Bear Read online

  CONTENTS

  Titlepage

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Bear Shamans and Plant Healers Understanding the Nature of Animals

  Animal Allies

  The Plant Healers’ Teacher

  The Bear Spirit Posture

  Chapter 2: Bear Caves and Neanderthals An Enigmatic Woman

  Stone Age Hunters and Bear Shamans

  Chapter 3: Bear Ancestors Osborn (Asbjørn), the Divine Bear

  Bear Children

  Golden Bears

  Chapter 4: Forest Maidens and Feral Mountain People Glutton and Gourmet

  Bear Love and Matriarchy

  Chapter 5: Meeting up with Maheonhovan A Bear Is Not a Tail-Tucking Dog

  Shining Light in the Bear’s Soul

  Chapter 6: Grandmothers’ Stories

  Chapter 7: The Cave, the Bear, and the Woman The Strength of Those Raised on Bear’s Milk

  A Bear-Like Mother Hulda, or Mother Goose

  Chapter 8: The Vital Spirit of the Vegetation Bloody Sacrifices

  “Straw-Bear” and “Pea-Bear”

  Chapter 9: The Bear King of the Celts The Wheel with Eight Spokes

  The Festival of Light

  May Joy and August Fires

  Modraniht (Mother’s Night)

  Chapter 10: The Guardian of the Treasures The Croesus of the Animal Realm

  Krishna Humbles the Bear King

  Zalmoxis and Immortality

  Master of Fire

  Chapter 11: Berserkers and Guardians of the Threshold

  Chapter 12: The Heavenly Trail of Ursa Major The Power That Moves the Heavens

  The Guest from the Twelfth Heaven

  The Forbidden Name

  Artemis’s Children

  The Once and Future King

  Chapter 13: The Warrior Bear Berserkers and Ulfhedinn

  Fylgia, the Follower Spirit

  The War of the Animals

  The Chieftain of the Animals

  Chapter 14: Bear Saints and Devils The Messenger of the Age of Pisces

  The Bear as a Porter and Plowman

  The Bear Goddess in Nun’s Attire

  Forest Demons and Malicious Wild Animals

  Brother Klaus’s Bear of Light

  Chapter 15: Bear Plants, Bear Medicine Plants That Induce Sleep

  A Master of Botany

  Bear’s Garlic, Bear Leek, or Ramsons

  Clubmoss

  Bearberry

  Burdock

  Bear’s Milk, Licorice, and Hogweed

  Chapter 16: Bear Fat and Bear Gall The Bear’s Charisma

  The Cure-All

  Bear Fat

  Amber

  Chapter 17: Rituals of Departure: Reconciliation with the Bear Spirit

  Chapter 18: Places of Bear Power Smokey Bear and Yellowstone

  Salmon Gourmets on the McNeil River

  A Guest from Heaven

  Visiting the King of the Forest

  Chapter 19: Bear-opolis—Berne (City of Bears), Switzerland Bears Who Have Become Human

  Duke Berchtold and Noble Lady Mechthildis

  The Patron Saint

  Chapter 20: Teddy Bear and Winnie-the-Pooh The Dumb Bear

  The President and the First Teddy Bear

  The Wise Bear of Little Understanding

  Chapter 21: Encyclopedia of Famous Bears Aloysius

  Baloo

  Barnaby Bear (Rasmus Klump)

  Bart

  Ben (Bozo)

  The Berliner Bear

  The Bernese Bear

  Care Bears

  Dancing Bears

  Ewoks

  Fozzie Bear

  Gentle Ben

  Goldilocks and the Three Bears

  Gummy Bears

  Paddington Bear

  The Russian Bear

  Smokey Bear

  Winnie-the-Pooh

  Yogi Bear

  Afterword

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  Bear

  Myth, Animal, Icon

  Wolf D. Storl

  Copyright © 2018 by Wolf D. Storl. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

  Published by

  North Atlantic Books

  Berkeley, California

  Cover design by Jasmine Hromjak

  Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

  Printed in the United States of America

  Originally published as Der Bar by AT Verlag. Translated from the original German by Christine Storl.

  Bear: Myth, Animal, Icon is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

  North Atlantic Books’ publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available from the publisher upon request.

  ISBN: 9781623171636 (print) | ISBN: 9781623171643 (ebook)

  North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We partner with FSC-certified printers using soy-based inks and print on recycled paper whenever possible.

  Poppies are blooming in the fields,

  mountains are filled with song;

  the blossom of our hearts,

  dear bear, come and visit!

