Pagan Magic of the Northern Tradition: Customs, Rites, and Ceremonies - Nigel Pennick 2015

The Spirit of Craftsmanship

TRADITIONAL TIMBER BUILDINGS AND THEIR MAKING

The act of making is an essential human activity central to our being. The craftsperson’s work ethic generates a harmonious relationship with nature and other people. The master craftsperson has gained the insight to see beyond the outer form of the material into its inner essence. This ability was explained by English master craftsman William Morris in a lecture delivered in 1881, titled Art and the Beauty of the Earth: “try to get the most out of your material, but always in such a way as honors it most. Not only should it be obvious what your material is, but something should be done with it which is especially natural to it, something that cannot be done with any other.” Aesthetic rightness and beauty is expressed in practical, personal ways. We attempt to emulate what is worthy in whatever spiritual climate we find ourselves. The function of the spiritually made artifact is to disclose the sphere of the sacred in human society. Making artifacts spiritually makes the self knowable and gives us the possibility of attaining personal integrity. To achieve this, the maker requires a mindful awareness of the nature of reality, an understanding of being that comes from an organic way of life.

Buildings have no meaning without human interaction. They are wholly the product of human ingenuity and skill. Human activities are personal: whatever form they may take, they come directly from specific individuals, acting at a specific place, a specific time, and a specific cultural moment. This is essentially local, even when it claims to be otherwise. Historically, each of the traditional elements of architecture came about through practical usage by the assemblage of components, each with a more or less natural form. Most basically, they are the frame of timber; the roof of bark, thatch, or wooden shingles; and the wooden door. More advanced concepts were derived from practical necessities; for example, the concept of proportion arose through the necessary repetition or alteration of structural components. In the development of European traditional architecture, the so-called ornamental parts of the assemblage either derive directly from the constructional techniques, as a skillful development of them, or as the result of rites and ceremonies that are also essential elements in the use of buildings.

Fig. 8.1. Timber-frame building patterns, making sunwheels, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

The Latin verb ornare, from which the word ornament is derived, meant to prepare something in such a way that it was fit for sacred use. Traditional ornament often makes permanent the remains of otherwise transient adornment. Garlands, flowers, fruit, leaves, flags, birds, bones, and skulls adorn buildings in the form of carved stone and metalwork on temples, churches, and public buildings, while wood, pargetting, and paint serves the vernacular. These are formalized in such a way that they enhance the buildings’ function, in a physical, cultural, and symbolic way, reinforcing collective belief and identity.

TIMBER SHRINES AND TEMPLES

Food supply is a matter of life and death, and safe storage guards against shortages. Food-storage structures must be raised off the ground to prevent vermin from gaining access and eating the contents. From Ireland and Britain to western Siberia, traditional granaries and provisions stores were small wooden buildings raised off the ground on posts, stones, or pillars. Particular rites and ceremonies were performed traditionally to magically safeguard these food stores, and it is probable that wayside shrines of spirits and deities were developed from raised storehouses. In Scandinavia the traditional storehouses of the Sámi were log structures supported on poles, accessed by ladders (Pareli 1984, 116). Until the late ninteenth century, the Ob-Ugrian (Khanty or Ostyak) people in Siberia built similar “spirit sheds” to house their holy objects. These were wooden structures raised off the ground by six pillars. They were clearly derived from storehouses (Kodolányi 1968, 103—6). These sheds were located in groves of elder trees (Sambucus nigra). In Estonia images of the gods Tönn, Metsik, and Peko were kept in off-ground storehouses standing upon stones (Moora and Viires 1964, 253). The Ob-Ugrian shrines housed boxes containing sacred objects and clothing, and in Estonian granaries, the images of the house spirit called Tönn were kept in special oval boxes, resembling the traditional Russian oval birch-bark bread boxes. A late record of veneration of Tönn in Estonia was in Vändra parish in the early years of the twentieth century. In England and Wales mushroom-shaped staddle stones, which supported long-vanished granaries, are used as garden ornaments. I have been told on a number of occasions that they have a magical function to ward off bad luck.

