SLFK 211, Tuesday, September 24, 2002
There are 2 basic theories of tales and we have been dealing with one of them
One theory says that tales have to do with the cultural past &endash; and this is what we have been looking at
Other says that tales have to do with the human past and that is Bettelheim
According to him, tales reflect the development of the child
Let us pick up again and Haney and tales have to do with the cultural past
I talked about Baba Iaga and how she might be a remnant of an old belief in goddesses
As in pagan belief, the pre-Christian stratum that is one level of dual belief or ditheism and has to do with goddess worship
We do not know for sure about goddess worship
The people who had this system of belief are long gone
However, when you have lots of TYPES of evidence, it starts to seem likely
And we do have archeological evidence &endash; all of those figurines.
Now, we cannot know for sure what the people who made those figurines did with them and what they meant. We need to guess. Still…
Then there are various more contemporary items, tales among them
Some are very serious like the World War II statues
Some are less so, like the embroideries
Some, at least now, are associated with children only and seem less serious
Though you could argue that passing on cultural knowledge to the next generation is one of the MOST serious things that we do.
When you have ALL of these things
When they share symbolic systems
As in the female being is associated with the soil, the earth and possibly also with crops
Seems to control time, perhaps even life and death
Seems to interact with young people at a turning point in their lives (or they
interact with her)
Seems to be associated with horses and journeys to another world, the world of the spirits, perhaps also death
When you get elements of sacrifice, as if to a deity
Then you start thinking that there may well be something to all this
The symbolic system is complex and interrelated
The Baba Iaga is associated with horses
But horses are significant in their own right as remnants of shamanic belief
Explain shamanic belief
Belief in 3 levels of being
The dead usually go to one of these
Certain people, the shamans, even while alive, can journey to other realms
Enter ecstatic state
Sometimes by means of a horse sacrifice, possibly accompanied with the drinking of blood
Sometimes by means of stress on the body
Dancing
Wounding
Fumigation and inhaling certain special drugs
The person who goes to the other world can help a soul of a person who died, but whose soul is having a hard time getting where it is supposed to go
Can travel to deliver sacrifices to make the gods of the other realms happy
This is the horse that needs to be ridden so that its soul can get to the god or goddess
Can travel to find out about the future of the harvest or to make a request on behalf of the people concerning the harvest
Very often, this person travels NOT on a sacrificed horse, but assumes the shape of an animal
These are usually the animals that have special eating habits
As in those that eat the flesh of their own kind, just as death "eats away" at human flesh
These animals are the wolf, the pike, and the eagle
The neighbors of the Slavs are shamanic still, at least some of them
Maybe the Slavs were also at some point
And so they have shamanic elements in their tales
What special people like the shaman can do on a regular basis, as in enter an ecstatic state and go to another world, all people can do when they make a transition from one state to the next, as when they go from childhood to adulthood
They NEED to make contact with the spirit world through a soul journey to get the knowledge that they need for adulthood
I can keep going on like this on almost every element in tales.
And some people think that you can use tales to reconstruct the old systems of belief
To me, what remains in tales is what is meaningful still
It may have originated in the old material, but it does not stay unless it retains meaning
That is why we find SO MANY elements that are connected to the Baba Iaga in various ways
I ended up talking about the 3 Ivans who were born of a princess, a maid and a cow and the Cow's Son is hero
What I was talking about was who the 3 Ivans can be "related" the way 3 brothers are not only because they are sired by the same fish and I talked about the continued use of the fish not only in tales but in rituals like the wedding
They are also related because "the cow is our second mother"
The relationship to her is through milk and the belief of ties through milk, analogous to ties through blood, like sibling relationships, persists
Milkmother
Milk connected to blood &endash; the Cyclops baby
Witch in Footless and Sightless Champions &endash; in their version it is a dragon who visits the girl
BTW &endash; there are incantations to keep flying snakes/dragons from visiting your wife at night
Weaning and the evil eye
If you wean a child and then let it suckle again, it will have evil eye
Sucking milk makes you a part of this world
Baptizing a child
Witches in legends &endash; the most powerful ones are the ones who are fully of the other world, baby witches who have not yet sucked mother's milk
Eating in the world, either this one or the other world
Witches and milk in general
They steal milk, have special control of milk and cows
Male counterpart is vampires, or beings who suck blood
The milk and blood link again
In Ivan the Cow's Son &endash; bowl fills with blood
Almost like he is being milked, but what comes out is not milk, but blood
