https://godsip.club/tags/folklore/ Recent content in Folklore on Godsip Club Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://godsip.club/articles/pagan-gods-trinity/ Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://godsip.club/articles/pagan-gods-trinity/ Get Lucky 🔗Either I’m very lucky, or I keep finding evidence that everything is connected. After Rites of Passage, I’ve been reading one of my Christmas presents: the very recent Woodruff’s Guide to Slavic Deities. I confess that when I discovered it was printed by Amazon, after flipping through the pages, at first I had some prejudices. I thought it was mainly a sort of list, maybe a catalogue… oh boy, I was so wrong! The text is full of interesting notions and –what I look for most– connections among civilisations. In brief, by studying the roots of names (often Proto-Indo-European), very interesting details can be discovered. Especially in countries like the Slavic ones, close each other, some small differences of pronunciation can help to find new details. A photo I took in Slovenia. The “magical” atmosphere is quite powerful! One of the main aspects discussed by this book concerns the polyvalence of the gods. https://godsip.club/articles/the-rites-of-passage/ Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://godsip.club/articles/the-rites-of-passage/ Flea Markets = Source of Treasures 🔗A few weeks ago, at the local flea market, I was very lucky to find a copy of The Rites of Passage by Arnold Van Gennep. It is an Italian edition from 1960s and it belonged to the library of a nearby village. It shows the signs of time, but for the price (about 1€) I couldn’t really complain! I immediately started studying it and I was glad to find, since the first pages, references to The Golden Bough, which I finished previously! It may be not in a perfect state, but for me it’s glorious! I’ll try to (badly) recap some of the most intriguing theories exposed here. Let’s remember that the given examples are general, so similarities can be observed with both our modern society and remote past civilisations around the globe. First, the life of a human being is a series of stages: childhood, puberty, married life , etc. https://godsip.club/articles/christmas-in-europe-is-no-joke/ Sun, 05 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://godsip.club/articles/christmas-in-europe-is-no-joke/ First: Avoid Being Chased Down 🔗I live in Italy and, when I was a child, I didn’t really believe in Santa – I was already asking too many questions. I didn’t mind too much being a good child to receive nice gifts, but a few hundreds of kilometers from me, things were (are!) quite different. In the Eastern Alps, in Austria, Slovenia and other Slavic countries, naughty children are not gifted with black coal by the Befana, as in Italy. In those countries, bad kids are actually hunted down by a horned demon – the Krampus. Every year, the 5th of December, during the Krampusnacht (“Krampus Night”), men and women march down the street dressed up like demons, with horrifying masks that take the whole year to make. The Krampus Run, or Krampuslauf, is a joyful parade for adults, mostly drunk, but a bit less cherish for children, who are continuously scared and chased by these horrible figures. https://godsip.club/articles/better-shut-your-mouth/ Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://godsip.club/articles/better-shut-your-mouth/ A Tiny White Mouse 🔗Vampires are not the only popular myths from Transylvania: there are other peculiar beliefs, often broaden to other countries – or maybe borrowed from them, who knows. One is about the soul and it is told by mothers to their children: if you sleep with your mouth open, your soul will escape your body in the form of a tiny white mouse. That’s a powerful image and it’s hard to forget – I’d bet that you will recall it next time you’ll see your partner sleeping. ’Silly Europeans, they have such a fantasy!’ one would think, blaming Medieval exaggerations… Well, sorry to tell you, but centuries before, in Guinea, if a person had waken up with bone pain, he would think that his soul was kicked by another one in the sleep. It was quite common opinion that, while we are dreaming, all that we see and feel reflects what the soul is doing: if a primitive hunter dreamt about chasing an animal, his soul was actually doing that.