The Tradition of Household Spirits

Lecouteux SPIRITUALITY/FOLKLORE $16.95 “There is no other author alive who so thoroughly examines the subject as Claude Lecouteux.” REBECCA ELSON, publisher/writer of The Magical Buffet website Why do we hang horseshoes for good luck or place wreaths on our doors? Why does the groom carry his new bride over the threshold? These customs represent the last vestiges from a long, rich history of honoring the spirits of our homes. They show that a house is more than a building: it is a living being with a body and soul. Examining the extensive traditions surrounding houses from medieval times The Tradition of Household Spirits to the present, Claude Lecouteux reveals that, before we entered the current era of frequent moves and modular housing, moving largely from the countryside into cities, humanity had an extremely sacred relationship with their homes and all the spirits who lived there alongside them—from the spirit of the house itself to the mischievous elves, fairies, and imps who visited, invited or not. He shows how every aspect of constructing and keeping a house involved rites, ceremony, customs, and taboos to appease the spirits, including the choice of a building lot and the very materials with which it was built. Uncovering the lost meaning behind door and window placement, the hearth, and the threshold, Lecouteux shares many tales of house spirits, from the offerings used to cajole the local land spirit into becoming the domestic house spirit to the good and bad luck bestowed upon those who seek the help of the “Little Money Man.” He draws on studies and classic literature from old Europe—from Celtic lands and Scandinavia to France and Germany to the far eastern borders of Europe and into Russia—to explain the pagan roots behind many of these traditions. Revealing our ancestors’ charms, prayers, and practices to bestow happiness and prosperity upon their homes, Lecouteux shows that we can invite the spirits back into our houses, old or new, and restore the sacred bond between home and inhabitant. CLAUDE LECOUTEUX is a former professor of medieval literature and civilization at the Sorbonne. He is the author of numerous books on medieval and pagan afterlife beliefs, including The Secret History of Poltergeists and Haunted Houses. He lives in Paris. INNER TRADITIONS ROCHESTER, VERMONT www.InnerTraditions.com Cover design by Peri Swan Cover images by Nigel Pennick This book supports the www.HaciendaRioCote.com Reforestation Project SFI-00000 Text stock is SFI certified TrHoSp_cover.indd 1 6/7/13 9:26 AM This page intentionally left blank. The Tradition of Household Spirits Ancestral Lore and Practices Claude Lecouteux Translated by Jon E. Graham Inner Traditions Rochester, Vermont • Toronto, Canada TrHoSp.indd 3 6/6/13 8:53 AM Inner Traditions One Park Street Rochester, Vermont 05767 www.InnerTraditions.com Copyright © 2000 by Éditions Imago English translation copyright © 2013 by Inner Traditions International Originally published in French under the title La maison et ses génies: Croyances d’hier et d’aujourd’hui by Éditions Imago, 7 rue Suger, 75006, Paris First U.S. edition published in 2013 by Inner Traditions All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lecouteux, Claude. [La maison et ses génies. English] The tradition of houshold spirits : ancestral lore and practices / Claude Lecouteux ; translated by Jon E. Graham. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62055-105-9 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-62055-144-8 (e-book) 1. Jinn. 2. Haunted houses. I. Title. GR549.L4313 2013 133.1'22—dc23 2012046362 Text design and layout by Brian Boynton This book was typeset in Garamond Premier Pro with Barbara and Legacy Sans as display typefaces All photos in color insert are courtesy of Nigel Pennick unless otherwise noted. Inner Traditions wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the government of France through the National Book Office of the Ministère de la Culture in the preparation of this translation. Nous tenons à exprimer nos plus vifs remerciements au gouvernement de la France et au ministère de la Culture, Centre National du Livre, pour leur concours dans la préparation de la traduction de cet ouvrage. TrHoSp.indd 4 6/6/13 8:53 AM Contents Foreword by Ronald Grambo vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: More Than a Simple Building 1 Part One THE HOUSE AND ITS GROUNDS 1 The House and Its Construction 12 2 The Building 36 3 The Openings of the House 48 4 The House Interior 67 Part Two THE HOUSE SPIRitS 5 Domestic Spirits in Antiquity and the Middle Ages 88 TrHoSp.indd 5 6/7/13 9:34 AM 6 The Origin of House Spirits 108 7 The Manifestations of Household Spirits 126 8 The Purveyor Spirits 153 9 Haunted Houses 168 Once Upon a Time . 