Dogs have been man’s best friend for tens of thousands of years, long before horses
were ridden, cows were farmed, or chickens kept, the dog was domesticated.
And this meant they became part of our culture, our stories, and our mythology.
And this is especially true in the mythology around death where we see stories of spirit
dogs, dogs involved in rituals, sacrifice, and even dogs guarding the otherworld.
And so today in what is probably the first of a few videos, as this is quite an extensive
topic, we’re going to look at the role of the dog as a spirit in Indo-European Culture,
and use it as a gateway to describe other mythologies in future videos.
So grab yourself a cup of tea, and welcome to Crecganford.
So lets first look at some stories about spirit dogs from the Indo-European cultures and see
if we can find any similarities.
And a good place to start is with Greek mythology where we have Hecate, who took the shape of
a black female dog, surrounded by her pack of corpse-eating dog shaped souls.
These were known to howl at the victims of battle, or in the moonlight, especially when
at you were crossroads or by graves.
These souls weren’t of dead dogs, but were human victims who did not have a path to the
light or dark realms of the afterlife, these people hadn’t received a proper burial,
or they died a brutal death, often before their time was due.
These souls had to stay around until the time they were meant to be fated to die, and so
we see stories about these souls being evil people, or those who commit suicide, or those
that were childless and unmarried.
And here we see Hecate appeased through the sacrificing of young dogs, which were often
eaten afterwards.
The stories tell how not only were actual dogs seen to howl at the moon, seemingly join
in with Hecate and her spirit dog pack, but the stories say the souls of living humans
also turned into dogs to join in this chorus.
But this transformation of human spirit to dog spirit happens because the inner spirit
of the human is actually a dog, and the spirit turns inside out, and so the inner spirit
of the dog appears, hiding the human spirit.
February is often seen as the month of festivals that centre around the soul and death cults,
and this death cult phenomenon spread rapidly across Europe, with people thinking they were
dogs or wolves, howling and biting, wandering around the graves at night.
And it is here we see ancient medicine describing this as a disease and to which it was referred
to as lycanthropy or cynanthropy.
According to the stories from the time, this disease, this madness broke out amongst women
who reached the age of sexual maturity.
Some similarity to these myths was seen amongst the Germanic tribes.
Their stories say that it is when a storm roars through the countryside, on twelfth
night, at the start of January or around two weeks after the Winter solstice, or in places
where people fear to tread, then an army passes by with a tremendous roar.
Its leader is Wode, a wild hunter, although we see he has other names depending on the
region you are in.
His army contains dogs and wolves, and these are representative of frenzied souls, without
peace.
And it is only the careful observance around the customs of death including funeral customs
that could ensure peace would be found.
You see the souls of those people who did not receive a proper burial or could not be
buried, or who did not live a full life that was expected for a man, it was these people
that were stuck between the mortal world and the otherworld.
Now what is also interesting here is that we see certain writings says that the people
who fall in between worlds are unbaptized children, all mad people, or those who are
stabbed to death when they run away.
But most interesting is that there are specific references that warriors who fall in battle
also end up here, and with Wode being cognate with Woden, and so directly linked to Odin,
then this is very much analogous to Odin and his right to choose fallen warriors for Valhalla.
And so knowing this it becomes much is easier to understand the appearance of the werewolf,
often aligned to when the wild hunt appears, with the roaring and howling, and this is
because Werewolves are those people afflicted by Lycanthropy.
They have the rapid bloodlust that drives the transformation during sleep, delivering
supernatural powers.
And like the lycanthropes, werewolves also appeared in packs.
There is one example, in the 16th century, where a secret society in Prussia, Livonia
and Lithuania, which included Germans and locals, was reported, and it was said “They
gather together in certain places, turn into wolves, swarm across the land, rage against
humans and livestock”.
In other words they were considered such a wild army.
If we look at a story in India, within the Atharvaveda we see Rudra, who was originally
known as Shiva, but we see Rudra having servants that were dogs and vultures.
With the dogs being described as wild and corpse-eating, their bite causing disease,
and they appear at night, found by crossroads, feeding on dead bodies.
And whilst there are no writings in India that talk about the nature of the dogs, such
as whether they are peaceful souls, there is enough information here to align them with
the Greek and Germanic mythologies due to the common details.
We also see stories in other places, such as a Celtic myth, from Wales.
This tale is about Gwynn ab Nudd, a demon of the dead, sometimes called the ruler of
the otherworld.
And he travels through the countryside accompanied by a ferocious hound.
Now whilst there isn’t much directly said about Gwynn ab Nudd and his hounds he is occasionally
said to lead the Wild Hunt in Welsh version of the tale, and so there is also the the
Cwn Annwn, or Hounds of Annwn.
So what does this say about the Indo-European belief of frenzied dog souls?
Well it shows that in Indo-European mythology there was a belief by some, that some souls
could not reach the afterlife and so had to remain in this realm between the mortal world
and the otherworld.
