "banish" the trolls, or the winter "spirits" of the old year. The Scottish New Year's Hogmanay, which was originally tied to the Winter Solstice and not the current New Year's, as reflected in its possible roots from the Norman French hoguinane "last day of the year". Yet there is a play-on words here, reflected in the Old English hoghmen and Icelandic haugmenn "hill-men", referring to the supernatural beings personifying the spirits of winter.
A rhyme spoken on that day states: "Hogmanay, Trollolay, give us of your white bread and none of your gray." This is an incantation asking the elves to drive the trolls into the sea, olay "to the sea" and "away" (Repp). Could this relate to Gaelic lore of "away with the fairies" and the Fomorians being driven into the sea? Beowulf portrays trolls as residing under the water, paralleling the Fomorians and thus the sidhe. A similar English invocation goes: "Trolle on away, trolle on awaye, Synge heave and howe rombelowe trolle on away" (Percy). These can be allegories for coming prosperity, free from trolls who personify forces of blemish and must be balanced. The Gaelic storm goddess Cailleach or Beira determines winter's harshness and length similar to Frau Holle or Perchta in Germany. Cailleach "captured" Brigid, making her clean a fleece all winter long until she is "saved" by Father Winter, who represented positive forces of Winter. She could be the Gaelic Earth Mother Degom, making her consort An Dagda, a sky father who became chthonic when "deposed" from his sovereign position. He was later personified as a "Father Winter" archetype.
Honoring Lugus. The most widely revered Celtic deity was Lugus, known as Lugh in the Gaelic lands. His name means "lightning flash", "bright", and "shining one" (Green, 135), symbolized by his spear. As a deity of oaths and contracts, he ensures order through the sworn word (Olmstead, 110, 117). His mythic "killing" of some even while forgiving them is an allegory for our being subject to the natural order no matter how much we try to escape our fate. Yet its not static, as Lugh inspires Cú Chulainn to connect with his subconscious intention in engaging with the outer world (Sheridan, 208). Lugus is a "mysterious figure linked with fertility, seasonal change, and the underworld." After the Roman conquest, his shared traits with Mercury included "one-eyedness, raven as cult animal, spear-bearing prophet stabbed by a spear, sacrifice by hanging and stabbing, disguised appearance, dedication of a hostile force by spear-throw, leadership of a band of warriors sworn to die for him, association with a prophetess with ties to a cult of the dead" (Enright), all close associations with Wodan.
He led "riders of the sidhe" in the Wild Hunt in a common link to initiatory warrior brotherhoods. One of his Gaelic epithets was "raging fury", as his shamanic dance inflamed the fire of battle and inspired the same type of war frenzy as Wodan. Other shared qualities include an ordeal involving the World Tree and symbolic loss of an eye. In Welsh sources, Lugh was killed with a special spear, returned to the World Tree in the form of an eagle, and Gwydion (another manifestation of him) resurrected him to be king. In Gaul and Celtiberia, Lugus was called Solutamaros "the great seer", portrayed with wide eyes to symbolize the extent of his perception. Celtiberian inscriptions show his eyes turned towards his enemies, perhaps an example of sympathetic magic or averting back the evil eye. Similar Gaelic myths describe Lugh closing one eye to do battlefield magic, perhaps to change his perspective of the battle. Conversely, Lugh killed the one-eyed Balor at Maige Tuired - a possible allegory for overcoming one's own limited perception. Some identify Lugus with the Wind Wolf, a Proto-Indo-European archetype associated with wind, storms, the harvest, wolves (whose howling simulated the wind), and leadership of the war band.