175 ❖ APPENDIX 1 Sayings and Beliefs 178 APPENDIX 2 The Alf 185 APPENDIX 3 A Brief Summa 187 ❖ Notes 189 Bibliography 208 Index 221 TrHoSp.indd 6 6/6/13 8:53 AM Foreword In Jean Giraudoux’s charming comedy Intermezzo, the druggist exclaims: “All symbols have their meanings. We only have to interpret them.” (Act I, Scene 1) But it was man who created symbols when fash- ioning his sociocultural world. Human fantasy remains an excellent subject of study for those with a real desire to become immersed in the medieval imaginal realm. As Évelyne Patlagean points out: “The imaginal realm is formed by all the representations that pass beyond the lim- its established by the lessons of experience and the deductive sequences they authorize.”1 Those seeking to solve the problems associated with studies of the Middle Ages are confronted by many almost insurmountable difficul- ties. For example, descriptions of folk customs and beliefs were provided primarily by the representatives of the scholarly culture, which is to say monks, priests, clergymen, and bureaucrats—essentially the spokespersons of law and order. But as a result of their tendency to write in Latin, the sources were made literary. At the same time, folk expressions were altered to agree with the grammatical and syntactical requirements of the Latin tongue. The Christianization of popular terms, often in dialect, repre- sents a huge obstacle to understanding medieval civilization. We should also note the incorrect interpretations on the part of clerics who did not grasp the key terms of the vocabulary of preindustrial culture. There is a kind of dialectic at work between the clerical culture and the folk culture throughout the entire Middle Ages. vii TrHoSp.indd 7 6/6/13 8:53 AM viii ❖ Foreword It is certainly inadvisable to exaggerate this social and intellectual distance between scholarly culture and folk culture, because there were ideas, sentiments, and attitudes shared by all. Every detail of daily life in the Middle Ages was fraught with meaning. The medieval man was surely greatly influenced by religion, but at the same time he maintained ideas with roots that are to be found in folk mythology. People believed that dwarves, werewolves, fairies, the undead, and other marvelous and grotesque beings were all around them. Legends, tales, and ballads are narrative forms that teach us about the mental attitude of the people of this time toward these supernatural phenomena. We should also observe the impact of secular literature—medical and pharmaceutical treatises, treatises on astrology, grimoires, herbals, lapidaries, bestiaries, and bird books—on popular culture. In any event, behind the inconsistency of the sources we have at our disposal, and behind the array of beliefs, we can see resilient structures and enduring ideas. These beliefs are clearly mental structures that embrace values, norms, and attitudes considered valuable by the different strata of society. Claude Lecouteux is engaged for the long haul2 because he is quite familiar with Jacques Le Goff’s dictum that “the Middle Ages never ended.” There is nothing paradoxical about this. There are customs, trends of thought, and sentiments dating as far back as classical antiquity that still exist today in isolated regions of Europe. As a Germanic scholar, historian, and folklorist, Claude Lecouteux is first and foremost an expert on the Middle Ages, and this study proposes to provide an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the house and its spirits, between man and the supernatural world. The corpus collected here is rich and diverse. On this point, the author says it is necessary to shed light on the literature by means of the civilization and vice versa, by excluding no kind of writing, and he adds that we should not reduce the perspective to clerical literature and historical texts. Nor does he confine his research to the Latin elements (chronicles, literature, historiography, catechesis, and exempla). We should take into account folklore traditions and myths, and refrain from dismissing the human substratum that pro- duced these elements. TrHoSp.indd 8 6/6/13 8:53 AM Foreword ❖ ix Here in a few words is the scientific credo of Claude Lecouteux. He never ceases to emphasize the predominant importance of philol- ogy as an analytical instrument for understanding the content and value of the texts studied. The linguistic contribution is decisive in his work. It is the lexicon that interests him, and this book on household spirits provides an eloquent testimony to that fact. The etymologies of the terms used to label supernatural beings and often obsolete notions are extremely important for clearly grasping the corpus, according to Claude Lecouteux.

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