Bear fat is also supposed to magically help a failing memory; after one rubs it into the temples, thoughts and memories shoot through the head like wildfire. Conrad Gessner, renowned scientist of his time, claimed in his book about animals, Thierbouch (Zurich, 1563), that rubbing bear fat onto one’s face will ensure a keen understanding of everything read and heard. This practice was probably a remnant of an old heathen custom. Shamans and berserkers rubbed bear fat enhanced with psychedelic plants into their skin before falling into trance-like states. Thus, worlds opened up that otherwise remained closed. They were then able to communicate with otherworldly beings, nature spirits, ghosts, kobolds, and other spirits, or they were able to roam the forest in the body of a wild animal. Nightshade plants, such as dangerous henbane or belladonna, and poisonous plants, such as monkshood or poison hemlock, were sometimes used as well, in appropriate minimal dosage. Bear fat is easily absorbed into the skin and releases such plant substances in an easily controlled way.
For Christian monks, these kinds of salves were understandably anathema. There was no doubt in their minds that the devil himself had created these wicked plants and that not only bear fat was used to produce these devilish salves but also the fat of assassinated infants or secretly exhumed corpses. But not all the pagans let themselves be scared away from such salves, and the knowledge regarding these “flying ointments” went underground. However, it was criminalized to the degree that ultimately hundreds of thousands who dared use them, and got caught doing so, were publicly burned as witches. Even as late as 1749, Maria Singer, a second abbess in Unterzell, Germany, was beheaded as a sorceress for the simple fact that she had planted belladonna in the garden.
The flight (Ulricus Molitoris, 1489)
Many Native Americans did not hunt the sacred medicine animal at all. But when they did, it was mainly for its valuable fat. They believed that the magical medicine power of the animal was stored there and that almost all ailments could be healed with it—from abscesses, eczema, epilepsy, and rheumatic pain to worms. Healing plants, especially tobacco, were cooked in bear fat, and the resulting salve was applied to the ailing body parts. A typical recipe from Virginia made from bear fat and mashed angelica and pokeweed was used to “strengthen the body” and to keep fleas and lice away (Vogel 1982, 218). Mixing color into bear fat also intensified the magical power of war paint.
Amber
The magical medicine power that was ascribed to all of the bear’s body parts, especially the teeth and claws, was also transferred to honey-colored amber, which is petrified, fossil pine tree resin. In German, amber is called Bernstein; Bern comes from Brennen (“burn”), that is, a stone that can be burned, but folk-etymologically, it is “bear-stone” because the German word for bear, Baer, sounds similar to Bern. Just as a necklace made of bear claws or an amulet made of bear tooth, an amber amulet can also protect from disease and demons. An amber necklace is said to help infants grow strong, healthy teeth. Like bear fat, this “electric” stone is said to protect against enchantment and treat rheumatic pain. Pregnant women who wear an amber necklace will have an easier birth. It is as if some bear spirit lives in the honey-colored stone.
A bear carved into amber (Mesolithic; Resen Mose, Denmark, 9000 BCE)
Chapter 17
Rituals of Departure: Reconciliation with the Bear Spirit
snare a bear: call him out
honey eater
forest apple
light-foot
Old man in the fur coat, Bear! Come out!
Die of your own choice!
Grandfather black food!
Gary Snyder, Myths & Texts
Of course, the bear does not let his strength, his gall, and his fat be taken easily. The bear’s spirit is very dangerous, and a bear hunter must beware of its revenge. Not unlike the shamanistic ritual that warriors performed before heading out on a warpath, Native American bear hunters would gather first in a body-and-soul purifying sweat lodge. They incensed themselves with tobacco and sage, painted their faces with magical color, and left early in the morning, unfed, to find the bear’s den while carrying medicine pouches and singing medicine songs. Through these ritually prescribed measures, they left behind everyday consciousness and entered a magical state, thus being in the right state of mind to approach the mighty animal.
