Steve Watson

Remnants of the Great Bear Cult in Punxsutawney

I’ve just read a brief article about Punxsutawney Phil by Stephanie Pappas at the LiveScience site. She mentions that:

relying on rodents as forecasters may date back to the early days of Christianity in Europe, when clear skies on Candlemas Day (Feb. 2) were said to herald cold weather ahead. In Germany, the tradition morphed into a myth that if the sun came out on Candlemas, a hedgehog would cast its shadow, predicting snow all the way into May. When German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, they transferred the tradition onto local fauna, replacing hedgehogs with groundhogs.

Actually, I have heard that the tradition goes back considerably further than indicated there. Rhys Carpenter in his (1958) book on ‘Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics’ (pp. 152-5) traces the custom to the ancient Bear cult of Europe, via the myth of Salmoxis, which read great significance into the resurrection of that hibernating animal from his long Winter sleep. All trace of the human sacrifice that was originally involved has happily disappeared, and the shamanic pretensions of travel to the underworld with the bear spirit have gone with it, but some small remnants of the cult remain.

In Silesia, Hungary, and Carinthia the feast of Candlemas [Feb. 2 – six weeks from the Winter solstice] is still bear’s-day in popular observance; and on that precise day (it is maintained) the hibernating bear emerges to see whether or not he casts a shadow: if he sees his shadow he must retire again for six more weeks of winter.

…

[I]f we will think back all the way to the Arcadian bear cult on Mount Lykaion and remember that in that hallowed precinct the bear lost his shadow, because the shadow is the soul and the living being which descends into the underworld of death must leave its soul down there … we shall understand that the bear emerging from his deathlike winter sleep, having lain as one dead, must have left his shadow behind him. If he has not done so, if an accusing shadow moves besides him in the wan springtime sunlight, he has not truly been among the dead and he must go back and properly sleep his winter sleep of the full six weeks before he can finally emerge again to announce the rebirth of the world and the imminence of the springtide.

The adherents of the bear cult transferred their attention to other animals when bears became scarce. In Germany the humble badger took the honours, and when Germans moved to America they gave the part to the friendly little Groundhog – who inspires no awe or terror of the otherworld.