The great temples of the north were timber buildings. Little remains except written accounts, for they were destroyed by Christian crusaders between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. The temple at Uppsala in Sweden was the greatest Pagan sanctuary in Scandinavia. Adam of Bremen (ca. 1070), who lived when the temple was in existence, described it as “completely adorned with gold.” To his manuscript a scholiast later added a note (scholium 139) telling of a golden chain running around the temple. This chain appears in a woodcut of 1554 illustrating the works of Olaus Magnus, made 450 years after the temple was destroyed. Traditional timber buildings of northern Europe, including the surviving Norwegian stave churches, are made completely of timber with no metal fittings except door hinges and sometimes shingle nails. So the chain seems an unlikely description. If it is a misreport, it might refer to gilded or painted carvings on the takfot, the beam at the top of the wall that supports the tie-beam rafters known as bindbjalke or stickbjalke. Carvings of the takfot exist from remaining medieval longhouses and churches in Scandinavia, including the Swedish churches at Hagbyhöga, Kumlaby, and Väversunda. The takfot carvings depict animals, dragons, and interlace patterns (Sjömar 1995, 219, 222). In northern England and southern Scotland, the form of hogbacks (stone monuments of the Viking Age) recall shingle-roofed buildings with the richly carved takfot beneath.

Temples of the west Slavonic gods in what is now Germany and Poland were also ornate timber buildings. Many were in towns built on islands in rivers, strongly defended with ramparts of earth and timber. Rügen was a holy island in the Baltic Sea with two major temple complexes, Karentia and Arkona. The temple at Arkona had an earth floor, into which the legs of the four-headed image of Svantovit were set. That temple had a single entrance, and the roof was supported by four columns. The west Slavonic name for a temple was continen, the modern Polish konczyna, meaning an “end” or “gable,” for, according to Herbord, the Pomeranian temples were buildings with gables (Herbord 1894, II, 31). At Gozgaugia the building was described as “a temple of wonderful size and beauty” (Herbord 1894, III, 7). The main continen at Sczeczin (Stettin), enshrining the three-headed image of the god Triglaus or Triglav, was “rich in ornament and art,” having painted sculptures on the wall. Sczeczin had a religious complex containing four separate temples and halls where the nobles gathered for sacred feasts served on dishes of silver and gold.

A basic understanding of the construction of some Slavonic temples has been obtained from archaeological excavations. The temples appear to have been constructed from vertical timbers, and they were roofed with shingles. An idea of what their walling was like can be seen in England in the remaining parts of one of the oldest timber churches in existence at Greensted-Juxta-Ongar, Essex (Clucas 1987, 29). Dendrochronologically dated to 845 CE, the Anglo-Saxon church is composed of oak trees cleft in half. They are grooved on each side and set vertically, joined by narrow wooden strips set in the grooves. Structurally, the Greensted church must have been very close to the contemporary Pagan temples farther east. Comparable staves of oak with human faces carved at the top were found in remains of the ninth-century temple at Ralswieck-Scharstorf on Rügen (Váňa 1992, 171, fig. 39). Similar humanoid knobs existed at the top of the vertical planks that formed the walls of the Slavonic temple at Gross-Radern in eastern Germany. The heads of the tjösnur used to delimit the fighting area in hólmganga resembled these.

CRAFT FRATERNITIES AND GUILDS

Traditionally all crafts were acquired by novices learning directly from highly skilled masters through personal contact. The most able novices eventually progressed through a journeyman stage to become recognized as masters in their own right. Because of this continuity through the generations, craftspeople have banded together in groups for mutual support and the continuance of the craft. These traditional organizations were self-reliant and self-governing and had some spiritual and moral teachings. The antiquity of guilds in Britain is uncertain. Undoubtedly, when much of western Europe was part of the Roman Empire, various Roman craft guilds operated here. A craft legendarium tells how, around 715 BCE, Numa, king of Rome, codified rules for the Collegia, guilds of craftspeople. The Roman Collegia honored tutelary gods who ruled the craft. Members conducted collective rites and ceremonies in honor of their deity. The craft guilds of post-Roman times, when the empire had disintegrated in the west, may well have continued some of the characteristics of the older Roman Collegia, honoring the corresponding Christian saint in place of the Roman god.

