Wolf Light and the Thread We Follow
Commoners' Advent, day 6
I often reflect on the number of animals and birds that many of us find 'unpleasant' or troublesome, but who are in deep relationship with the saints of our islands. Often there are stories of crows, of rabble-rousing geese, and of seabirds; cormorants and gulls, but also snakes and wolves. Our saints, and so the memories of our holy ancestors, are often presented to us as peaceful, meek, and humble beings but these other-than-human relationships would suggest that this is not so. Instead, they are holy disturbers of the peace, come to shake us out of the mundane enchantments of ordinary life.
A few days ago I mentioned that there is a gathering of saints’ feast days connected to geese and swans here at the beginning of our deep midwinter journey, and again as we emerge into the finespun light of Candlemas at the beginning of February. The 'Wild Goose', an Geadh-Glas, Geif Gwyllt in Welsh, is the name that Celtic Christians are said to have given to the Holy Spirit, perfectly embracing the untameable, free, & unpredictable nature of our connection to the indwelling Divine. In my community of the Little Church of Love of the World, we call those who are in deep communion with swan and goose the Cygnini Saints, our winter companions of long migrations.
But there are other threads that we can follow. I have been collecting a calendar of saints’ feast days for many years now. Generally these are the pre-reformation saints of the early Anglo-Saxon period and Middle Ages, usually from the 5th and 6th Centuries when we were still allowed to believe in magic. Their stories are memories of our holy ancestors' deep connections with the landscape, reciprocal relationships with animals and birds, & self-offering to a wilder Spirit. They can teach us much about the things we've lost. I have no doubt that the proliferation of 'Royal Saints' who appeared as the Anglo-Saxon kings converted to Christianity had more to do with facilitating & legitimising land grabs than with grace, but even this helps us to understand our history. In the meantime, I have learned how to tell when a saint has 'antlers', and I have also begun to see patterns emerging from the fog of our forgetting.
One pattern is that there are many feast days of saints connected to dogs during the ‘Dog Days’ of summer, the balmy days following the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star. In autumn, as we turn towards gathering and grounding, we find the Bear Saints and, just as we are beginning to light the hearth for the cold days to come, saints who protect us from fire. There are fen and swamp saints, fungal saints, and star saints, and the ‘sun, sieve, and seed basket’ saints of early spring, and so many more. A world of wonder! But I especially love the saints who hold us through the winter; the Cygnini Saints, the Fire Saints, and now, the Wolf Saints.
Now, I can hear some of you say, “But, Bee; these saints come from all different times and cultures. How can there possibly be a pattern here!?” Well, since you ask, I have two things to say to that. The first is that I feel entirely unconcerned about whether something is ‘real’. What concerns me is whether it brings hope and resilience of heart. If we close our eyes and feel the presence of a holy ancestor whose boundaries of being merged with Swan, does it make it possible for us to look the world in the eye, forgive life, and speak out for those who are silenced? If so, then why would we ever want to live in world in which we didn’t believe in these wildly woven saints? As W.H. Auden said in one of my favourite quotes, "Animal femurs ascribed to saints who never existed, are still more holy than portraits of conquerors who, unfortunately, did."
And secondly, I think of the connections between these disparate saints as mycelial, a shimmering network of the holy beneath our feet. Here and there this web of wild spirit will give birth to Bear, to Swan, to Hawthorn, to fungi, to Star, and yes, to Wolf.
The first ‘wolf saint’ I want to mention is Edmund the Martyr, whose Feast Day is 20th November. Said to have been born in 841 CE, Edmund was crowned King of the East Angles on Christmas Day 854. Few historical facts are known about his life, but we do have stories about his death in 869 CE at the hands of Viking raiders who had been laying siege to England since the attack on Lindisfarne in 793 CE.
Legend tells us that, despite trying to make peace with the invaders, Edmund was killed in battle by Hingwar and Hubba of the ‘Great Heathen Army’, being first shot with arrows until he was pinned to a tree and then beheaded. Hingwar then threw his head into the undergrowth of the forest as a final act of disrespect. Once it was safe to enter the forest, his followers resolved to search for Edmund’s head, despite being quite convinced that it would by that time have been carried away by predators. However, they soon heard Edmund calling to them from deep amongst the trees and, following his voice, they came upon his head resting between the paws of a wolf.
The wolf allowed them to take the head and, acting as guardian and guide, accompanied them back to the edge of the forest and the safety of the town.