Animism ties in through Irish and Welsh myths of Lugh "animating" trees to "fight" alongside him; the wind also being symbolic of the divine "breath" or consciousness that resides within all Nature. Lugh was "born" beyond the sea and adopted by the "three mothers" of Earth, relating him to the same motif as the Matronae. The sea could be an allegory for the subconscious, while being born of the earth subjects him to the same natural cycles as all other living beings. He was fostered by an Irish queen and goddess named Tailtiu; a Celtiberian euphemism for the Underworld was Taltiu. He began Lughnasadh "assembly of Lugh" by remembering Tailtiu, who died from exhaustion after clearing the lands for sowing. This is a mid-August harvest festival, marking an auspicious lunisolar mid-point between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. Although Gaelic, there are attestations to Lughnasadh throughout the Celtic world. A Celtiberian inscription from Peñalba de Villastar thanks Lugus for fruits harvested at a festival held in the month of Equos, which according to the Gaullish Coligny Calendar extended from mid-July to mid-August. The term nasadh or eenach relates to two of Lugus' Celtiberian epithets, Unaeco and Cossus Beneaco.
Lugus was a triune god whose three Gaullish forms were Esus, Toutatis and Taranis, each undergoing a specific death ordeal. Such aspects could have been moulded into the Proto-Germanic *Wodanaz via the lands where Celts and Germanic tribes interacted (Rübekeil), with Wodan undergoing his own symbolic death that is also an initiation. Lugh alluded to an esoteric "death" when he said in the Conn Cetchathach: "Some have said that I died, but here I am - I am not dead." The Celts subdivided a deity most often in three forms, while retaining the deity's name. It could be an allegory for the different parts of the psyche that together shape the personality. The sacred triune, such as Lugus' frequent symbolism of three faces transposed upon one head, was used by Christian missionaries to explain their trinity, but is an esoteric theme deeply embedded within native European cultures. Other shared traits of Lugus and Wodan included being psychopomps, wandering across multiple worlds, and shamanic, magical abilities. One historian theorized that the legendary Merlin was based on a historical priest of either Lugh or Wodan in the Scottish Lowlands (Tolstoy).
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| Lugus image discovered at Reims, France |
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| "Morrigan Ravens" tapestry by the Welsh artist Jen Delyth |
The raven is a shared symbol of their shamanic and divinatory abilities. "In his Gaulish form, Lugos sent ravens to guide his people to found the city of Lugdunensis (Lyon)" (Paxson, 11). In the medieval Irish Lebor Laignech, the mysterious figure Fitheach "raven" encountered by Laegaire Mac Crimtham during his visit to the sidhe realm, seems to be Lugh: Appearing in "the mist of morning", wearing a mantle of five holds, and carrying two "barbed darts" much like Lugh's five-pronged spear. Lugh is the "master of death" whose "eyes" are the raven, much like Wodan's two ravens personify "memory" and "thought". Lugdunum came from the Gaullish Lugdunons "fortified hill of Lugus", containing a sacred "hill of the crows" that was a place of battling warrior initiates and observing omens. His reverence included processions to a mountaintop (Meid, 11-12) and festivals have been found there corresponding to Lughnasadh (MacNeill). Extensive inscriptions to Lugus have been found throughout the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region (Koch, 2-3), and the Iberian Peninsula. Aside from Lyon, his name survives in such far-flung toponyms as Lugo (Galicia), Lugones (Asturias), Luton (England), and Lucerne (Switzerland).
Lugus is "master of all the arts", associated with skill and mastery in multiple disciplines (Monaghan, 296-297). These are magical symbolisms: manifesting will and imagination to create something in the physical world. One of Lugh's epithets is samildánach ("skilled in all arts"), whose functions were listed by the Cath Maige Tuired: "bricklayer, blacksmith, champion, harpist, warrior, poet, historian, sorcerer, doctor, cupbearer, bracerer." The Romans compared Lugus to Mercury, whom they called "inventor of the arts"; inscriptions of both were often interchangeable in Gaul and Celtiberia. One of his local forms was the smith god Gobniu or Gobbanus, who shaped fire and other elements into physical form. Gaullic coins from the 3rd century name Lugus as Sutur Augustus "Divine Shoemaker", and inscriptions in France and Spain associate him with the guilds of shoemakers. Shoes are a metaphor for crossing the boundaries between different worlds (such as with Hermes); and their creative process was elaborate, binding multiple elements together. Some theories suggest that leprechauns - often represented as shoemakers - derive from the same etymology as Lugh (Hemmi); Christianized perceptions of various beings were very different from how they were viewed in Pagan times. Under the Welsh name Lleu, he was described in the Welsh Triads as one of the "three golden shoemakers of Britain".
