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Following Bulgarian tradition by making the Sign of the Cross over my liquor, so that the Devil doesn't hitch a ride inside me via my drink.

#silly #religious folklore #folklore #Christianity #Orthodox Christianity #Sign of the Cross #alcohol #demon #devil #alcoholism

One thing that may help you understand a thing about “religious folklore”

One thing people seem to have trouble understanding when it comes to European folklore and legends is its link to the Christian religion, and the difference between what I would call the Christian religion and Christian folklore.

When Christianity came into the numerous countrysides and other superstitious places of Europe, as you all know, it tried to blend in, and to erase the local folklore and legends in a way or another. Most people however just know of the “eradication” side. Aka : claim fairies don’t exist. Say that elves and sprites are in fact demons disguised. Take the local gods and claim that they are demons or the devil. Erase every local cult centered around trees, rocks and springs. But people know less that the Church and its believers also worked the other way. Yes, they erased and eradicated a lot of folklore, but they also assimilated a lot of it and shaped it in their own ways.

For example, legends that originally talked about how a fairy blessed a certain person or place became the Virgin Mary performing a miracle. Where people used to say “This bridge or this castle was built in one night by the fair folk”, the Church started to say “It was built in one night, yes, but by the Devil and his demons, and in the end he was beaten by God and his angels and/or a good Christian”. The huldra, from elvish creature coming from who knows where, suddenly became children of Eve cursed by God. Basically, they remade everything by self-inserting their own characters into all of the folk tales.

That’s why usually, in cities, you have the Christian religion, with its canon, its studied texts, its teachings and analysis and debates, and, usually in countryside, you have a Christian folklore, with a lot of weird tales. A folklore in which the Devil has an habit of building churches. A folklore in which the Virgin Mary is quite an active spirit and often kicks the asses of demons. A folklore in which God hangs out with Saint Peter on Earth and gets drunk.

This is why, in France particularly (I honestly don’t know much for the other European countries) you have a discrepancy between religion canon and religious folklore. But the two managed to live perfectly side by side for centuries.

And this religious folklore goes on even today in France.

Les Contes de la Rue Broca, which I’m making posts about, is a perfect continuation of this religious folklore.

If you want another good example of what I consider modern religious folklore: check out “Le Tout Nouveau Testament”, (The Brand New Testament), a 2014 movie in which God is an abusive husband and father (because in there is both God and the Devil-sort-of), and has a daughter that decides to go in the world to help people by making a Brand New Testament (since her older brother, Jesus, made the New Testament). It is quite a funny film, not that religious, and not at all blasphemous,

In fact, to make it more clearer to American people: the weird Christian tales you can hear in France or other part of Europe are often just like how Vodou and Christianity mixed themselves ; or how in Mexico you end up with Santa Muerte (San La Muerte in Paraguay).

Anyway, sorry for the messiness of this post, but it is late here, and I just wanted to share some thoughts and explanations about why we French people have a lot of weird tales about God and the Virgin Mary and angels living in cathedrals.

PS: The story of God getting drunk is really funny. It was like a proto-Adventures of God.

#religious folklore #christian mythology #french stuff #french tales #adventures of god #folklore #virgin mary #fairies #rue broca #le tout nouveau testament

Bread baked on Good Friday or Christmas Day was once generally supposed to have magical and healing virtues. If such a loaf was kept in the house during the following year, it protected the house itself from fire, and the living therein from accident and misfortune. If it was put in the stable or granary, or thrust into a heap of corn, it kept away rats, mice, and weevils. Probably few people believe in these protective powers, but there are still some who consider a Good Friday or Christmas loaf to be a good remedy for dysentery, diarrhoea, and kindred ills. [...] Such bread is allowed to become dry and hard, and then, when the need arises, it is crumbled into powder, and given to the patient in hot water.

The Encyclopedia of Superstitions, page 66

#Christianity #food #folklore #religious folklore #Good Friday #Christmas

[I]n 2021, just before St. Patrick's Day, a good friend of mine from Ireland sent me an article from the secular press over in Ireland that spoke about Saint Patrick in art. This particular article focused in on Patrick in stained glass, and looked at two windows; one of them was there in Ireland… the other one was right where I was sitting in St. Patrick's in Columbus [Ohio], where I would be that Saint Patrick's Day. The story behind that window tells the legend of Saint Patrick baptizing the king of Cashel. There you see Saint Patrick in all of his episcopal regalia, and you see the king on one knee bowing down reverently as Patrick was pouring water. If you look carefully, you see that the king is grimacing in pain. If you look a little bit more carefully, you see that the crozier that Saint Patrick held —and, in those days, croziers were realistically… [they] reflected a shepherd's staff (complete with the spike on the bottom)— Saint Patrick had it planted firmly… on the king's feet. The story goes that, when all was said and done, Patrick learned what happened, and he was mortified; he said to the king, "Why… why didn't you say something?" And the king just looked up and said, "I thought it was part of the ceremony! After all, didn't you tell us that baptism conforms us to Jesus Christ, Crucified and Risen?"

