The Wild Hunt: Symbolisms, Meanings, and Folklore (Part 4)

Part 4: Krampus, Perchtenlauf, Warrior Initiations, Werewolf and Other Shamanic Symbolisms

by Sean Jobst

4 January 2022

"Die Wilde Jagd" (1856-1857) by the German
landscape painter Johann Wilhelm Cordes

   After nearly a year, I resume my Wild Hunt series which generally ties in with other themes of folklore, mythology, and spirituality. I ended Part 3 with some insights from Carl Jung on the Wild Hunt and fairy-tales like the Pied-Piper of Hamelin as allegories for "ecstasy" and "going berserk" that connected to Wotan. He connected that fairy-tale to Wotan as the "unleasher of frenzy and passions" (Entfeßler von Rausch und Leidenschaften), whose "essence is ecstasy" (Sein Wesen ist Ekstase)(Jung, 75). We now know from anthropologists and folklorists that fairy tales have ancient origins going back thousands of years, so its only natural they preserve those traditions. 

   Such is the Wild Hunt, whose furious sounds and supernatural spectres could be symbolic of the primeval forest of the Unconscious as much as the physical forests. I maintain that myths have multiple layers of meaning, preserved within folk traditions long after conversion. Underlying meanings of the Wild Hunt carried over into the winter processions throughout various towns and villages of Europe, up to the present. These have common elements of figures wearing masks and costumes, representing various animal-men hybrids or demonic beings, accompanied by noise-making and other festivities, such that we have to wonder about a single origin. All the elements are interwoven with the various holidays throughout Winter, forming certain patterns that speak to our psyche as much as tell us about our past.

   We are in the rauhnächte ("rough nights"; "smoke nights"), a liminal time between 24th December and 6th January (Epiphany) during which various ghostly and "demonic" figures appear. Each of the twelve days are symbolic of a month, so there is alot of reflection and shadow work that was to be done. "Smoke nights" because herbs were burned to cleanse the house, symbolically casting out the "bad spirits" of winter as much as the bad parts of your own personality or habits. The riders of the Wild Hunt are said to hunt for such spirits but sometimes living people. Yet, the Wotanic energy of the Wild Hunt is of no harm to those who don't stand in its way, which could be symbolic of not going against cycles, accepting their place within this world vis a vis the otherworld.

   These processions date back to ancient initiations around the Winter Solstice, "some of which allowed the participants to go into a trance, leave their bodies, and transform into the entities whose masks they wore - in other words, the dead" (Lecouteux, 204). It was a healthy reflection on death and awakening to your true self: "The theories of German scholars can be summed up in a few key words: beliefs connected to the soul and ancestor worship, to the elements, and to dreams are the source of what initially appeared as a myth, then as a legend (Sage). They were crystallized in the form of rites of which processions of masked men would be one form. Two essential elements emerge from all this: the importance of the dead for the well-being of human societies, and the role of ecstatic practices that carry with them vestiges of shamanism" (ibid., 206).

"Berchtengehen" ('Going as Perchten') from
Illustrierte Chronik der Zeit (1890)

Perchta and the Perchtenlauf

   Frau Perchta is a uniquely South Germanic Goddess whom I discussed in Part 2, so I will only touch upon some of her symbolisms. Given both her direct link to Old High German giberahta naht ("night of shining forth") and her earliest representations being medieval, I think she is a later Christianized folkloric personification of Frau Holle, reflecting certain uniquely Alpine traditions from both the Celts and Germanic tribes. The "bright" connotations proposed by Jakob Grimm were also seen in her association with "witches' brooms", often made from birch bark which crackles and pops when burned and creates a "brightness" even during the darkness of Winter. The Rune Berkano "birch" is symbolic of rebirth of both the year's cycle and the individual's growth for the coming year.

   She is only one of the many female leaders of the Wild Hunt in various regions, giving rise to the female witches' counterpart to the male warrior-initiates who underwent shamanic journeys. "If the initiation is a rite of rebirth, the female aspect would clearly be missing from a cult practice limited to the all male Männerbund. The solution to this gap will probably lay in the witch phenomenon of the late medieval and early modern era" (Iwobrand). Both the Perchtenlauf processions and Wild Hunt have connections to agriculture: Ghostly figures that roam the fields making a lot of noise, preparing the soil for a good harvest in the coming year in a fertility magic rite according to the Austrian ethnologist Lily Weiser (ibid.). Perchtenlauf processions were regarded as Pagan, so that even up until the 18th century, participants had to do penitence afterwards, and those who died during such processions would not be buried by the Church in their hallowed grounds.