  Russian Folk Song

  Introduction

  The more we get engrossed in time and hurry along with it, the farther away it takes us from the everlasting. This also applies as far as animals are concerned; never have we known more and (at the same time) less about them, never more regarding their anatomy and behavior, and never less regarding their divine nature, their pristine radiance of the creation. Fairy tales and myths reveal them to be miraculous and ancient; cults understand them to be divine beings.

  Ernst Juenger, author’s translation from Hund und Katz, 1974

  I lived in bear country, in the Rocky Mountains and on the northwestern Pacific Coast, for about five years at various times, where bears, especially black bears, are still very present. In 1963, I spent about six months in the wilderness in Yellowstone where I met up with Bruin1 on a daily basis. The kitchen smells attracted bears; they sniffed curiously around doorframes and garbage cans. I met up with them on secluded hiking paths and always yielded them the right of way while admiring them from a respectful distance. While dozing near a campfire at night, I occasionally heard one sniffing and grumbling out in the darkness. I saw them with playful little bears splashing in the lake, swimming or fishing, saw them smacking their lips with pleasure in the berry bushes, saw their blue droppings full of digested blueberries and their paw tracks here and there on the muddy banks of streams. If one spends enough time in the wilderness, one begins to see bears as most Native Americans or other peoples who live close to nature in bear country do—as magical beings, as “humans” in animal shape, possibly even as a teacher who can appear in dreams and somehow remind us of our own primeval, innocent, wild nature. It goes without saying that, in this way, one gets to know bears quite differently than in biology classes, at the zoo, or during a safari vacation.

  Now I live near the Alps in southern Germany,
near Switzerland. Here, there are beautiful mountains, lakes, and forests. It is wonderful to hike here, but something is missing, something that actually belongs to the country—the howling of wolves that sends a chill up the spine on a full moon night, circling vultures above a dead wild animal, and the occasional bear ambling along the forest path. In our over-civilized world, too little takes our breath away, stirs up our archaic Neanderthal soul, or is able to awaken our awe for the creation. The virtual images of the ever-present entertainment industry can never replace genuine nature or wilderness without which our souls become impoverished. Everything is safe—too safe! Everything is controlled, scientifically documented, and schoolmasterly explained. Even the mountains and forests are becoming increasingly tamed. The old Squamish Chief See Yahtlh (a.k.a. Seattle) was right when he warned the white intruders: “What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man” (Seattle 1854).

  Now let us ponder our brother and sister bear who have accompanied us along our pathway since the Stone Age, who send dreams and inspirations to medicine people and shamans, who give berserkers strength and courage, and who communicate knowledge to healers. I write as an anthropologist and touch upon not only the biological and ecological aspects of the bear’s being but also, and primarily, the ethnological and mythological ones. However, my concern is not simply one of information. I want to focus the bear into our consciousness so that we can dream him back into our hearts. And as far as Western Europe is concerned, we must even dream him back into existence.

  Chapter 1

  Bear Shamans and Plant Healers

  The souls! They are not in the bodies. The bodies are in the souls!

  Christian Siry, Die Muschel und die Feder

  We have almost forgotten: animals are our helpers and companions. All too often we see them only in a utilitarian way. Cats are useful because they hunt mice, dogs protect property, cows produce milk, and horses are here for us to ride. But when we see animals with the eyes of the heart, we realize that their value cannot be expressed in merely economic and utilitarian terms. While studies have shown that children who grow up with pets are psychologically more well-balanced and that old people also fare better, especially if they are alone, with even just a goldfish or a bird, psychological well-being is not the aspect I want to emphasize. My area of interest goes into a much wider perspective, into the archetype of the animals, and, in this particular case, the mythological bear archetype.

  Animals have very subtle senses and often sense what is approaching the people, or even other animals, they live with long before the people themselves become aware of something. It seems they can see into energetic, astral dimensions that are invisible to us. I believe that they even sometimes deflect the karmic suffering, or a similar serious illness meant for their owner, by taking it on themselves, even to the point of dying from it. Animal allies can help us understand and comply with our own fates better by communicating to us telepathically. Pets can do this, but wild animals are even more powerful because they haven’t been through the process of domestication. Some of us have close contact with wild animals and may have the opportunity to experience the phenomenon with deer, wild rabbits, coyotes, birds, snakes, and even tiny animals such as ants and bugs. For people who go far enough into the wilderness, contact with mountain lions, big game, and bears is possible.

  In our schools, we do not learn about this connection to animal souls. Our attention is focused on other “more important” things, on lifeless mechanisms and abstract data, which makes it possible for us to function in “the system.” But the soul needs something else in order to be happy. Some of us are lucky enough to learn in childhood from relatives or friends how to connect with animals. But even beginner adults can connect with animals simply by opening their souls more when out in nature. Animal spirits tend to appear when we are open to them. Maybe a certain kind of animal has always interested you, or someone in your family knows about an animal that your ancestors were connected to or has always had a special friendship with your family.