As Lugh Lámfada ("Lugh of the long arm"), he represents sovereignty and priestly kingship, as seen in his many functions and leading the sidhe in the Wild Hunt. In Roman Gaul, Lugus was portrayed with the consort Rosmerta ("great provider"), a fertility goddess who bore the ritual drink conferring such kingship. This is the same esoteric symbol as the mead through which Odin uncovered the Runes; the magical drink he shared with Saga (Odin's feminine counterpart in the poem) in Grímnismál; or the elixir of immortality in different mythologies. As an "immortal" youth, the Tuatha Lugh defeated his Fomorian grandfather, the monstrous Balor, whose venomous eye represents primal energies that must be checked and averted lest they overtake the balance; he is the generative force with Nature which has gotten out of control. Lugh personifies this duality as a Tuatha descended from the Fomorians. Within Irish folklore thunderstorms were seen as a "battle" between these two opposing forces. These are all interpretations and as with all the other myths, it would be as much a mistake to see them as only allegories of Nature as to read them literally. There are multiple layers of meaning, both esoteric and exoteric.
His spear is another symbol of his sovereignty as well as celestial meanings. Irish mythology names the Spear of Lugh as one of the four magical treasures brought by the Tuatha to Ireland, the others being the Stone of Fál, Núada's Stone of Light, and Cauldron of An Dagda. The spear may have inspired the legend of the Celtiberian war chief Olyndicus receiving a silver lance sent to him from the sky, as recounted by the Roman poet Florus. An ancestral memory of this past could have inspired medieval legends of El Cid's two magical swords, Tizona and Colada. His spear may also represent the lightning bolt, with the Gaullic thunder god Taranis likely one of Lugus' forms. These are the storms of Autumn, ending the heat of Summer in time for the harvest represented by Lughnasadh. His killing of Balor could be an allegory of "winning" the harvest from control of chaotic nature spirits. Although the Celts personified the Sun itself as feminine, its brightness and heat was controlled by a masculine force such as Lugh/Lugus. One of his names in Roman Gaul was Apollo Belenos, with belenos meaning "the bright, brilliant". Balor describes Lugh as looking down from behind his "cloak" of the sky, the clouds. Lugh also means "small, diminishing" in Gaelic, symbolic of solar decline in Autumn.
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| Triskele stone from ancient Coeliobriga, modern Castromao in Galicia |
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| Celtiberian alphabet |
Iberian Traditions. One of my bloodlines is Spanish, through my paternal bisabuela who was descended from a family that settled in Ellwangen sometime in the 1800s and blended with my Swabian line from nearby Baldern (Bopfingen). From the fragments of family lore I was told by both my oma and father, tracing the Germanized surname of that line (Vaas) back to its original Spanish (Vázquez), and the mantilla in one of my oldest family pictures (my great-great-great grandmother of whom I know very little), I've traced this bloodline to northwest Spain, either Castilla y León or Galicia - the surname is of Galician origin, which further explains why I feel a Celtic blood connection as much as Germanic. It was in that region where the Suebi founded a kingdom, so as with Swabia the history of the Suebi is intertwined with the Celts. My trip to Stuttgart and Madrid in 2016 was the main catalyst that started my spiritual journey, as I put the Abrahamic religions behind me and realized we had our own rich, indigenous tradition and spiritual worldview tied to our landscape. Since then reconstructing Celtiberian Paganism has been an interest of mine alongside continental Germanic Heathenry - and the way both survive within folklore even to this day.
