Some notes on Krampus/Schiachperchten/Oskorei taken from Gerhard Hallstett’s essay on Oskorei in his Blutleuchte book (this was revised and put into the Michael Moynihan & Didrik Søderlind book Lords of Chaos, Feral House Press)
"In my childhood in the lake district of Upper Austria I was fascinated by the Perchten*1 who haunted the villages and towns in the dark nights of winter. There were beautiful Perchten with colorful clothes and glittering ornaments, and the Schiacperchten*2 - bold forms, ghastly apparitions with masks of wood or bark, enveloped in furs, moss, lichen…demons represented by the inhabitants. These Schiacperchten were particularly amazing to me. They emanated an aura of panic. Centuries ago, and in some distant valleys only decades ago, these masked customs - done today mainly for show, survived from pre-Christian cultures. It was uncanny. Not only children felt a dark fear when they saw these demonic creatures with their animal masks and disguises. In the Perchten, the werewolf culture of pagan antiquity, the pagan Dark Ages, could survive into the modern world. The Adults recognized who were behind the masks, and yet there was a sinister suspicion that the neighborhood boy, whom they thought they knew well in everyday life, became another person when wearing the specter’s disguise."- Gerhard Hellstatt
"Whoever dares to perform in the dangerous disguise exposes himself to the spell of sinister, incalculable forces. Dark demonic powers awaken inside him; he himself becomes a demon… The disguised performers of this nightmare are ‘possessed,’ they become the bearers of demonism. (Höfler, Kutische Geheimbünde der Germanen)
In this psychodrama, mythology was united with depth psychology. In his consciousness, and to the outer world, the psyche of the performer became one with the psyche of the creature he represented. An active imagination changed into a mystical identification. The mask not only changed one’s outer appearance, it also influenced behavior and affected perception. It short-circuited everyday consciousness and reality for hours, days and even weeks: wilderness came into view… A “psymbolic” magic took effect, negating the boundary being evoked between the performer and creature.
This metamorphosis also played an essential part in the world of the Berserkers and werewolves - it occurred partly intentionally, partly involuntarily, when members of these communities draped themselves in the fur of a wolf, wore a belt made from wolf hair, or drank a certain beverage. Possibly a drug was used.
In a case that took place in 1691, in what is now Latvia, an old farmer named Thies talked extensively about the customs of the werewolf community of which he was a member, the metamorphosis into the wolf, and the powers he and other werewolves possessed when they fought with real or imagined enemies, ripped animals apart, or escaped from dogs.
This 80 year old man was still a werewolf, but intended to give his power to a younger man, through special initiation, before he died. He himself had been initiated by an old farmer who had given him his wolf pelt. Since then he had to become a wolf at certain tikes of the year - especially in the summer and winter solstice - whether he chose to or not. He had no choice, and it did not matter whether he wanted this power, or decided to struggle against it.
"In ancient times there were many young men who had to put on the magic fur at special times to become a werewolf. Usually they were like all the others, maybe even better; they were good and friendly and harmed no one. But if they were werewolves one had to beware of them. Many of these poor men wished to get rid of this disastrous fur, but…. (Goyert and Wolter, Vlämische Sagen)
II
The Wild Hunt appeared in many legends - a ghostly flock of dark, martial shapes riding through the night on their horses through the woods, led by Odin. the one-eyed ruler of the dead, or sometimes by a female rider…a perception that in Christian times was transposed onto the Archangel Michael and his hosts. The black riders on the storm were dead souls, warriors returning to their homeland at certain times - especially winter solstice, the twelves nights when the spirits walk - and during the Fasching carnival*3. The Austrian folklorist Otto Höfler was able to demonstrate in his books Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (Secret Cult Societies of the Germans) and Verwandlungskulte that the Wild Hunt was not at all a mythological interpretation of storms, thunder and flocks of birds - as many researches thought - but a union mythology and folklore, of myth and reality, which was of great importance in the Nordic mystery cults.
In these legends he saw reminiscences of the raw, at times violent, customs of cult societies in which young men, usually unmarried, participated. They were initiated into these alliances. What they taught had to remain secret - a striking similarity to the mystery cults of the Mediterranean.
Otto Hölfer also referred to some resemblances between these cults of the metamorphosis with the animal or demonic disguises and the Mithras cult in which certain initiatory degrees wore masks of ravens and lions. In this way the young men embodied the souls of their ancestors. Höfler stressed that in the Germanic Weltanschauung, like that of most pre-Christian cultures, there were no sharp distinction between this world and the one of beyond - the boarders were fluid. The folklore of the cult groups was often brutal. With or without drugs the members felt a ‘furor teautonicus’, which Höfler called a “decidedly terroristic ecstasy” with various excesses.
"This type of cultic amplification of existence did not signify debauched gratification but…a duty for the dead… In this ecstasy the boundaries of the individual are broken down - but not to detach it from boundaries of order; rather it should take part in the meta-individual community of confederation with the dead" (Höfler, Kultische)
In the life of the archaic, Germanic societies the Berserkers fulfilled the function of the imagination, commotion and violence which is important for the social balance as the conservative function ensued by the more mature - probably the old men. (Dumézil, Tumult)
*1 Perchten - Wild men in furs with bells and horns
*2 Schiactperchten - Schiach is Austrian dialect for ugly
*3 Fasching (carnival) - Roman Catholic Shrovetide carnival as celebrated in German- speaking countries