The Goddess in Bulgaria

I’m back from Bulgaria.  Here is some of what I learned.

We all know that storks bring babies.  This is one reason why when storks return to their nesting places in Bulgaria in the spring, it is a sign of renewed fertility and growth.  The beginning of March used to be the beginning of the year in old Bulgaria, a somewhat more sensible seasonal event than beginning the year in the snows of January.

There is a Bulgarian folk tale about Baba Marta, Granny March, and her two older brothers, January, Big Chill, and February, Little Chill.  During the summer they all provide a barrel of wine for themselves.  The two older brothers consume theirs and when they pursue their wintry functions and develop a thirst, they slake it with their little sister’s wine.  When Baba Marta finally has her turn, and finds her barrels empty, and her brothers possibly drunk, she alternatively smiles and rails, giving us the changing March weather, sunshine and cold showers.  There is also a story about how, as part of her spring cleaning, she shakes up her feather bed, releasing a flurry of feathers upon the earth, the last of the winter snows.  

This is very similar to what Frau Holle does in the Grimms’ tale of the same name, and like Frau Holle, Baba Marta is a folk manifestation of the ancient fertility mother goddess. In celebration of Baba Marta, even today, it is traditional for people to tie white and red ribbons, martenitsa, around their wrists, present white and red ribbon gifts to each other or tie these ribbons around trees.  The colors have different explanations, but seem to represent red for female, blood and life, and white for male, spirit.  The ideal of renewed life is a face of pale white skin with red cheeks.  (The red and white have an interesting association with the blood dripping on snow that initiates the desire of the mother in “The Juniper Tree”, another story of fertility and renewal, for a child of similar colors).  The mother goddess, and her relationship with male figures and heroes, has a long, long history in Bulgaria, going back at least to neolithic times in the 5th millennium BCE.  Marija Gimbutas in The Living Goddesses references the Balkans and Bulgaria in particular as a rich source of ceramic goddess figurines.  The city of Varna on the Black Sea coast  (where I waded in the water) was once the site of the earliest culture in Europe, 1500 years before the pyramids in Egypt, and a source of the earliest gold work ever discovered, 1000 years before any similar discovery.  The pieces were found in burial sites along with ceramic masks that Gimbutas claims are Medusa-like snake figures or images of the fierce aspect of the goddess.  In any case, she declares, they indicate rituals of regeneration.

Around the second millennium BCE, Indo-European nomadic tribes invaded Bulgaria and, eventually, collectively, became known as the Thracians.  They were patriarchal and horse herding people (they sided with Troy in the Trojan War).  One of the most consistent images to appear in their art is of a horseman defending the tree of life and its protective serpent from an attack of a wild boar, apparently protecting life and regeneration.  However, the goddess was still strong and appears in many guises, some as huntress protector of animals like Artemis or as the Earth Mother Cybele.  Mythologist Ivan Marazov suggests that the Hero on horseback plays the role of son of the goddess and her, or her daughter’s, lover, ensuring the successful revival of the cycle of life.  The goddess and her dying and resurrected son and consort is a common motif in goddess worship (“The Juniper Tree”, again, maybe).

The Thracians were also devotees of the cult of Dionysus who is at one level a vegetative god who descends to the underworld to rescue his mother Semele and rises with her again, renewing life.  He is also, obviously, the god of wine and intoxication.  The Thracians were noted for their intoxication and scorned by the Greeks because they did not water their wine.  Bulgarian wine is delicious and plentiful.  We passed acres of vineyards and drank glasses of wine.  Nearly every house, big or small, has its own grape arbor.  Bulgarian wine is not easy to find in this country because, as one of our guides suggested, “we drink it all.”  Baba Marta’s anger at her drunken brothers seems to reflect a long history.