The Wild Hunt is known by various names in Spanish regions: Galician Estantiga or Hoste Antiga ("the old army"), Hostia, Santa Compaña ("holy troop"); Asturian Güestia ("host"); Leónese Hueste de Ánimas ("troop of ghosts"); Castilian Estantigua ("apparition"); and the Hueste de Guerra ("war company") or Cortejo de Gente de Muerte ("deadly retinue") of Extremadura (Risco, 389-395). Some of these words derive from Latin hostis antiquus but the imagery and traditions are indigenous to exactly these regions that retain the strongest Celtic roots. Other folkloric names in Northwest Iberia include the Rolda, As da nuite ("the night ones"), Pantalla, Avisóns, and Pantaruxada. All of these terms express the thin boundaries between the worlds of the dead and living. The beings associated with these traditions closely parallel the Irish banshee and Breton ankou (Paredes). Such parallels led Ramón Otero Pedrayo (1888-1976) and other Galician thinkers to link Galicia with the Atlantic Celtic cultures more than the Mediterranean. This is backed by the castro culture, local folklore, etymology, and origin myths of the Irish.
Our knowledge of pre-Christian Iberian traditions have expanded since then and should most include awareness of the pre-Roman. The Church expanded through the earlier Roman institutions that conquered and occupied the Peninsula. Contrary to the centralist narrative, it was a gradual process especially in the Northwest regions where move survived longer due to remnants of the Celts and Suebi. Throughout the 6th century, the bishop and missionary Martin of Braga lamented the Pagan traditions stubbornly surviving in the countryside. One Catholic source admits that in the 580s, the "Pauci" - as the Christian faithful were called - were exceeded by the "idolatriae sacrilegium" that spread throughout the Peninsula (McKenna, 112). In 681, Church canons recommended death sentences for recalcitrant peasants. "By then, most of the Peninsula had long reverted to Paganism" (MacMullen, 68). I contend that the Islamic Moorish invasion, the Church and central authorities exploiting the natural yearning for liberation (Reconquista) from a foreign occupation for their own power, and the social and economic infiltration by Jewish Conversos, together solidified Abrahamism within the Peninsula and further eroded Iberian Pagan traditions that nevertheless survived as fragments in rural folklore that could only outwardly present a Christian veneer.
La Reconquista and the following centuries forged a common Spanish identity that nevertheless preserved unique regional distinctions. Great works of art, literature, and other aspects of higher culture were produced, despite what advocates of the hispanophobic Black Legend, apologists for the Moorish occupation, or false claims about the effects of the 1492 expulsions may assert. A consistent theme in many of these works is the ghostly processions of the Wild Hunt. Celtic Samhain traditions survived in the Leónese Hueste de Animas, described in the Auto de los Esposorios de Moysen, written in Salamanca around 1570. This güeste was also expressed by Francisco López de Úbeda (1560-1606) in La Pícara Justina (1605). One expression of the genius of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was his portrayal of real life and use of common speech instead of the "vain and empty" chivalric romances (Close, 39), including the reality of folklore. Don Quixote and Sancho mistook the twelve men they saw accompanying a coffin on the night road from Baeza to Segovia, as ghosts; their large candles for the axes of Grim Reapers. In his novel El Buscón (1626), Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645) personifies Estantigua as an apparition who dresses in mourning and hides his face with a cape. This same figure is the feminine La Estadea in Zamora region. The Cortejo of Extremadura are two ghostly horsemen who cause panic at the liminal time of dawn.
