Mythological Hospitality: Difficult Guests and Spirited Away

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Everyone intuitively understands what hospitality is. As a rule, we are attentive and helpful to those who are invited into the house: we are ready to offer them a treat and tell them the password for the wifi. And if something happens to the guest - for example, he gets hurt or drinks too much - it is the owner who will fuss around with a first-aid kit or a glass of water.

There are not many types of relationships in culture that involve caring for an adult who is not a relative or romantic partner. Where did such a reverent attitude towards hospitality come from, which we still maintain today? We talk about why bread and salt are important, why the biblical Sodom was actually destroyed and how the problem of hospitality is interpreted in philosophical anthropology.

Hospitality as a virtue and fellowship with a deity

The Hellenistic concept of hospitality was deeply ritualistic in nature. The duty of hospitality was associated with Zeus Xenios, under whose protection the pilgrims were.

Often in ancient cultures, guests were not only acquaintances, but also strangers. An important point regarding ancient hospitality is related to the fact that sheltering someone and giving him shelter often meant saving his life. For example, if the business took place in a cold season and in unsafe places. Sometimes the guest was sick or injured and looked for opportunities to heal. No wonder the Latin word hospes (guest) is reflected in the roots of the words "hospital" and "hospice". If the wanderer was pursued, the owner should have sided with him and protect the one who found shelter under his roof.

The Greek virtue of hospitality was called xenía, from the word for stranger (xenos). The Greeks believed that an outsider could be anyone, including Zeus himself. Therefore, those who followed the rules of hospitality should invite guests into the house, offer them a bath and refreshments, seat them in a place of honor, and then let them go with gifts.

It was considered indecent to ask questions before the visitors were watered and fed.

The ritual of Xenia made demands on both the hosts and the guests, who were supposed to behave well-mannered under someone else's roof and not abuse hospitality.

The Trojan War began due to the fact that Paris kidnapped Elena the Beautiful from Menelaus, violating the laws of Xenia. And when Odysseus went to the Trojan War along with other heroes and could not return home for a long time, his house was occupied by men asking for Penelope's hand. Unhappy Penelope, along with her son Telemachus, were forced to feed and entertain 108 suitors, out of respect for Zeus Xenios, not daring to drive them away, although they had been eating the house for years. Returning Odysseus put things in order, interrupting the oversized guests from his heroic bow - not only because they besieged his wife, but also because they violated the ritual. And in this Zeus was on his side. The murder of the Cyclops Polyphemus by Odysseus is also connected with this theme: Poseidon hated the hero so much because the monstrous son of God was killed not in battle in the middle of a clear field, but in his own cave.

In addition, the ability to comply with the laws of hospitality was associated with the nobility and social status of a citizen and acted as a symbol of civilization.

The Stoics believed that the moral duty towards guests is to honor them, not only for their own sake, but also for the sake of their own virtue - in order to perfect the soul

They emphasized that good feelings should not be limited to ties of blood and friendship, but extend to all people.

In Roman culture, the concept of the divine right of the guest was entrenched under the name hospitium. In general, for the Greco-Roman culture, the principles were the same: the guest was supposed to be fed and entertained, and goodies were often given at parting. The Romans, with their characteristic love of laws, defined the relationship between guest and host legally. The contract was sealed with special tokens - tessera hospitalis, which were made in duplicate. They were exchanged, and then each of the parties to the agreement kept his own token.

The idea of a disguised deity who can visit your home is common across many cultures. In such a situation, it is wise to show sufficient honors just in case. An offended god can send curses on a house, but a well-received one can generously reward. In India, there is the principle of Atithidevo Bhava, which is translated from Sanskrit: "the guest is God." It is revealed in stories and ancient treatises. For example, Tirukural, an essay on ethics written in Tamil (one of the languages of India), speaks of hospitality as a great virtue.

Judaism has a similar opinion about the status of a guest. Angels sent by God came to Abraham and Lot disguised as ordinary travelers

It was the violation by the inhabitants of Sodom, where Lot lived, of the laws of hospitality that became the trigger for the punishment of the Lord

Lot received the newcomers with respect, invited them to wash and spend the night, baked bread for them. However, the depraved Sodomites came to his house and began to demand the extradition of the guests, intending to "know" them. The righteous man flatly refused, saying that he would rather give up his virgin daughters for knowledge. It was not necessary to go to extreme measures - the angels took matters into their own hands, striking everyone around with blindness, and took Lot and his family out of the city, which was then burned by fire from heaven.

The Old Testament principles also migrated into Christian culture, where they were reinforced by the special status of pilgrims and wanderers. The teaching of Christ, who did not address nations and communities, but to each person personally, assumed that strangers were treated as brothers. Jesus himself and his disciples led a nomadic life, making preaching trips, and many showed them hospitality. In all four Gospels there is a story about the Pharisee Simon, who called Jesus to a feast, but did not bring water and did not anoint the guest's head with oil. But Jesus was washed by a local sinner, whom he set as an example for the Pharisee. The tradition of anointing guests with olive oil, to which incense and spices were sometimes added, was common among many Eastern peoples and symbolized respect and the transfer of grace.