   Perchta is dualistic in her appearance: appearing like a beautiful young maiden in the front, but an ugly "hag" in the back. Symbolisms of the closeness of life and death being part of the same cycle in our traditional worldview. In regions like the Austrian Pongau, alongside the Schiachperchten ("ugly perchten") whose masks are worn to drive away bad spirits, are the Schönperchten ("beautiful perchten"), who encourage prosperity in the upcoming year (Gallon). These Schönperchten appear dressed in red and white (two colors with their own shamanic connotations as will be discussed in a future part of this series), performing festive dances. The Austrian philologist Richard Wolfram, a member of the Vienna Ritualists group of the early 20th century whose leading members (Lily Weiser and Otto Höfler) will be cited throughout, linked such folkloric dances to ancient warrior-shaman brotherhoods (Corrsin).  

   Alemannic Switzerland has a tradition of the Totageigl ("fiddler of the dead"), a passing of the dead accompanied by music. Violins accompany the Wild Hunt throughout South Germany and Switzerland, while the musical cacophony of the French Charivari likewise "emphasizes the demonic aspect of the troop, whose only thought is to misbehave" (Lecouteux, 173). Bells worn by the Perchten are symbolic of "cleansing" negativity, sending out a certain vibration that could ward off bad "spirits" or energy. There is the Aperschalze "cracking in the spring" tradition of Salzburg in Austria and Goaßlschalzen in Bavaria, whereby such spirits are chased by clinking on pots and pans. There are also folk traditions of people going across the fields, their whips symbolic of the harvest being released from the frozen death of winter. Such rituals have broader social connotations: "This type of cultic amplification of existence did not signify debauched gratification but a duty for the dead. In this ecstasy the boundaries of the individual are broken down - but not to detach it from boundaries of order; rather, it should take part in the meta-individual community of confederation with the dead" (Höfler). 

 

"The Werewolf or the Cannibal" woodcut
by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1512

Krampus and Werewolf Traditions of the Perchtenlauf

   Krampus is the ferocious goat-man counterpart to the generous fatherly figure of Christmas, Saint Nicholas or Father Winter (about whom there will be more in Part 6), who delivers gifts while Krampus carries a stick to hit naughty children and a large sack to capture them into the Underworld. Krampen means "claw" and he was viewed as son of Hel, the Germanic Goddess who presided over the Underworld (Peterson, 125-126). Krampusnacht is celebrated overnight on 5th/6th December, on the eve of St. Nicholas Day, and during the processions Nicholas lets Krampus loose on the streets (ibid., 7, 47). In Jungian terms, Krampus represents his Shadow side - integrating his darker aspects lest they go unresolved; the processions could be part of a collective ritual to process the aspects of one's Unconscious "untamed" by the Conscious, to bring what is hidden into the light. Nicholas as the Conscious side, uses this wild surrogate so as to not get his hands "dirty" while achieving a healthy balance. 

   Both are later traditions: St. Nicholas only became popular in Germany around the 11th century (Honigmann, 264). Ethnologist Hans Schuhladen demonstrated that Krampus' earliest origin was with the processions in Diessen (Bavaria) in 1582, even though these referred to "hunting the Percht" (Schuhladen). From these Perchten - male villagers exploring their "wild" side, wearing furs, bells and horns during this liminal time of the year - the personified Krampus was born. His name comes from Austrian postcards that originated in 1897 and were sent the weeks leading up to Christmas, often depicting him as a goat-man hybrid with scantily-clad women. And from Vienna, it spread across Austria into Southern Germany (Rest and Seiser, 45). Krampus has parallels throughout Europe, with folkloric figures such as Zwarte Piet (Dutch and Flemish), Père Fouettard (French and Walloon), and Kallikantzaros (Greek), fawn and satyr figures associated with the winter. 