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| "No saben el camino" (1813-1814), Francisco Goya |
Camino, Compaña, and Purgatory. The mists of this magical landscape meeting the vast expanses of the Atlantic led to its name Costa da Morte "Coast of Death", where finisterre is only the end of one landscape and beginning of an imaginal world. Its inclusion in the Camino pilgrimage harkens back to Celtic processions of the dead who traveled to the symbolic edge of the world, as was the tradition in both Galicia and Brittany. The pilgrimage routes are symbolic of following the stars back into the cosmos: "Santiago is associated with the Milky Way as the road of the dead" (Lecouteux, 138). Similar processions whose stations align with the Great Bear constellation exist in the Languedoc and northern Catalonia, historical regions of the Cathars. Like the Irish morrigan and Germanic valkyries, the Celtiberians believed in excarnation - souls of slain warriors would be carried up to the skies by vultures rather than ravens, while all others were cremated (Freeman, 74). Could the Camino be re-enacting this soul journey through its cosmic symbolism?
Finisterre follows the mysterious place where the Sun set, possibly related to the Dawn Goddess whose Iberian form is Ataecina. Compostela could originate from a word-play between campus stellae "field of stars" and a burial place, compositum. This city and other stations of the Camino contained pre-Christian sites like the Crouga, stone mounds and cairns containing the bones of excarnated warriors and other elevated ancestors. There were ancient processions to these stone structures, and these places were associated with supernatural beings called the Fes, night spirits similar to the sidhe. These are likely a holdover from the earlier Megalithic past, where beings such as the mouras encantadas of Portugal are associated with stone circles. Churches were built upon earlier sites, because the Church knew the power of their sacred energy. The veneration of Santiago reveals more roots within the local landscape than a religion originated from the Middle East and based in Rome.
The Camino is the setting of one of the earliest works of nocturnal horror, Julián de Medrano's Silva Curiosa (1583). Medrano refers to desierto, a barren world devoid of the Christian god's "divine presence", where prevailed instead beings of the animistic, Pagan past - whose existence wasn't denied but simply recast as "demonic": "Even the relics of Saint James, which were supposed to mark the end-goal of the pilgrimage, the place where the spiritual quest of the protagonists would be satisfied, are revealed as a carcass devoid of miracles; nothing but an empty crypt, another curious epitaph. Julio continues his journey beyond the sacred tomb (now just a ruin of antiquity) to the very end of the ancient world, the Northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula known as Finis Terrae (today Finisterre, Galicia) where an undead witch, who sustains herself on the blood of innocent children, lays dormant deep inside the bowels of the Earth. Unlike the relics of Saint James, which are no longer significant (they have no miracles left in them), the undead witch reveals herself as a real presence in the world, capable of inflicting suffering and pain, and even causing the death of unsuspecting travelers" (Castillo and Egginton, 122).
Anthropologist Carmelo Lisón Tolosana (1929-2020) traced the Compaña to the Church's introduction of Purgatory in the 13th century, because it embraced the notion that most souls remain in a liminal realm between Heaven and Hell for an indeterminate period of time. This realm is closer to our own, allowing those souls to interact with the living - fitting ancient traditions about the Otherworld and that the souls of people who met traumatic deaths (battlefield and suicides) would linger on earth, suspended between worlds (Pérez Cuervo). This is a remnant of animism, the complex tapestry of souls and beings interacting through all levels of Nature, expressed in two traditions: The estantigua, estadea and güestia where ghostly riders hunt souls as prey to be snatched into the Otherworld; and the Compaña where grieving spirits wander for living souls to assist. The latter rode in search of a dying person's spirit to merge it into the community of the parish dead (Pérez de Castro). Not only is dying just another cycle of life, but this theme of the parish dead is part of the natural inclination towards venerating the tribe's ancestors; regional expressions of a "folk Catholicism" at odds with the official Church which ultimately incorporated it through Purgatory.