And this realm came into view at particular times of day, or times of the year, or at
particular places, and when it did those souls would appear transformed into dogs, dogs who
would bark and howl, and no doubt, according to a poetic motif that is found in various
texts, “the dogs shall eat the dead in Hell” But we also see the spirit dog as a soul mate,
from stories that stretched from the celts to the Vedic culture.
For example, the Roman’s had Lares, who were guardian deities, and have been shown
to be souls of death.
They are often depicted wearing dog fur and could mean that they were originally considered
to be identical to dogs.
But we also see in stories that these Lares are often accompanied by a dog, which is a
sensible requirement of someone who guards pathways, but also underlines that there is
a mythological connection between those Lares and the dog.
Over in India we see the dog as a companion in another realm in the 17th parvan of the
Mahabharata, Yudhishthira.
Here the oldest of the five pandavas, is tired of life and moves north to the Himavant with
his four brothers and the Krishna, and he is also accompanied by a dog.
They take a journey high up through the mountains and find themselves in another realm, one
between heaven and earth, and this realm makes this an endless and arduous journey, and as
they travel each of his brothers fail due to their mortal inadequacies.
But despite this Yudhishthira carries on, his dog by his side, and as he continues,
he finds Indra in his chariot, and Indra offers to take him to heaven so he can see his wife
and brothers again.
But Yudhishthira doesn’t want to leave his dog, but Indra won’t allow the dog in heaven,
it must stay in this in between realm.
And it is at this point that the dog then reveals itself as an incarnation of the god
Dharma, who is the father of Yudhishthira, and he tells Indra how Yudhishthira has earned
his place in heaven through his virtue.
Within the Rig Veda there are the two dogs of the Yama who have traits that are both
good and dangerous.
The most detailed passage about these is a where a dead person is addressed during the
celebration of corpses: “Go, go on the old paths, where our fathers used to go.
You shall eat with both kings who enjoy the soul food, Yama and Varuna, the god.
Escape the Sarama children, the two dogs, the four-eyed piebald ones on good paths,
and come to the fathers, the gifts rich, who enjoy pleasures as Yama's noses.
To both your dogs, the guardians, Yama, the four-eyed guardians who peek at the men: hand
him over to them, O king, and give him salvation and well-being.
The two broad-nosed soul eaters, Yama's messengers, go around among the people.
May they give us a beautiful breath of life today, to look at the sun”.
The Yama's four-eyed dogs stand in the way of the soul when it journeys down the path
to the otherworld, and the soul has to get past them.
But the verse asks Yama to entrust the soul with the dogs, treating them as companions,
showing that dogs are not always hostile to the soul and thus can give it salvation and
well-being at the same time.
Dogs should accompany the soul just as they accompanied Yama, who was the first to take
the path to this realm of the dead.
But it also means that when one sees the dogs appear in the realm of the living, then you
should take it as a sign that you are departing from this world.
In the Avesta of Iran, the dog is considered a sacred animal next to the rooster.
But unlike the rooster, the dog is in many ways aligned to people, and this is seen in
the often used phrase within the texts of “When a human or dog has died.”
And in the Avesta, the evil part of the dog has been transferred to the wolf, the representative
of evil animals.
In Zoroastrianism when the soul departs the body it is met by their primal spiritual form,
a daēnā, and for those that are good it is in the form of a beautiful girl, but for
those considered evil it is in the form of an old hag who has with her two dogs.
Within Zoroastrianism the judgement of the soul is carried out on the Cinvat Bridge,
which leads to the beyond, but the dogs stand in front of the bridge.
They only belong in the intermediate realm, on the path from the mortal realm to the other
realm, but they do not seem to have a specific function here.
There is a description that says they will not help the soul of the evil if the bridge
becomes so narrow under their feet that they must plunge into hell.
There is also a Celtic story from Brittany in France which may give us a glimpse of a
similar motif where a girl’s soul is accompanied by two dogs.
It goes along the lines that on the way to a town, at midnight, a young spinner witnesses
a woman being chased by a black and white dog who wanted to devour her.
Her bare feet bleed, and the wings on her bonnet flutter like the wings of a bird, with
force.
There is an Irish version of this motif, focused on dogs of the devil, although this maybe
more of a modern construct and quoting Hartman the story goes “Two dogs or wolves sleep
on both sides of a dying person.
The people who are present at the person’s death behave quietly and avoid all noise,
even crying, so as not to wake the dogs up and alert them too early that a soul is about
to leave the body.
Those in the know may want to give the soul a head start in the journey to the Otherworld,
but it all comes down to being prepared for that moment.
Food was prepared, bread and a bowl of porridge, which the dying man had tasted, and this was
put on a fire.
Someone would be standing at the door of the room with a water bowl.
The sick person constantly watched.
If you think the moment of death was here, you would place a piece of bread in the dying
man's hand, and a woman would take the bowl of porridge outside and empties it by throwing
the contents onto a hawthorn bush in an easterly direction, while the person standing at the
door pours the water onto the floor.
