What They Sound Like: Rune Songs and Joiks

The Voynich manuscript appears to contain some sort of chanting in the tradition of the joik and the

From "Women and  Death - Karelian Laments"
Nordic Women's Literature

charm rune. Certain characteristics point strongly to this conclusion:

1. The text appears to be largely trochaic, which is the meter of choice for such purposes.
2. Like joiks and chant songs, the Voynich text is alliterative and repetitious, playing with sound.
3. Several pages depict nothing but women involved in some sort of ritual, dancing and shaking torcs and possibly beating the water, so the potential for chant songs to be included is very high.

 Runes of origins and other "loihtoluvut" (charm runes) were once common in the Finno-Baltic region. The following is excerpted from "Impact of The Kalevala on Finnish Arts and Nationalism" by K. Y. Hamilton:

The word ‘rune’ means ‘a secret thing’ and was thought to have magical overtones. Through the many magic charms in the rune songs, we are able to peek at the social life surrounding the peasant community. The charms themselves were, depending on the circumstance, short, humble, and prayer-like or long, fanciful, commanding charms. The charms regarding the creation of a thing (the ocean, the trees, etc.) are imaginative and poetic narratives. By singing a charm about the origin of a thing, the people were able to conquer that thing through the power of the spoken word.

Carelia was famous for its professional lament singers, men and women
who knew long laments, songs and epical verses by heart.
In 1920 The Kalevala Society (Kalevala Seura) still found wise men and women
who also could perform magical rituals.
This video is a compilation of magical rituals
found in "Reenactment of a Carelian Wedding" shot on location in 1920.

Recording from The Estonian Literary Museum (http://www.kirmus.ee/) 

...In addition to Bride Lamentations, there are magic charms for every nuance of Finnish life. There are exorcism charms, traveling charms, huntsman’s charms, charms for times of illness and times of prosperity, charms for animals and people and natural disasters.

Charm Runes/Rune

Above is the left side of a page in the Voynich. The lines are divided by a heading in the left margin. When transcribed using the alphabet in this blog, the words appear to derive from old Fenno-Norse roots along the lines of a dialect from the peoples inhabiting the coastline of the Gulf of Bothnia for thousands of years, and those eastward into the Baltic and Karelia.

The Kalevala meter was once the poetic code throughout much of the Balto-Finnic area: among the Estonians, Finns, Izori, Karelians, Livonians, and Votyans. The Balto-Finnic peoples were and continue to be a culturally diverse lot. Thus, rune-singing praxis—its institutional contexts, performing styles, performers, and their goals and poetic skills—varied, often in fundamental ways, according to the region and people in question. "Body, Performance, and Agency in Kalevala Rune-Singing" by Anna-Leena Siikala

A rune singer tradition in the north of Karelia is known to exist for ages, legends and songs were passed on from one generation to another, keeping connection between them. It was rune singers who made the Kalevala region famous: The runes performed by them were carefully recorded for the descendants by Elias Lyennrot who compiled the epos “Kalevala”.

A Karelian Rune Singer

Frans Laulainen contributed these insights:

In Finnic tradition music is the way that magic is conducted. In the Kalevala Väinämöinen uses his Kantele and sings Joukahainen into the mud. I find it interesting that in Finnic culture the women are the singers in chant groups (listen to some Värttinä for songs of Karelia, Ingria, Votia, ja niin edespain). The Saami Joik is sung by all (male and female). Music is power and wisdom.

In pre-Christian Finnic culture women perhaps had some social status as Shamen (or Shawomen) and musical status of singers of the folk songs and lore songs. It is not surprising to me that if the Voynich manuscript is Finnic (possibly Karelian) that it should be written by a woman. 

Rune Charms as opposed to Runes

In this post, we are talking solely about runes or rune charms as chant-songs. The Voynich manuscript handwriting has little to do with the written type of runes except for possibly its very strange "k" and the resemblance that some of its drawings bear to Icelandic magic staves. Karelian runic letters do exist, but they are not well studied at all. The rune song emerged some 2500-3000 years ago in the culture of the proto-Finnic groups living near the Gulf of Finland. Characteristic of this singing tradition is the use of four-footed trochaic verse, alliteration and parallelism (saying the same thing twice in successive verses but in different words). The melodies of rune songs consisted of one or two phrases, usually in 4/4 or 5/4 meter and with a melodic range of a perfect fifth. This singing style remained vital throughout Finland until the 16th century, after which it gradually disappeared, first in the south and west, and later elsewhere. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/is/2005-v25-n1-2-is0384/1013309ar.pdf

