The Black Vault

Yes the pictures of the krampus are awesome....they are very contrary like.
I'll read on some of that other information you just provided, I need to learn more about the history of the krampus.

This is at the Sun dance ceremony where windigos are very much a part of. They are viewed as the most sacred people of the ceremonies.




http://www.ushistoricalarchive.com/indians/photos/ct19.html
There are some great pictures at this site above, of sun dance, and witchita dancers. etc etc.

In 1990 there were over 1,200 Wichita in the United States. Culturally the Wichita were similar to their Plains relatives the Pawnee. The French called the Wichita Panis piqués, or Pawnee Picts, because they practiced tattooing. Distinctive to the Wichita was the conical grass house, which resembled a haystack. They practiced a dance for agricultural fertility, and in the late 19th cent. they adopted the Ghost Dance.

http://www.answers.com/topic/wichita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance
Which the ghost dance relates to the Rain Dance/Sun Dance.

"The Shaking Tent was not only one of the most important rituals in the yearly cycle of harvesting and ritual activities, it was also an important method of direct communication with the caribou and other animal masters, as well as with Mishtapeu (a benevolent giant, the antithesis of the Wendigo) and the Wendigo spirit itself. The tribal shaman would use the tent to look into the hidden world of animal spirits, and to make contact with Innu in distant places. On such an important occasion as this form of exorcism, he would gather the souls of many Innu and animals, both past and present, into this tent to assist in waging a spiritual battle of great magnitude."

Anohter association I wanted to show in this thread was the Windigo with the Shaking Tent ceremonies. My father has been to a shaking tent ceremony when he was a little boy, children were never allowed to go, but the grandmothers couldn't find a babysitter for him. To this day I will at times visit the ceremonial land where the shaking tent ceremonies tooko place. Its rare these ceremonies are ever done, and are far less common. The thunderbeings and other animals are associated with the ceremonies as well.
http://chrishibbard.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/the-many-faces-of-the-wendigo/

To be honest you might not find much on Krampus. It falls under the realm of Santa Claus folklore which wasn't well reserached or thought about because it was generally thought for a long time to come soley from St. Nicholas.

There is however a bit of info coming from this history book on the subject, though admittedly it could use quite a bit more research. This is an excerpt from it:
http://books.google.com/books?id=hkw2bP ... q=&f=false

SOME Information on Perchta can be found here:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... ntent;col1


BTW I noticed the dance you mentioned was harvest dance like I said trick or treating and caroling. We might be looking at paleolithic cultural survivals as well as cultural diffusion. This is interesting.

I remember reading a fiction book called Runestone-Don Coldsmith about a party from Erikson's group exploring inland. It brought up fairies/elves and the Native response in that was that the Native Americans had them too. Is that response just fiction I wonder. Also note the global use of burial mounds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_Mounds

Aquatank wrote:To be honest you might not find much on Krampus. It falls under the realm of Santa Claus folklore which wasn't well reserached or thought about because it was generally thought for a long time to come soley from St. Nicholas.

There is however a bit of info coming from this history book on the subject, though admittedly it could use quite a bit more research. This is an excerpt from it:
http://books.google.com/books?id=hkw2bP ... q=&f=false

I'm buying that book. I was getting into it, and kept watching the scroll, all of a sudden it tricked me and went from the middle to nothing left. That is a book every household should have, are there any others like it you would recommend? Looked like I was only able to read through about 25 pages, does that sound correct? Wish the entire text was online, because now I'll be waiting for it in the mail.- and I just so happen to be moving here next week, so I might have to wait another week. How accurate do you believe some of the information? Looks like there are alot of new devolpments into this, as you said, for so long Santa Claus was thought to come straight from St. Nicholas. Which prior to this I did have some inclinations that was not the case, although this book opened up alot of other possibilities. Its interesting how many resources were used to compile the book.

The 1826 account of a Bellsnickle took me for a surprise. The Bellsnickle had moccasins the same as worn by the Chippewa (ojibwe) nation. I couldn't believe that was in there.
And The description of his cap made of porcupine quills and painted a fiery red, having
two folds at each side reminded me of the porky roach that is used in all styles of Native American dances.


However then I realised that the MicMac were excellent quill workers, and I had remembered seeing
what they call a 'peaked cap'. Almost could not find a picture, but I managed to find 2.

Now this one is from around 1812.

