Just finished reading this fascinating book, which examines the realationship between customs assocated with the American Santa Claus, and old world Carnivals, elves, pre-celtic gods & goddesses, and even Neanderthals. I had heard of this book for a long while, but finally got my hands on a copy. Lots of things jump out to me, but in particular, one thing was rather surprising.
On page 177 of the hardcover, there's an image of a 'Bohemian Setek' , a creature called the Skrat by the Slovenians (per Seifker). The image jumped out at me because I had seen it before in a National Geographic Channel show on 'The Devil's Bible'. That show looked at a tremendously oversized collection of the bible and some other books called the Codex Gigas, which had a huge illustration of a horned, fanged, clawed devil on one of its page. The thing is, its almost exactly the same as Seifker's Setek image, its even standing between two pillars, just like in the Codex Gigas. I thought that the picture in Siefker was the same image, but its not, there are some slight differences in the face (less wild grin, fewer teeth that aren't as sharp, and the face doesn't appear to be a dark green).
So what gives?
On the one hand, this all fits well with Siefker's synthesis; an ancient god/ritual gets split and transformed over the course of history into its goodly aspects like Santa Claus and Caroling and terrigying aspects like The Devil and Halloween mayhem. But still, The creature in the National Geographic Channel special is specifically said to be the Devil, hence the name of the show as 'the devil's bible'. But the images are, if nothing else, copies of one another, and Seifker isn't calling it 'the devil', but the bohemian Setek, and the Codex Gigas was created in Bohemia.
Maybe the National Geographic Channel, in an effort to drum up rattings, decided to ignore all this and just pretend it was the devil.
This reminds me of the History Channel's production 'Apocalypse Island', which was supposed to be about a secret island that Mayan preist-kings had built a momunment on and to which they expected to return and watch the end of the world occur. Of course, it was bunkum, the island's actually inhabited, has an airport, is no where near the Mayans, and there's no monument there. But you'd never get that from this, you know, educational show.
Don't know what that all means, other than yet another reminder to not beleive everything you see on TV, even 'historical documentaries'.
But still, what about Siefker's Setek image? Unfortunately she doesn't give a citation for it (at least in my hard-cover edition, maybe its in the softcover ). Its really strange because its such a near perfect copy of the Codex Gigas image, excpect for minor details of the mouth, and color of the face.
In trying to get the reference, I found out the Mrs. Seifker died in 2002, which is sad to hear:
This is definitely the author, the surviving family members are the same people she dedicated the above book (which looks to be the only book she published, that I can find anyway).
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