Everything is set up to partly scare the dogs away, partly to distract them from the pursuit
of the escaping soul by using the wind to spread the smell of the food tasted by the
dead man from that hawthorn bush, the thorns of which are able to help stop the dogs.”
In Wales, it is said that dogs, with properties similar to the Yama's dogs, and are sometimes
seen on Earth where their bite is fatal.
But in keeping with their ambivalent nature in other parts of Wales they are usually described
as harmless.
And in Armenia there is the tale of the two aralez dogs, which are winged dogs, and who
were coloured black and white and named Siaw and Spitak respectively.
These dogs had powers that would restore a wounded hero’s war wounds and even give
life back to the dead when their wounds were licked.
They are known by local myth as death companions or ghost seers, and this promotes the superstition
that the sudden barking and whining of a dog is a sign that death is approaching, and this
is particularly believed if dogs bark at night.
In Greece we have Hermes, not only a messenger and considered the cleverest of the gods,
but also a psychopomp, an escort of the newly deceased into the underworld.
And here we see that Hermes is sometimes shown as having a dog as a companion.
Although these observations happened primarily during the Hellenistic times, which is around
300BCE to 30BCE, and we can therefore conclude that this is almost certainly influenced by
the dog-shaped god of death of the Egyptians, Anubis.
However, I’m not looking into Egyptian religion today, or Egyptian mythology, or the Semitic
peoples, although I will come back to discuss these at some point in the future.
And if we then go back to Germany, culture has the idea of dog heaven, which apparently
lies in front of the actual sky and beckons the good and faithful dog as a reward.
This idea may have been influenced, in part at least by the bible, as in Luke 16 verse
21, where the despised dogs do the last service of love to the dying Lazarus by licking his
sores before he died.
Thomas Murner, a satirist of the early 16th century, wrote in his work “On the great
Lutheran Fool” about a dog called Weckerlein and says “Therefore, dear Weckerlein, suffer
yourself, you come in the dog of Himmelrich; Beaten to death and flayed, the world gives
the reward to all dogs”.
When Luther was asked by a student whether the dogs would also go to heaven, he replied:
“Yes, of course, because God will create a new heaven and a new soil, and for these
little helpers, these dogs with golden skin”.
Klopstock, who has discussed questions about whether animals have souls, says about dogs
in his ode “The Unknown Souls”; “They are a more loyal friend to humans, as they
often are to each other.
He can't talk, but he can take commands!
If you do not feed him; he endures the pain, although this punishes him unjustly; until
he licks the Dead Hand.”
The 16th song of the Messiah tells the story of the old beggar Elisama, to whom his dog
alone has remained faithful.
When Elisama's soul was on the way to heaven, it is said: The soul of the only friend Elisama
kept met her on a field of flowers, and was at the side of the old lady who had fallen
asleep and died.
The soul of that faithful dog joins the soul of the dead, and follows it, and it does not
want to be apart from it.
The dog did not leave her, but she had to go a separate way when she ascends into higher
stars.”
So here the master and their dog die at the same time and meet in a realm before heaven,
this intermediate realm between the mortal world and the Otherwold.
Hamel referred to the death of the dog Argos, which is written about in the Odyssey with
much emotion (17, 326f.).
It is clear parallel to this story; however, it is the Breton story of the dog that howls
terribly when his master dies and at the same time dies with him from a mysterious burn.
And that’s the thing that stands out differently.
Otherwise, the story of Klopstock is very close to the plot of the other story: the
dog remains in the “flower fields”, this realm between the mortal world and heaven,
and it guides the incoming souls to the sky, a path which the dog itself cannot access.
And so to conclude this, all these stories are about a dog as a companion to man in his
death, but what can this tell us about our ancestors?
Well it shows us that the Indo-Europeans had an early idea that the soul met with two dogs
on the way to the otherworld.
And these dogs either guide, or pursue and eat, the soul, or the view could be that only
one of the dogs attacks the soul if it is “bad”, the other can gives the soul salvation,
that is a transition from the beyond by licking the wounds of the dead person.
One could argue that the dogs could be split into the dog of life and the dog of death,
leaving a soul in an uncertain place, a mixture of fear and hope of what path it can take.
And when taken with the first ideas we discussed in this video, about dog souls that are seen
in the mortal realm, we see that there is some commonality.
Firstly, that both dogs are in this intermediate realm, but cannot leave that realm if in the
form of a dog.
And although stories say that dogs are seen in the mortal realm, this is only just before
death when there is this intermediate realm is close to the mortal world at that specific
point in time, at that specific place.
But there is a second thing in common, and that is that these dogs also eat souls.
And that I think that is a great cliff hanger to end the video on, as there is much much
more say about these dogs, from funeral customs and sacrifice, to perhaps the most famous
dog of death, Cerberos.
And I will cover this in a video very soon.
So please consider subscribing if you enjoyed this, and like the video, it all helps to
keep this channel growing.
And with that, please stay well and stay safe, and stay away from crossroads on a full moon.
And this was Crecganford!