In most European cities in the medieval period were crafts and tradesmen’s guilds, each with a religious connection to a patron saint. The word guild (Old English gild) itself has an early origin, for in Anglo-Saxon England the frith-gild was a mutual-protection society organized by family groups. Craftsmen’s guilds undertook to do the best work possible, and the quest for excellence was inherent in their work. The motto of an ancient Norwich guild expresses the material and spiritual aspirations of all guilds: “to do well, and to have continuance in well doing.” The master does not overturn the accepted norms: they are created anew. Pride in one’s work was paramount. In the medieval period, any work of skill was called a “mystery,” and the craft guilds that maintained and transmitted the tradition were called “mysteries.” It was the guilds that staged the mystery plays enacted on holy days. Bards in medieval Wales were known by the kenning “carpenters of song,” for craftsmanship is a state of being that is independent of the type of materials upon which we work. Once Protestantism split the church, the overt connection in Protestant lands with tutelary saints was broken, and the organizations became secularized as companies and brotherhoods, though their internal myths and legends were not forgotten. Trade guilds in towns and cities were fully recognized legally, serving local business interests defending the interests of their members.

Fig. 8.2. Coopers’ (barrel makers) guild shrine, Antwerp Cathedral, Belgium.

Journeymen traveling from place to place and rural fraternities tended to be less regulated officially and were often clandestine, with secret passwords, handshakes, signs, tattoos, and other means of recognition. In traditional trade guilds there are standard questions and answers, accompanied by particular words and gestures that are taught to initiates and used by members to determine whether an unknown person claiming to be a member actually is one. In France the builders’ guilds were prohibited in 1189 because of their use of secret words and actions, and in 1326 the Council of Avignon reaffirmed the ban. “The Horseman’s Grip and Word” was actually the name of the fraternity of horsemen in Scotland. So the emphasis on magic is among rurally based trades, such as journeymen, millers, horsemen, and drovers, as well as people who went to sea.

The traditional form of organized craft practice has three stages: apprentice, journeyman (outwright), and master. These correspond to the three stages of learning. First, the novice has spontaneity without control. The next stage is to have control, but with consequent loss of spontaneity. Finally, masterhood consists of regaining spontaneity and having control with spontaneity. Traditionally, a journeyman had served his full apprenticeship and was qualified to practice the trade as an employee of a master. For this, he or she was entitled to the going rate of pay. The journeyman would travel from place to place, recognized by his knowledge of the secret signs and words of his craft, until he found a master to work for. Since ancient times, there has been a religious dimension to crafts, under the tutelage of gods, founding fathers, or saints, and their legendaria and foundation myths were recalled in the rites and ceremonies of the guilds. In France three grand masters of old are honored in Compagnonnage: King Solomon, Père Soubise, and Maître Jacques. Freemasonry, unlike Compagnonnage, which is no longer operative, honors Solomon and the Phoenician architect of the Temple of Jerusalem, Hiram. Compagnonnage and Freemasonry are institutions where spiritual symbolism plays a major part in the rites and ceremonies. Similarly, the mutual societies that grew up in Britain in parallel with trade unions in the nineteenth century—organizations such as the Oddfellows, the Britons, and the Foresters that promoted ideals of fellowship—have or had rites, ceremonies, symbolism, and regalia with origins in the medieval or earlier religious guilds. Some contemporary trade unions still use the religious terms “chapel” or “chapter” to denote a local division. This is the last remnant of the former spiritual nature of workers’ associations.

