A cultural anthropologist would interpret the fairy tale, with regard to the cultural history of Europe, as follows: The three women, Snow White, Rose Red, and their mother, who live deep in the forest, represent the female trinity that was once prevalent in the entire Indo-European cultural area. Fairy tales that were recorded by the Grimm brothers and other collectors—and thus saved from being lost forever—contain many treasures of spiritual vision and wisdom common to the pre-Christian forest peoples of Europe, the Celts, the Germanics, the Slavs, and others. The three women are different aspects of the same one goddess. It is the goddess who reveals herself in the yearly changing of the seasons: as a white virgin; as the beautifully blossoming whitethorn goddess in the spring (Celtic Brigit); as the red goddess of the blood of life, summer warmth, and plentiful harvest; and as the dark lady of wisdom and death in the fall.2 We see here the ancient Paleolithic goddess of the cave, Mother Goose, in her changing appearances.
The bear, who finds shelter with the three women and from under whose fur pure gold shines, is the sun—is the sun god himself. Like the bear in the wilderness that holes up in a dark cave, the sun conceals itself mostly under the horizon in the winter (in northern climates), and a gray coat of fog muffles its light. In the spring, the bear tosses off its bearskin. When the whitethorn and blackthorn are in full blossom, the sun radiates like a young hero—bringing them to blossom. As Belenus (Celtic for “radiant, shining”), he woos the whitethorn goddess. His “brother,” who marries Rose Red, is the hero in the form of Celtic Lugh or Lugus (Celtic for “burning brightly”), representing the fiery sun in August that drives everything into ripeness and completion. As an old woman, as a grieving widow, the black goddess (Celtic Morrigan) accompanies the dying sun god in the late fall into the womb of the dark earth. On the darkest day of the year—the winter solstice—she bears the new light, the new sun, like a bear does its young.
Fairy tales are not clear cut; instead, they are usually ambiguous. Each interpretation can be correct. The shiny jewels guarded by a mystical bear not only exist in the womb of the earth or in the depth of the soul but also shine as stars in the high heavens—inaccessible to mortals. In the imagination of the alchemists and also some primitive peoples, crystals and precious gems are magically connected to the stars by invisible threads. According to the alchemical law “as above, so below,” precious jewels are reflections of the stars in earthly matter.
Both the depths of the earth and the distant heavens were regarded by archaic people as the otherworld, as the barely reachable “beyond,” as the realm of the gods and ancestors that is full of mystery. Bears and other guardians of the threshold watched over the thresholds to these worlds. Consequently, these peoples also saw bears in the heavens at night—shining, godly bears that roam along paths near the stationary North Star. We will now follow the star tracks of these heavenly bears.
The three-fold goddess (Renaissance representation, Vincenzo Cartari, Venice, 1674)
Chapter 12
The Heavenly Trail of Ursa Major
Ursa Major, descend, shaggy night
nebula-furred animal with those ancient eyes,
Star eyes,
your clawed paws break shimmering
through the thicket,
Star claws,
We keep vigil over our herds,
yet you hold us in your power, and we mistrust
your tired flanks and sharp,
half-bared teeth,
old Bear.
Your world is a pinecone
and you its scales.
I propel them, roll them
from the firs at the beginning
to the firs at the end.
I blow them, test them in my mouth
and grasp them with my paws.
From Invocation to the Great Bear by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Angelika Fremd
In the myths of the peoples of the northern hemisphere, one happens again and again upon the imagination of a big bear that roams around the North Star. We all know the constellation of the seven bright stars called Ursa Major (or the Big Bear, also known as the Big Dipper and in older times in northern Europe as “the Wagon”). It is easy to identify and often the first constellation that beginning astronomers learn. Close by, one can see the small bear, Ursa Minor, whose long tail points to the North Star.