Please note that these witches are NOT the Baba Iaga
These are real people believed to have magic powers
Baba Iaga is some sort of mythic figure of great stature, and one who controls the cycle of the sun
In other versions of this tale, hero is called Ivan Bykovich, or Ivan the Bull's Son
Other equivalency between woman and cow: women exchanged for cattle as part of the wedding
Inspect bride-to-be; inspect cattle of the groom
Married woman wears a kitchka, a hat with horns, or a kerchief in horn shape
So, as Ivan is the name that means "everyman" sort like Hans in German and Jack in English and American tales, so a cow can perhaps be every married woman
Ivan is the ordinary man who triumphs
The cow is the ordinary woman (as opposed to the princess) whose son triumphs
Koshchei the deathless as a figure
There are legends about why death has to be
I told them about the man who was making a coffin and imprisoned death and how, as a result of people not dying, humans came to realize why people SHOULD die
Koshchei may also be associated with the red death and shamanic practices
People who are subjected to red death then serve as shamans of sorts, only dead ones
They are supposed to acquire the ability to go back and forth between the living and the dead
They are supposed to communicate the wishes of the living for good crops to the spirit world and they are supposed to communicate information about upcoming harvests to the living
Kalyna's findings about harvest predictions
This indicates proper crops to plant
Or if something bad is predicted in a given area, you know that this is the year you should prepare for that sort of shortfall
So, during the red death period, you have 2 types of dead
The ordinary dead who die by natural means and that is it
They do not come back to the living.
They just go to the world of the dead
And the special dead, those who underwent red death and communicate between this world and the next
When the practice of red death ceases, you have the inversion I talked about with goddess beliefs where a good figure > a bad figure and goddess > Baba Iaga
With the end of red death as a practice, you still have 2 types of death
This is true now
The normal dead (the ones who die of natural causes) stay the normal dead
They are not marked in any way
The red death people, the special ones, instead of being special good become special bad
They still go back and forth and communicate between the living and the dead, but they do not do so for the benefit of the human community
In fact, they threaten to harm
So Koshchei is wrong; he violates the normal human cycle of life and death
He does so by keeping his soul in a special place
Often analogous to the places where old people were sent to die a red death
Or inside various animals
This is something called the transposable soul
And Koshchei can have his inside a box, inside an egg, inside a pike, at the bottom of the sea, etc.
Link to talisman?
Or link to shamanic practice of separation of body and soul
Body tied down so that soul can go on a journey to the land of spirits without taking the body along
Koshchei is an old person who steals the princess, something he should not do
But I told you of possible ritual deflowering by an older male
Perhaps a parent, perhaps some sort of sage or wizard
And perhaps it is just a manifestation of him being "wrong"
He is also frequently linked to a serpent
They seem to replace each other quite easily in tales
A serpent is also something that does not adhere to the proper cycle of life and death
Or so people thought
Sheds skin and lives again
Flying snakes visiting your wife
This is another link between Koshchei as someone who takes young women when he should not and the serpent
Serpents are believed to live underground
They are believed to live in cemeteries and feed on corpses
Somewhat analogous to that vampire in the vampire story
Very definitely the wrong sort of male
Ancient symbol of taking food from the land of the dead makes you one of the land of the dead; you cannot go back
Just as accepting food in the home of a stranger means that you are human and okay
And this perhaps leads us back to the stories where the champion who helps the hero can eat whatever is necessary and however much is necessary
Or shamanic animals being marked by their eating habits
Remember the spoons and also talking and not talking (admitting knowledge of what had happened in the Vampire)
There seems to be a certain connectedness to mouth things
You cannot take things in through the mouth in the other world or you will get stuck there
Including accepting a drink from the devil or the death
Story of a soldier returning home
Similarly, sometimes you cannot speak in this world or you will get stuck
This is the avoidance of saying things
Words can be powerful in the other directions as in the incantations collected by Alexis
So, very rich and interconnected symbolism
And I could go on and on, and those of you who have had other courses have heard me talk about the various symbols and their means
The fund of symbols is so rich that I cannot do them all ever, much less in one course
So I try to spread them out, doing some in one course and some in another
And here I want to do child development and teaching socially appropriate ideas
And I will go to the category of animal tales
Haney dismisses them; says they are primitive
Perhaps they are
Primitive in what sense?
Past of the culture or human, individual past?
The fox and the wolf at the fishing hole