Tree brides

 

A pattern of marrying trees has been happening. In Mexico back in 2018, women who were dressed in traditional white wedding gowns married trees. This was part of an anti-logging campaign in an event called Marry A Tree as a protest against deforestation. Their love and devotion towards trees was strengthened by the symbol of marrying them. The idea inspired other women elsewhere to do the same. The notion itself, like a tree that takes root and branches out, flowering and growing. A woman in Merseyside, England, married an elder tree and her surname was changed to Elder. It was her love of trees that encouraged her to take part in Marry A Tree campaign in protest against building over woodlands. 

While this has been a movement to help trees, there has always been an old Hindu tradition of marrying trees in India. It's a ritual going way back since ancient Vedic times. It's believed that marrying a tree was a rare event done by those with a curse or "Manglik dosh", meaning people born under the influence of planet Mars and/or Saturn were believed to have uncomfortable futures. So to lift the curse, marrying a tree would help a person become freed from the dark astronomical influences. Actress and former Miss World named Aishwarya Rai (Ash) was born a Manglik, and she married a banana tree to lift the curse and be with the man she loved properly afterwards. 

Marrying trees for a number of reasons, from ancient spiritual beliefs to protesting has seen a global increase of tree brides this century. Does it help? It surely helps those who marry trees for whatever they believe in. 

She Wolf Night  

Saint Christopher a werewolf?

For this topic, I could not resist mentioning the curious figure of Saint Christopher. He's a well loved saint often found in art and in lockets, pictured as a bearded man depicted carrying a child across a river. Unknown to him, the child was really Jesus Christ. However, Saint Christopher is shown as always having the head of a dog in eastern Orthodox churches. Why is this? Was he really a sort of Dogman or a werewolf? The term for a dog headed looking human is Cynocephali. This is how many early Medieval art forms have made him out to be. It must be said that he was a warrior and a Canaanite, regarded as giant in stature, belonging to a race of humanoids with dog heads. Many early church art, show people of these dog headed features. 

More on Saint Christopher at Medievalist  

Posted by She Wolf Night 

Scientific view of werewolves

There are diseases that sparked off the legendary werewolf stories, according to medical science. The main cause of the amount of mass werewolf sightings in centuries past might be caused by a number of terrible diseases and pandemics. 

One of them is rabies. The legend of the werewolf causing a human being to become a werewolf through an attack or a bite, a telltale sign similar to how a rabies infection is passed from animal to human. Rabies is a lyssavirus (named after Lyssa, a spirit of rage in Greek mythology). The earliest  symptoms of rabies is anxiety, hallucinations, fever and vomiting. After a few days, the infected will become aggressive, paralyzed, foaming saliva, hydrophobia and hallucinating. Rabies is a fatal disease although it's treatable at the beginning stage. 

Another disease responsible for werewolf activity (and this also includes vampires too) is porphyria. The blood disorder that makes the person with porphyria to have really sensitive skin to sunlight. It has an effect on the nervous system, causing pain, nausea, weakness, paranoia, discoloured urine, high blood pressure and seizures.

Other known diseases that triggered off werewolf mania include psychosis, a mental illness that is properly termed as clinical lycanthropy. There is also congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa, a genetic disorder that causes someone to grow a lot of hair. There are some poisons that cause hallucinations too. Ergotism might've been responsible for mass werewolf sightings in Europe during the Middle Ages. Ergot poisoning happens after eating infected grains and cereals in bread and porridge, that was mainly consumed by the peasantry. Such ergot poisoning played a part during the witchcraft events at Salem. Deadly nightshade was used a lot in ancient times, during rituals as a herb to assist with astral travel, and it caused a lot of hallucinations and visions. 

She Wolf Night team