   Despite his late origins, Krampus could exhibit some deep residue of ancient Germanic shamanism via the story of Donar restoring sacrificed goats to life. Donar has been identified as one of the leaders of the Furious Army in many folk traditions (Wolf, 135). There are Alpine legends of a night feast involving a resuscitated bull, which is sacrificed and eaten after which the hide is placed over correctly-arranged bones, and the troop leader restores the bull to life (Lecouteux, 221). Could Krampus be related to these traditions? "Metamorphoses, cavalcades, ecstasies, followed by the egress of the soul in the shape of an animal—these are different paths to a single goal. Between animals and souls, animals and the dead, animals and the beyond, there exists a profound connection" (Ginzburg, 1990, 263). 

   Such traditions could be a source for many werewolf legends: "In the Perchten, the werewolf culture of pagan antiquity, the pagan Dark Ages, could survive into the modern world. The adults recognized who were behind the masks, and yet there was a sinister suspicion that the neighborhood boy, whom they thought they knew well in everyday life, became another person when wearing the specter's disguise" (Hellstatt). They are closely identified with this season: "The time favored by the werewolves for their forays in the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic countries - the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany - corresponds to that in which the souls of the dead went roaming" (Ginzburg and Lincoln, 74). Within Flemish folklore, donning such furs was an astral body initiation: "In ancient times there were many young men who had to put on the magic fur at special times to become a werewolf. Usually they were like all the others, maybe even better; they were good and friendly and harmed no one. But if they were werewolves one had to beware of them. Many of these poor men wished to get rid of this disastrous fur" (Goyert and Wolter, 129).

A popular painting about reincarnation. Artist unknown

Initiatory and Rebirth Rites

   The various processions portraying the Wild Hunt are initiation rites involving a symbolic death of the physical body, followed by rebirth into one's true self. Its an appreciation of life coming from a healthy reflection upon death. Fifteenth and sixteenth century accounts of the Schembartlauf in Nuremberg show remnants of ancient Germanic views about reincarnation. "Some of the young men taking part in this public Carnival procession were also dressed up as wolf-men. One of their floats was called ‘hell’ and had the shape of a ship. Since the sun ship is often seen as a symbol for the descent and rise of the sun from the underworld, we are reminded of the stone ships and ship burials of northern Europe, as well as the mythical ship Skíðblaðnir, belonging to the Norse fertility god Freyr. Direct links are hard to make, but all these things seem to tap into the same archetype: Going into the underworld, in order to retrieve the solar powers that allow both the sun and man to be reborn with the coming new year" (Iwobrand). 

   The ship-float called "Hell" could be an ancestral memory of Helheim, with solar elements based on the Germanic word Sunna relating to the Soul as much as the personified Sun. Even though they share a similar name, Hel has absolutely no relation to the Abrahamic hell which only developed later: Its a place for reflection and waiting for one's next incarnation, not any kind of "punishment" although there is a lowest level where souls do not reincarnate. While South Germanic traditions did not include ship burials, we would have seen rivers, lakes and other water sources as conduits into the Underworld, a view shared with our earlier Celtic ancestors. This recognition of the cycles of life, death and rebirth, of being one with ancestors, is an important theme within various initiatory traditions. As noted by the Dutch folklorist and occultist Frans Farwerck: "The initiant by life became a member of the community of the dead. He became one with his deceased forefathers" (Farwerck, 15). 

   Lily Weiser was a member of the Vienna Ritualists, students of the University of Vienna Germanist Rudolf Much, who advocated a Germanic Continuity Theory where ancient traditions survived within modern folklore. In her book, Altgermanische Jünglingsweihen und Männerbünde (1927), she began studying the most primal rites of passage among tribes and how these later matured into complex initiatory rites. "After reading Theodor Reik on puberty rites among primitive peoples, she identified the 'conflict between two generations' behind the initiation ceremonies. Oedipal tensions charge relationships between fathers and sons with ambivalent feelings, a combination of hate and love; the initiation expresses symbolically, through terrifying rituals, the bridling of youthful energies" (Ginzburg, 1989, 122). These rituals involved a period of separation from the tribe and asceticism, leading to a changed psyche that involved a memory loss of persona, waking up to true personality.