Ann Louise Avery wrote movingly on the saint’s relationship with the wolf on St Edmund’s Day;
“It was St Edmund's Day, a highly important day in the liturgical calendar for wolves, and Old Fox had taken his Wolf to the ancient church on the downs to light candles and generally mark the occasion. There was a faded fourteenth century painting of Edmund's martyrdom on one of the walls – a fierce painting, a painting of violence and transcendence. It traced a crowned Edmund pierced by a dozen arrows, a dozen ruthless, salt-scoured Vikings drawing their war bows on either side. On the edge was another figure, a great grey wolf, unable to save his king, but ready to guard his scythed head with his life. Old Fox had brought some apple cake and a flask of tea and two golden beeswax candles. Wolf read a poem he'd written that morning ("The snow lay deep on Edmund's day, on Edmund's day we mourn.....") and Old Fox read from Abbo of Fleury's Passio Sancti Eadmundi in his beautiful, resonant voice. His copy of the Passio was so old, it sighed every time he turned a page. When the light began to fade, they left the church and walked slowly home, bats skirling above them, the lamps of the cottage beaconing below.”
As an aside, do visit Ann Louise on her Patreon page where you can support her wonderful work. You can find her here.
Following his death, the cult of St Edmund the Martyr flourished and he was considered to be the patron saint of England until he was replaced by St George in the 14th C. We do need to talk about St George, who I love and who is not what we might think, but that is for another day. St Edmund remains patron saint of kings, pandemics, torture victims, wolves, and protection from the plague.
Now to St Andrew's Eve, which falls on 29th November, with St Andrew's Feast Day, or Andermas, on the 30th.
Andrew, the Apostle was a fisherman who lived his life in occupied Palestine. Born in Galilee sometime between 5-10 CE, he was one of the first to become a disciple of Jesus. Most familiar to us now as the Patron Saint of Scotland, Andrew is also the patron of Romania, Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, Greece and Cyprus, amongst others, together with fishermen, fishmongers & ropemakers, textile workers, singers, miners, pregnant women, butchers, and farmworkers. He is also called upon for protection from sore throats, convulsions, fever, and whooping cough!
In Scotland St Andrew's Day, with its evocative Scottish Gaelic name of Là Naomh Anndrais, is reason for a national holiday and a celebration of Scottish culture, but it's in Eastern Europe that we are offered a glimpse of an older tide. For instance, St Andrew's Eve is a night when are able to talk to wolves.
Many of the Eastern European traditions attached to St Andrew's Day come from the ancient Indo-European culture of the Dacians, who were located near the Carpathian mountains and west of the Black Sea. Broadly speaking, this areas covers the modern day countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Ukraine, Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and Southern Poland.
A great many of the customs relating to St Andrew's Eve involve young women seeking out the name of the man they will marry. In Poland, Andrzejki was only celebrated by single girls with the main ceremony being the pouring of hot wax through the hole in a skeleton key into cold water. Having cooled, the wax is held in front of a candle and the shadow on the wall reveals the future spouse. In Romania, young women would place 41 grains of wheat, or a sprig of sweet basil, under their pillow before they slept. If they dreamed that someone was coming to steal it it meant that they would be married in the next year. In other parts of the country, girls would take an Easter candle to a fountain at midnight and ask St Andrew to give them a glimpse of their future husband in the water.
For the Dacians, New Year took place between 14th November (the eve of our older Advent) and 7th December. This was an 'in-between', liminal time and was deeply bound up with folklore relating to wolves. It was said that, on St Andrew's Eve, no prey could escape from wolves because St Andrew, their protector, arrived at midnight to provide each wolf with their food for the winter. It was also believed that wolves and humans could speak to one another, although to hear a wolf speak meant that you would soon die.
But this is not just a warning to avoid wolves at a time when they are hungry for their winter prey. St Andrew's Eve is also believed to be the beginning of peak vampire activity, which will last until St George's Eve on 22nd April. In Serbia it was believed that wolves were the 'enemies of demons', and that, should you be unlucky enough to encounter a vampire or other spirit of ill-intent', "Vuk mu na put!", "May a wolf stand in his path!" should be the response.
In Bosnia and Croatia it was once thought that drinking water from a wolf's paw print would offer protection from evil, and in Serbia, as well as other Slavic countries, a wolf skull (or the skull of a horse killed by wolves), would be placed on a bee hive to protect the inhabitants from pests and disease.