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor
The Power That Moves the Heavens
In India, the seven stars in the constellation Ursa Major are called “the seven luminous ones” or “the seven rishis” who are gathered around God (the North Star) on the top of the world mountain (Mount Meru). According to an even older version, the Hindus speak of seven shining bears. The North Star is the hub around which the heavenly vault turns, and the bears represent the elemental power that makes the turning possible. They drive the stars that rise and set daily. They push and shove the wheel that turns summer to winter and back to summer, brings rain and harvest, but also wind and drought.1 These bears are identical to the Maruts, the storm gods that whirl around the god Shankar-Shiva with thunder and lightning bolts. The androgynous god of yoga, Shiva, sits in the quiet eye of the storm, and out of the unfathomable depths of his meditation the entire creation emerges. The North Star is the spring out of which the worlds flow, the place of birth, and the bears are the guardians of this cosmic womb.
For the ancient Germanic tribes, the North Star that was surrounded by vital bear power was not only a physical point of orientation but also a spiritual one. It is the tip of the conical firmament, the tip of the mystical mountain of glass; in the Edda, the North Star is called Leidharstjarna and in Old High German, Leitesterre, which means “leading star.” It is the star one looks for to avoid getting lost, to “get one’s bearings.” For some Siberian tribes, the heavenly bear appears in the constellations Booetes and Arcturus—the same constellations in which the ancient Greeks saw the oxen driver and the bear guardian. They call Ursa Major a huge elk that the hungry heavenly bear is chasing.
But no matter where the hunting peoples of the north see the divine bear in the starry sky, it is always the center of their religious life. The bear appears on earth, the middle world (of the three-fold heaven, earth, and netherworld), as a benevolent visitor. He is the cosmic shaman who connects the higher cosmic and lower earthly worlds. He is a higher being created by star power but at the same time the son of Mother Earth. Only to deceptive, everyday consciousness does he appear as a wild animal, bulky and clumsy and covered with fur. This ancient view lingers in the fairy tales that we sometimes tell our children. As we have seen, they also tell about the light and starry secrets of the bear. According to ancient Finnish belief, the heavenly bear descends from the northerly regions in the sky to the earth in a golden crib. Finnish reindeer herders describe dying as “mounting the bear’s shoulder,” what we know as “going to heaven.”
The Guest from the Twelfth Heaven
The Algonquian tribes lived as hunters and corn farmers in the northern forest areas of North America. They also worshiped the mystical bear and saw it in the four brilliant stars that form the square in Ursa Major (the dipper part of the Big Dipper). The three other stars that are the handle of the dipper, or for the ancient Germanic tribes the shaft of the wagon, were seen as three hunters with their dog, the star Alcor,2 who are hard on the bear’s heels. A star song of the Passamaquoddy, an Algonquian tribe that lives in Maine, goes like this:
We are the stars who sing,
we sing with our light;
We are the birds of fire,
we fly over the sky.
Our light is a voice . . .
We make a road for the spirits,
for the spirits to pass over.
Among us are three hunters
who chase a bear.
There never was a time
when they were not hunting.
We look down on the mountains.
This is the song of the stars.3
In the deepe
st wintertime, shortly after the January new moon, when it seemed that everything was going to petrify in the freezing cold, the Mohicans celebrated a twelve-day festival for the rejuvenation of creation. At that time, the cosmic bear, as a messenger for the Great Spirit, descended from the Twelfth Heaven down to the wintery world on earth. He took on the shape of a simple forest bear and appeared to a woman in a dream, revealing to her where he was hibernating. When it became known that a woman had dreamed the sacred dream, twelve hunters, under the leadership of a flawless bear ceremony master, set out to find the hibernation place. Without speaking a word, the hunters made their way through the deep snow in the forest. When they found the bear’s den, they waited—fasting and still not speaking—for one more day and night in the bitter cold. Only then did the ceremony master enter the den, greet the heavenly messenger as the lord of all animals, and ask him to follow him. Presumably, the master successfully contacted the bear telepathically because it is said that the drowsy bear followed the men willingly into the village. There, the divine guest was brought into a longhouse. The bear was tied to the center pillar and sent back to its star-lit, heavenly home when it was killed at the end of the all-night ceremony. The bear was then to tell the Great Spirit that everything on earth is in good order, that people are faithfully carrying out their duties, and that they deserve divine blessing.