Mythological Hospitality: Difficult Guests and Spirited Away

If among the Greeks and in monotheism, the guest is a god, then in traditional cultures that do not have a developed pantheon, these are the spirits of ancestors, a small people or inhabitants of another world. These creatures are not always friendly, but if you get used to, they can be appeased.

In the pagan view, every place has invisible masters, and if you do not agree with them or spoil the relationship, there will be trouble. Researchers of Slavic rituals describe the practice of treating spirits, coinciding with the way in which the host-guest relations between people were traditionally fastened, that is, with bread and salt.

Offerings for brownies, baenniks, field workers, mermaids, noons and other owners of the surrounding locations were called "otrets". There are many described practices of feeding bread, porridge and milk to a brownie, a mythological homeowner, in relation to which people act as tenants

The peasants of the Smolensk province treated the mermaids so that they would not spoil the cattle. And in the Kursk province, according to the records of ethnographers, even purchased cows were greeted with bread and salt in order to show the animals that they were welcome in the house.

It was believed that on special days of the year, when the border between reality and navu becomes thinner, creatures living on the other side pay visits to people. The most suitable time for this is late autumn, when daylight hours are reduced so that it seems as if it is not there, or the beginning of winter, the time of the first frosts. There are still echoes of calendar rituals associated with mythical guests. Outwardly harmless Halloween trick or treat and Christian Christmas caroling that assimilated ancient rites are a reflection of them. By the way, a ghost is also a guest in the world of the living.

In the Slavic folk calendar, the time of caroling fell on Christmastide. In the huts, where visitors were awaited, lighted candles were placed on the windows. Mummers, or okrutniks, carols, who, in exchange for food and wine, entertained (and slightly frightened) the owners by playing musical instruments and telling stories, entered such houses. To be convinced of the symbolic meaning of this rite, it is enough to look at the traditional masks and outfits of the okrutniki. In folk sayings and greetings, they were called difficult guests or unprecedented guests.

The church systematically tried to combat the pagan rites of caroling. In the Christian view, such guests are an unclean force, and a "hospitable" dialogue with them is impossible. In some areas, it was forbidden to let carols into the house, or residents found a compromise between folk and Christian traditions, presenting "unclean" guests through the stove window or cleansing them with blessed Epiphany water.

Santa Claus, the Scandinavian Yulebukk with the Yule goat, the Icelandic Yolasweinars, the Icelandic Yule cat - all these are guests who come from the other world on winter evenings when the walls crack from the cold

Today they, ennobled by Christianization, have become refined childish and commercial images, but once they were dark aliens who often demanded sacrifices.

In fairy tales and myths, there is also the opposite option - a person goes to another world to stay. From an etymological point of view, this word comes from the Old Russian pogostiti, “to be a guest”. True, the origin is not so obvious, it is associated with such a semantic chain: "the place of the merchants' lodging (inn)> the place of stay of the prince and his subordinates> the main settlement of the district> the church in it> the churchyard at the church> the cemetery". Nevertheless, the cemetery spirit in the word "visit" is quite palpable.

Propp directly points out that Baba Yaga from fairy tales is the keeper of the kingdom of the dead. Going to visit her is part of the initiation, a demo of death

In fairy tales, a yaga can be an old woman, an old man, or an animal - for example, a bear. A cycle of mythological stories about a journey to the land of fairies, the kingdom of forestry or to the underwater world to the mermaids - these are variations on the theme of shamanic trips and rites of passage. A person accidentally or deliberately falls into another world and returns with acquisitions, but, having made a mistake, he risks incurring big trouble.

Breaking a ban in another world is a surefire way to quarrel with the spirits and not return home, dying forever. Even the three bears in the tale about Mashenka (Goldilocks in the Saxon version) say that it is better not to touch other people's things without asking. Mashenka's journey is a visit “to the other side”, which miraculously ended without losses. "Who sat in my chair and broke it?" - asks the bear, and the girl has to get away with her legs.

This plot is revealed, in particular, in Hayao Miyazaki's cartoon "Spirited Away", based on Shinto beliefs and images of youkai, Japanese mythological creatures. Unlike Western demons and demons, these creatures may not wish a person evil, but it is better to behave with them carefully. The parents of the girl Chihiro violate the magical prohibition by carelessly eating food in an empty town, where they accidentally wandered during the move, and turn into pigs. So Chihiro has to work for supernatural beings to free his family. Miyazaki's cartoon proves that in a more or less modern world, the mystical rules are the same: you just have to make a "wrong turn" and violate the laws of someone else's place - and youkai will take you forever.