"This image of a young Passamaquoddy woman depicts her in traditional dress of the time. She wears a peaked cap and dress made from red trade cloth and sewn with glass beads and silk ribbon. Notice the soldiers drilling on the parade ground through the window."

http://www.abbemuseum.org/pages/wabanaki/timeline/hard-times.html
Now check out the one from around the time of the Bellsnickle. Actually it states it was collected early 1910 or something.

http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/stones/clothing/i06257.shtml
That peaked cap is in a Canadian Museum, I'd love to know the appraisal on something like that.
Because even modern quill work can cost a fortune!

"The Mi'kmaq and Maliseets did not adopt all European materials and artifacts. Although their way of life changed dramatically during the 1500s, they continued to require clothing and equipment appropriate for travelling, hunting, fishing and trapping.

During the contact period, and up to the present day, a number of the decorative techniques of the Indians became popular with European collectors and other customers. Etched birchbark and embroidery using dyed porcupine quills, wampum and moose-hair were especially sought after.

http://www.gnb.ca/0016/Wolastoqiyik/artwork-e.asp
That link above shows an outfit made with quill work around the 1840s as well.
With the mention of the Bellsnickle wearing moccasins and quills, I went off in all sorts of directions.

SOME Information on Perchta can be found here:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... ntent;col1

I'm still digging at the Perchta information, just after reading the first two pages, and noting that
Perchta was known as the 'maker of snow', and affiliated with the some of the Goddesses such as Selene, Diana, and Artemis, along with reading some of Jacob Grimm- I couldn't quit thinking of 'Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs'
http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/professional-development/childlit/snowwhite.html

Which I noted a story similar of that from the 1800's and much earlier by the Cherokee Nation, and some of their beliefs in
what Native Americans call 'The Little People (fairies/elves/dwarfs/all that stuff)

"The seven men took the rods and the box and traveled west for seven days until they came to the Darkening Land. There they found a great crowd of ghost having a dance, just as if they were alive. The Sun's daughter was in the outside circle. As she danced past them, one of the seven men struck her with his rod, and then another and another, until at the seventh round she fell out of the ring. The men put her into the box and closed the lid, and the other ghost never seem to notice what had happened."

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/396myths.html
Which has similarities to that of Orpheus and Eurydice.
http://www.bartleby.com/181/241.html
And that of Proserpine
http://www.bartleby.com/181/071.html
There are still many pages I have left to read of the Perchta information, because as you can tell, I get side tracked.

BTW I noticed the dance you mentioned was harvest dance like I said trick or treating and caroling. We might be looking at paleolithic cultural survivals as well as cultural diffusion. This is interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassailing
Yeah I started looking into some of the history of this, and hadn't realised that wassailing is OE and could predate
1066. Wassailing was done to ward of evil spirits, much the same as putting on masks to be mistaken for one of the same, and not be taken by any evil spirits ...trick or treating. And the Krampus along with many others really fall into those categories, of creating rukuss etc etc. Aquatank what do you think about the history of wassailing? Do you believe it is Old Norse?

I remember reading a fiction book called Runestone-Don Coldsmith about a party from Erikson's group exploring inland. It brought up fairies/elves and the Native response in that was that the Native Americans had them too. Is that response just fiction I wonder. Also note the global use of burial mounds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_Mounds

Did both groups already have established beliefs in such?
All the Native Tribes that I am aware of have Little People Legends.
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legen ... rokee.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_people_(mythology)
(sometimes described with little horns on their heads)
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/wy-littlepeople.html

Here was a good article I read on a site I had added in nightwolfs bigfoot thread.
It ties in the Windigo, Bigfoot, and the little people.

"The Iroquois (Six Nations Confederacy) of the Northeast -- although they live in close proximity to the eastern Algonkian tribes with their Windigo legends -- view Bigfoot much in the same way the Hopi do, as a messenger from the Creator trying to warn humans to change their ways or face disaster. However, mentioned among Iroquois much more often than Bigfoot are the "little people" who are said to inhabit the Adirondacks mountains. I never heard any first-hand stories among the Iroqouis about encounters with these "little people" -- for that matter, I never heard and first-hand stories in that region about Bigfoot, either -- but the Iroquois pass down stories about hunters who occasionally saw small human-like beings in the Adirondacks (which are not all that far from the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle was alleged to have met some little bowlers) (and slept for 100 years -HF). Some present-day Iroquois assert that the "little people" are still there, just not seen as often because the Iroquois don't spend as much time hunting up in the mountains as they used to. many Iroquois seem to regard both Bigfoot and the "little people" as spiritual or interdimensional beings who can enter or leave our physical dimension as they please, and choose to whom they present themselves, always for a reason."

http://www.bfro.net/legends/
I'm really starting to question, how much are these stories influenced by
other peoples? Aquatank, what are some of the oldest stories you know about elves/fairies and the type?