TOOLS AND GUILD LEGENDS

Tools are magical objects. Pagan divinities and Christian saints were often depicted with craftsmen’s tools or weapons that signified the nature of their skills, powers, or symbolic deaths. In Scotland all men who worked trades using a hammer were deemed to be members of the Hammermen’s Guild. In 1694, for example, the hammermen of Selkirk included blacksmiths, coopers, a coppersmith, stonemasons, and wrights. Makers of larger objects from wood and metal were wrights, such as wheelwrights, wainwrights (wagon makers), shipwrights, and arkwrights (box makers). The sign of the guilds of hammermen is the crowned hammer, and it can be seen on old tombstones in Scotland. An instance of the magical and symbolic nature of tools comes from the British shoemakers’ legendarium. St. Hugh’s Bones are emblematic of the “Gentle Craft of Shoemaking.” According to the story, Hugh was son of a Pagan king, Arviragus of Powisland (Powys, Wales). He married a Christian princess, Winifred of Flintshire, who converted him to Christianity. For this he was disinherited and cast down into poverty, so he was compelled to learn the trade of cordwainer (shoemaker). Hugh then preached the gospel by day and made shoes by night. Both he and Winifred were put to death during the persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Winifred was beheaded, and Hugh was forced to drink a cup of her blood, mixed with cold poison, after which his body was hung on a gallows. But he bequeathed his bones to his fellow shoemakers. After the bones had been “well picked by the birds” some shoemakers took them down from the gallows and made them into tools. From then on their tools were named St. Hugh’s Bones and described in a guild rhyme, The Shoemakers’ Shibboleth, learning of which was part of the initiation into the craft guild. Before the availability of steel, the finest needles used by shoemakers were made from bone. Hence each tool the shoemaker uses is symbolically a certain part of the body of the founder.

Craft guilds had their own rites and ceremonies, many of which were conducted at special places. In Shrewsbury, England, from 1598, the ground called Kingsland, now a park, was the venue for the Shrewsbury Show, a trade guild festival. The guilds built temporary “arbors” at Kingsland in which they conducted their rites and ceremonies and made merry. The Patriotic Company of Shoemakers of Shrewsbury had the symbolic images of their patron saints, Crispin and Crispianus, on the entrance to their arbor, and next to it was an octagonal enclosure with a labyrinth cut in the turf. It was called The Shoemakers’ Race. It was destroyed in 1796 when the guild sold the land for a windmill to be put up there. Another shoemakers’ labyrinth, the Windelbahn, existed at Stolp in Pomerania (Słupsk, Poland). The festive day of both the English and the Pomeranian shoemakers’ guilds was the first Tuesday after Whitsunday. At Stolp an elected Maigraf (May Lord) oversaw the festivities (Sieber 1936, 83—86). Guild rites and ceremonies all over northern Europe included the staging of miracle plays, sword dancing (Corrsin 1997, passim) and feasts on the day of their spiritual patrons or founders.

Another guild legendarium concerns The Miracle of Bread. According to one horsemen’s catechism from eastern England, “the word” was imprisoned between black boards and chained and padlocked in the pulpit of the church. It was impossible for it to get free among the plough and the nets, so the season of famine could be at an end. So the “lesser world” of the fiddle, the rune, the word spoken, must by necessity work the miracle of bread. The ploughmen prepare the ground and sow and harrow in the grain. The seeds germinate, grow, and produce ears of grains. They are harvested by the laborers, transported and threshed, then taken to the mill, where the miller grinds the grain into flour. This Miracle of Bread links the society of horsemen with the millers, another group in possession of the “word.”

Fig. 8.3. Słupsk shoemakers’ labyrinth in Pomerania, Poland. The Library of the European Tradition

The first magical act of The Miracle of Bread is plowing the fields, forming straight rigs (furrows) in which to sow the grain. The rite of “setting the rig” uses two willow sticks, each called a dod, which are set up at each end of the furlong to be plowed, and both activated magically and made visible by wisps of straw tied near the top. The plough-man lines up his horses in front of one dod and looks toward the other dod at the end of the furlong, noting what is visible behind it, a back mark called “the farthest beacon.” The first furrow is drawn straight toward the second dod, keeping the farthest beacon in sight. The rest of the furrows are plowed parallel with the first one.

The Miracle of Bread centers upon the cycle of the growing grain, just as the traditional English ballad John Barleycorn Must Die tells of the emergence of the barley plant from the seemingly dead grain buried in the earth and its seasonal development in time until the cycle is completed and begins once again. In the larger, more organized lodges there were degrees based upon various progressive states of the growing grain, as in the song, as The Miracle of Bread has six stations or stages: the Plough, the Seed, the Green Corn, the Yellow Corn, the Stones, Rising Again. The primary function of any craft is to be effective, and like other handicraft skills, ploughing was an art tried and tested in the harsh world of physical reality. If it had not worked, it would soon have faded into oblivion.