----- Original Message -----
From: "jacqueline simpson" <[log in to unmask]>
> I don't know enough about High
> Ceremonial Magic to know if any of its medieval or
> Tudor practitioners invoked Zeus or Aphrodite or
> Osiris etc, but at the 'folk' level I see no obvious
> traces of any memory of Celtic, Germanic, or Roman
> gods.
I can not lay any claims as to the traces of ancient Slavic Gods in the
Cunning-Folk practices but the presence of beings from "lower" mythology is
evidently present, namely the fairies.
> You mention fairies. How do the Slavs fit fairies into
> their cosmological and religious world-view? Here in
> the West there are two widespread legends which seek
> to link them into the Bible schema: (a) they are the
> 'Hidden Children of Eve', or (b) they were 'neutral'
> angels who refused to take sides in the war between
> Satan and Michael. [I can recount these legends, if
> anyone wants them.]
There are legend of fairies as "Hidden Children of Eve" over here as well
but, frankly, I doubt it was a widespread belief. Tihomir R. Djordjevic in
his excellent and exhaustive study "Vestica i vila u nasem narodnom
verovanju i predanju" ("Witches and fairies in our folk beliefs and
legends") from 1953, devotes only a page or two to these kinds of legends,
while other motifs are prevelant. Namely, that fairies are more connected to
the spirits of the ancestors (because of etymology of their name in
Serbian - vila) and spirits of nature. To quote a stanza from a Serbian epic
song:
"A mene vilu od gore, /And I, a fairy of the mountain high,
Mene je gora rodila, /I was born from the mountain,
U zelen listak povila, /Swaddled in a green leaf.
Jutrenja rosa padala, /Morning dew was falling,
Mene je vilu dojila, /And, I, a fairy, was suckled.
Od gore vjetric puvao, /The wind soft from the mountains,
Mene je vilu sikao, /And, I, a fairy, was rocked.
To su mi bile dadije." /These were my mothers.
It is also believed that they are born not like the beasts of the field, but
like fruits or flowers; that they become pregnant in the spring by the sun
and dew and give birth in caves during the winter. In Montenegro people
believe that fairies are born of the dew on a distant mountain that is as
high as the moon and they believe that fairies are raised on a tree that has
golden leaves and a silver trunk. Elsewhere it is believed that fairies are
born during sun showers. It is also believed that fairies are born of a
plant which, early in the morning, has excreted its own liquid on its leaves
that sparkles along with the dew.
> There is some material in witch-trials, especially
> Scottish, suggesting that some of our healers too
> 'learned from fairies', but since the trial evidence
> is always slanted in the direction of
> 'fairies=demons', we can't safely work out how the
> accused woman herself thought of them.
That is rather unfortunate. Luckily, we still have some Cunning-Folk left to
research and question.
Andrija
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