The wiki reference to the burial mounds reminded me of the Turkish Temple that was just
newly discovered. And I have little history knowledge of the steppe peoples. I'd like to spend
more time looking into the history of burial mounds, as I am still even wondering where the history of burial rituals come from that are used by my specific tribe. We build 'coffin' like homes made of cedar wood, that are called 'spirit homes' and a little shelf gets built on the sides, along with a hole on one end of the wood home with a small 'porch' that we place food offerings. Whats interesting is when my grandmother passed I dreamt I was in a house of hers that was very little, she wanted me to come in, and I told her that I
couldn't, because I wouldn't fit. She insisted, so I did, and it was amasingly an entire house where she had lived, with many things. Years later when I became older, on Memorial day I visited her grave site, and yep, that was the little home I had visited. When I had that dream I had no idea of the 'spirit homes' used in the burial process of my people.
Anyways I just shared that, because its rare knowledge, these spirit homes that are built for our passing ones. Enough rambling now.

I found out about that Santa Book years ago in an article in Fortean Times. Sometimes
I runin to good books sometimes I don't (yeah that book excerpt is only about 20 so out of 200 pages). How accurate is it? Well I know the author was working from American source material, newspapers and such maybe journals as well, which is the way a good history major does. Is wasseling Old Norse? I don't know, like I said much of this survival customs and got absorbed in the post-Christianization cultures. For instance in the Netherlands Krampus eventually became Schwartz Piet/Black Pete (cute fiction movie: Santa & Pete), and Perchta eventually becomes the Christmas Witch/La Befana.

Do I know anymore good books. I have to admit most history books can be a very dry read. I wish I could finish Age Of Arthur but it is very dry, however it is also very detailed look at Europe in the 400-600s, but not much on Arthur. I did find another dry book recently very technical on American Built Clipper Ships. A fave less dry one is one from my anth class Other Fields Other Grasshoppers But alas getting at really good folklore books isn't easy largely I think because of how does one say "goofiness" movements that have absorbed things, mixes like GnosticCatholicWiccanBlackfootTaoistEgyptophiles crop up into legitimate studies. Cultural diffusion and survivals can only explain so much and it needs to be taken in context.


So how does that apply on this thread. Well the first thing to do is realize that much of this is happened 75000BP at that point humanity had carried much of its original culture out of the Black Sea area and kept spreading world wide our two continents apparently see several immigrations into it before the Inuit circa 5000BP. Apparently the bear cult was favorite. At around 30000BP we see the goddess cult in full swing and it lasts until about 4000BP. So it is likely the Bear Cult got absorbed into the goddess religion in some places while in others other religions developed. But each carried aspects of the earlier stories. Then circa 1000AD contact between everyone starts happening again and things start getting new diffusions.

The fairies are a different matter. Elves may or may not be the gods that pre-dated the Vanir, they might also be the Vanir. The problem with that is records indicate intermarruages with Elven families. If ithat is not made upthat means an Elven culture existed. But gnomes and wee folk thats a different story, which might end up being a group in Iceland of all places today.

Well I am purchasing the Santa book, along with The Civilization of the Goddess -Marija Gimbutas 1991 and I'll check into the other ones. - yeah Age of Arthur just sounds like a dry read. And I have never seen the movie Santa & Pete. Some of the history that has been added to this thread is awesome though. And I'm still doing alot of reading on it. However what did you mean by adding that the harvest dance could be paleolithic cultural survival as well as cultural diffusion, in other words, well why wouldn't it be?
The Sun Dance is a fertility dance, they dance for days straight in the hot sun, a sacrafice to ensure their own fertility, and show gratitude to the creator like.
I'd like to read more about the Vanir.