Hospitality rituals

Many of the rituals of etiquette that we still practice today are associated with a complex relationship in the ancient world, where a stranger could turn out to be both a deity and a murderer.

In traditional culture, a person lives in the center of the world, along the edges of which lions, dragons and psoglavtsy live. Thus, the world is divided into "us" and "foes".

The cultural meaning of hospitality is that a person lets in his personal space the Other - a stranger, an alien - and treats him as if he were “his”.

This seems to have been understood throughout cultural history - at least ever since our ancestors appreciated the benefits of intertribal ritual exchanges over the “all versus all” war that Thomas Hobbes described.

You can get from one category to another using a special rite of passage. For example, a bride passes through such a ceremony, entering her husband's family in a new capacity. And a deceased person goes from the world of the living to the kingdom of the dead. The rituals associated with the transition have been described in detail by the anthropologist and ethnographer Arnold van Gennep. He divided them into preliminary (associated with separation), liminar (intermediate) and postliminar (rituals of inclusion).

The guest symbolically connects the world of friends and foes, and in order to accept a stranger, he must be met in a special way. For this, stable phrases and repetitive actions were used. Among different peoples, the rituals of honoring guests were sometimes rather bizarre.

The Tupi tribe of Brazil considered it good form to weep when meeting a guest

Apparently, a vivid expression of emotions, as happens with relatives and loved ones after a long separation, should have made communication sincere.

The women approach, sit on the floor by the hammock, cover their faces with their hands and greet the guest, praising him and crying without respite. The guest, for his part, is also supposed to cry during these outpourings, but if he does not know how to squeeze real tears out of his eyes, then he should at least breathe deeply and make himself look as sad as possible.

James George Fraser, Folklore in the Old Testament

A stranger adapted to his inner, “own” world no longer bears danger, so he was supposed to be symbolically included in the clan. Representatives of the African people Luo from Kenya donated land from their family plot to guests, both from the neighboring community and from other people. It was assumed that in exchange they would invite the donor to family holidays and support him in household chores.

Most of the rituals of hospitality are about sharing food. The already mentioned classic combination of bread and salt is the alpha and omega of historical hospitality. No wonder a good host is called hospitable. This treat is recommended for reconciliation with the enemy "Domostroy", it was also an obligatory attribute of Russian weddings. The tradition is typical not only for the Slavs, but for almost all European and Middle Eastern cultures. In Albania, pogacha bread is used, in Scandinavian countries - rye bread, in Jewish culture - challah (in Israel, landlords sometimes even leave this pastry to welcome new tenants). It was widely believed that refusing to share a meal with the host was an insult or an admission of bad intentions.

One of the most famous shock content stories in the Game of Thrones TV series and the George Martin book series is The Red Wedding, in which most of the Stark family are killed by their vassals Freya and Bolton. The massacre took place at a feast, after the breaking of bread. This violated the sacred laws that, in the world of Westeros, inspired by many world cultures, guaranteed guests protection under the shelter of the owner. Catelyn Stark understood where this was going, noticing that armor was hidden under the sleeve of Rousse Bolton, but it was too late. By the way, the tradition of shaking hands also has a preliminary nature - there are definitely no weapons in the open palm.

In addition to food, the host could invite the guest to share a bed with his daughter or wife

This custom, which existed among many primitive societies, is called hospitable heterism. This practice took place in Phenicia, Tibet, and among the peoples of the North.

Then the guest was required to be properly escorted, provided with gifts that connected him with the visited place and served as a kind of sign of the discovery of the location. So today, many collect travel souvenirs. And the exchange of gifts remains a popular etiquette gesture. True, now a bottle of wine or a treat for tea is more often brought by guests.

Whatever the rituals of hospitality, it is always a combination of protection and trust. The host takes the guest under his protection, but at the same time opens himself up to him. In the sacred practices of hospitality, the guest is both a god and a stranger from a mysterious outer space. Therefore, through the Other, the comprehension of the deity occurs and communication with the outside world is carried out beyond the boundaries of the usual.

Hospitality theory

Traditionally, hospitality has been a subject of interest mainly to ethnographers who study how it relates to specific folk traditions and rituals. In addition, it was interpreted by philologists. For example, the linguist Emile Benveniste considered how the terms used to describe hospitality and the status of the people involved constitute the linguistic palette associated with this phenomenon. From the point of view of sociological science, hospitality is considered as a social institution that was formed as travel and trade relations developed and finally industrialized into the modern commercial sphere. In all these cases, specific forms of expression become the subject of research, but there is no talk of general ontological foundations.

