Chapter 16
Bear Fat and Bear Gall

Bear fat is a healing means that has a solid place in the medicine chest of shamans until this day and comes from “bear cultures.”

Nana Nauwald, Baerenkraft und Jaguarmedizin (author’s translation)

The living bear is cherished even more as an apothecary itself than are all the bear plants put together. All of its body parts are laden with healing energy. In China and East Asia, only ginseng can compare to the mighty healing power of the bear. Ginseng (Chinese = man-root) is the “emperor of the plants” just as the bear is the “king of the forest.” They both have in common a human-like form, and, according to the oldest healing principle—head to head, heart to heart, kidneys to kidneys (i.e., like cures like, similia smilibus curentur)—both the human-like root and the “forest human bear” cure the entire human being. As alchemists would say, both have a human signature. Tungusic peoples in Siberia avow that both ginseng and the bear have a human soul and speak to both the plant and the bear, as to a human being. In ancient China, it was even believed that an exceptionally gifted herbal practitioner could marry the ginseng plant and that it would appear to him as a radiant virgin. It was believed to even be possible that he could sire children with her. Likewise, a shaman can marry the bear spirit, or the bear spirit can sire children with women it visits at night. The human relationship to these two carriers of potent medicinal power is loaded with energy and surrounded by numerous taboos and rules.

In other parts of the world, the bear—its fur, teeth, gall, fat, flesh, and blood—was also seen as a reservoir of the strongest of healing means against which the worst demons of disease and black magic had no chance. In the Artemis temples of antiquity, living bears were kept for therapeutic reasons. The priestesses cured hair loss and gout with bear fat and a chronic cough with a drop of bear gall stirred into honey water. Bear testicles were prescribed against “falling sickness” (epilepsy).

The Bear’s Charisma

Surely one could analyze the bear’s fat, gall, kidneys, and testicles for the molecular active ingredients and find out very interesting things. After all, have healing plants not also been analyzed and freed of the undergrowth of superstitious imaginations? Bill Tallbull could only shake his head as I discussed such ideas with him: “The bear has medicine power, but it is not a substance. It is more like a charisma that surrounds him. Each hair, the claws, and all parts of the bear have this power!” Was he telling me another of his tall tales that he had on hand for curious tourists? Like so often, he read my thoughts even before I had finished thinking them and added with a whimsical smile: “This charisma can change a human’s consciousness. If the bear did not have this power, the white people would have wiped it out by now.”

The bear’s charisma! Even until the beginning of the twentieth century people would invite traveling artists who had dancing bears with them to come to their barns or the local mill. The very presence of a bear was enough to drive away bad moods, spooks, and bad magic. In the Carpathian Mountains, a bear claw is still hung over a child’s crib for protection. According to the principle that like can deal with like, these dangerous, murderous weapons of the carnivore will keep anything threatening away from the helpless little one. The Inuit also hang a bear tooth around the neck of a baby so that it will have a good appetite and good digestion and especially so that it will grow strong teeth. Good teeth were historically vitally important for the Inuit, not only to eat, but also because they spent hours chewing dried animal skins to make them soft, malleable, and easy to sew. The Inuit still believe that an amulet made from bear parts will make them invincible, as long as the bear did not die by human hands. Knut Rasmussen, the famous polar researcher, adds: “It is not the amulet itself but the soul of the animal from which the amulet is made that has helping and healing power” (Nana Nauwald 2002, 107).

80_artists.tif — Traveling artists with a dancing bear

It is a universal, archaic belief that the power, the “soul” of a living being, can live on for a long time in the bones and especially in the skull, the teeth, and the claws. This belief also applies to human remains and explains many of the burial rites in the old and new world. Christians also believe in the radiating power of the bones of the martyrs and saints and cement them into altars. In the entire northern hemisphere of yore, dead bears were handled with as much respect as dead humans were. In Siberia, the entire bear skeleton was carefully buried or, as done by many Native Americans as well, carefully placed on a platform or in a tree. The bear’s skull, which is where the reincarnating soul resides, was often painted, just as human skulls also often were (Schlesier 2013, 57). Shamans stay in contact with the helpful spirit of the bear that is now residing in the otherworld by wearing its claws and teeth.

