by Sean Jobst
4 May 2022
We are now at one of the liminal times of the year, when the flow of energies is greater and barrier between different dimensions or realities are at their thinnest. Walpurgisnacht is on the night of April 30th, followed by the season known as Bealtaine in Gaelic lands. I wrote an article back in April 2020: "Walpurgisnacht - A Journey Across Time, Space, and Darkness" - about the folklore, meanings, and symbolisms of this day.
Seasonal because holidays in Celtic and Germanic lands being tied to lunisolar dates meant they weren't reduced to just one day. Despite the later creations of modern-day neo-"Paganisms" who embrace an ahistorical "Wheel of the Year" that cobbled together both cultures without regard to the authenticity of either, nor is Walpurgisnacht a "Witches' Sabbat" - the Hebrew notion of a "day of rest" (sabbath) was foreign to native European celebrations of life, fertility, and the cycles of Nature. The basis of our ancestral calendars were lunisolar, not fixed solar dates, although there was a reckoning of lunar cycles around solar events:
"If we browse the internet for holidays of the Germanic people, we mainly find pages presenting an octopartite year cycle, the so-called 'eight-spoked wheel of the year' based on the solstices, the equinoxes, and four moon feasts in between. This year cycle has absolutely no historical basis. Although it is very popular in neopagan circles, especially within Wicca and eclectic Asatru, there is no verified evidence for such a year circle as basis for the seasonal festivities. The same is true for the Celtic feasts within the year circle, because the Gauls too, used a lunisolar calendar as we know from the examples of Coligny and Villards d'Heria. If one has internalized such ideas, one should get rid of them immediately!"(1)
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| Painting by Der Meister von Meßkirch, 1535-1540 |
Christian or Heathen?
Walpurgisnacht is an ostensibly Christian feast day, established by Anno II, Archbishop of Köln, in the 11th century. It was to honor Saint Walpurga, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon missionary to Franconia canonized by Pope Adrian on 1st May 870 after her relics were moved from Heidenheim to a new abbey constructed in her honor elsewhere in Bavaria. "Her bones were 'translated' (that is, moved) on May 1 - which became her feast day - sometime during the 870s to Eichstätt, where he brother Willibald had been bishop. Ever since then an oily liquid has oozed out of the rock on which her tomb rests, and has been renowned among pilgrims for its great healing power."(2)
Her life-time miracles were only attributed to her later, in works from 895 and the late 10th century, by which time the Church had a vested financial interest in promoting pilgrimage to her site as well as demonstrating the power of its own "acceptable" magic over that of the Heathens, symbolized by her relics being moved from Heidenheim "Heathen home"(3). The translation of earlier works on natural philosophy meant a greater acceptance of magic so long as it was "natural", harnessing the power of natural properties, and not the "demonic" variety of powers and entities outside the Church.(4) Examples of the Church's magical traditions include the traditional Latin Mass, basically an appropriation of previous Roman rituals; doctrine of the Transubstantiation; consecrated altars; blessed candles and oils; and specified incantations used for exorcisms and other occasions.
Thus were many hagiographies (biographies of saints) written after the mortal lives of their subjects. Her story seems apocryphal, carrying more symbolic than literal meaning. First, her alleged pedigree into an aristocratic family of English missionaries who persecuted Heathens in Southern and Central Germany. The Church tended to send foreign missionaries to convert local tribes and bend them to the dual political power of the Merovingians and Carolingians and religious power of Rome. Walpurga's maternal uncle was Boniface, who chopped down Donar's Oak of the Hessi tribe (known to the Romans as the Chatti) from whom Hesse was named. It was Boniface who sent for Walpurga and her two brothers, Winibald and Willibald, to join in the family endeavor of converting Heathens and building churches over previous sacred sites. She actively participated in the destruction of sacred groves and preached that of the Saxons' Irminsul (later carried out by Charlemagne's Christian jihadi armies in 782).