Orpheus was born in Bulgaria and became an important Thracian religious figure.  He, also, at one level can be seen as a vegetation deity. Like Dionysus, he was torn limb from limb (Dionysus by the Titans, Orpheus by Dionysus’ followers, the Maenads), and the earth remained barren until his head was found and buried.  Orpheus lived in The Rhodope Mountains in southwestern Bulgaria.  We didn’t get there, but came close at the Rila Monastery in the Rila Mountains just to the west.  We did cross the river Maritsa in Plovdiv, known as the Hebros in ancient times, which flows south into the Rhodope mountains and then out to sea.  It was into this river that the head of Orpheus was thrown, carried to the sea and to the island of Lesbos.  (There is a story about a Thracian king, Haemus, son of the North wind Boreas, and his wife Rhodope - rose-faced - daughter of the river god Hebros.  In their pride and arrogance, they compared themselves to Zeus and Hera, earning the wrath of those deities.  As punishment they were transformed into two mountain ranges in Bulgaria, the Rhodope mountains in the south and the Balkan range in the north.) It was suggested by Marazov that it was Orpheus who introduced Dionysus to the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, making him part of the seasonal cycle those two goddesses represent, before he abandoned the earth-centered cult for the sun worship of Apollo.

Ares was originally a Thracian god, of war since the Thracians were a war-like people. Robert Graves, in The Greek Myths, talks about a peculiar ritual.  In March when the ivy (chewing ivy leaves intoxicates the Maenads) begins to grow, if the stem is punctured it releases “a gummy liquid which, when mixed with urine and boiled, turns a blood color…red dye was used to color the faces of male fertility images…In Rome this custom survived in the reddening of the triumphant general’s face. The general represents the god Mars, who was a Spring-Dionysus before he specialized as the Roman god of war.”  So we are using the sap from the Maenads’ ivy to redden, perhaps for reasons of life and fertility, the cheeks of the representative of Mars who gives his name to March, the month of Baba Marta and the martenitsa.  Minor details, but with head-scratching associations.

During subsequent domination by the Hellenistic culture and by the Romans, the names may change but the influence of the gods and goddesses remain the same. The incursions of the Old Bulgars in the 7th century CE, brought pagan nature deities, though perhaps no goddess, and the conversion of the Bulgars to Christianity in the 9th century would seem to have brought all this to an end. In the Eastern Orthodox churches we visited, however, the ubiquitous presence of icons and frescoes of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus, attest, as it does in Western Europe, to the popularity and lasting power of The Mother.  In any case, it is clear from present-day custom, that the earth mother, the female figure of fertility and life, still has its place in popular culture. 

Last year when I visited Russia, I searched almost in vain for signs of folklore and fairy tale.  They appeared, at best, in commercialized versions of popular figures like Baba Yaga.  Bulgaria is a different story altogether.  It unfolds in layer upon layer of history, art and mythology going back to the earliest paleolithic evidence of human habitation.  Indeed, it may be true that when homo sapiens made its way out of Africa, the route it took towards the North ran across the Bulgarian plains.  Bulgarian culture is deep and rich, like its soil.Great trip.

The Meaning of Human Existence

 by Jack McKeon  

illustration by Arthur Rackham

A couple of months ago, I read a book by biologist Edward O. Wilson modestly titled “The Meaning of Human Existence”.  In it, Wilson makes the case that we are a “eusocial” species – one that cooperatively raises its young across multiple generations and which divides labor so that members must sacrifice some personal reproductive success for the success of the group.  There are, he says, about 23 such species, primarily insects (bees, ants, termites), a couple of African mole rats, and us.  We’ve attained this status by the adaptation of our ancestors to meat eating, which favored a more stable form of life than our previous wandering.  The “nest” or campsite developed, becoming the focus of social life.  Work became divided and complex and the community cared for the children.

    Aiding this eusocial development was a genetic disposition to be insatiably curious about ourselves and each other. This developed our sensitivity to the non-verbal messages put out by others, enabling us to interpret situations and anticipate the future. This function was further aided by the development of spoken, then written, language and the creative arts in general.