Other regions in northern Europe employed spells as the famous Merseburg charms evidence. Jacob Grimm in his Deutsche Mythologie, chapter 38, listed examples of what he saw as survivals of the Merseburg charm in popular traditions of his time: from Norway a prayer to Jesus for a horse's leg injury, and two spells from Sweden, one invoking Odin (for a horse suffering from a fit or equine distemper) and another invoking Frygg for a sheep's ailment. He also quoted one Dutch charm for fixing a horse's foot, and a Scottish one for the treatment of human sprains that was still practiced in his time in the 19th century. 

The Joik

A joik (also spelled yoik), luohti, vuolle, leu'dd, or juoiggus is a traditional Sami form of song that is also used in very spiritual contexts.

Through joik, noaiden (the shaman) could come into contact with the spiritual world. In the old Sami religion, it was thought that nature had a soul, and there were many gods and spiritual beings. ...Person joiks are still found to a large degree and are in living use. These are joiks which are made for a person or an animal. It is not the composer or the person who wrote the lyrics who owns the joik, but rather the one for whom the joik was made. It is not said that one joiks about someone, but that one joiks someone. A joik can therefore be connected to a person in the same way as a name is. More here.

The verb “to joik” is used in the transitive form—one does not joik about someone else; one simply joiks someone else (Sámi Instituttha 169). The joik is a unique form of cultural expression for the Sami people in Sápmi. Like the Sami people, it has been misunderstood, ridiculed, appropriated, and even threatened. According to music researchers, joik is one of the longest living music traditions in Europe, and is the folk music of the Sami people. Its sound is comparable to the traditional chanting of some Native American cultures. With the Christianization of the Sami, joiking was condemned as sinful. The traditional joik may be called the "mumbling" style, said to have resembled magic spells. Joiking’s function was both social and spiritual.  Joiks were used not only to communicate the quintessence of a person, place, or thing, to one’s audience, but were also used in the trance-inducing rituals of Saami shamans, or noadi. Lyrical joiks center around either nature (animals, plants, particular places or geographic formations) or people, the latter of which is especially common in North Sapmi.

This is Jan Ole Hermansen, winner of the Sami Grand Prix Yoik Competition.

Conclusion  

Folk wisdom has to do with the rhythms of nature, propitiousness, fertility, purification, and communication with the past or invisible. The more I read about older cultures, the more I am impressed by how central the concept of timeliness was, so that for warriors, as for farmers and priests, there was a due season, and a key to success in any venture was action at the most propitious time, whether it was to make war or sow seed or give a sacrifice. So many traditional patterns in various older cultures speak of rhythms, cycles, a sort of tempo of existence that we can hardly imagine how to appreciate (for more on the seasona``l calendar, click here). Interpreted through various manifestations, both male and female, the divine was witnessed mostly in the phenomenon of sacred timing: that is, rhythm. 

When we manipulate sound, we also affect the medium through which it passes. The ancients have used this fact to at least appear as if they were effecting change through magic.

 

The first historic use of written Finnish was 1450 and Mikael Agricola didn't translate the bible into Finnish until 1537. But that is history, and a lot never got into history. Certainly fact that the bible was translated into Finnish in 1537 would have made it into those annals. The fact that a group of women adopted a weird script in order to record their obviously non-Christian rituals would have been ignored. It is not part of the canon. A fantastic treatise on how our truths have been formed for us can be found in the works of Michel Foucault. Or you could ask any people whose traditions and language have been systematically oppressed, for example the Sami.

Rhythm and Women's Song

Water Drumming and the Voynich

Finno-Baltic Poetic Sound Device and Voynich Charm Runes

Balto Finnic Folk Poetry and Trochaic Meter

Water and Ritual

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Finno-Baltic Poetic Sound Device and Voynich Charm Runes

Repetition, alliteration, and wordplay

Each of these elements is very common in the Voynich manuscript, and no mistake. Finno-Ugric languages appear to form words by taking a root prefix and varying it at the end. Below is probably one of the best examples of Baltic singing/poetry's distinctive, driving trochaic rhythm, sound play, and repetition. It is a video of the Seto Leelo Choir of Varska, Estonia.