Bear claw and bear tooth amulets for pregnant women were used until recently, and Roma peoples still use them today. In the Mediterranean, a bear claw on a necklace is believed to ward off the evil eye. Old Norwegian peasants would put dried bear eyes on the beds of children to ward off nightmares that not only frighten them but also sometimes cause cramps. In many places, newborn babies, as well as sick and old people and people who had rheumatism, were lain on a bearskin. This practice was done not only because of the warmth that a bearskin offers but also mainly for the vitality, the energy, that the shaggy fur radiates. A bearskin was even believed to heal those bitten by a rabid animal when such victims were wrapped in one. Bridal couples of the Sami people would sit on a bearskin during the wedding so that they would profit from the bear’s strong vitality and fertility. For the same reason, in ancient Prussia, the couple was served fried bear testicles; later on, roasted bear innards were placed under the bridal bed instead.

Everywhere blood is believed to be a magical, strengthening substance. What blood could be stronger than that of a bear? Only chiefs, shamans, warriors, or the best hunters were strong enough to take it, and the bear’s heart, inner organs, and fresh, warm blood were reserved for such people to consume ceremoniously. The berserkers also ritually charged themselves up with bear blood, brain, and bone marrow. It is said of legendary Achilles that he got his heroic courage from sucking out bear bone marrow as a child.

In this same spirit, the proud councilmen of Berne, Switzerland, used to claim the meat of a slain bear for themselves. For example, in 1891, when the town celebrated its seven-hundred-year anniversary, they strengthened themselves and their authority with a tasty dish of bear—accompanied by festive brass music. The meat was chased down with a hearty stream of special dark beer. In addition, even into the middle of the 1990s, at an annual bear feast for the most important councilmen of the city, the bear warden of the ancient bear pit in Berne and the mayor were the first ones to be served the best parts—the paws and the liver. Anthropologists speak quite openly of a ceremonial, totemic meal in this case as well as any other. The bear fat was sold to the apothecaries, and the furs decorated the offices. A legend of an old Bernese who was downright addicted to bear meat tells how the more he ate, the more hair he had on his body and the stronger he became. Instead of speaking, he evermore only grumbled. Such a case sounds highly unlikely, but why are the Ainu, who became ethnologically famous for their totemic bear feasts, the hairiest people known to anthropologists? They are stocky, have round faces with deep-set eyes (no epicanthic fold), are extremely hairy, and the men have extremely full beards. By chance?

“No, most certainly not by chance,” argued Bill Tallbull as we discussed the subject one day. “One does become what one eats,” he explained plainly and justified his preference for the meat of wild animals and his rejection of calf meat and milk. “Just look at the soft white people with their everlasting milk drinking. They have become like dumb calves,” he said with a dismissive gesture.

The eastern Siberian nomads, who have a highly ritualized bear meal, do not go so far as to suck the marrow out of the bones and would not dream of it. The bear spirit could revenge itself in a horrific way, and the potency in the bear could turn into a negative power causing disease, accidents, or severe weather. Each bone should remain intact. The bones are carefully rearranged in exact anatomical order just as one would do with a deceased human being and then put carefully into the earth or wrapped in birch bark and placed in a tree. Only in this way can the bear wake up into a new life.

82_amulets.tif — Wooden healing amulets with bear motifs (Siberia, Museum of Ethnology, Berlin; above left: Golden, the others Gilyak). Ailments treated, from top to bottom: back pain (2x), disease, and chest pain.