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| Walpurga in the Hitda Codex |
Symbolic Authority
Such "spiritual" powers invested in a fictitious aristocratic bloodline could have been designed to mentally establish the magical power of the Church over the subjugated Heathens. The etymology of Walpurga "ruler of the fortress" comes from Germanic waltan "to rule" + burg "fortress", from Old High German waltan "rule". Authority and symbolic powers abound in apocryphal stories. "The porter who one evening refused to carry out Walpurga's orders and to light the lights of her monastery is the picture of the unintuitive man who always sees and never beholds, while a light welled up from Walpurga's pure heart and flooded around her figure, who in the middle of the night began to shine so brightly that the horde of nuns rushed over in dismay and, speechless with astonishment, surrounded the beaming woman."(5)
Another clue can be found in the earliest representation of Walpurga from the Hitda Codex, published at Köln in the early 11th century, which depicted her holding stalks of grain. Given that peasant farmers fashioned her image in a corn dolly at harvest time, including what can be called a transubstantiation within the grain sheaf, some scholars have made a compelling case that Walpurga was constructed from an earlier Heathen Grain Mother Goddess.(6) Other folk traditions portrayed her with a three-cornered mirror and a spindle, correlating to the Norns. Folklore holds that spells sent using the spindle originated with Walburga herself, and lazy farmers would be presented with a straw doll called "Walburga" to shame them into ploughing their land.(7) To return to the Hitda image, Walburga was seen as investing Hitda, the Abbess of Meschede in Nordrhein-Westfalen, with spiritual authority:
"The placement of Hitda on the right of St. Walburga also increases her authority and equivalence in power to men. Traditionally, the right side of a religious figure was reserved for men and symbolized their spiritual strength in the face of passion and intrigue. In contrast, the left side was the arena of women and symbolized earthly desires and the weak souls whom God must protect. By placing herself on the right, Hitda is subverting gender norms and forging an image of spiritual strength. Hitda’s power is also conveyed through her presentation of the Codex to St. Walburga, an act which has been interpreted as a gift exchange by Henry Mayr-Harting. Early medieval monks and nuns believed that through gifts they could hold patron saints to their promises of protection and advance the interests of their houses. By giving the book to St. Walburga, Hitda is showing that she is the authoritative channel of access to the patroness. Also by receiving the book, St. Walburga invests Hitda with the power that a donor has over a recipient."(8)
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| Walking along the Neckar, Bad Cannstatt, 9 July 2016 |
Anointing and Initiation
Her bones exuding a "miraculous" therapeutic oil, upheld by such theologians as Cardinal Newman(9) and in folkloric pilgrimages to the site, could relate to her rocky(10) resting place being the site of a healing spring from Heathen times. The spiritual seeker has long experienced "anointing", such that when I was still seeking mystical experiences within an Abrahamic paradigm, I was anointed with oil allegedly from St. Stephen at a local Orthodox Christian church (although I was only visiting there as a Sufi from an original Catholic background) in 2014; visited a Sufi retreat at a thermal springs outside Yalova, Turkey, in 2015; and drank from and smudged myself with therapeutic spring water at the Meryemana (Mary's House) on Mount Koressos near Ephesus in 2017. It was only as I began researching and delving deeper into my own ethnic folklore that I discovered the spiritual importance of healing springs as we see throughout southern Germany (including my family's experiences living near the thermal springs of Bad Cannstatt). So there is a mystique into which those constructing stories of Walpurga were tapping.
Aside from seeking transcendence through initiation, anointing has an animistic origin as noted by John Lamb Lash. He points out how the Greek Chrestos "the good one" represents the function of anointing within Nature, such as in morning dew or the formation of cells since those have porous membranes through which liquids flow.(11) It was only among the Hebrews that it became a physical "anointing" of kings and priests as occurs throughout the Bible, later turned into a "messiah" figure via the mind-virus of salvationism. For such an anointed person, "the application of the holy oil to his head was believed to impart to him directly a portion of the divine spirit. Hence he bore the title of Messiah, which with its Greek equivalent Christ, means no more than 'the Anointed One.'"(12)
I've previously traced chrestos to the same Indo-European root as Germanic and Iberian words carrying meanings like "mask" (Old English grima, Old Norse grima, grimr, Proto-Germanic *grimo) and "disgust" (Spanish and Portuguese grima), reflecting a concept steeped in occultic imagery as its inversion demonstrates - i.e. a figure hidden in social masks or personas, the outer trappings of authority. Yet if we return to an animistic view, Walpurga and her anointing could represent a natural yearning for a feminine counterpart to a masculine anointer, as the previous Gods had their Goddess counterparts. This yearning was resolved after Christianization through the devotion to Mary and localized saints like Walpurga, complete with the imagery and healing qualities often associated with previous nurturing, motherly Goddesses. Its a balance of energies and metaphor for how these flow.
Meryemana, including the niche spring and
the "wishing wall", 25 June 2017
Witchcraft and Magical Workings
As Walpurga was "celebrated in the Middle Ages as a protectoress against magic"(13), its strange how Walpurgisnacht became known as an infernal night when witches freely took flight and gathered in mountain conclaves. The "threat" of such witches had to be magnified to justify the "protection" from them, so that it became a day of persecuting those seen as witches, as in its Czech version of Pálení čarodějnic "Burning of Witches". Its beyond the scope of this article (or my knowledge) to give a detailed analysis of these "witch trials" except two broad points. First, that it was almost entirely confined to Protestant areas with some exceptions, such as the famous witch-trials in one of my ancestral villages, Ellwangen. Perhaps because the Catholic Church had its own magical tradition (although never calling it "magic"), it was seen as warding off any "inferior" magic outside its institutions. But in returning to the Old Testament, the Protestants disavowed any magic so the "threat" was more heightened.
Second, contrary to the romantic notion of a continuous network of witches operating throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, I tend towards the view of such contemporaries as Alonso de Salazar Frías and Balthasar Bekker, that the witch-trials and witch-hunts were more about social and political power capitalizing on superstitious fears to entrench and expand their power (sound familiar?). There were indeed some high-profile cases of traditional folk healers outside the burgeoning medical establishment, which saw herbalism and folk medicine as a threat. And there were some isolated cases of people holding to the Old Ways still being persecuted, such as mentions of Elfhame in certain Scottish cases. But for the most part I see pre-Christian lore as surviving most in folklore, waiting to be decoded; and also in a Jungian sense of lurking archetypes within the unconscious and folk soul of a people. On a physical level, there was this undercurrent either hidden in plain sight or deep within the psyche, not an actual network of "witch" practitioners.