Harvest dance, its looks like I was talking about the Shaking Tent and seeing the Halloween connection, Theres enough difference to sperate the two but many of these things follow the older earth cycles (solstices and equinoxes have changed not just on the calender differences but also because our pole star changes over time between Polaris and Vega.) So on that level my head gets stuck on fall equinox and how things start focusing on monsters and or death when that starts. Symbolically it makes sense, but at the same time its not exactly widespread, in fact if we go back to the Krampus except in Germanic countries, the tradotion becomes either evolved into something like Black Pete or almost completely lost as in regular caroling (or lack of it. I did a lot of caroling as a child and I don't see it much anymore, but of course New England is a different region from my current one with its own peculiar customs and ways as all are.)

How intriguing that all cultures have at least one creature that feeds off humans somehow..either physcially or energetically.

I say this because I had not really made that connection before..yet I have often wondered (and I know I'm not alone in this) if the visitors (at least the ones I dealt with) fed off my energy or my emotions in some way. That they actually "heard' us and we don't even realize it. We are like a form of cattle to them. (it's just one of my many theroies/thoughts on this..that I know others wonder as well)

I had a couple of instances, expereinces involving that..where it seemed they were either tapping into my mind and getting off on my emotions (like I was a drug) or literally tapping into my arm (with a big needle)and draining me of something..which I felt was not physical like blood, but more energetic like my chi.

Aquatank wrote:Harvest dance, its looks like I was talking about the Shaking Tent and seeing the Halloween connection, Theres enough difference to sperate the two but many of these things follow the older earth cycles (solstices and equinoxes have changed not just on the calender differences but also because our pole star changes over time between Polaris and Vega.) So on that level my head gets stuck on fall equinox and how things start focusing on monsters and or death when that starts. Symbolically it makes sense, but at the same time its not exactly widespread, in fact if we go back to the Krampus except in Germanic countries, the tradotion becomes either evolved into something like Black Pete or almost completely lost as in regular caroling (or lack of it. I did a lot of caroling as a child and I don't see it much anymore, but of course New England is a different region from my current one with its own peculiar customs and ways as all are.)

That post reminded me of a quote, which I like, by an author that wrote 4,000 yrs of Christmas

"Shall we liken Christmas to the web in a loom? There are many weavers, who work into the pattern the experience of their lives. When one generation goes, another comes to take up the weft where it has been dropped. The pattern changes as the mind changes, yet never begins quite anew. At first, we are not sure that we discern the pattern, but at last we see that, unknown to the weavers themselves, something has taken shape before our eyes, and that they have made something very beautiful, something which compels our understanding."

--Earl W. Count, 4,000 Years of Christmas

Makes me wonder how long ago, were people doing things around the solstices and equinoxes, why some of these things have been part of traditions for soo long. And how they have changed, but still hold similar meanings- and what kind of history from the earliest ages have we missed out on...for instance what you just stated in the Ancient Civilization thread, how much had people tryed to convey even in those times.

bionic wrote:How intriguing that all cultures have at least one creature that feeds off humans somehow..either physcially or energetically.

bionic, last week, for the first time, I watched interview with Vampire, what a wild movie. You seen that before? Hmm I'm not much for scary movies, but you know, I still thought it was a pretty good movie, although somewhat disturbing.

I had a couple of instances, expereinces involving that..where it seemed they were either tapping into my mind and getting off on my emotions (like I was a drug) or literally tapping into my arm (with a big needle)and draining me of something..which I felt was not physical like blood, but more energetic like my chi.

Many years ago i used to get the feeling of that, of being emotionally drained at times, however now, I do not. Infact, now I find myself on the opposite end of that spectrum- most don't want to know whats in my mind....I really believe we become free of those types of feelings when we are more capable of taking care of ourselves, emotionally and otherwise. I think the whole energy vampire thing serves its purpose in the collective.
Look at how many movies in past years have been released on Vampires, the interesting thing is, I believe many of these people making these movies behind the scene, know more about what they are trying to convey than most are aware.

I've been slowly getting tired of the whole good/sexy vampire thing for awhile. It had a couple good ones decades ago, but slowly I realized there no such thing as a good or sexy walking corpse thats out to suck out your blood and give you a bad infection, they're just zombies/revenants with nasty sharp pointy teeth. With some kind of parasite like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8 Its like calling the Grudge or Sammara from the Ring sexy, nope nope nope. Vampires aren't overly nice yummy beings like Succubi.