The Setu people are arguably the oldest settled people in Europe. Their traditions go back thousands of years. Leelo is an ancient, aboriginal type of singing done by women's choirs.  Until the 1950s the Setus accompanied their work in the fields with communal singing.

Here are some more examples of Finno-Baltic song and poetry. Alliteration is bolded, repetition underlined, and repeated ending sounds (usually an a, i, or s) italicised.

Estonian Folk Song

Estonian runo-song (Estonian: regilaul) has been extensively recorded and studied, especially those sung by women. They can come in many forms, including work songs, ballads and epic legends. Much of the early scholarly study of runo-song was done in the 1860s by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, who used them to compose the Estonian national epic, Kalevipoeg. By the 20th century, though, runo-song had largely disappeared from Estonia, with vibrant traditions existing only in Setumaa and Kihnu.

Pilve tõuseb soost sinine,
soost sinine, maast punane,
----
Ei saja sinine pilve,
sajab sauekarvaline.
Mis seal pilvete seessa?
Vikerkaar pilvete seessa.
Mis seal vikerkaare vahella?
Hani vikerkaaride vahella.
(VK VI:1, 10 A "Kulla põlemine")

'A blue cloud is rising from the bog,
from the bog blue, from the earth red,
It's not raining from the blue cloud,
it's raining from the claycoloured.
What's there in the clouds?
There is a rainbow in the clouds.
What's there between the rainbow?
There's a goose between the rainbow.'

Karelian Folk Song

The importance of beginning rhyme and repetition can be seen in this song by the bard, Mateli Kuivalatar. She is regarded as the most noted among the known Finnish-Carelian folksingers of her sex (?).

Song by Mateli Magdalena Kuivalatar (1771-1846), cloudiness, Finland. 
Sung by Alice Matveinen & Tellu Virkkala (Turkka), 
Accompanied by Ritva Talvitie playing the bowed harp. 
Pictures of Finnish winter. 
"Alahall 'is allin the mind uiessa vilua water sukkeloitessa suloa ice under upset. 

"Alahall' on allin mieli
uiessa vilua vettä
sukkeloitessa suloa
jäänalaista järkyttäissä.
Alempana minun sitäi
viluvatsa varpusella
istuissa jääoksalla,
vilumpi minun sitäi."

"Low are the calloo's spirits
as she swims the icy waters
shuttling the slush
diving below the ice
Lower are my spirits than hers
lower than those of the shivering sparrow
perched on an icy bough
lower are even mine."

Latvian Folk Song

Below is an example of a Latvian folk song to be sung by girls at the ancient festival called Ligo.

Note that it also has alliteration, play with sound, and repetition like the Sami joik and Karelian folk song.

Estonian Epic Poetry

Below are three lines from Estonia's national epic the Kalevipoeg. Here again you can see repetition, alliteration, end rhyme, and play with sound, similar to the Karelian rune song, the Sami joik, and the celebratory songs for Latvia's Ligo.

Kattis maada, kattis merda,
Kattis rahva perekonda
Kaitseliku tiiva alla.

A very rough translation: Plowed covered, and covered merda, Population covered family Kaitseliku wing.

Regilaul

Regi song has three important components: the words, the way and performing.

Regilaul is a leader in the words, the music adds for expressiveness. Regilaul text is characterized by alliteration and repetition of thought or parallelism . Värsivormiks is based on alliteration - a four-foot line lõppriimita the quantitative trochaic verse. Finnish and Karelian folk used to the verse of the term " Kalevala-measure ." Verse contains four värsitõusu and sunrises, and therefore it is also referred to as neljajalaliseks trohheuseks ( "Roll, Roll, A day").

Joik

A fine example of the joik is one by Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, called the central author of the Sami people and defender and developer of the yoik-music. His "Eanan, Eallima Eadni" is well worth a listen if you can get past the regrettable seagull calls and really bugging synthesizer. Most notable for our purposes is how the song title plays with words with a similar beginning.