The Sioux, as well as some other tribes, danced grizzly bear dances in preparation for meeting the bear. “Striding and jumping, accompanied by drums and songs, they mimicked the movements of a bear, dancing in a circle. The leading role fell to the shaman, as was common for most religious dances, and he wore a bearskin. The other dancers had bear masks over their heads and were painted colorfully. At the end of the dance the women started yelling and cheering them on, and then the hunt could begin” (Mauer 2002, 28).
Native Americans of the prairie performing a bear dance (drawing by George Catlin, 1848)
The bear dance or the right medicine song—the bear song that could bring the hunters into contact with the bear spirit and let their honorable intentions be known—was of crucial significance. A legend of the Haida people of British Columbia tells how human beings received the bear songs:
There was once a young girl who went with her girlfriends to pick berries in the forest. But instead of singing the berry songs as she should, she chatted and laughed foolishly all day long. In the evening on the way home, the strap of her full berry basket tore. Her girlfriends were all too far away for her to call them. Two young men in bearskins came along and asked her in a friendly way if they could help.
“Come with us. It is getting dark. Our camp is near here,” they said and took her with them. Soon they came to a campfire around which other figures, also in bearskins, were sitting.
It is nice here, but tomorrow I will go back to my people, the girl thought. Just then a mouse tugged at the bottom of her skirt. “Psst, little daughter,” the mouse whispered, “do you even realize that you are amid bears? It will be hard for you to leave here!”
And so it came to pass. The days and months went by, and the bears showed no sign of bringing her back home. One of the spirit bears was especially friendly to her and invited her to sleep next to him. As time passed, she became his wife. Soon after she bore twins that were half human, half bear.
The girl’s brothers had sought to find her as soon as she had not come home. One day, they appeared in front of the bear’s den. Before the young lady could say a word, arrows flew and wounded her bear husband mortally. As he was dying, he called his two sons and taught them the sacred bear song that human beings should sing to every killed bear. This was the only way that his soul could be comforted and the only way he would be able to come back to the world.
Bear shaman of the Black Foot (George Catlin, 1848)
How the Cheyenne learned to treat a slain bear in the right way is told in the following story:
Once very long ago even before there were horses, a Cheyenne was walking with his wife in the prairie. He shot a bison. Just as they were skinning it, a bunch of hostile Crow came along. They killed the man and forced the woman to go with them. The leader of the group took her as his third wife. The other two wives did not like her because she was much prettier than they were. They beat on her and gave her the hardest work to do. She had to fetch wood and water, scrape hides, and sew moccasins.
A young Crow who often watched her fell in love with the beautiful woman. He had heard her crying often and had ever more compassion for her. One day when the men were out hunting bison and the women were digging roots, he brought her a fast horse. “Flee from here as fast as you can,” he told her.
She rode and rode until she was sure no Crow would be able to follow her. She was exhausted and lay down to sleep for a short time. While she was sleeping, the horse got free and ran off. She had no choice but to continue on foot. As she was walking, she saw a shadow that seemed to be following her from a distance. Though she started to walk faster, the shadow caught up with her. It was a bear.
“Do not be afraid,” it spoke with a human voice, “I am walking in your footsteps so that your pursuers will not find you. I will show you the way to your people, dear daughter.”
They continued through the wild countryside, and the bear was fast on her tracks. When she slept at night, the bear watched over her. Every day it hunted down a buffalo calf or an antelope so that she had enough to eat. The bear only ate what she left over. When they came to the wide Platte River, the bear carried her across.
Finally, they saw smoke from campfires in the distance. “There are your people,” the bear grumbled in a friendly manner. “Go to them and tell them that I brought you home safely. I will wait here. Bring me a bison back divided into four pieces.”