Bishop Robert Brennan of Brooklyn Queens, in his 2023 Chrism Mass homily.

An alternative version of the legend has King Oengus reply: "Since Christ shed all His Blood and gave His life to save my soul, it is fitting I should shed a little of my blood for Him and for eternal life."

#Christianity #Catholicism #stained glass #Saint Patrick #saints #baptism #Precious Blood #Oengus mac Nad Froich #folklore #religious folklore #Robert Brennan #Saint Patrick's Day

is there a patron saint of weather??

Yes! Several, in fact.

Saint Dimitar is associated with winter and frost, but I think that has more to do with the dating of his feast day than any miraculous winter hijinks.

But speaking of miraculous winter hijinks, Our Lady Queen of Snows is a title for the Virgin Mary, given to her after she caused a snowfall in the middle of August in order to designate the location of a chapel she wanted built in her honor. Growing up, my mother taught us the following prayer for when we were really hoping for a snowday: "Our Lady, Queen of Snows, dump on us!"

Saint Swithin's Day has a legend associated with rain; if it rains on his feast day (July 15th, so coming up), it's supposed to be followed by a very wet 40 days. If it's dry on the other hand, well, you get the idea.

Saint Méard is another rain-saint, but in this case he's specifically supposed to protect you against the rain. His legend says that he was protected from a particularly nasty rain storm by an eagle.

Saint Anne, the Mother of Mary, is associated with storms, too. Actually, there's a rather famous case of a man who asked for Anne's intercession when caught in a bad storm, promising to become a monk if he survived. That man was Martin Luther.

I'm sure there are a ton of others; there's one saint associated with wind, he is supposed to have saved a city from a fleet of ships, but I can't remember his name. But I hope this helps as a start!

#asks #Catholicism #Christianity #Orthodox Christianity #Virgin Mary #Our Lady Queen of Snows #prayers #aspirations #Swithin of Winchester #Meard of Noyons #Anne Mother of Mary #Dimitar Basarbovski #snow #weather #rain #religious folklore #Martin Luther

My dear friend,

Do you have any interesting Adam and Eve legends? I'm not talking about the apocryphal gospels in particular, because I know a little about them.

Hey there! Not sure when you sent this, hopefully you weren't waiting for too long. Ah, there's a lot of folklore that could be looked at.

For example, there's a theme in some Islamic and Jewish folklore that Adam and Eve actually separated for a length of time after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. This may have been a conscious choice on their part, or they may have been separated during their expulsion. In some versions, Eve is already pregnant with Cain at this time, and it is Eve's wails while giving birth that draws Adam back to her. In other versions, Eve may not yet be pregnant. In some accountings, the demon Lilith impregnates herself from Adam's wet dreams and produces a race of demons.

There's a story where Adam created by dust that angels had collected from all corners of the world, so that his creation is in some sense an epitome of all Creation. (The fact that he is created from dust from all over the world is also an etiological explanation for why there are so many different skin colors among humans).

There is a legend that Adam was buried under Golgotha; Christ's Precious Blood spilled onto and soaked into the ground where he was buried. You can see this motif in some Crucifixion icons that depict a human skull (Adam's skull) under the Cross.

The number of children that Adam and Eve have vary wildly by source; some Irish sources suggest 100 children, 50 of each sex; we have a surviving monks' trivia game that says that Adam and Eve had 63 children, 33 boys and 30 girls. The lowest number I know is 14 children total. These are all postlapsarian children, by the way; some theologians speculated that Adam and Eve may have had sinless children in the Garden of Eden, beings we now know as faeries.

Speaking of children, one Islamic tradition says that Eve always gave birth to twins; a boy and a girl, a future husband and wife. According to this story, Cain killed Abel because Cain wanted to marry Abel's twin sister and not his own.

More children stories! In one tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm, Adam and Eve had many, many children. When God came to bless them with vocations, Eve was ashamed at the ugliness of some of them, so she hid them away while presenting the beautiful ones. When she saw God bless them with destinies like becoming scholars, knights, and princes, she called the ugly ones out. By that point, all the cool vocations were handed out, so they got destinies like becoming peasants, tanners, and sailors. And that's why.... us commonfolk are ugly???

At least some Rabbinic sources attribute Psalm 92 to Adam and the angels.

Oh! And Adam and Eve may have brought plants from the Garden of Eden to our fallen world; it may be a particular tree in Kashmir, clover, or maybe wheat.