   In Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (1934), Höfler concluded that "legends about the wild army are not simply nature allegories, but are mainly reflections of the ancient cult of secret societies" transmitted through initiation. These played out in processions where initiates dressed up and had ecstatic experiences. He postulated "the priority of the ecstatic worship over the mythic legend" while the Furious Army "is the reflection of secret German ecstatic cults." Initiates challenged themselves through courage, camaraderie, ambition, and discipline. They were reborn into a "stronger" and "truer" life than when they were uninitiated. He drew parallels with the Mithras cult where initiates of certain degrees wore masks of ravens and lions. Donning masks are symbolic of changing your identity, whether its for dark reasons, or in this case positively for one's own growth. Another part of these rites involved the taking of psychoactive substances to induce furor teautonicus, an ecstatic state shared with similar initiatory traditions elsewhere.

"Sorcerers" (1905), a painting by the Russian
mystic and archaeologist Nicholas Roerich

Indo-European Warrior Brotherhoods and Ecstatic Rites

   Long after these real initiatory brotherhoods ceased, mock initiations survived within various folk traditions associated with the Wild Hunt and winter processions, which will be discussed in Part 6 with an emphasis on Dutch and Flemish folklore and the Männerbunde. While Höfler drew parallels with the masks of Mithraism, Weiser pointed to the presence of female leaders of the Wild Hunt to suggest a link between the Germanic Perchta and Hellenic Artemis, with their initiations including a literal hunt in the woods. Through a heightened consciousness, warrior initiates would reach ekstasis, dissociation of spirit and body, as a precondition for shamanic metempsychosis, as seen with the Germanic Berserker (bear-skin) and Ulfhedinn (wolf-skin) warriors (Iwobrand). Their unbridled ecstasies (raserei) can be compared to that of Eurasian shamans to suggest a common Indo-European origin. "The existence of secret male societies of a ritual type, accepted by many scholars of Germanic areas, has also been discovered elsewhere, for example in Iran" (Ginzburg, 1989, 124).

   Associated with the Proto-Iranian Srubnaya Culture (1900-1700BCE), a winter initiation ritual site was found at Krasnosamarskoe on the Volga Steppes, involving taking on the qualities of wolves and dogs by consuming them; we must not be influenced by modern sensibilities, as it was an animistic respect of the animal within the broader cycle of life. "It was a place of inversion, as is the eating of wolves, animal symbolic of anti-culture (a murderer 'has become like a wolf' in Hittite law; 'wolf' was used to refer to brigands and outlaws, people who stand outside the law, in many other Indo-European languages)" (Anthony and Brown, 100). Another element of developing werewolf mythos. Wolf warriors appear within Indo-European, Turkic, Mongol, and Native American cultures (Speidel, 10), with the Hotamétaneo'o ("Dog Men/Soldier") warrior society of the Cheyenne being just one famous example. Iranian elite warriors were called mairyos "wolves" following their initiation.

   Among the Ossetes, wolf warriors formed a k'war "herd" after an initiatory spring feast (styr Tutyr) dedicated to Wastyrgi, god of wolves and warriors (later Christianized as St. George) during Varkazana "month of men-wolves" (mid October-mid November) (Ivančik, 314, 319). In the Vedic tradition, special warriors were initiated during Winter Solstice rituals (ekastaka) presided over by vratyas "dog-priests", during which they went into states of ecstasy to be reborn as "dogs of war" and unleashed into the forests to live for themselves (Kershaw, 203-210, 231). The initiation of the Hellenic ephebos, young men aged 17 to 20, included isolation in the forests, having to hunt and rely upon their senses before being reintroduced to their families and society. They were seen as under the personal patronage of the god Apollo, associated in many myths with wolves and carrying the epithet Lykeios (Cebrián, 352).

   The Irish Fenian Cycle describes fianna, warrior bands who lived outside in the woods and hills from May to October, returning to their family farms from November to April (Sergent, 15). During his initiation, the Irish hero and son of the god Lugh, Cúchulainn, changed his youthful name from Setantae to "hound (cu) of Culainn" (Ivančik, 313). The Proto-European *kóryos "army, people under arms, detachment, war party" survived in Old Iranian kāra "people, army"; Lithuanian karias "war, army, regiment"; Latvian kars "war, army"; and Greek hybristes. Through Proto-Celtic *koryos "troop, tribe", there derived Gaullic corios "troop, army"; Middle Irish cuire "troop, host"; and Welsh cordd "tribe, clan" (Matasović, 218). Through Proto-Germanic *harjaz "host, troop, army, raiding party", there derived Old High German hari "army, crowd"; Gothic harjis "army"; Old Saxon heri "army"; and Old Norse herr "army" (Kershaw, 22). Long after these initiatory warrior societies ceased, they survived in folk traditions about ghostly riders of the Wild Hunt, such as in the archaic Dutch words Wilde Heir "wild army" and Dodenheir "army of the dead" (Farwerck, 112).