When the family members saw the girl they believed to be dead, they were overjoyed and began to celebrate. They put a bowl with buffalo meat right in front of the snout of the bear and decorated its head with feathers and colorful ribbons. They put a necklace of river pearls around his neck and blankets on his back. Finally, they offered the bear the peace pipe, blew smoke in his face, and put tobacco in front of his nostrils.
Even today, Cheyenne treat bears as guests when they appear out of nowhere, and the ones their hunters have killed are also honored with respectful rituals. Reconciliation with the bear spirit was no less elaborate in the Old World. For example, the Mansi people, a hunting and reindeer-rearing people from the upper Ob River area in Russia, would ask the still sleepy bear for forgiveness before their hunters lured it from its den. The hunters would then wear masks made of birch bark and alter their voices so that the bear would think it was Russians or Tatars who dared commit such an atrocity. After killing it, they immediately spoke to the slain animal while sprinkling water or snow over it to refresh it, “Surely, grandfather, it was a Russian axe that struck you. By chance, we happened upon you and found you so badly battered, noble bear. We will celebrate a merry feast with you! You will be wined and dined at a golden table!” As they skinned the precious fur from the animal, they sang about its life, its descent to earth, its roaming through the forest, its occasional meeting with women and children when the berries were ripe, the feast it was soon to attend, and its ascent to divine realms.
When they were back in the village, they did not carry the bear’s furry carcass through the normal entrance, but, as with dead bodies, through a hole made solely for this purpose, or through a window. The bear was then placed on a seat of honor, and silver coins were put over its eyes and beautiful rings on its paws. Each person at the festive meal bowed before the bear and kissed its snout. A bear dance followed, which portrayed scenes out of its life. Women covered their faces, and men wore wooden phalli that they strapped on with hip belts.
The bear feast is a dismembering and reassembling that mirrors a shamanic initiation. A new shaman also experiences, in a trance, his own death, the dismemberment of his bones, his consumption by hungry demons, the reassembling of his bones, and his rebirth into a higher state of being. The bear’s bones were all bundled together and buried on a wooden platform just like one of the Mansi’s own dead.
Siberian Nanei tribe bear idols (Shimkyavitch)
When the Tungusic peoples in Siberia celebrate a bear feast, the process is similar. During the festival, they crow like ravens so that the bear’s spirit, which can still hear everything, will think that black vulture-like birds are feasting on its flesh instead of humans. The ancient Finnish and Lapland peoples also woke up the bear they planned to slay with friendly words. “Poor grandfather, surely you had an accident,” they lamented after slaying it. They also sang sacred songs as they carried the slain bear home. They removed the clothes they had on while hunting, changed to something else, and painted their faces red with alder sap. For three days, they did not return to their living quarters while they skinned, gutted, butchered, and cooked the animal in a separate hut far from the settlement. To fool the bear spirit, they did not enter the hut through the door but through a hole made specifically for this purpose. The women, believed to be especially susceptible to the powerful bear spirit and thus easily possessed by it, were not allowed to show themselves during the preparation and so did not help butcher and cook the bear. When the hunters would bring the meat to the women’s quarters, they would act like strangers and pretend to be speaking another language. They also did not carry the meat through the normal entrance here, using another specifically designed opening. Pregnant women were not even allowed to touch the meat, and, for a whole year, women were not to touch or feed the reindeer that had pulled the bear carcass to the settlement.
The attempt was made to convince the bear that a gala festival was being held in its honor in a brightly lit palace. During the festival, the bear would be given a sixteen-year-old maiden as its bride. If it was a female bear, a youth would be given as a groom. A wild, erotic festival followed, and, at the end, the bear’s skull was hung in a pine tree on a hill while people sang consoling songs for the departing bear soul. “We will not hang you too low, so that the black ants cannot eat you and the wild boars cannot gnaw on your bones. We will not hang you too high, so that the birds of prey will not harm you and the wind does not dry you out too much.” The bear was admonished to remember all the good deeds that were done for it and to tell the lord of the animals about them. The bear’s skeleton was rearranged anatomically correct and bedded on birch branches. It was put into a grave out of the reach of dogs and rodents. At the very end of the ritual, the hunters would jump through a purifying fire.