Generally, the Compaña is any mass and procession in honor of the deceased, whose souls are in Purgatory but nevertheless able to attend those gatherings - perhaps an homage to ancient views about astral traveling where the soul and body are in two different places. Its traditions were described by the Galician folklorist Xesús Rodríguez López (1859-1917): "The company is the gathering of souls in Purgatory for a specific purpose. At twelve o'clock at night the deceased get up, go out in procession through the main door, a living person goes ahead with the cross and the cauldron of holy water, and cannot, under any pretext, turn his head. Each deceased carries a light that cannot be seen, but the smell of burning wax is clearly perceived. The procession can not be seen either, but the air that its passage produces is perceived. The unfortunate director can only dispense with such a gloomy task by finding another person and giving him the cross and the cauldron, before he makes a circle on the ground, thus leaving him free to direct the company" (Rodríguez López, 224).
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| Santa Compaña graffiti in Pontevedra, Galicia. Photo not taken by me. Despite the Christian cross, the Compaña is a remnant of the Iberian Wild Hunt. |
Timing and Boundaries. These processions of souls appear variously in October, from December to March, or on certain days such as Saturday between midnight and 1am (Lecouteux, 144). These are liminal times where boundaries between worlds are thinnest, such as Bealtaine (around May 1st) and Samhain (early November). Certain people are more sensitive to these experiences, those already having the second sight or those who were accidentally rubbed with consecrated oil for anointing the sick instead of holy water during their baptism (Lisón Tolosana). Others lacking psychic abilities will see it when the procession comes to take them to the Otherworld, revealing its secret on their deathbeds (Pérez Cuervo), a liminal time whose effects are similar to that between wakefulness and sleep (hypnagogia) when more lucid and shamanic experiences are recorded. Many can detect the scent of wax through the breeze, feel a shiver or shudder as the Compaña passes, or otherwise detect the light of their candles through certain images, a possible recognition of certain primal symbols that were the original form of human communication before elaborate speech developed.
Midnight often starts these processions, that "twilight" time when one is less affected by the Earth's magnetic field, thus making one more open to deeper perceptions beyond the brain's typical cognition. Stepping outside normal consciousness is expressed in traditions that the living leader cursed to walk with these night processions has no conscious memory of it during the day. The procession warns the living: "Andad de día, que la noche es mía" ("Walk in the daytime, for the night is mine") (Llano Roza de Ampudia), similar to the German Wild Hunt whose leader warns people to stay in the middle of the road: "Mitte den Weg!" (Pérez Cuervo). This is a recognition of the liminal importance of crossroads, and stressing how both worlds are supposed to be separate by Nature. The legend of the Misa de las Ánimas ("mass of the souls") underscores how one should not speak with or interact with these spectres, lest they never return to the living world (Pérez Cuervo). There is a trickster element, as the Compaña entices the living with food or drink; one should reject it or only pretend to accept (Vaqueiro).
Curses, Protection, and Other Magical Elements. Called Bearer of the Cross, the living leader can only be released from the procession by passing it on to another living soul on its route (Lecouteux, 144-145). Unless he does so, his health will rapidly deteriorate and only upon his death can the curse be passed on. Nor should the living person turn around to face the dead souls, similar to Orpheus losing the living Eurydice forever when he glanced back at the last crucial moment. The living soul loses their own mortality staring death in the face. The ghostly procession offers anyone it encounters a candle; accepting means one's flesh will decay and be turned into a skeleton, forever condemned to follow them (Pérez Cuervo). Children were advised to carry some breadcrumbs in their pockets to offer them to these spirits, with bread being symbolic of life in Celtic tradition (ibid.). Bread being "a sacred life-sustaining staple" through which "the gods and spirits passed their blessings" when it was consecrated on certain days and occasions (Storl, 274), a tradition surviving in the Catholic Eucharist. The allegory here is that by offering something back to the animistic cycle, one can ensure that such spirits will remain in their balance.