As you listen to joiks, you probably won't be able not to hear the repetitions, the slight variations, and the short syllables that make of this chant-like song. Here are some lyrics to "The Shadow," a modern day joik in Samigiella by Sami singer Mari Boine. You can see how the beginnings rhyme, the meter is heavily trochaic, and repetition shapes the lyrics:

Gáhtašiid gákti ii guhko
Ja gáhtašiid gárri ii dieva
Giehkalas olmmoš
Velggolaš olmmoš
Giehkalas olmmoš
Velggolaš olmmoš
Bálvalusaid
Bálvalusat
Bálvalusaid
Bálvalusat

The Joik's Depth Symmetry

Ánde Somby, a noted Sami and scholar and yoiker, describes the differences in form between Western song and the Sami yoik tradition:

The regular concept of a western European song is that it has a start, a middle and an ending. In that sense, a song will have a linear structure. A yoik seems to start and stop suddenly. It hasn't a start or neither an ending. Yoik is definitively not a line, but it is perhaps a kind of circle. Yoik is not a circle that would have Euclidian symmetry although it has maybe a depth symmetry. That emphasizes that if you were asking for the start or the ending of a yoik, your question would be wrong. From The Sami Yoik by Kathryn Burke 

Evidence in the Voynich Manuscript

Now let's take a look at samples from the Voynich. Below, a similar dynamic is occurring with the root Elu.

Word play and repetition appear to be rife in the text of the manuscript.

This is why the text is mistaken for a patterned gibberish

Now let's look at a theory about the Voynich manuscript held by Torsten Timm, who 

demonstrates the partially complete lines seem to copy each other, always slight modifications were woven into the copying process, so that never or very rarely arose same, but only similar strings. At first glance, it may seem a far-fetched as too simple or too - who the hell are you to sit down and fill more than a hundred pages on this senseless way? However, the hoax hypothesis for VMS (the characters bear no content, it was not for exchange or for the preservation of information made) of many VMS researchers assumed as obvious. These Timm has his suspicions by a number of indicators in the paper itself, and especially in its annex, which one sees that someone has carefully dealt with the matter. From blog post on Jürgen Hermes theory on the Voynich. (Blame Google for the rugged translation.)

Timm and Hermes are picking up the patterning of a joik/chant/charm song (play with the prefix roots and depth symmetry) and calling it gibberish created by an Autokopisten. 

Let's look at another piece of text:

Ning minna naggin, ning waat!? Seriously?? While this also looks like pure gibberish, it is in fact a snippet from a Stockholm manuscript of 1705, "John's book of Revelation," in an old Finno-Ugric dialect, possibly Livonian, akin to Estonian. Similarly, the Voynich manuscipt most probably contains folk wisdom from such a group of people, much of it pictorial and part of it the songs and chants of the text. 

Contextual Consensus

Outside of the repetition, the alliteration, the patterning picked up in the text, what precisely about the Voynich manuscript points toward the text being gibberish generated by an Autokopisten? Anything? Let us look again at this page below, #f66r. When transcribed and translated from proto-Finnic and Old Norse, the headings suggest typical topics for charm runes so that "gibberish" begins to show shades of meaning in keeping with the poetic sound devices one would expect to be used.

Thus by looking at the text alone, we are starting to discern what the Voynich may be about. As if that were not enough, the Voynich gives us depictions of many, many women performing some sort of ritual, dancing, wielding large spoons, a drop spindle, and distaffs, and shaking torcs. Collectively speaking, these are very powerfully symbolic in one certain, particular, discrete, unique cultural tradition, and nothing at all within the Voynich points outside of that tradition--not the waterfowl, the pike, the rainbow, the Wheel of the Year, nor any of the designs nor the women depicted as the sun.

One thing that has mystified researchers of the Voynich manuscript is the profound lack of punctuation throughout its pages. There seem to be no sentence breaks or paragraph breaks. There doesn't even seem to be any coherent capitalization. This probably adds to the general perception that the work is simply gibberish.

In former posts, I've talked about rune songs in places like Estonia and Karelia, I've explored how they are made up of trochees, the proverbial witches' meter, and also spoken about how old they are.

Here is one below, set to its musical score.

This is the quintessential ancient Baltic-Finnic poetic metre, regivärss. It's pretty highly focused on getting in essentially trochees, eight syllables per line. It's more complex than that, but let's at least look for these fundamentals in the Voynich.

I picked a page that was a pretty good candidate for a rune song. How do I know? It says, "Jelksa, jelksa, jelom" over and over again. That's a Voynich hallelujah!--or some such celebratory phrase found on the depictions of processions and rites.

