Oddities - The Eaten Heart Legend

         Do you remember the ancient Greek myth according to which Dionysus was dismembered and pieces of his body boiled in a cauldron and then pierced with spits and roasted?  Those who did such an abominable thing were the Titans. Luckily, he was later reborn from the one organ they didn’t consume, his heart.

Well today I bring you a story that was told over and over again-  the legend of the Eaten Heart.  Scholars collected about 24 distinct versions of this story. For many years, it was thought that this story came from Europe. Most of the versions came from European literary traditions in England, Germany, France, and Italy. There was also one Swedish version. 
In the 1880s, a scholar found a version of the story that included all the key elements in the Punjab district of India, and everyone studying this story had to scramble to account for that. Was the Indian version derivative of the European versions, or vice versa? No one place could definitely lay claim to this story—it’s just a classic.

Some even go as far as to consider it as an aside in the story of Tristan and Iseult. It happened during the Middle Ages, in Europe. In the most basic version of this story, a married woman takes a lover, and her husband finds out. When the lover dies or is killed, the husband takes possession of his heart, cooks it, and feeds it to his wife, who dies shortly after.

 Vessel in the form of a heart held by a hand; 16th century Wellcome;Wkimedia

There are two main variations, dealing with how the lover dies. In one version, the husband tracks down the lover and kills him. In the second, the lover dies some other way, usually when he goes off to the Crusades. He wants his heart removed and sent back to his lady love, (this was a popular gesture at the time), but while the heart is en route, the husband intercepts it. No matter what, the wife eats the heart. That’s a key bit. She almost always dies after that, usually by throwing herself out the window or refusing to eat, sometimes both. Occasionally she dies of grief. When she survives, which is rarely, she ends up in a convent. Although she’s always in love with the dead man, in some versions of the story, her love is innocent and never consummated. More often, though, she’s an unrepentant adulteress.

Besides being a thrilling tale about a woman or women being tricked into cannibalism, the legend of the eaten heart is a story about power. Who wins in the end, the husband or the wife? Different versions have different answers to that question: sometimes the husband is explicitly punished for his transgressive act by a vengeful relative of his wife or by being exiled from his home.

Mysterious Romania (VIII) Martisor

I  wrote about Martisor, a lovely  Romanian spring tradition, in two 2013 and 2014 posts. Mărțișor, marț and mărțiguș are all names for the red and white string from which a small decoration is tied, and which is offered on the 1st day of March. 
Giving this talisman to people is an old custom, and it is believed that the one who wears the red and white string will be happy and healthy for the year to come.  Today I will tell you the legend of  Martisor and some of the customs linked to it in various areas of Romania.

 Once upon a time, the Sun came down to Earth. The Sun reached a village where many young people were dancing a hora (traditional dance). To be able to enjoy the fun, the Sun turned into a pretty young maiden  and joined the hora. A dragon kidnapped the young woman and closed her  in a cave. The whole world was devastated. The birds no longer sang, river no longer flew to the sea, mankind was threatened by famine. Nobody dared fight with the dragon. At last, a young man decided to try his luck and save the Sun. Several men  gave him their powers to make him invincible. His journey lasted for three seasons: summer, autumn and winter.

The brave young man found the dragon and they fought for days on end. Weakened and wounded, he managed to defeat the dragon and release the sun. This rose  high above on the sky, and all the world rejoiced. Unfortunately the valiant young man died. The blood oozed from his wounds on the snow covering the earth. And while life ebbed away from his body,  white snowdrops,  flowers heralding spring, appeared.

 Ever since that day, young men offer the girls they love,  either two tassels, one white, the other red, or a white and red thread.  Red means love for everything that is beautiful in our life, reminding us of the brave young man’s blood, white symbolizes health and purity, reminding  us of snowdrops, the first spring flowers that appeared at his death.  

The white and read thread – Martisor – is put around the wrist of small children to protect them from bad spells and bring them luck.  In some areas, children wear the thread around their neck for twelve days and then tie it to a  young tree branch.  If  that year the tree goes well,  it means that the child will go well in life  too.

In Moldova and a large part of Romania’s villages there’s the belief that hanging the Martisor thread on a tree branch will bring wealth and health  into people's homes. There's also the belief  that if someone  thinks of a wish while hanging the red-white thread on a branch, the wish will come true. A funny thing in Moldova is that girls and women offer martisoare to boys and men, while in the rest of Romania there's the belief that if a man receives a Martisor he will cry that year. 

  In Transylvania, Martisor is hung on doors, windows and horns of farming animals as this will frighten  evil spirits.

                Nowadays, on March 1, Romanians buy silky red-white threads tied into a bow to which a small trinket is attached and offer them to the (female) family members, friends and colleagues to show friendship, respect or admiration.

  What a pity other people don't borrow this tradition from us, the same we did with Valentine Day or Halloween.

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Romanian Valentine Day

The Romanian equivalent of Valentine Day is called Dragobete. It dates back to Dacian times and is celebrated on February 24. Dragobete is the equivalent of Cupid, love’s god in Roman mythology, and Eros in Greek mythology.

Dragobete,  Youth God in Romanian Pantheon, nicknamed Spring Head, is celebrated, depending on the ethnographic area, on one of the days at the end of February or beginning of March. The legend claims that Dragobete is Dochia’s son. He stands for a positive element, in opposition to Dochia who is the bad mother of the earth, the embodiment of the old year, of winter, according to Geto-Dacian mythology. Dochia is represented as an old woman wearing nine sheepskins that she sheds along the road as she leaves the country.

It is around Dragobete time that the birds begin to build their nests and mate. Dragobete customs vary from region to region.  Considered locally the first day of spring, it is the moment when boys and girls pick snowdrops or other early spring plants for the person they are courting, and sing together. The girls keep the flowers until Sanziene day when they throw the flowers in a river.