Representation of the Suebi Gutenstein Scabbard.
Picture taken during my visit to Landesmuseum
Württemberg, Stuttgart, 8 July 2016. The original
scabbard was looted by the Soviets and displayed 
in Moscow. It shows a warrior wearing wolf skins.

Continental Germanic warrior societies

   Germanic Berserkers and Ulfheddin originated from hunting magic and took the form of three animal cults: the bear, wolf, and wild boar (Jones and Pennick, 154-156). The wild boar was closely linked to fertility, going back to the Proto-Celtic funerary gifts during the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. In Norse mythology, the Vanir goddess of fertility Freyja often appeared atop her boar, Hildisvini "battle swine". Freyja's name meaning "lady, mistress", coming from Proto-Germanic *frawjon "lady, mistress", reveals hers was an epithet: She was the Mother Goddess variously known among our Continental tribes as Frija and Holle. Perhaps she was unconsciously portrayed by Lucas Cranach the Elder in his painting "Melancholy" (1532), which shows a wild boar ridden by an emaciated naked woman who carries a spear, a ram mounted by a Landsknecht (pikes-man), and a cow carrying a naked man and woman (Lecouteux, 215-216).

   Both Hellenic and Roman sources referred to warriors known for their battle fury and ecstatic rites among Celtic and Germanic tribes, often semi-naked and armed with light weapons (Cebrián, 344). These harkened back to the ancient Indo-European past, with the Yamnaya culture's Kernosovsky idol from the mid-3rd millennium BCE, showing a "power belt" and similar elements as later Celtic findings. These included the 6th century "Warrior of Hischlanden", found in Ditzingen (Württemberg); and Celtiberian statuettes from the 5th-3rd centuries discovered in Spain. Continental Germanic wolf-warriors are portrayed on Relief 36 of Trajan's Column in Rome, left their traces by captured shields and standards displayed in the Roman armilustrium, and as late as the 10th century, Gothic wolf warriors were described by the Emperor Constantine VII at Constantinople (Speidel, 15). 

   Whether lupine (wolf-like) or ursine (bear-like), elite warriors donned its skins in battle to symbolize merging its power with his own. Both Germanic and Celtic lore gave the bear solar connotations based around hibernation, allegorized as a rebirth. Warriors wearing their skins carried the Germanic concept of inherited luck (Norse: hamingja) and the guardian spirit (Norse: fylgja) which was often a totem animal (Simek, 129). The 7th-century Gutenstein Scabbard, discovered inside a grave during construction work at the St. Gallus Church in Gutenstein (Württemberg), shows an Alemanni warrior wearing a wolf skin, holding a large sword and spear. His Vendel-style helmet reveals trade links between the Alemanni and the Norse in Sweden. As with the closely-related Bavarians, wolf-based names were common among the Alemanni and these warriors dedicated themselves to Wodan; indeed "Gutenstein" means "Wodanstone" given the linguistic shift from "g" to "w", so this could have been an initiation site to Wodan. As noted by the German military historian Michael Speidel: 

   "A clue to the meaning of the Gutenstein scenes is the right-facing wolf-warrior who bows his head, drops his spear, and (with outsize thumb) offers his sword to Woden. The god, if one may judge from the way he holds the spear, dances the war dance, spurring on the warrior....It is nevertheless unlikely that the Gutenstein wolf-warrior following Woden and offering his sword is a fallen warrior who joins the god of death, for it seems untoward for a leader to advertise on his helmet that death is in store for his men. Self-dedication to Woden by no means meant imminent death....However they moved, one may say, with Mircea Eliade, that 'he who...could rightly imitate the behavior of animals - their gait, breathing, cries, and so on - found a new dimension of life: spontaneity, freedom, 'sympathy' with all the cosmic rhythms...ecstasy could...well be obtained by choreographic imitation of an animal.' This may be one roof of the wolf war dance, the other being representation of wolf-warrior ancestors. From such twin ecstasy it is but a small step to mad attacks" (Speidel, vii-ix).

Illustration of Iron Age Alemanni warrior
by Frithjof Spangenberg, based upon 
archaeological reconstructions.

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