Episode 43 - Perchta and her Perchten

Before I begin this week’s episode of Through the Veil, I want to include a content warning.

The myth I am discussing this week is a violent one. It features a particularly gory action, often targeting children. It is only discussed in one section of this episode, and I will warn you again before hand.

However, if you don’t want to risk it, and the subject matter makes you uncomfortable, I invite you to skip this episode and join us again next week.

Thank you.

The Festival of the Twelve Nights was starting tonight. Which meant that for the next twelve nights, there would be celebration, feasts, family and friends.

It was an important time of year for your community. The heavy work of the harvest was behind you all, and you could focus on the winter, and eventually preparing for spring.

And of course, with the lack of work in the fields, it was a time of leisure. Obviously, there were things to do, tasks to be completed and things to maintain, but it was a slow-moving season for the most part.

In particular the Festival. Nearly two weeks of relaxation, food, and celebration. Each year the town was visited by spirits, creatures of beauty and horror, in equal parts.

It was visited by the Perchten and their terrifying leader, Perchta.

Perchta is a goddess or spirit associated with midwinter, or the Twelve Nights festivals, in Alpine paganism in the Alps of Germany and Austria.

She has been seen as parallel to Holda, or Frija-Frigg. She is a guardian of wild places and beasts, and is responsible for rewarding those who had been industrious and hard-working and severely punishing those who had not behaved, had not worked hard, or broken other rules grounded in superstition.

She came accompanied by her host of beautiful and terrible servants, the Perchten.

Perchta and her hosts are strange and terrible creatures. Some are beautiful, and bless the people and places they travel through. Others are horrifying or terrible, scaring away other spirits and punishing the wicked or lazy.

And strangest of all was Perchta herself. A goddess, at one time worshiped by a wide-ranging cult, who would bless the good with gifts and wealth, and bring violent punishment to any who disrespected her rules.

Although the worship of Perchta has significantly decreased in modern times, many festivals still feature Perchten masks and costumes in parades and to serve several ritualistic purposes.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I am excited to invite you to join me as I pass Through the Veil, and learn some of the stories and myths associated with Perchta and her host of Perchten.

The Twelve Nights had begun in earnest. A huge feast, drawing everyone in town, started off the first night. A keg was tapped of the year’s brew, and celebration was certainly in the air.

All in all a simple, but enjoyable time. While every night of the Twelve had some festivities, the first and the twelfth were by far the most extravagant.

As the stories went, these were Perchta’s times. She would be roaming the countryside, sneaking into homes and leaving gifts or punishing the inhabitants depending on whether they were good or not.

And while much of the celebration was light-hearted, you knew the stories of Perchta as well as anyone. She was not always a benevolent visitor.

Perchta is commonly described as having two forms. The first beautiful and impossibly pale, and the other haggard and strange to behold.

She is occasionally depicted as being able to shapeshift into several animal forms, and can be clearly distinguished from the rest of her Perchten hosts. In some stories, she has a unique foot, one of her legs is a goose or a swan foot that does not change forms when she does.

It is common in the oldest stories for her to be described as a goddess more often, and is often depicted as beautiful. Later stories more often describe her as a spirit, and emphasis the uglier facets of her stories.

Some folklorists believe her stories predate Christian influences in the region, while others think she specifically came about during the rise of Christianity and the Twelve Nights of Christmas.

The Twelve Nights went by quickly, and before you knew it, the Twelfth Night was upon your town. Tradition said that until the feast that night, everyone would be fasting, and if they must eat, they would only eat gruel.

Of course, the day leading up to the feast was also full of activity. Throughout the whole day, perchten, some beautiful others terrible, would troupe through town. The beautiful ones would enter homes, receiving and giving gifts. The ugly and terrible perchten would do the same, but rather than leave gifts, they would instead screech and howl to scare away bad spirits and curses.

And somewhere in the chaos was Perchta herself, observing the festivities of her day. Slipping quietly and unnoticed from house to house and hiding coins for those who had worked hard and been good. The punishment for the wicked would come later…

This is the second warning. The content in the remainder of this episode is the violent descriptions I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. If you don’t want to continue, I would like to thank you for listening, and hope to have you back next week.

Now, let’s continue.

Perchta’s traditional narrative is a dark one. She was a goddess responsible for maintaining certain taboos. Rules that had been established long ago were within her purview.

She became very tied to a particular rule that prohibited spinning of all varieties on holidays. In addition, she became associated with ensuring that children and servants were well-behaved, worked hard, and were honest.

She would sneak into houses undetected during the Twelve Nights and leave silver coins for the good workers and children, often hiding them in shoes or pails. Places where they were not obvious, but would certainly be discovered by the person who they were intended for.

For those that were to be punished, especially those who broke one of her most important rules, there was a terrible fate in store.

For lazy servants, dishonest children, people who spun on holidays, ate foods other than gruel before the feast on her feast day, or children that had not completed their prescribed work for the year, Perchta offered violence.

She would, in the traditional stories, slice open their bellies, remove their stomach and guts, and replace them with straw and pebbles.

Perchta is generally referred to as a specific individual, however, there are a few related creatures and different forms.

Perchta was thought to be equivalent or related to the Weisse Frauen, a kind of elf-like spirit that comes from other Germanic folklore, by some folklorists.

However, Perchta is related more commonly to a set of beings known as the Perchten. They are the name of her companions, a group of creatures that trouped behind her.

In some regions, animal masks worn in parades and festivals are also referred to as Perchten.

The Perchten generally came in two forms. The first were the Schonperchten, or beautiful perchten, the second were the schiachperchten, or ugly perchten.

The beautiful perchten are bright and happy, arriving throughout the Twelve Nights of Christmas to bring wealth and luck and gifts. However, their counterparts, the ugly perchten would parade through towns going from house to house and scaring people.

In some versions, even the ugly perchten served a good purpose, and they would scare bad spirits from a house and town during the same process.

Perchta and her host of Perchten served a wide variety of purposes that changed over time. She has been known to lead the troupes of spirits over the countryside, spreading joy and fear, protecting people from evil, and everything in between. The Twelve Nights are certainly a busy time for her, she had only those nights to perform all her prescribed purposes, and in particular she was busy on the Twelfth Night.

The stories of Perchten were so popular that costumes and parades centered around them became common in the region and continue to this day. In several regions of Austria, various festivals and traditions abound centered on wood masks made to look like horrible animal spirits, or beautiful inhuman creatures, these masks are used to attract financial windfalls or drive away bad forces.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, myth, and magic.

Music this week was: Winter by sileeeles.

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.