However, in recent years, hospitality has become more often talked about from the point of view of global analytics. This approach assumes that it exists in culture as an independent phenomenon, filled with one or another traditional practice. There are semantic binary oppositions - internal and external, I and the Other - and all interactions are built according to this principle. The idea of the Other, who is the central character of plots about hospitality, has acquired special significance in modern humanitarian knowledge. First of all, all this is a problematics of philosophical anthropology, although the discussion about the forms in which the Other appears to us and how to deal with it is conducted almost everywhere in the socio-cultural and political field.

Interaction with the Other and the alien is built simultaneously along two lines - interest and rejection - and oscillates between these poles. In the world of globalization, differences between people are erased, and life is becoming more and more unified. Coming to visit a colleague, a modern city dweller is likely to find there the same table from Ikea as at his home. Any information is easily accessible. And the likelihood of meeting something fundamentally different is reduced. A paradoxical situation arises. On the one hand, the dignity of modernity is considered to be the ability to rip off the veils of everything incomprehensible: the audience of new media loves to be educated and read about the debunking of myths. On the other hand, in the "unenchanted" world there is a growing demand for new impressions and exoticism, caused by the longing for the unknown. Perhaps this is connected with the desire of modern philosophy to comprehend the inhuman and intellectual fashion for everything “dark”.

In search of the unknowable and in an effort to see a person in a different light, researchers turn to the themes of the vague and transcendent, whether it be Lovecraft's philosophy of horror, the philosophy of darkness, or the bogey of conservatism

At the same time, the processes of globalization presuppose interactions, during which the idea of a stranger is actualized, and the problem of hospitality acquires a new acuteness. The ideal of multiculturalism assumes that the European society will welcome guests with open arms, and they will behave in a friendly manner. However, migration conflicts and crises prove that it is often not just about something else, but about someone else's, often expansive and aggressive. However, there are different opinions about whether it is possible to speak of hospitality as a political phenomenon or it must certainly be personal. Political philosophy operates with the concept of state hospitality, which manifests itself in relation to citizens of other states or immigrants. Other researchers believe that political hospitality is not genuine, since in this case it is not about philanthropy, but about the right.

Jacques Derrida divided hospitality into two types - "conditional" and "absolute". Understood in the "conventional" sense, this phenomenon is regulated by custom and laws, and also gives the participants subjectivity: we know what the names and status of people entering into relations of guests and hosts are (just for such a case the Romans minted their tokens).

Understanding hospitality in the “absolute” sense presupposes the experience of radical openness to an “unknown, anonymous other” who is invited to enter our house without any obligations, without even giving a name

In a sense, this acceptance of the other in its entirety is a return to the archaic idea of a “guest-god”. Historian Peter Jones gives a somewhat similar interpretation to love:

“People see love almost as an agreement: I make a contract with you, we are in love with each other, we make this agreement together. I think the danger is that this approach does not recognize radical manifestations of love - that love can show you something outside of your personality."

Derrida's guest is interpreted through the image of the Stranger in Plato's dialogue - this is a stranger, whose "dangerous" words call into question the master's logos. Thus, Derrida's “absolute” hospitality is associated with the central ideas for him of deconstructing all kinds of “centrisms”.

Nevertheless, while phallologocentrism is not going to disappear, and the hierarchies, unfortunately for some and for the satisfaction of others, have not disappeared

At the same time, traditional ritual forms of communication with strangers are a thing of the past. Traditional societies are characterized by xenophobia, but they were also capable of radical xenophilia - these are opposite sides of the same phenomenon. Previously, bread was broken with a guest, making it their own through laminar rituals. And if he suddenly behaved inappropriately, it was possible to treat him harshly, like, for example, Odysseus, who killed dozens of "suitors" who annoyed his wife - and at the same time remain in his own right. The loss of the sacred role of hospitality, its surrender to institutions, the separation of the private and the public lead to confusion in the relationship between the Self and the Other.

Many hot questions of ethics are connected with this: how to stop someone else's expansion without escalating the conflict, is it possible to respect the morally unacceptable aspects of someone else's identity, how to reconcile freedom of speech and the recognition of some views as unacceptable, how to distinguish between a compliment and an insult?

Nevertheless, it is possible that the sacred side did not go away, but simply migrated, and the Other took over the functions of the transcendent. Sociologist Irving Goffman associated the importance of etiquette with the fact that it took the place of a religious ritual: instead of God, we today worship a person and an individual, and etiquette gestures (greetings, compliments, signs of respect) play the role of sacrifices to this figure.

Perhaps this is due to the sensitivity of millennials and post-millennials to ethics: trampling on the psychological comfort or personal boundaries of another is seen as an attempt on the "deity."

Thus, from the point of view of philosophical anthropology, the concept of hospitality refers to the basic ontological problems, which today are acquiring new relevance and acuteness. On the one hand, few people want outsiders to occupy their world and for their subjectivity and thinking to collapse. On the other hand, interest in the alien and incomprehensible is part of the cognitive mind's strategy and a way to see oneself through the eyes of the Other.