By now, I know most of the letters and quite a few of the words and can make out a vague cadence enough to make a guess within reason at the number of syllables per line on this page. The average? 16.8.

Of course I think each line on this page is two lines of a Baltic-Finnic rune song and that the rest of the Voynich, though not all of it, may be organized similarly. I would bet you that whoever wrote this was counting syllables or was so inured in this particular prosaic tradition that it just came naturally to write this way.

This stands to reason. The Voynich is of an oral tradition--a masterpiece of the folk.

Context reinforces substance

The Voynich manuscript is not an elaborate hoax created by some Renaissance man of letters in order to make money or hide information. That theory is a figment of imagination concocted by centuries of wishful thinking and gender bias. It is what it looks like it is: an herbal, calendar, and spellbook with chants and depictions of rituals from an old pre-Christian, European tradition. As such, it is an extraordinary phenomenon worth not less but vastly more research than is conducted today. However, I've come to the conclusion that it would be easier to get every researcher onto a roller skating rink than it would to get them to abandon the presumption that something else more to their liking is hidden between those pages. And so the "mystery" of the Voynich persists.

What They Sound Like: Rune Songs and Joiks

Rhythm and Women's Song

Water Drumming and the Voynich

Finno-Baltic Poetic Sound Device and Voynich Charm Runes

Song/Chanting to Effect Change

Balto Finnic Folk Poetry and Trochaic Meter

Water and Ritual

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The Voynich and Childbirth

The Dangers of Childbirth

As recently as 1800, life expectancy for newborns was very low around the world. In addition, just a hundred years ago a woman was more than 70-times more likely to die while giving birth. Childbirth was thus a treacherous experience which must have been made all the more treacherous by well-meaning women like those described below and a terrible prankster who can throw his voice.

[Brother Peder told us that] in his homeland, Denmark, it is the custom that when women are lying-in the neighbouring wives come and help them to keep cheerful with dancing and uninhibited songs. So it happened that one time when a group of women had assembled for a lying-in and were intent on making a row in accordance with the country's evil custom, they
assembled a bundle of straw and formed it into the likeness of a man, with arms of straw, put a belt and hat on him, and called him “Bovi”.

Then they performed their ring-dance, and two women jumped up and sang with him between them, and between the verses, as the custom is, they turned to him with unseemly gestures and said to him: “Sing with us, Bovi, sing with us; why are you silent?”

And at once the devil, who had these wretched women in his power, replied: “Oh yes, I shall sing!” and he (not the bundle itself of course, but the devil sitting in it) screamed out and gave such a powerful yell that some of them fell down dead, while others were struck with such horror and fear that they were ill for a long time afterwards and barely escaped with their lives.

Jorgen & Axel Olrik, “Kvindegilde i Middelalderen”, Danske Studier. (1907), 175-76, at p. 175. Trans. Tom Pettitt & Leif Søndergaard. The Medieval European Stage, 500 - 1550. Ed. William Tydeman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 615-665, No.J68, at p. 659. 

Until the advent of 21st-century obstetrics, women were more or less left to their own devices regarding how to survive giving birth, or their in-laws. Nevertheless, it stands to follow that those who were generally thought to know how to bring about successful births tended to be highly valued within their communities.

According to a history of obstetrics, "prior to the 18th century, caring for pregnant women in Europe was confined exclusively to women, and rigorously excluded men. The expectant mother would invite close female friends and family members to her home to keep her company. Skilled midwives managed all aspects of the labour and delivery. The presence of physicians and surgeons was very rare and only occurred once a serious complication had taken place and the midwife had exhausted all measures to manage the complication. Calling a surgeon was very much a last resort and having men deliver women in this era whatsoever was seen as offending female modesty." An informative paper on this can be found in Volume 5 of Health Science Journal: Midwives in early modern Europe (1400-1800) by Maria Kontoyannis and Christos Katsetos.

Seahorse

Male Reproductive System

This little guy, one of the few males depicted in the manuscript, is holding just one thing...or not.

This may be a tactful illustration explaining to girls their impregnation.

Sponges and Feminine Hygiene

I found this from a Facebook posting:

Voynich Manuscript f66r Scottish Sponge Gum Laminaria
25 May 2012 at 13:03
"On f66r is drawn a lady in labor shown with two sponges and a pot of gum solution. She is certainly not dead but appears to be having a foot first or breech delivery as indicated by the shape of her abdomen. The tools for the procedure of cervical dilation she is undergoing are the two sponges and the pot of gum solution." More here.