  Understanding the Nature of Animals

  Animals are very much closer to our souls than inanimate and completely mute plants or rocks are. They are embodied souls, just like we are. Just like us, they live within a wide realm of likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure. I believe that plants and minerals also actually possess something like a sentient soul and a wise spirit—but these are not directly connected to their physical bodies, as is the case with animated, breathing human beings and animals. Plant and mineral “souls” and “spirits” are definitely much more distant; they exist far beyond their physical bodies, effused in macrocosmic nature. For this reason, logic and material rationality cannot help us behold “soul” and “spirit”—and that is why science, which focuses only on what is logical and can be measured and weighed, cannot show us this aspect of our existence. But shamans have the ability to step outside of ordinary daily consciousness. A strong shaman, who may even have a bear as a totem, can also communicate with these even more remote kinds of spirits.

  Animals are living beings. Every animal breathes. Its soul flows along with the rhythm of each breath. Feelings, moods, and emotions are closely connected to the rhythm of breathing in and out. The old English word deor, related to our word “deer,” comes from Indo-Germanic dheusóm (Old English deor, Dutch dier, Swedish djor) and means “breathing, animated being.” The English word animal, which is from Latin animal, animalis, is related to the concept anima, animus (soul, breath, wind, spirit, living being). When an animal or a human being stops breathing, the anima, or soul, leaves the body and goes back to another dimension; the warmth of life disperses, and the body stiffens and begins to dissolve into its material components.

  As any shaman or anyone who knows animals will tell us, animal souls are pure and cannot be false like human souls can be. No abstract thoughts, no “creative intellect,” no “cultural constructs of reality,” and no lies split animals from their direct natural environment. Animals are directly and undividedly involved in their environment and surroundings. Smells, sounds, and moods of the environment; sun and moon rhythms; and the seasons determine their activities. They are very much unlike humans who have complicated and abstract symbol systems, who communicate with words, and whose thoughts are linked to a complex and huge physical brain. Nature itself “thinks” for animals. They partake in the orderly intelligence of the macrocosmic spirit.

  Seen in this light, it is not really all that clear that the cerebral-cognitive abilities of animals are less developed or less evolved than those of humans. An animal’s spirit is not an individually incarnated one; rather, it is part of a “group spirit”—as most indigenous peoples describe it—or part of the spirit of the “lord of the animals” or “in the otherworld,” with the “mother of the animals” in a cave, inside a mountain, or “on green pastures in the otherworld.” As anthropologists hear from native peoples, this “group spirit” is a spiritual being, a deity, a deva. It is that which guides the wild geese to the sunny south in late fall, guides the birds as to how to build their nests, warns the animals about tidal waves or earthquakes, and lets them know which plants are edible, which are healing, and which are poisonous. In modern times, this is called “instinct,” a word that was introduced into science in the seventeenth century and simply means “drive” (from Latin instinguere = to prod on, to drive on as a shepherd drives sheep with a stick). But what is it that drives the behavior of the animals? Today, we believe we know: “genetic programming” guides hereditary, stereotypical behavior that has not been learned and can barely be changed by learning processes. Exogenous forces (warmth, light, smells, etc.) trigger endogenous, genetically fixed reactions—this is the present materialistic-positivistic doctrine based on analyses and measurements in laboratories.

  Native peoples are not known to have laboratories occupied by busy scientists weari
ng white jackets, nor have they developed an exclusively rationalistic method to achieve knowledge. Their knowledge of animals is based on living near the wild feathered or furry animals of their surroundings. These human-animal communities stretch over many generations. Humans and animals know each other. They have always had relations with each other—positive and negative—and live in a symbiosis. Native peoples know every sound in their wild natural surroundings. They can also read the finest traces of other beings exactly, such as when leaves have been nibbled on, fresh tracks have been made on moist ground, fur has been snagged by bushes, or feathers are found in unusual places. They have observed animals closely and intensively and over many generations.

  But they not only observe externally; they also go beyond the ordinary senses. Dreams and visions as well as shamanic techniques such as deep meditation, long fasts and vigils, trances, dances and drumming for some tribes, and mind-altering plants for some others connect them to the specific animal spirit, with the lord, or the mother, of the animals. They dress in the fur of the animal of a bison, an elk, or a bear, move and dance the way the animal moves, and sing age-old songs about that animal until they are in unison with it and the border between human and animal disappears. Their soul flies then as a raven, owl, or eagle, swims like a dolphin, lopes as a wolf with the pack through the tundra or prairie, or moves as an elk through the forests. Unlike scientists, who only observe animals externally and measure their external reactions, they experience the animals, so to say, from the inside.1