Re: [tied] Yggdrasil

on 12/7/01 3:32 PM, Max Dashu at maxdashu@... wrote:

>> Can you give examples of the connection between "riding on the backs of
>> animals", shamanism and Norse mythology. Of course, there's Sleipnir
>> and even Pegasus, but regular people ride animals too.
>
> Not horses with eight legs though!
> Sleipnir has a counterpart in Buryat legend. A woman shaman calls an
> eight-legged foal born to one of her mares "my little horse on which
> I used to ride like a shamaness." [in Eliade, Shamanism]
>
> Freyja rides on a pig (cf Baba Yaga in Russia), and of course the
> myrkri(dh)a rides on a wolf; the dakinis in Tibet fly on various
> magical mounts from tigers to more prosaic mules -- but flying ones.
>
> Some Siberian shamans dance with a horse-headed stick representing
> their magical steed. Add to the mix the Yakut shaman saying that "the
> drum is our horse." There's a connection, too, between the World Tree
> and these shamanic mounts in some Siberian traditions which have the
> latter tethered to the Tree.
>
> Max
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

There is an Old English charm against dwarves that goes like this:
Her com in gangan in spiderwiht,
haefde him his haman on handa, cwae at u his haencgest waere,
legde e his teage an sweoran. Ongunnan him of aem lande lian;
sona swa hy of aem lande coman, a ongunnan him a liu colian.

Here came walking in, in here, a spider-creature--
He had his coat in his hand, said that you were his horse,
laid his reins on your neck. They began to travel away from the land;
Once they came from the land, then the limbs began to feel cold.

I have had to use eth for both eth and thorn, ae for the ligature.
This certainly looks like shamanism, where the "victim" or patient (?)
becomes the horse and feels cold (because of a drug?) and has the sensation
of traveling to another land. The spider-creature must be the dwarf.