As a rule, young people, girls and boys, meet at a house and spend the day together singing, eating and drinking, having a good time. Then they go to the nearby forest and make a hora, (traditional dance).

On Dragobete morning the girls and young women gather snow, melt it and use the water to wash their hair. They say their hair and complexion will be pretty and liked by men all year long.

Those who take part in Dragobete customs are supposed to be protected from illness, especially fevers, for the rest of the year. It is a common belief in some parts of Romania that, during this celebration, if you step over your partner's foot, you will have the dominant role in your relationship.

Dragobete festivities, once waited anxiously by young people living especially in Bucovina county, are almost forgotten. Only elderly people speak about them, trying to rekindle their flame in the heart of the young generations. I fear this  is unlikely to happen as  Saint Valentine Day, that has no connection to Romanian spirituality, is a strong competitor. And a good advertiser for all kind of trades.  All Dragobete rituals are little by little lost and replaced by the more glittering and louder ones of Valentine Day. No matter how beautiful our traditions may be, the interculturalism is leaving its print on the Romanian customs. 
Anyway, for those who still celebrate it, I wish a Happy Dragobete Day!

Mysterious Romania (IV) Bermuda Triangle's Sibling

Hoia-Baciu forest a Romanian Bermuda Triangle?

I will continue my introducing to you places surrounded by mystery, legends and controversy in Romania.

Hoia-Baciu forest is to be found on the same list with other strange places of the world like: Mojave Desert, La Spezia-Arenzano in Italy, Hessdalen Valley in Norway or Kailasa Mountain in Tibet. Prestigious publications such as Travel & Leisure magazine or BBC have included the forest here among the most interesting forest haunted areas on the planet.  Close to Cluj town, just a three kilometers trip, you will enter the Hoia-Baciu forest. A mysterious and  wonderful place, where  you can’t say  the difference between reality and paranormal. In fact, nobody really knows if this is a haunted location, or a UFO location. The forest was named after a shepherd that disappeared in the area with two hundred sheep.
By the way, do you know what does the name mean? Of course you can't know. Hoia is in fact a regional pronouncing of the name Horia. Baciu means in dialect of the area shepherd. So the name  Hoia-Baciu means Shepherd Horia. The one who disappeared with his sheep in the forest.
 What witnesses say
 What strikes tourists at first is the odd shape of the trees. You’ll find nowhere else in the world so many crooked, unnaturally bent trees. There are places where six to eight trees come out from the same root. Their crowns, instead of raising to the sky, are bent as if in silent prayer, to the ground. 

People have always been fascinated by this place. In old times, peasants said they knew about the strange powers of the forest and would avoid  going there. They believed that those who visited the site would never return. They even avoided mentioning the forest as they thought it was cursed,a dwelling place of the Devil himself. It is believed that the souls of the peasants murdered here, their ghosts, are trapped within the woods.
Even nowadays, those who ventured into the forest returned deeply shaken and complained of physical harm, including rashes, nausea, vomiting, migraines, burns, scratches, anxiety, and other unusual bodily sensations, as well as a feeling of being watched. Scientists would describe these as the symptoms of radiation poisoning. But, centuries back, in the fourteen hundreds, people were reporting those same symptoms, so “secret government bases"are ruled out. There were others who entered the forest and suddenly remembered all of their past experiences, but then forgot the memories after leaving the area.

 First to unravel the mystery

The biologist Alexandru Sift started researching the forest in the fifties and lifted a tiny corner of the mystery veil. Sift performed many scientific trips into the forest and, soon, he became aware of “shadows” watching him from behind the crooked trees. His investigations were continued in the seventies by several research teams or even by solitary researchers. 

In 1968 international press agencies  sent home a famous photograph of a saucer-like object over the Hoia-Baciu Forest. The photo was captured by a military technician named Emil Barnea.  International experts, over the years, have classified it as “the clearest images of a UFO photographed in Romania and undoubtedly one of the best images of any UFO photographed ever in the world. ” It seems this is the moment the international career of the forest began. The area was a hotbed for UFO sighting and unexplained lights. There are many rumors and reports about contact with entities outside our known world, occurring here every year.
Science logic annihilated

Research institutes from Europe and USA received reports on Hoia-Baciu forest that has become a living legend today. For half a century, odd events that blow to pieces the limit and logic of science have been noticed here;the geometric shapes, flying nocturnal or diurnal light colored humanoid appearances, strange nebula forms, materialization and dematerialization, twisting trees in intervals of tens of seconds, mobile radioactive fields and many other things that defy understanding won the forest the name of Romanian Bermuda Triangle. Other specific occurrences include passive wild animals. Even the locals will tell you that wolves living here are very friendly. Due to the amazing variety of the apparitions happening in the forest it is considered the world „capital”of paranormal.  Visitors in the forest have witnessed strange events, the most common phenomenon includes seeing mysterious orb-like lights, female voices, giggling, apparitions, and cases of people being scratched. Specialists from around the world are fascinated by the forest. They have managed to capture bizarre material structures on film, including  ghastly faces and  ghostly apparitions.

Conclusion
Paranormal phenomena happening in Hoia-Baciu - the mobile radioactive fields and many other things that defy understanding, the complexity, novelty and frequency with which they occur, make this area a unique space, the most active and most researched by specialists worldwide. Famous parapsychologists in the world consider Hoia-Baciu forest as the most „active” point on the earth. Due to the force and  amazing variety of the apparitions happening in the forest it is considered the world „capital”of paranormal. 

The atmosphere in Hoia-Baciu is similar to the one in  my paranormal romance Shadows of the Past.  The cursed forest where Anne and Neil get lost and make a gruesome discovery. You may find the book here:
Wildchildpublishing
Amazon