It's just below the surface

 "The need for [pagan] ritual goes deep," Silvia said.  "But it’s also just below the surface," I said.

Scratch the surface of a German and you find a pagan who loves trees, being in the woods and mountains and who loves processions that take place in the dark by torchlight. Hunting has its own rituals associated with honoring the game animals. When a house is built, the first roof support erected is decorated with a branch from an evergreen tree. A German is very close to his pagan roots, as we saw one evening at the “Perchtentreiben.” (roughly pronounced pairk-ten-try-ben) See the Wikipedia article on  Pre-Christian Alpine Traditions.

The Perchtentreiben traditionally takes place between Christmas and the New Year. The Perchten represent devils who are driven out as a way of getting rid of the evils of the old year and of this indeterminate “time between the years.” (see note below)

The roots of the Perchten tradition are not clear, but in recent years, it has become connected with the Krampus, a demonic-looking character who accompanies St. Nicholas as he visits the children, scaring and punishing those who have been bad. The feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated Dec. 6 and is a real tradition here; the children put out their shoes so “der Nikolaus” can fill them with treats.

At a Christmas market in a small town on the first weekend of Advent, we gathered around a roped-off area in the middle of which a fireplace had been set up. A stage occupied one end of the enclosure.

The performance soundtrack started with a passage from the book of Genesis, “The world was without form and the dark was upon the deep, and God said let there be light.” Flames leaped up in the central fire ring. Saint Nicholas, with a long beard and a wise face, wearing his crimson bishop’s robes with mitre and crosier, entered with angels dressed in white, processed around the circle and took their place on the stage.

As the music turned darker, the voice changed to a deep demonic one speaking Latin and saying “Lucifer, great devil,…”. Smoke came from the side of the stage and finally, the lead devil made his entrance. As he stalked around the circle, he carried a staff with a horned animal skull on it (and a sign displaying the name of the group).

 The Perchten, or devils, appeared with impressively fearsome masks with huge horns, wearing ragged robes of furs, and bundles of long hair covering their lower legs so that you could imagine there were actually hooves underneath. 









Some of the figures had red or blue lights in their eyes. All had wild, long hair. Some of them clanked as they entered the circle – they had huge bells tied to the backs of their belts with chains hanging from the belt so that the bells clanked as they moved. The music changed to a heavy-metal soundtrack. They threatened and leered at the onlookers as they entered, pausing to put a clawed hand on top of a pretty girl’s head so that she screamed, or knock a hat off. 

Some of them represented witches, with hooked noses and broomsticks. As the witches surrounded the fire in the middle, they dipped wands in the fire and opened them out to flaming fans. They danced with these, gracefully and slowly, while still moving threateningly. 

A fire breather entered the ring dressed in a dark monk’s robe. More of the devils entered, some with whips made of bundles of horse hair. These they beat on the ground as they mimed fighting with each other. Others moved menacingly around the circle, running toward the onlookers as if to attack and sliding onto their knees at the feet of the spectators. As they stalked around the circle, they reached into the crowd, even into the second and third rows of spectators. Those who thought they were safe were no longer! I was standing behind two other people, but I took off my hat in case they decided to reach in to grab me! The fire breather circled and crossed the area, coming ever closer and breathing his fire just above the heads of the crowd. 

The devils continued circling, clanking, glaring and dancing as one of them used his staff to create a ring of fire on the ground. Some of them gathered around this ring to perform. Then, the church bells started to ring, and St. Nicholas and his angels left the stage to drive the devils off. 

A cage on wheels containing a child-sized devil (or a child?) came from off-stage and into the circle as the devils followed St. Nicholas away. The Ave Maria started to play, the flames went out. Peace was restored, and the spectacle was over. 

The crowd broke up, but a few minutes later, the MC announced that the devils and St. Nicholas would assemble on the stage for pictures. The spell was broken, but it was great fun to be able to see the fantastic masks and costumes up close as St. Nicholas and all the devils assembled. They got a round of applause and, as they made their way out again, paused for pictures with members of the crowd. 

You can see lots of good pictures on the devils' website: Oberpfälzer Schlossteufel

 A highly personal Interpretation

It was a communal rite, watching the forces of darkness with their fearsome faces cavort, fight with each other and leer at the bystanders. Who says that the gods, or forces of nature, aren’t capricious devils? The Old Testament god of the Hebrews was certainly capricious and displayed his might frequently through forces of nature. 

