Summoning Monsters and the secret meaning of words

In Finland, it has been important not to whistle on the boat because you can accidentally call a storm (because whistling was believed to be able to control the weather) and not to argue in the sauna because then the noise activates the murder mode of the silence-loving sauna spirit (and same with water spirits, forest spirits and field spirits). The only forbidden words that were not allowed to be said were "bear" and "swan" because they were considered very sacred animals, for example, hunters had to apologize for killing the bear in the forest and organize funeral parties, bear weddings, while swan hunting was prohibited under threat of death because humans were believed to be descended from swans and vice versa

Thank you for the shoutout, Jon! Adding to the conversation in the comments, the Romanian folk calendar observes certain animals several times throughout the year, overlapping them with Orthodox feasts. On each of their feasts, those animals are referred to using euphemisms, ranging from saintly titles to descriptors. And so, for example, on the Night of the Wolf (30 Nov) you don't mention the beast, on the Day of the Snake (14 September/17 March) you call it "the crawler", and on the Day of the Bear (Feb 2nd), you call it Saint Martin or "the Elder" for fear of not summoning them your way and out of reverence for some of them, like the Wolf and Bear, are also considered divine ancestors. According to some scholars, these customs have survived from the practices of "the wood civilization", the Neolithic sylvan culture most prevalent in the Carpathian region. But, of course, the dispersion of similar beliefs points to an older and perhaps untraceable animistic ethos.

Hungarians also currently use the slavic word for bear, the old name is lost, as far as I know. However, we too have a few interesting taboo animal names. Farkas (wolf) means "the tailed one", szarvas (stag) is "the one with horns", and an old name for fox is ravasz, "the sly one"

It actually makes sense. Albania is famous for the cult of the snake. Even though the snake is depicted as a duality and a protector, it can also bring misfortune and death. For this reason, when referring to the snake, many people say "ai I tokës" meaning "the one of the ground" or "the one who belongs to the ground", from the fear that if you use the word for snake, you may summon it. But on the other hand, we are told that if we find a snake inside the house, we should not bother it as it protects the home. We call it "gjarpri I shtëpise", meaning "the snake of the house". If the snake is bothered, bad things will happen to the house; either it will be destroyed by natural disasters, or people may get destructive diseases and die.

Bear in Sanskrit is called RkSa. The Brahmanas texts mentions how the Seven Sages (Big Dipper) were formerly called "the bears". The modern Indian languages use some form of Sanskrit "bhallUka" (Hindi: baloo) meaning "brown" as well, but I don't think this is taboo as opposed to simple word preference. The word RkSa survives in Hindi as "rIc".

The 13th warrior: A terror that has no name. A terror that must not be named. Look at them. What thing would affect them so ? "The name cannot be said. "

I was outside on the back porch (my house is surrounded by woods) watching the video on my phone and in a loud voice I said the forbidden word when all of a sudden the largest, most horrifying Bear jumped on to the railing of the porch and I was so terrified for a split second that I just froze, and I think I peed a little... Okay it was actually a squirrel... Well, what can I say I was really immersed in the video...

7:15 In Finnish language, there are also other names for bear than karhu. For example otso and mesikämmen (the latter when translated to English means honey palm). These other names were invented so that people could speak about the beast without repeating the name and be heard by the bear…

I’ve heard somewhere that Bear is what Arthur meant as in King Arthur and that’s why it’s hard to determine who he was because it was more of a title than a name.

Bears also appear in Korean mythology. The Sky-God had sons, one of whom came down to earth. He married a bear-woman and had a son, who was said to be Dangun, the first king in Korean. I guess Korea also had a lot of bear-related folklore in ancient times. However, perhaps because tigers were more threatening than bears on the Korean Peninsula, tigers appear more important than bears in the legends and folklore that have been passed down in Korea to this day.

The weirdest thing happened.... I was listening to this video with my headphones on whilst sitting on my verandah. When I said 'rtkos' aloud, both my dogs , which were a few metres away, surveying the fence line, pricked up their ears and turned to me... Gosh, wishing us all good luck with such dangers about! Plus when I was in Sweden some 30 years ago, I ate smoked bear on a camping trip!

Stefan Milo released a video yesterday that is mainly focused on structures built of mammoth bones and thoughts on why, but in it he mentions practices of "sending the bear off" still used by Evenki people.

I bear witness to this great episode.

I love your video angle. It looks like you are wearing a tea cup on your head!!😂😂😂❤❤❤❤

It was nice knowing you

13:58 actually there are plenty of German fairy tales with bears in it (one of the most famous ones being the story of Snow-White and Rose-Red, where the bear is the "good guy" and protects the girls). Ans some wild speculation... I looked up the descendants of h₂ŕ̥tḱos and noticed that one of them ἄρκτος - artos and wonder if the word is related to Arthus (German) or Arthur (English), which lead me to muse about whether or not all the ancient stories about deities or kings sleeping for centuries in caved may be related to some primordial bear cult? (as I said: just wild speculation)

I'm reminded of the bear cult in the movie, "The 13th Warrior" based on "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton. He was rewriting Beowulf, but in that he considered the possible origins of berserkers and a variation of the Tree of Odin.

Arktos = summoning name of bear. Bear, Brown, Bruin, Honey-eater, Bee-wolf etc are the safe words. This is how the Romans won the battle of Mons Badonicus: As we faced the English hoardes, Owain ab Urien said "What do we do now, Arthur pen Dragon?" A bear appeared and ate 1,000 Jutes. Then, Peredur ab Evrog said "What do we do now, Arthur Emperor?" A second bear appeared and ate 2,000 Angles. Then Lancelot the Irishman said "What do we do now, Arthur dux Bellorum?" A third bear appeared and ate 3,000 Saxons. Then the whole host of the Britons yelled "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"

Like mentioned in this video, in Finnish, even today the bear has multiple nicknames ("mesikämmen" honey paw, "kontio" something-walking-on-all-fours etc). The modern name for bear, "karhu" is etymologically derived from the word "coarse" as to describe the feeling of the fur, so again an euphemism. It seems our ancestors kept the real name so tightly secret that nobody knows anymore what the damn thing is actually called! ... But then again.. to be on the safe side maybe some words are better leave unsaid...

I like that King Arthur is named for the Old English word that would have literally meant "bear". So, King Bear. I guess it would have been audacious to have such a name, daring the bear to try to eat you. After the real word for bear was forgotten, people began to be named "Bjorn" or "Barney" for maybe related reasons. Very incidentally, bears' brains were once the right thing to use to cure leather for shoe soles. North America used to have a bear much bigger than the grizzly, called now the "short-faced" bear. They were wiped out in the aftermath of the end-Pleistocene comet strike / air burst that set the whole continent on fire, and also did in North American horses, camels, giant sloths, mastodons, mammoths, dire wolves, saber-tooth cats, cheetahs, giant beavers, and many more of what are called "megafauna". Clovis point industry ended then, too, although production of smaller points more suitable for the smaller game that remained continued. People have asked why dogs don't have a mega-dog, the way cats have tigers. Answer seems to be that bears are dogs' counterpart.