The spacious sacrificial longhouse was covered with elm bark, built on an east-west axis, and seen as a reflection of the cosmos. The center pillar, on which the bear was killed, was seen as the world tree. The two fires that burned between the pillar and the two doorways symbolized the all-permeating duality: day and night, male and female, life and death. The bear on the martyr stake was the universal messenger, the being in which all dualities were obliterated. The seats in the longhouse represented the stars in the heavens. The ceremonial dances portrayed the movement of the stars and the life of the cosmic bear.
After the killing, the ceremony master skinned the bear with an obsidian knife, cutting in the opposite direction of that used for normally slain furry animals. Afterward, the bear’s body was carried out of the longhouse on the east side through the women’s doorway, the doorway of life, and prepared for a sacred communion meal. Neither salt nor vegetables were allowed in the broth. The dogs were shooed away. Under no circumstances were they to gnaw on the bones, which were all gathered and burned to pure ashes in the fire on the east side of the center pillar.
In the last four nights of the bear festival, as the full moon was approaching, the Mohicans danced until dawn. During this time, the festival escalated into an orgiastic, trance-like celebration. The bear that was now shining down from Ursa Major again was to watch over them. Through the festival, the necessary bear’s strength was given to the tribe so that all could grow and prosper for another year. Around 1850, the Mohicans were converted to Christianity. They were a defeated people, demoralized and decimated. No woman ever dreamed of the divine bear again—and, consequently, as the Mohicans came to say, compared to the height of their culture, hardly any bears roam the New England forests in modern times.
The winter bear festival of the Mohicans (painting by Dick West)
The Forbidden Name
The children who merrily play among the car junkyards, trailer houses, and army barrack–like prefab houses on the northern Cheyenne reservation play hopscotch and tag like any other children do. But sometimes they also play a bear game: A girl hides in a dark hole and the other children come as hunters. They have sticks and try to pry the girl out of the hole. They act like they don’t know what animal is in there and try to guess. A badger? A mountain lion? A prairie dog? A porcupine? They name all the animals they can think of. Only one animal they are not allowed to mention by name—the bear! It is a sacred animal, and its name is taboo. If one of the little hunters mistakenly calls out the bear’s name, the “enraged” little “bear” storms out of the cave to punish the excitedly squeaking and fleeing culprits.
This simple child’s game has its roots in the mythology of the Cheyenne. In the myth, the godly bear storms down to earth to punish those who have called out his name and insulted him. Medicine man Bill Tallbull told the following story regarding this myth:
A very long time ago, a tribe had their teepees set up near the Black Hills, in what is today called South Dakota. It was a careless tribe that did not honor traditional taboos. Because they constantly called the bear by name, it got so angry that it stormed down from the heavens, destroyed their settlement, and killed all of the people. Only one girl escaped his claws. She ran out into the prairie as fast as she could. But he chased her with great strides. He wanted to wipe her out, too. The seven brothers, the constellation Pleiades, heard her heartbreaking cries. They tried to obstruct the bear, but they could not.
The earth felt sorry for her, too. Mother Earth quickly let a glass mountain grow up right under her feet. It grew very high, and so the girl came out of the bear’s reach. The mighty bear tried to climb it, but it constantly slid down and its claws left deep crevices in the mountain. It did not give up though. Because it was a magical being, it painted its face with red mud and yelled at the Pleiades with its voice of thunder, “Toss the girl down to me or I will squeeze the mountain until you all fall down and I will eat all of you!”
Although the bear yelled this threat four times (four is a magical number, universally, for Native Americans), the seven brothers did not waver. The bear grabbed the mountain with its front paws and squeezed it with all of his might. The mountain became so small that it looked like a gigantic tree stump. The Pleiades were shocked and flew back up into heaven with the little girl. The bear chased them. When we look up into the night sky, we see the bear that is still chasing the Pleiades.