… the creative arts… are… in an important way just the

same old story, with the same themes, the same archetypes, the same emotions.

….

The function of anthrocentricity – fascination about ourselves – is the sharpening of social intelligence, a skill in which human beings are the geniuses among all the earth’s species…a state of intense, even obsessive concentration on others has always enhanced survival of individuals and groups. We are devoted to stories because that is how the mind works –

a never ending wandering through past scenarios and through alternative scenarios of the future.

It struck me that what we do is at the center of this process, not only in the actual act of telling stories but in the content of what we tell.  One of the consequences of our eusocial standing is a conflict between the individual’s drive for personal genetic success and the opposing need of the success of the group.  This is a conflict that has plagued us throughout our history and is playing out now in our own politics.

    Our stories, more often than not, deal with just this conflict. Take the Grimms’

“The Golden Bird”, which I recently told at the Morris County Juvenile Facilities.  This is a story with the typical three brother conflict.  The older two brothers, faced with the task of first identifying and then locating the bird, indulge their desire for sleep when they should be watching, and then, trusting to their “cleverness”, ignore the good advice of the fox that would have deprived them of some personal satisfaction.  So they get stuck living for pleasure and abandoning all responsibility towards a greater good.  Eventually they end up on the gallows – an interesting response of group control over the excessive individual – and are rescued by the more other-oriented youngest brother, only to resume their selfish, disastrous, behavior.

    This youngest brother, on the other hand, as is usual in these cases, assumes the responsibility of watching through the night and heeds the advice of the fox to avoid the snares of the Inn of pleasure and assume the humility of the dark, quiet inn.  In this way he attains the invaluable assistance of the fox. He pays attention for the good of all, at some discomfort to himself, at least this time.  (Other third sons gain helpful assistance by engaging in generous, socially conscious sharing of food or information.)

    The youngest brother is not without flaws, however, mainly an inability, shared with his brothers, to accept the humble when the grand is available.  He is still trapped by a desire for “show” that each time arouses the community and lands him in prison.  Each time he is given a reprieve by the various kings – the social authority – if he can only bring something further that might be useful for the community.  Even his final task, accomplished by the fox, of removing a hill blocking the king’s window is to enable the king to see further, an increase in power rather than wealth.  By the end, the youngest brother has obtained the animal power and energy of the horse, the spirituality of the bird and the life asserting force of the anima/princess.  However, they are usurped for personal gain by the older brothers and ultimately do not function in a positive way.  Only by approaching them with humility, as the youngest does in the guise of a beggar, can they be persuaded to sing, eat and be joyful. The youngest son then becomes heir to the throne, the new social condition..  The individual has integrated in himself all that can make him whole in such a way that he blesses and unifies the kingdom at large.  The apparent conflict between individual and society is resolved and everybody wins.  Except the elder brothers who are put to death.  While this doesn’t actually address the biological imperative of the individual to reproduce personal DNA at all costs, one can imagine that prince and princess will have lots of children in a manner sanctioned by society.

    It’s nice to see us storytellers on the front lines of this eons old and ongoing battle for civilization.  I think of last year’s workshops with the 6^th grade at Frelinghuysen in which we told stories and ran exercises about the benefits of community.  Our stories work towards a socialization that traditional societies accomplished more forcefully and sometimes brutally.

    What about the fox?

Our stories about animals require human like emotions and behavior understandable with well worn guidebooks of human nature.  We use endearing animal caricatures including those of even tigers and other ferocious predators to teach children about other people.