For the Serbs, the wolf was the 'animal twin' and, on Christmas Eve, they would lay out a feast on the doorstep with an invitation extended to wolfkind; the doorstep being one of the most sacred parts of the house as it was believed that ancestors gathered beneath it. In other parts of Serbia, the same invitation would be extended to the ancestors, in the way that we might hold a 'dumb supper' at Hallowtide; the line differentiating wolves and the beloved dead was thin and people of importance, whether human or otherwise, should always be invited to a feast.
In Serbia, a ritual to ‘close the wolf’s mouth’ and so protect the flocks was performed at Christmastime and involved tying a read thread around the chain that suspended the cauldron over the hearth. The verige, or hearth-chain, was believed to be a personification of the old god, Dabog, the ‘lame wolf shepherd’. However, that Wolf was also deeply connected to healing is shown by this Central Serbian saying, "Wolf has four legs, two ears, a tail, and jaws, terrible jaws: it will devour the disease! Back off, go away!"
November is threaded through with dates central to wolf folklore, and much of this lore is centred on Mary and her healing intercession. 21st November marks the Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple as a child. In Bulgaria, it is also the day of Mary as the 'Wolf Mother of God'.
Mary as Wolf Mother plays a central role in Bulgarian healing rituals, protecting the people by sending "the spirits of diseases into the woods, as a she-wolf would with her cubs." In this way, she echoes the Polish legend of Our Lady of the Thunder Candle (Matka Boska Gromniczna), who appears at Candlemas to watch over the people on cold nights at the end of winter when the wolves are ravenous. She is both the protector of wolves and of people, and so holds the balance between the needs of each. Candlemas is, of course, also the time when Brigid returns and she too has a connection with wolves.
Also in November, on the 24th (St Catherine's Eve), is St Mrata's Feast Day. St Mrata is the 'shepherd of wolves' and his feast marks the end of 9 days known in Serbia as "Mratinci", Mrata's "wolf days". Interestingly, his counterpart, St Sava, who is another wolf shepherd, has his Feast Day on 27th January.
Again and again in our journey through Commoners’ Advent we come upon the same themes, often gathering at the beginning and end of the season. If we were weaving the withies of a basket to hold our winter dreaming in we would see from the darkling windows of our Marsh Church of the Shepherd and the Shrew that they begin and end in the wild flight of geese and swans, the flame of the forge, and the paw prints of wolves, and that the basket is full of wild winter stars.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_the_Martyr
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Edmund-original-Patron-Saint-of-England/
https://brianwhelanart.com/galleries/st-edmund/
https://www.spookyisles.com/the-wolf-who-protected-st-edmunds-head/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_the_Apostle
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Andrew%27s_Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacians
https://www.inyourpocket.com/krakow/andrzejki-st-andrews-eve-in-poland_72953f
https://www.scotland.org/features/st-andrews-day-tales-and-traditions
https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/01/enemy-of-demons.html
https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/12/verige.html
https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/07/wolf-feast.html
https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2014/09/ojkanje-wolf-singing.html
https://rolandia.eu/en/blog/romanian-myths-legends/saint-andrew-the-protector-of-wolves
https://lamusdworski.wordpress.com/2016/03/13/holy-mother-with-wolves/
https://www.romania-insider.com/superstitions-traditions-st-andrew-2017
https://www.nineoclock.ro/2012/11/28/the-feast-of-saint-andrew-start-of-the-winter-celebrations/
https://witnesstruesorcery.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/mother-of-god-as-a-hypostasis-of-the-great-mother-goddess-in-bulgarian-healing-ritual/
https://www.diglogs.com/bulgaria/big-holiday-its-the-wolf-mother-of-god-here-is-who-draws-for-a-name-day-and-what-to-guess/
https://witnesstruesorcery.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/mother-of-god-as-a-hypostasis-of-the-great-mother-goddess-in-bulgarian-healing-ritual/
https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/t/thunder-candle-mother-of-god-of-the-blessed.php
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250007828_Wolf_holidays_among_Southern_Slavs_in_the_Balkans
https://sfioanevanghelistul.ca/wordpress/en/2023/11/30/andrei-apostolul-lupilor-noi-cercetari/
#CommonersAdvent #OldAdvent #CelticAdvent #StMartinsLent #WinterLent
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This is wonderful and so interesting, thank you so much for including Eastern Europe, and hello from Bosnia
Walking in step with Anne Avery and Oldeuropeanculture is a journey among the stars and the seasons. Lovely.