Anyone who doesn’t believe this story should travel to eastern Wyoming. There, Devil’s Tower, the core of an extinguished volcano, looms as a lonely pillar or huge “tree trunk” above the sagebrush prairie. The Cheyenne call this pillar Nakoeve, “the bear’s peak,” which the angry heavenly bear formed.4
Grizzly trying to climb Devil’s Tower
Artemis’s Children
For the peoples of the Mediterranean region, the image of the cosmic bear—which they saw as female—leisurely walking around the North Star was also familiar. The Greeks saw Ursa Major and Ursa Minor either as (1) the hands of the divine mother of the gods, Rhea, that are turning a spindle out of which come the threads of fate or (2) two bears that keep the heavy millwheel—its hub is the North Star—in motion for the goddess. The Hellenes also saw the nymph Phoenicia who was having a secret affair with Zeus. When his jealous wife, Hera, found out about it, lightning-bolt-slinging Zeus turned his lover into a bear and placed her in the stars. In the constellations of the big and small bears, the people of Crete saw the two bears that sheltered baby Zeus in their den and suckled him.
Each of these legends is from another epoch and another tribal mythology that over thousands of years grew to be the mythological treasure of antiquity. However, the most popular legend of this region regarding the bears in the northern sky comes from the cult of the wild female hunter, Artemis. Artemis, the “bear goddess,” who immigrated to Greece from the cold hyperborean forests of the north along with her brother, the sun god, was seen as the lady of all the wild animals. The beautiful, lithe hunter was untamable like the wild animals themselves. Her arrows brought quick death to forest and wild game desecrators. Only to childbearing women did she reveal herself as a gentle helper—as these conditions find themselves outside of conventional behavior patterns. In temples and groves dedicated to the goddess, often wearing a silver crescent moon as a crown, bears and other wild animals were free to roam.
In Athens and on the eastern coast of Attica, the festival of Artemis-Brauronia was celebrated as part of the midsummer festivities. Girls danced cult dances naked or in saffron-colored robes during the rite called arkteia. They were the virgins of Artemis and were called arktoi (bears). A ten-year-old and
a fifteen-year-old girl played the roles of the big and little bears. They wore fur-like gowns the color of the Syrian bears that were at home in the forests of the Near East. Similar to the Cheyenne children’s game, the Brauronia “bears” lunged at the boys who came too near and pretended they would devour them.
Artemis was honored in the entire ancient world, but nowhere as much as in Arcadia in the mountainous, inaccessible Peloponnesus, the home of fauns, nymphs, and lustful Pan. The Greeks saw the “acorn-eating Arcadians” as bear people who were “older than the moon.” The temples of the aboriginal people were decorated with bear paws and skulls from bears that had been sacrificed, and the female priests wore bearskins. They were rumored to be, just as the Arcadian warriors were, very ferocious. The warriors wore bear’s heads with wide-open mouths on their helmets.
In these impassable, forested mountains, there once lived a girl named Kallisto who joined the wild band of virgins who honored the goddess and roamed the countryside. Just as her name indicates (Kallisto = the most beautiful), she was enchantingly lovely. This fact had not escaped Zeus, the father of the gods, and, driven by desire, he stalked her.
Artemis (Roman representation)
Kallisto’s father, Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, was a werewolf that delighted in feasting on human sacrifices. Zeus was so angry about the heinous crimes of Lycaon’s sons that he even sent a deluge because of them. But before it came to that, he was possessed by the desire to seize Lycaon’s beautiful daughter. However, the beautiful virgin had devoted her life to Artemisia and had sworn, like the goddess herself, to remain untouched. And so, wrapped in a bearskin, she roamed the mountains and forests with the other wild women and wild animals. She fended off all of lustful Zeus’s advances. But the father of the gods was a master of deception and could take on any shape he wished to. He had seized beautiful Europa in the guise of a wild bull, and he had even seduced Phokos’s daughter while disguised as a bear. This time he approached the innocent girl disguised as a female bear and was able to kidnap her and impregnate her.
Bear Page 13