Finnish bear idols from Keralia
Gilyak people during a bear festival
Siberian Khanty people would similarly wake a bear out of hibernation, asking for forgiveness according to exactly prescribed rules before slaying the “furry human being.” The lungs, stomach, and intestines were immediately buried, and the ribs, backbone, and limbs were dismembered without damaging them. Wearing birch masks over their faces, they would perform a bear dance around the skull and the fur and mimic the movements of the “four-legged forest human.” While dancing, they would take the soul of the bear into their souls and become ecstatic. The stripped-down body along with the skull and the pelt were brought into the village on a sled. After an extensive celebration that lasted for several days, selected tribal members hung the bones, which were wrapped in birch bark, up in a juniper tree. Ritual images were carved into another piece of birch bark that was hung up with the bone bundle. When this bark carving fell out of the tree after some time, the Khanty knew that the bear had been reborn and had started a new life.
These kinds of bear festivals that culminate in a sending-the-bear-away ceremony were celebrated in numerous variations from the Sami of northern Scandinavia throughout Eurasia and the northern half of America to the Inuit of Greenland (Schlesier 2013, 57). They belong to the oldest rituals of the circumpolar peoples and have their roots in the shamanic culture of the Old Stone Age.
A Bear Is a Love-Hungry Woman
Not only for the Sami but also for numerous hunting peoples, the ritual marriage of a male or female bear, as well as sexuality in general, plays a major role at the bear festival. In this context, cultural anthropologist Hans Peter Duerr writes (Duerr 1987, 85), “Not only was the ‘Lady of the Animals’ a bear for many peoples, but the bear itself was often seen as a furry and very libidinous ‘woman’ and it appears that often after the hunters had slain a bear they either actually performed or imitated performing coitus with it. For example, a Yakut who participated on a bear hunt with Evenks, tells that after the hunters had killed a bear they imitated the act of sex with the body. When the Evenks prompted him to do the same, he declined; then ‘the two Evenks pulled him by the ears over to the bear and he complied.’ Also according to the Dolgans,1 the bear is basically ‘a woman,’ and after killing a bear they also imitate the act of coitus with the bear’s body to provide it pleasure.” When the Karelian Finns went out to hunt a bear, it was said they are going out “to woo the forest virgin.�
�� A female bear looks very much like a young woman when skinned, especially the breasts—the Estonians, the Sami people, Siberian tribes, and many Native American tribes claim this to be true.
Carved bone from La Magdeleine
The erotic relationship to the female bear being seems to be very old. Duerr, for example, assumes this from the example of a bone carving from La Magdeleine (Dordogne, France; early Old Stone Age) that depicts a penis directed toward a bear’s head. Or is it the case, as some prehistorians claim, that the penis is ejaculating into a bear’s mouth? Or is the bear breathing on the penis to strengthen it? During a genuine shamanistic trance, or “astral trip,” the penis (or clitoris) always has an erection. Could it be that the soul animal that is seen or contacted in trance is shown here? We just simply do not know; many interpretations are possible.
In the cave of Le Mas d’Azil, in Ariège, France, a broken scapula was found depicting a shaman or an “animal man” who seems to be approaching a bear with sexual intention (one can see the paw).
Fragment of a bone carving from Mas d’Azil
Greetings from the Bernese “Mutz” (Bruin)
She thumbed through the written pages, reading a bit here and there. “Bear fat, bear hair . . .” my wife murmured. “It seems to me that in order to write about bears it would be good to have some real contact with a bear.”
“I am in contact . . .” I protested.
“I mean wear something that is connected to a real bear. What was once connected remains connected. You need a tooth or a claw, or some hair. You yourself write about the inherent power in such things!”
Bear Page 19