Why do these creatures who represent evil fascinate us so? Because they still have power inside us. Sometimes they are our gods: vanity, lust, pride, irrational and selfish behavior. Silvia said that people need these representations; what are depression and anxiety and panic but our personal demons? On the other hand, they are of the earth, their terrifying faces carved out of trees that grow in the earth, their robes are animal skins, their horns and fangs remind us of predators. We are also of the earth, and not so far removed from the animals biologically. They are eventually driven out by the forces of light to the strains of church bells and the Ave Maria, but we miss them with their fascinating earthiness and passionate behavior. They are also our avatars.

Are they really evil? “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – Shakespeare, Hamlet. You can’t have the light without the dark.

Another thing I posit is that Christianity, especially in the Middle Ages, was a religion centered on aspirations toward a paradisical heaven and the afterlife. “Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.” (Really? Do I have to wait until then?) The pleasures and temptations of the flesh were to be denied and denigrated. But we still need to cherish our connection to the earth that supports us and not deny and ignore it. 

Another thing I have concluded is that, in comparison to polytheistic cultures, which have many stories about the gods, the Christians only have one great mythological story, and that’s not enough. It’s like only being able to see one movie in your whole life and having to base your life on that. We need to acknowledge that other stories can be just as powerful and just as valuable in our lives.

The power of these performances is proved when, every year, various church officials protest against these events and encourage their faithful not to participate, even seeking to have the events banned. 

Christians have been brought up to look upon the rites of non-Christian peoples as quaint and meaningless at best: the Hopi Kachina dances, or the Chinese New Year festivals, or the Tibetan festivals with the various demons and gods represented by people in costume. But the Perchtentreiben showed me that even we (nominal) Christians still need to be thrilled by a ritual representing the conflict of the forces of light and darkness. Christians, especially in Germany, are only Christians on the surface. You only need to scratch the surface to find the pagan thirsty for the old rites.

Historical Context (again, highly subjective and personal)

We European descendants in America have no pagan roots in the New World. The Christianity handed down to us by our New World ancestors is relatively pure, relatively free of local pagan influences. The heathen origin of such festivals as Christmas and Easter are legends to us Americans. Because I grew up in such a context, it was easy to believe it when we were taught that Christianity was something new and superior to all else in the world, unaffected by what came before it; that it sprang directly from the teachings of Jesus. (With some accounting for the Jewish civilization in which context Christianity developed 2000 years ago.) There was no locally influenced inflection of Christianity. In other words, for the descendants of Europeans in the Americas, Christianity was not overlaid on any local pagan tradition.

The point I want to make is about the contrast between the Christianity handed down in the New World and Christianity as a veneer over the surface of the pagan traditions here in Germany. The Germanic tribes converted to Christianity between 600 and 800 AD, relatively recently in comparison with the countries occupied by Rome. There was almost no Roman influence north of the Danube and east of the Rhine. Before the Germanic tribes overran the Empire in the 5^th century AD, the Romans had resigned themselves to allowing the German tribes to be German. In the Scandinavian countries (also with Germanic roots) and Slavic countries, the conversion came even later and more slowly. In all these countries, the early churches are decorated with artwork exhibiting a very pagan influence . In Germany, a visit to an early Romanesque-style church reveals such symbols as “Green men” and various devils depicted in the stone work. The stonemasons were still referencing images that the newly converted could understand.

For more on converting the Germans to Christianity and other pagan traditions that are maintained here in Germany, see Richard’s blog Life in Germany.

Summary

The traditions of pagan Germany are still alive in some form in spite of Christianity because the Germanic tribes and their Celtic predecessors have been living  continuously in central Europe for millennia. In many cases, old traditions, including the Perchtentreiben, have been revived, some relatively recently. With the steep decline in church attendance in this country, the old rites and sacred places, however altered, are experiencing a revival of importance.

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Note: It is a very common pagan belief that the ambiguity and uncertainty of the time between the years thins the barriers between worlds and allows the evil spirits to come out – Halloween is based on this very thing. In the Celtic calendar, the new year began on November 1, and the evening before, evil spirits were thought to walk the earth.