I have come to believe that what is known about the finnish and sami bear ritual is something we can still apply to social life today. There are some rational beliefs surrounding this, and bear worship or bear cult is the wording used by academic mainstream thinking when they are referring to them. I don’t think there is any doubt about the known ceremonials involved, or of the rituals used to come into a communion with the spirit of the bear. But i reckon it is a scapegoat ritual rather than bear worshipping. The killing and eating of the bear was in its traditional sense a ritual for the renewal of spiritual beingness transferred to the bear, and a respectful ceremonial of death and rebirth in a controlled ritual hunt as an outlet for uncontrolled acts of aggression, discontent and blame that has accumulated in the community. Of powers threatening its stability. In the killing of the bear, it was extremely important to let the bear know that the blame was his, not theirs, and the hunters where very careful not to take any of that blame with them back from the hunt. In fact, everything involved in this ritual was about being cautious not to let the bear blame them for his murder. So the blame was transmitted on to the bear. By waking it up from its hibernation the bear turned on them att full force. So the hunters must have been very alert and keep their heads to be able to handle the tensity and its rage. Intuitively, my senses tell me that the whole hunt is more of a clensing ceremony. A ritual transfer of guilt, of handling aggression, and to put the blame on the bear for him to carry it back to the spiritworld. Ultimately, it seems that the hunt was aimed at a spiritual revivification of a group or community. We still have it today. The hunt is there but the ceremonials are gone. So it continues to live on in a hidden and distorted form outside of ritual handling where it doesn’t belong, and we turn it loose inside the community itself and tear both the community and each other apart.
This is actually what is happening today. We hunt indiscriminately both people and animals with our rage, and we blame them for our actions. This is how we relieve ourselves of the phenomenology of our actions, no matter how obvious it is for any bystander to actually observe that the aggression or blame are coming from us as we move it out of ourselves and place it on something else.
So the bear itself becomes the subject of our untamed forces. For the unrestrained and naturally antisocial behavior we have within us. When the bear within us expresses itself, his own company is enough. He is playful but irritable and is best left alone to himself. It is not behavior for common purposes. We can meet the bear in our dreams, as the power of our untamed nature. In solitude and in the mountains. Wherever he appears, he has something important to say about the relationship we have with ourselves and others. When we meet him, he becomes a significant companion in our inner life.