According to the poster, the only other place in the world that this method was traditionally used besides Scotland was in Denmark. That's all well and good. However, the sponges above look more like typical sponges, not Laminaria, which looks more like a seaweed.

Laminaria digitalis

The sponges depicted in the manuscript may be more closely related to the Halichondria panicea or Breadcrumb sponge, an abundant sponge of coastal areas of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea. During low tide, you can find this remarkable sponge on jetties and under stones.

It usually looks like a thick bready crust with 'volcano' chimneys. Those are the excreting pores. The breadcrumb sponge has a strange smell, similar to exploded gunpowder. Halichondria panicea occurs on kelp stipes where it may dominate in tidal rapids and on other algae such as Halidrys siliquosa (sea oak). In low or variable salinity (for instance, in the western Baltic), it may be found encrusting predominantly on red algae such as Phyllophora sp. and Phycodrys sp. 

Or these may be some other sponge. The fact is that for centuries sponges have been used in feminine hygiene and for contraception.

Caliper or Another Scoop?

This looks like either a caliper to measure the baby's head or, dare I say it, a crude forceps to grasp the head and pull the baby out. That, in fact, might have been the original forceps--a caliper grabbed out of desperation. I do not doubt that Chamberlen's making his little hundred-year-old "secret" proprietary was the part that was his idea. It could also be the head-on view of another scoop or spoon.

A case made for prenatal ritual

Below are depictions of typical medieval and Roman births with the squatting stool, someone behind for support, and someone in front with a bucket of water.

Or you might, like me, be forced to give birth lying flat on your back. This is a painful, uncomfortable position that works against gravity instead of with it. Note the massive washtub with, one might guess, the proverbial hot water.

Below is an illustration from the Voynich mss. showing gravid women relaxing in the water.

Compare this to some modern water-birthing/prenatal course scenes below.

Now add to this various instruments held by the women which suggest midwifery, such as the sponge, the caliper, the vulva-like contraption, and what may be respectively symbols of the male and female reproductive systems, and it becomes clear that much of the manuscript involves birth and fertility/fecundity--making the crops grow, the rain fall, and the kids come out ok.

Indeed, the Voynich manuscript has kids.

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Spinning, Hulda, and the Voynich

The Voynich Manuscript depicts the stages of spinning from distaff to finished spindle.

The women in the Voynich manuscript are depicted carrying implements that would not appear to belong in a watery cave. Two are from spinning: a drop spindle and a distaff. However, within the context of a ritual revolving around a deity associated with these arts, it makes perfect sense.

Drop Spindle

There are many old beliefs assigning powerful significance to the drop spindle. Svetlana Zhulnickova relates the following ritual:

There is also a custom in Karelia when a baby reaches the age of 6 months the mother makes a special ritual "banya" (sauna) for him. When people prepare the sauna for the baby they put a spindle into the stove together with firewood, that is because 6 month is the age when baby usually gets the first tooth, and that means [her/his] own soul. "Superstitions about the Spindle in Russian Karelia"

Distaff

The word distæf in Old English meant literally "flax staff," from dis- "a bunch of flax" and stæf "staff." Because women usually did the spinning, the distaff came to be a symbol for women's work. The word distaff in time took on the meaning "women's work" and later "woman." The noun distaff is rarely used in this way today, but the female members of a family are still referred to as the distaff side. 

Berchta or Perchta, 19th c. engraving by Karl Jauslin 

Which deities were matrons of the art of spinning, weaving, and sewing?

Päivätär ('Maiden of the Sun'), is the goddess of the Sun in Finnish mythology. Described as a great beauty, she owns the silver of the Sun, spins silver yarns, and weaves clothes out of them. In Kalevala, young maidens ask Päivätär to give them some of her silver jewelry and clothes. Not only was Päivätär a goddess—she was the goddess of spinning, and her sister, Kuutar, goddess of the moon, was in charge of weaving.