    I think there’s more to what we find in the animals in tales, particularly the helpful creatures like the fox.  Part of this fascination is our intuitive connection with animals which we lose as we become civilized.  Our houses are filled with animals, not, I think, just for companionship but because we need that connection, however domesticated.  It’s fascinating to watch my Aussie do her best to herd and control my two cats, or to listen to the guttural noises the cats make as they watch the birds out the window. We need to be close to them to be reminded of who and what we are.  The animals in story speak with that inner voice that resides deep in our brain.  They are us.  We are at our best when we can listen to these foxes, who, perhaps ironically, always put us onto the difficult and uncomfortable road towards civilization.  But if we listen we can experience, as at the end of “The Golden Bird”, the transformation of animal to civilized being.

illustration by Jamie Mitchell

Stories that Resonate Deeply

Illustration by H.J. Ford

I love stories – who doesn’t? It’s why I became a storyteller. And with told stories, I love the time-out-of-time feeling that happens when teller and listeners make the story come alive together. Stories on a page are fine words, but a different magic happens when we make the story appear in our minds’ eyes, when we conjure together what the youngest son looks like, how the smile beams from the kindest daughter, imagine the threatening leer of the monster, and feel the comfort of the old woman who gives advice.

I think of myself as a medium. The old folk tales come through me to share with others. It’s important to me that they are remembered and told; they are the wisdom of many generations before us distilled in a form we can understand, regardless of what age we are when he first hear them. We can hear a story over and over and it still resonates deeply for us because our life experience adds meaning to the story. It enriches our understanding and feelings about life.

Let me give an example. In about the sixth grade I became fascinated with the myths of ancient Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia. I couldn’t say why these stories hooked me, only that they seemed to hold secrets I wanted to understand.

In high school I latched on to a particular myth, “Cupid and Psyche.” You may remember it: Psyche is married to a mysterious husband who comes to her only at night and warns her not to try and look at him. Her jealous sisters urge her to kill what they say is surely a monster, and Psyche determines to see the truth for herself. But the lamp spills oil, burning her husband’s shoulder, as she gazes upon Cupid, the god of love. Cupid flees because love cannot live without trust. In her grief, Psyche searches for her husband and prostrates herself before Cupid’s mother, Venus. Angry Venus gives Psyche seemingly impossible tasks to ruin her, but, with help from surprising sources, Psyche (Greek for “soul”) ultimately is reunited with Love.

This heroine’s journey spoke to the teenage me because I wanted to find love and be worthy of meeting seemingly impossible tasks. 

H.J. Ford, Blue Fairy Book, Andrew Lang, editor

Years later I chose as my first folk tale to learn the Scandinavian classic “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” As I delved into the characters I recognized the similarities between Psyche and the Scandinavian lass who agrees to go with a Great White Bear to help her family. The lass sees the bear only by day but at night senses a presence with her who disappears by dawn. She begs to visit her family and, although warned by the bear that to listen to her mother could bring doom, on her return she follows her mother’s urging to investigate the night presence—to disastrous effect. Love cannot live without trust, and the enchanted bear, really a prince, must now marry a troll. After a long, arduous search the lass proves her faithfulness and love and trust are restored.

By then I was married with a son and another child on the way. “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” was a favorite of my son, who sat on my lap to listen as I practiced telling it. His favorite stuffed animal was a white bear—for him, the bear turning into a prince was wonderful. For me, the tale of losing and gaining trust spoke volumes about relationships.

You may be thinking that not every story carries such a deep meaning, and you are right. But what I have learned over the years is that it’s not for me to say which stories will resonate deeply with listeners who, with me, make a story come alive.

A few weeks ago, my husband came home from a cigar shop he likes to visit. He was talking with the young man behind the counter, who, it turns out, vividly remembered my telling of a Japanese tale, “The Stonecutter,’’ to his class when he was in elementary school. Now in his 20s, he retold it to my husband: how a poor man cutting stone blocks from a mountain one day wishes to be greater than he is; how the mountain’s spirit transforms him, first into a samurai warrior, then into an emperor, into the sun, a raincloud, and then the mountain itself; how he finally realizes that as a man he had a power he had not understood. And so he once again becomes a stonecutter.

The story had spoken to him—you could say it had spoken to his soul—and he remembered it still.

written by Maria LoBiondo