The Compaña is active at unprotected crossroads, "traditionally regarded as thresholds where the Otherworld encounters the physical world just as the roads meet" (Pérez Cuervo). For that purpose, many cruceiros - stone or wooden cross signs - were constructed throughout the countryside. Folklore holds that one can escape the procession by stepping onto the base of a cruceiro. This tradition of wayside shrines is common throughout rural Europe, a mainstay of folk Catholicism present in many of my family pictures. These were constructed on the groves and sanctuaries (nemetons) of our Pagan ancestors, fulfilling something in our Unconscious that instinctively knew the sacredness of such sites. Another protective measure from the Compaña is drawing a circle or sigil like a cross, and then step into it until it passes. In the Asturian Güestia, "the spirits walk three times around the house of the doomed, who will become ill and die shortly afterwards" (ibid.). Protective circles and walking around three times are common magical rituals throughout many cultures, innate to the natural cycle. One can ward off the procession with hand gestures like the horns or "fig" sign, two gestures now viewed as vulgar but traditionally protective signs to ward off bad luck and the evil eye.
Initiation and Society of the Bone. As I expressed in a writing last year, initiation is an innate bond within all cultures that has been lost in many of our modern societies to much detriment. The Compaña and other Wild Hunt traditions served such an initiatory ritual between life and death: "The living and the dead help each other in the transit to the great beyond: the living pray for the dead to find their way, the dead come back to guide the dying. The underlying concept is clear: the journey to the Otherworld is not easy, and we must be prepared for it" (Pérez Cuervo). Dismissal of the paranormal and folk traditions as "superstitious" are mere symptoms of our "modern" world being disenchanted; its myths such as "progress" and happiness through consumerism furtively filling the void of deeper initiation rites. Yet true Myths are profound truths expressed in words beyond the senses. Its seen in the traditional Galician saying: "Eu non creo nas meigas, pero habelas, hainas" - "I don't believe in witches but they do surely exist" (ibid.).
Having crossed the threshold of death, the riders possess secrets that cannot be revealed to the living, except those few more sensitive to other worlds or who undergo shamanic journeys. The word "shamanic" is used here as a process, knowing the specific word is Siberian whereas they are known under various cultural names. All cultures worldwide had such a shamanic tradition - including European cultures. The shamanic journey is not a pleasant experience of "love and light" but one grounded in traumas, descending to the lowest depths of one's own psyche and soul, and confronting and integrating one's Shadow to obtain the deepest spiritual truth. Its to cut through the lies and bullshit not only of society, but the personas adopted to deceive oneself. Unable to explain their experiences that modern society dismisses as "insanity", in alter centuries many people with such experiences coalesced in initiatory groups. One such group is the Galician Società do Oso (Society of the Bone), masked members whose processions acted out their astral travels during which their souls left their physical bodies:
"This gathering of souls into a group, often the dead of a parish, ancestors, and relatives, transformed into a secret society made up of living individuals, a society whose functions appear to be similar to that of any other pious fraternity or brotherhood....All the members of this society possess the ability to foresee the death of individuals and announce them with certainty. This death premonition seems to be the privilege of those who are members of the Società do Oso" (Risco, 423-425).
The members' divinatory premonitions could be the living transmission of Galician Druids whose practices would have been similar to what has been recorded of Druids in other regions. This meditation of living individuals upon death is also a reminder of their own mortality, and a recognition that death itself can be transitory in the cycles of life. Going to the precipice of death, if even only mentally, can be a profound rite of spiritual transformation. People as varied as the Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome advised Momento Mori - reflection upon death - to better appreciate life and not take our every moment for granted. Modern society's refusal to confront and integrate their Shadow on both the individual and collective levels, has resulted in many inversions. The unhealthy attitude towards death, to be shut away as a taboo and not seen properly within the holistic cycle of life, has only projected itself into death cults - various "doomsday" fears and hysterias manipulated by the same elites who have a sick desire to "transcend" the humanity (and their own human-ness) they so despise. That will be a theme in some upcoming articles as I take a break from the final conclusion of this Wild Hunt series.
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| "Time and the Old Women" (1810), by Francisco Goya. He was conveying the importance of not taking life for granted or getting caught up in vanity, but to have gratitude and appreciation for life. |
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