Frau Bercht, Frau Percht, Striga Holda, Perchta, Frau Holda, and Frau Holle, among others, are names for an ancient deity once worshiped throughout Europe. She was the protectress of agriculture and women's handicrafts. Her name and the names Huld and Hulda may be cognate with that of the Scandinavian being known as the huldra or Huldra. The most steadfast connections are with Frau Holle and Hulda on one hand, and the Old Norse Hlóðyn, a byname for the Earth, Thor’s mother, on the other. This deity is also frequently equated with Nerthus, who also rides in a wagon, and Odin's wife, Frigg, from her alternate names Frau Guaden [Wodan], Frau Goden, and Frau Frekke as well as her position as mistress of the Wild Hunt. 

She was often depicted holding a distaff and/or drop spindle or sitting at a spinning wheel. 

The distaff frequently symbolized women's power, as in the medieval illustrations below.

• 
  German engraving (1450-1467) of a tournament between man and woman; to the left, a naked man rides a unicorn, holding a rack as his armour; his opponent is a woman on a horse to the right, equipped with distaff; the entire background is covered by ornamental foliage, on which three birds are placed.
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  Image from a French Arthurian romance, 1201-1300, Bibliothèque nationale de France,
  Département des manuscrits, Français 95, 226r. 

  

  
  

  

  
  
• Above is a photo of Norse seidr staffs collected by Max Dashu. She says:

• Seiðstaffs of the völur (Old Norse seeresses) are based on the design of distaffs. This symbolism ties in the shamanic staffs with the Spinning of the Norns, with fate-weirding actions, and it also helps to explain the intense female gendering of seiðr, the entranced ceremonies referred to in the Edda and sagas.,,  

Ynglingasaga says that Freyja "was a blótgyðja [sacrificial priestess]; she was the first to teach seiðr to the Æsir, as it was practiced among the Vanir.” [Ynglingasaga 4] In the same poem, Snorri claims this "greatest power" for Odinn; “But this sorcery [fjolkyngi], as is known, brings with it so much ergi that manly men thought it a shame to perform, and so this skill was taught to the priestesses.” [Ynglingasaga 7]  --Max Dashu, Witches and Pagans, forthcoming

• 
  Voynich woman holding staff and descending into cave
• Spin-offs from distaffs and seidr staffs include a staff with snakes winding about it. Eileithyia, a Minoan goddess of childbirth and labour, is probably one of the earliest deities shown handling snakes. It is conjectured that this goddess (Alauta) was adopted from an early Indo-European culture.
  

  

Engraving from Le immagini de i dei antichi (Images of the Ancient Gods) by Vincenzo Cartari, 16th c.

Perchta

In German legends, 'frau Holda' was the protectress of women's crafts, but none so much as spinning, traditionally a woman's task strong in magical connotations and links to the other world. Holda first taught the craft of making linen from flax. The legend of Frau Holle is found as far as the Voigtland, past the Rhön mountains in northern Franconia, in the Wetterau up to the Westerwald and from Thuringia to the frontier of Lower Saxony. The fairy tale of Mother Holle as recorded from local German folk by the Grimm Brothers contains the following elements: spinning, a well, Frau Holle's feather bed, the belief that shaking it makes it snow on earth, harvesting, and a subterranean realm where Frau Holle, (as folk must have witnessed in bits of green remaining beneath bark, soil, and snow) dwells. Running throughout the tale is this underlying theme of seasonality--sunny blooming meadow-> apple harvest->feather winter->Persephone-like emergence of the "golden girl."

People prayed to Frau Holle for protection, abundance, and healing.

To blow = to heal

The woman inside the sun below right looks like she is blowing out air. To the left of her is a scene from the movie "The Cuckoo." In it, the Sami widow Anni blows on near-death Finnish Soldier Veiko to turn him back to the land of the living.

Below is Veiko's soul being beckoned toward the land of the dead.

Here is a scene from the movie Khadak, in which a Mongolian shaman takes a rather eye-opening approach to a similar situation.

Below is an excerpt from Vladimir Napolskikh's "Seven Votyak Charms" from Estonian Folklore.

The common Votyak word for the healer (or witch-doctor) is emjas'kis' "healer" - a participle (= nomen agentis) from emjany; "to heal" - or pel'l'as'kis' "blower" - a participle from pel'l'as'kyny "to blow"; the last word describes one of the main ways of magic treatment, well-known throughover all the Europe, when the healer blows upon the water with charming and gives it to the patient to drink. 

Women "in the know" were also known as the vǫlur, tietäjä, seiðkonur, vísendakona, vǫlva, seiðkona, seiðr, noita, cailleach,  emjas'kis' or noaidi.

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