Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (24 page)

It is important for the dead to receive guidance by a relative, a wise woman, or a shaman. The deceased should go farther into the world of the ancestors, the underworld, or heaven. He should not cling to his former life, not return as a bad-luck-bringing
Wiedergänger
(walking dead), not scare the humans as a spook, not bring someone else into the grave. The Celts, the Germanic peoples, and others carried the corpse out through a hole that had been broken in the wall of the house. Afterward the hole was filled so that the ghost wouldn’t be able to find its way back in again. Hunters simply left their homes and moved on when someone died. The Germanic peoples and the Slavs bound anyone who died suddenly or violently; they weighed the corpse down with a heavy stone or pierced it with a spear. Shamans and clairvoyant women would have known when anyone came back to the village as a vampire, and they would know different methods—iron nails, juniper smoke, garlic braids, and crucifixes—to make them harmless. They could recognize when a restless dead soul was inside the body of a living one, and whom it wanted to possess. They could also differentiate the walking dead from the friendly dead, who sometimes came, usually during the time of the dead in November (Samhain), in order to warn about the future or to beg for some nourishment—a little light perhaps, or some nuts, apples, or gruel. If their needs were satisfied, they would show their gratitude—the “grateful dead,” as they are called in English—and send unexpected blessings from the other world.

The Dead and Vegetation

After the dead person has left his body, he looks for security, for a new shell, which holds his being together as it gradually dissolves into the microcosm. Often a coffin, a hollowed-out tree trunk, a carved fetish, or a boat is used as a transitional “body.” The person can rest there before he continues down the path of death.

More than anything else, huge ancient trees were considered dwellings for the dead. Many Native Americans, Melanesians, and Siberians bound the dead to the branches of such trees. The Slavs considered entire groves of trees, where the dead dart from tree to tree like forest spirits, to be sacred. To cut down one of these trees would bring the sinner bad luck or drive him to insanity.

“Guarantee that my soul sets down in the trees which I have planted, so that I may refresh myself under my sycamores,” says the Egyptian death prayer carved into a casket lid. The sycamore, a type of fig tree
(Ficus sycomorus),
is the World Treeof the Egyptians and the residence of Hathor, goddess of the heavens, who dispenses the water of life. The Egyptian Copts still believe that the Virgin Mary has sat in every sycamore tree.

The sagas often mention dead people who transformed themselves into trees. We hear of Dryope, who turned into a poplar, of Daphne, who became a laurel, of the daughter of the king of Cyprus, who, pregnant by her own father, fled his rage and through the graciousness of the gods was transformed into a myrrh tree. We hear of the devoted old couple Philemon and Baucis, who were allowed to continue growing next to each other as an oak and a linden after death. And in the Celtic saga the passionate love of Tristan and Isolde first found fulfillment after death when hazel branches and honeysuckle grew over the graves and embraced each other so tightly that they could not be separated by anybody.

Although it is barely perceptible, the knowledge of the connection of the dead with trees lives on in European culture. The cemeteries are like old parks or even forests. Many of the trees growing in the graveyards have been considered trees of the dead for thousands of years. This is especially true of the poisonous yew, which was sacred to the goddess of death throughout Europe and which protected the dead: “With yew no magic can stay!” The juniper, the elder, the “sorrow-heralding cypress” (Horace)
,
the cedar, and the beech (which is sacred to the reaper Saturn) are classic cemetery trees.

Cemeteries, cremation places, groves of the dead, trees of the dead, and coffins have always been considered the residences of and initiation places for “witches” and shamans. Siberian and Indian shamans were initiated among such trees of the dead. Sadhus (wandering holy men) are initiated at midnight on a cremation site. There they “die”; they take off their clothing, their former lives, their social positions, their caste membership, even their names. From then on they clothe themselves in ashes, in “air,” or in the red cloth that echoes the flames of the funeral pyre. Although they are still in their bodies, they are reborn as spiritual beings. They can communicate with other spiritual beings, “fly,” see invisible things, and hear inaudible sounds.

The wooden coffin or sarcophagus (from the Greek
sarko-phagos
, which means “flesh eater”), which we have inherited from the Osiris mysteries of ancient Egypt, was actually a tree. Stone Age hollowed-out trunks in which the dead were laid to rest have been discovered. Like the cradle that surrounds the infant, so does the protective motherly wood enclose the human during this phase of its transition from one form of being to another.

In the Indian Vedas, Yama, the first mortal human, is made into the lord of the dead. He lives in a tree and becomes drunk with the gods on the drink
soma.
The dead, robbed of their bodies, seek refuge in the huge ancient tree. There they find entrance to the realm of Yama. The masculine relatives show the dead soul the way: They fix an unglazed, undecorated clay pitcher on the tree trunk and offer the dead water and unsalted rice balls. After two weeks—half a lunation—the clay pot is broken to show the deceased that it is time to move on. Unhappy dead people—those who don’t want to go any further—develop into evil spooks
(pisachas)
or vampires
(vetatlas).
An iron nail must be pounded into the tree trunk to scare them off.

To the external eye the tree in which the dead souls seek refuge is just one of the many mighty fig trees that grow in every location in India. But to the inner eye this tree reveals itself as the World Tree. It is the shamanic tree, the ladder to the heavens, the cosmic spinal column that connects the highest heavens and the depths of the underworld. It is the path on which the witch sits and listens and sometimes laughs her “cosmic laugh.”

On every branch of the tree is a universe. Depending on their karma, the dead spend a longer time in one or another universe. Some go to the heaven of Shiva while others go to Vishnu; others go to the terrifying Rakshasas. The Germanic heroes go to Valhalla, where they drink mead with Odin; the gracious go to Freya’s Folkvang; the seafarers and the drunks go to Ran, the god of the sea. But most go to the underworld realm of Hel or Frau Holle. Seven or nine such spheres are known by most peoples. The Upanishads mention 333,000,000 divine and demonic realms—they are as numerous as the leaves of the world tree.

The Dead As Dispensers of Fertility

The moon is the first branch of the cosmic tree where a dead spirit rests for a while. This eternally increasing and decreasing planet is brought into connection with the dead and the vegetation gods throughout the world. The syndic moon, the period from full moon to full moon, represents a day and night of the
pitri,
the ancestors, according to the Indian worldview. The dark phase of the new moon is the night when the pitri sleep. The bright half of the full moon is the day in which they are busy working. The pitri’s work brings the earth fertility and stimulates the plants to grow. Gardeners know that seeds germinate and the plants grow faster around the time of the full moon.
²
Because the deceased work from the sphere of the moon on the flourishing of the fields, the herds, and the humans, it is imperative to look after the pitri, to feed them, and to honor them with our thoughts.

The Chinese know about this mystery. The round grave mounds of the ancestors still stand in the middle of the fields and receive the respect they are due—despite the scientific materialism demanded by the Communist Party. In the spring the dwellings of the deceased are meticulously cleaned; in the fall the ancestors are fed elaborate meals. They receive blankets (small pieces of fabric and paper), rice wine, and large bundles of “hell money,” which is burned next to the graves. Only then will the Shen spirit bless the fields with a bountiful harvest.

Similar examples are found in Africa. There the fields will become barren and the living will have bouts of bad luck if the Manen are not properly fed and honored.

The Romans sacrificed food, wine, milk, and blood to the dead in February; in May other spirits of the dead, the Lemurs, are celebrated. The Lemurs, who descend to earth in the rays of the full moon, are also connected to the growth of the plants.