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Pig: • noun 1. a domesticated mammal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout, kept for its meat. 2. a wild animal related to the domestic pig. 3. informal a greedy, dirty, or unpleasant person. 4. informal, derogatory a police officer. 5. an oblong mass of iron or lead from a smelting furnace.
–Concise Oxford English Dictionary
Pigs have acquired an unenviable reputation. Their name is synonymous with greed, lust, filth and disease. Jews and Muslims abominate them as an article of faith and the rest of us aren’t terribly keen.
But it wasn’t always thus:
The Pig was held sacred by the ancient Cretans, because Jupiter was suckled by a sow; it was immolated in the mysteries of Eleusis; was sacrificed to Hercules, to Venus, the Lares, and all those who sought relief from bodily ailments. –Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 1894 Edition
In fact, Brewer’s entry for pigs is woefully scanty for an animal that has figured so prominently in the world’s myths, cults and religions.
Tibetan Buddhist deity, Vajra Yogini, is also known in the form of Vajravarahi the Adamantine Sow.
The Hindu Goddess Durga often takes the form of a wild boar.
Nuut the Egyptian goddess of the night, Mother of Stars, was sometimes depicted on amulets as a sow suckling her piglets.
The pig was sacred to Isis, just as it was to Demeter. (Indeed several aspects of her mythology –especially details of the quest for the dismembered Osiris — are identical to myths of Demeter’s quest for her abducted daughter.)
The chief of the Greek gods, Zeus, was suckled by a sow.
Swine were sacred to Demeter, goddess of the earth’s fertility, who was the mother of Persephone, queen of the underworld. In autumn, during the rites of Thesmophoria, her devotees drove a herd of swine into a labyrinthine cave. Later, they would return to see if the deity had accepted this offering by examining the condition of any pig carcasses that might remain.
Her cult was later absorbed and subsumed by that of the Roman goddess of grain, Ceres, to whom the pig offering continued to be performed. Swine were sacrificed also, to Hercules, to Venus and also to the Lares by those seeking relief from their illnesses.
In the epic about the Greek hero Odysseus’ 10 years of adventure returning from the Trojan War, somewhere on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the sorceress Circe turned Odysseus’ crew into swine for the 7 years during which she held him captive.
Tacitus (1st century CE) in Germania [ch. 45] says of the Germans that:
‘They worship the Mother of the Gods, and wear, as an emblem of this cult, the device of a wild boar, which stands them in stead of armor or human protection, and gives the worshiper a sense of security even among his enemies. They seldom use weapons of iron, but clubs very often.’
The Slavic figure called Baba Yaga (or Iaga,) is usually described as riding an airborne mortar which she steers with her pestle. However, some Russian folktales describe her riding a sow.
The Celtic Mother goddess Ceridwin, who was associated with the moon, was referred to as the Old White Sow. The Celts were also among those who considered the flesh of swine the most suitable meal for the gods even after the Old Mythology was diminished into tales of the Otherworld. It was also said that Manannan, god of the sea, had magic pigs which though eaten one day, returned the next to be eaten again.
In Artemis’ eastern form as Great Goddess similar to the Diana of Ephesus, she is associated with the boar. Hence, it is more than likely that the bulbous appendages on the tiered body of the triple-crowned goddess of the Ephesians are not breasts (Are there any breasts without nipples?) but rather boar’s testicles.
Adonis, a later Greek god whose origins lie in the Middle East, perished by the tusks of a wild boar. His name, which derives from adohn or lord, likely refers to Tammuz, consort of the Great Goddess, Ishtar.
A flying boar was associated with Clazomenae, a city of Asia Minor, home to philosopher Anaxagoras (499-428 BCE.) He taught, with some similarity to the Buddha, that “nothing comes into being nor perishes but that it is compounded or dissolved from things that are.”
Vishnu’s third avatar, or manifested form, is The Boar. He is depicted either as the animal or as a boar-headed man with four arms. In that form, he holds a wheel, a conch- shell, a sword, and a mace or a lotus. Alternately, two of his hands may be in the protection or boon-bestowing gestures.
Hiranyaksha, (golden-eyed demon) received a boon from the god Brahma after having practiced severe austerities in his devotion to him. He asked to become king of the whole world, and that no animal which he mentioned by name should ever have the power to harm him. But he had to enumerate the animals, and he forgot to mention the boar.
Now the demon wreaked havoc, plundering everything of value from the creatures of the world, including the Hindu scriptures. Golden-eye even took the earth down into the ocean as a hostage, but it complained bitterly and loudly.
Vishnu assumed the boar form and plunged into the depths of the primeval ocean to rescue Earth. It took him one thousand years to kill Hiranyaksha and to lift the earth up with his great white tusks. He calmed it, and made it ready for human use by molding its mountains and continents.
In Rome, a boar was the feast offering to the god Saturn; Martial says, “That boar will make you a good Saturnalia.” The winter pork feast reminds us of Vishnu’s Varaha incident occurring as it does at the winter solstice when the earth needs to be retrieved from the depths of darkness.
The boar’s-head standard is among the gifts bestowed by the Danish king upon the hero Beowulf for his having slain the ogre, Grendel.
In Saxo’s History of the Danes the order of the battle of Bravalla is described, and Woden or Odin’s device of a boar’s head [hamalt fylking] is said to refer to the swine-head military formation referred to in the Code of Manu [ancient Indian social code] a ” terrible column with wedge head which could cleave the stoutest line.”
The valkyries, the Norse dakinis, served the warriors of Valhalla meat from the boar named Saehrimnir. The divine chef, Andhrimnir, prepared a stew of it in the cauldron called Eldhrimnir. The beast magically came back to life again before the next meal.
At Yule, the northern European winter solstice festival, the head of a roast swine with an apple in its jaws, is the highlight of the meal.
Arthurian legend includes “The Hunting of Twrch Trwyth,” a magical boar with comb, scissors and razor between its ears. The animal was female and, like Marichi, was considered to travel with her 7 farrow.
The Yuletide celebrations were adopted at least from the time of the Saxons, who offered a boar as a solstice sacrifice like their more northern relatives. A boar’s or pig’s head with the apple in its mouth is a festive dish at Christmas in the British Isles though the reason for it may be long forgotten.
The Beast of Cornwall, as described in medieval British legend, is a boar.
Which all goes to demonstrate that pigs are worthy of our respect.
And so we come to our friend Alarming’s (and The Whalley Range All Stars’) Giant Inflatable Electric Euro Pig:
Politely Homicidal is going to break with tradition and encourage you to swinishness (I can hear some mutters of “…I thought swinishness was Politely Homicidal tradition” but I’m going to ignore the nameless malcontent [Mowbray]). Get your trotters in the trough and root out some verses in honour of Alarming’s splendid Euro Pig.
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