walpurgishall: Each year on January 16th in Sardinia a notable kind of masquerade takes place. Stran
walpurgishall: Each year on January 16th in Sardinia a notable kind of masquerade takes place. Strangely enough, but this spectacle is probably the one among all other european masquerades which preserved not only all the attributes of german Frau Perchta - Frau Holle character, but its’ most ancient prototype of the goddess Frygg as well - the spindle, the distaff and the wool. “Sa Filonzana”, as she is called, is always surrounded with the masked peasants shepherding the “Sos Boes” goats, who are the symbols of the fertility and the horned companions to Frygg and the Wild Hunt procession itself. Those “Sos Boes” masks are oftenly marked with the solar symbols similiar to the Hagal rune. All the people who appeal to the sombre “Sa Filonzana” receive her auguries on the spindle. She also bears the scissors sometimes used to cut the thread of fate and thus predicting someones death. Once the evening falls, people burn up the huge fire. During the ritual everyone passes around the purifying flame three times sunwise and thrice against the sun. So the heathen ritual conducted in order to protect it’s participants from the woes begins. It is dedicated to the sacral element of the Universe - the Fire, which is associated with the colour of blood and with the heat of life. The procession happens again on 5th of March, when Spring carivals began to celebrate the departure of Sa Filonzana - Frau Perchta, who is already imagined being pregnant by that time, thus forecasting the fertility, because she is the Earth herself. In nine months from that day, she is ready to give a new birth to Baldur, her son, once again. V. -- source link