We can still obtain much wisdom through decoding these folk traditions of Walpurgisnacht. After all, the word "witchcraft" does comes from the same Indo-European root as "wit" and "wisdom". Rather than being about actual witches, more important is the deeper wisdom that Walpurgisnacht tapped into, contrary to the authorities' wishes. Secrets can be found in the word itself. "Clairvoyant, wise women played such an important role among the forest peoples that it astonished the Romans. In the Germanic-Celtic settlement area, they were known under the names Wala and Voelva and in southern and central Germany as Walburg and Walburga, which means 'staff bearer' (Germanic waluz = stave, staff; from Indo-European *uel = turn). They carried wands with which they were able to steer things magically."(14) Also reflected in Gothic walus "staff, wand" and Lombardic Gand-bera "wand-bearer."(15)
According to Longobard lore, the seeress Gambara sought the assistance of the goddess Frea (their name for Frija), wife and consort of Wodan. The wal- element could also relate to the walkuries, the messengers of death who "chose" selected warriors off the battlefield to take with them into the Underworld. Norse tradition held that Freyja had first pick of these dead before Odin. Historical seeresses likely lent their names to the Walpurga figure. A Greek inscription from 2nd century pottery on Elephantine Island mentions a Germanic seeress named Waluburg who served the Roman governor of Egypt, calling her "Sibyl from the Semnones".(16) Roman historian Cassius Dio mentioned a seeress named Veleda. "The Veleda or Weleda goes back to the original Celtic velet or fili, which means 'visionary' or 'poet'."(17) Given both its prevalence in areas of southern and central Germany settled earlier by Celts, as well as coinciding with Bealtaine - which would have began on Walpurgisnacht since days were reckoned from the night before - I conclude that Walpurgisnacht also had lingering Celtic origins rooted in the German landscape. The second element, -purgis and -burga, could relate to burg "homestead" or berg "mountain", both conveying images of the hearth and the magic coming from the Earth (animism) - but that is a subject for a future article.
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| "Odin and the Völva" illustration by the German artist Carl Emil Doepler, from Nordisch-Germanische Götter und Heiden (1882) |
Sources and Footnotes:
(1) Dr. Andreas E. Zautner. The Lunisolar Calendar of the Germanic Peoples: Reconstruction of A Bound Moon Calendar From Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Sources, trans. Johanna Klapper. Norderstedt, Schleswig-Holstein: BoD - Books on Demand, 2021, p. 83.
(2) Richard M. Wunderli. Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992, p. 46.
(3) The existence of a Heidenheim in both Bavaria and Wurttemberg, as well as the activities of such missionaries in the 8th and 9th centuries, show lingering devotion of our ancestors to the Old Ways, contrary to the simplistic narrative of "2,000 years" of Europe being Christian. It was a gradual, syncretic process that eroded and adopted previous Pagan and Heathen traditions under a new Christianized form solidifying dual authorities of Church and State.
(4) Peter J. Forshaw, "The Occult Middle Ages," in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge. London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 34-48.
(5) Annette Kolb, "Das Leben der Heiligen Walpurga," in Wege und Umwege. Berlin: Hyperion Publishing, 1919, p. 217.
(6) Pamela C. Berger. The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectoress from Goddess to Saint. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985, pp. 61-64.
(7) Ernst Ludwig Rochholz. Drei Gaugöttinen: Walburg, Verena und Gertrud, als deutsche Kirchenheilige. Sittenbilder aus germanischen Frauenleben. Leipzig: Verlag von Friedrich Fischer, 1870, p. 40.
(8) "Abbess Hitda gives a codex to St. Walburga," Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index, University of Iowa Libraries, 2014, <https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/DetailsPage.aspx?Feminae_ID=34059>.
(9) "Walpurgis, St," in Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 28, ed. Hugh Chisholm, Cambridge University Press, 1911, pp. 290–291.
(10) There was a sacredness often invested in stones, going back to the most ancient Megaliths and including the mythic Omphalos of Greece. Contrary to modern "altars", Germanic and Celtic peoples constructed outside altars from stone, often a simple pile of stones consecrated for sacred purpose. This is reflected in the various words derived from Proto-Germanic *harugaz and Proto-Celtic *krowko, carrying the same dual meanings.
(11) John Lamb Lash. Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, 15th Anniversary Edition. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021, pp. 140, 173.
(12) Sir James Frazier. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, Vol. 1. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1961, p. 21.
(13) John Canaday. The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, p. 98.
(14) Wolf Dieter Storl. The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017, p. 267.
(15) Rudolf Simek. A Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007, pp. 135, 333.
(16) Wolfgang Spickermann, "Waluburg," Brill's New Pauly, <http://www.encquran.brill.nl/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/waluburg-e12208850>.
(17) Storl, op. cit., p. 267.
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