Traditions
Teachings, figures and works — each one dated, and its claims attributed
Where to begin
Poem · Sufism · 1278
The Chickpea to the Cook
The Cook Was Boiled First
— Masnavi III.4159–4164 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1930Look at a chickpea in the pot, how it leaps up when it is subjected to the fire.
A chickpea leaps from the boiling pot; the housewife beats it back with her ladle.
What it meansRūmī's heading makes the chickpea the believer fleeing tribulation. The housewife boils it to “mingle with the (vital) spirit”, and was herself earth once, boiled twice.
Being · the 1220s
Elves and the Álfar
Medieval · Norse & Germanic Lore
Álfar, the elves of Old Norse poetry and saga: named beside the gods, and given sacrifice at farms.
Who they wereSnorri places light-elves, fairer than the sun, in Álfheimr, and dark-elves, blacker than pitch, down in the earth. The poems name elves beside the Æsir, and Grímnismál says the gods gave Álfheimr to Freyr. In Kormáks saga a wounded man reddens an elf-hill with a bull's blood and feasts the elves to be healed.
The FindingLight-elves and dark-elves are Snorri's division: Anthony Faulkes (2005), following Anne Holtsmark (1964), finds no source older than Snorri, around 1220, for it, and svartálfar and Svartálfaheimr are named in no poem. The older witness is cult: Sigvatr Þórðarson's verse on an elf-sacrifice at a farm in Gautland.
Person · African Traditions○
Luisah Teish
Writer and ritualist, author of Jambalaya (1985), described by her publisher as an Oshun priestess.
Who they wereIn Jambalaya, Teish presents ancestor reverence, natural objects and household ritual as means of cultivating spiritual power.
The FindingThe preface in Jambalaya's 2021 edition calls the Yemaya and Oya tales original, distinguishing them from five retold traditional stories.