For some of the hunting peoples, the ancient Finnish hunters for example, the bear’s brain was considered the best part. Medieval Europeans did not eat it, though—perhaps memories of wild berserkers and their non-Christian customs were too strong. Even the Romans were convinced that a bear’s brain had a strong influence on a person’s spirit. Plinius warned it would make a person go crazy; the bear’s fantasies and delusions would transfer to the person who would begin to believe he or she was a bear. Repugnant stories of noblemen, mainly, who ate bear brain and turned into vicious were-bears made the rounds in Europe.¹

The Cure-All

Bear gall plays a special role in healing lore. It is said to be good for anything and everything—a veritable cure-all. In Finland, the bitter liquid is given to sick people as a sudorific. In Central Europe, frostbitten limbs used to be bathed in water with some bear gall in it. Bear gall was also used to treat skin and eye ailments, jaundice, cancer, and animal bites. It was put into the vagina in the form of a suppository shortly before intercourse to increase the ability to conceive. And some knights tied a bear gallbladder around the right hip before mounting an enamored damsel in order to “be a man as often as he wished.” Universal scholar Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) at the University of Zurich, inspired by traditional Swiss lore, claimed that bear gall, bear fat, and bear blood drive off nasty fleas and blood-sucking vermin that nest in beds and that it suffices to merely put a saucer of it under the bed (Schmitz 1998, 145).

Macabre statistics indicate that bear gall is still a much-coveted item in East Asian medicine. From 1980 to 1990 alone, sixty thousand bear gallbladders were imported from China to Japan. During the same timespan, bear gallbladders brought in big money in India: 4,300 gallbladders were sold to Japan for the incredible price of $64,000 for 1 kilogram (approximately 2.2 pounds). Bear paws in the amount of 600 kilograms (approximately 1,300 pounds) were also imported to Japan during this time and sold for a price of around $850 per plate in special restaurants. Obviously, being able to afford a bear paw meal is regarded as a status symbol. In 1980s South Korea, a poacher killed one of the last Asiatic black bears even though these animals were, theoretically at least, under strict protection. After the poacher was arrested, the government sold the bear’s gallbladder for $64,000 at a public auction (Mills 2002, 179). In 1990, one could still order roasted bear paws in the Hilton Hotel in Seoul, South Korea (Savage 1990, 118).

Vancouver, British Columbia, where many East Asian people have settled in the last few decades, has become a major trafficking hub for bear gall and bear meat. Bear gallbladders can be bought for approximately $1,000 and sold in Korea for up to $55,000 apiece—as much as a human kidney for a transplant! That is an enormous profit, comparable to illegal drugs such as heroin, for example. Business with the bear’s anatomy worldwide adds up to $100 million a year, which is incentive for unscrupulous poachers and mafia-like criminals (Busch 2000, 163). Fortunately, British Columbia authorities became aware and it is increasingly difficult to pursue these nefarious activities. In 1991, a Korean man, who had a bear gallbladder in his possession, was found murdered in his New York apartment. Up to forty thousand bears are shot illegally every year in North America. Sometimes, the cadavers are just left in the forest after the gall bladder has been cut out.

Mercilessly hunted, just as the whales as a source of raw materials, the rhinoceroses for their powdered horn that supposedly gives aging men their virile youth back, or elephants for their tusks that turn a big profit, the Asiatic bears—the Asiatic black bears, sun bears, sloth bears in the Himalayas, as well as the Siberian brown bears—are seriously endangered. In bear farms in China, the animals are kept in tiny cages and “milked,” that is, a catheter is rammed into their belly and the gall bladder is tapped. Half of the bears do not survive this procedure. Bear gall (Chinese yu dan, xioung dan, or dong dan), which contains the active ingredient ursodeoxycholic acid, is used for fever, hemorrhoids, conjunctivitis, diabetes, liver disease, and epilepsy; but, contrary to some claims, it is ineffective as an aphrodisiac or as a healing means for cancer. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, bear gall is considered “cold”; that is, its effects are “cooling” for such symptoms as dry throat, reddish face, constipation, high pulse, fever, and headaches. Ursodeoxycholic acid can be made synthetically nowadays, or out of cattle bladders. In addition, some fifty-four different herbal preparations can effectively replace bear gall.

Japanese healing lore differentiates three different qualities of bear gall: yellow gall, amber gall, and black gall. Amber gall (kama-no-i) comes from a bear in the snowy season and is considered one hundred times more valuable than that from a bear killed in the summer. Before a bear retreats into its den, it busily gathers ants and rubs them into a sour-tasting paste between its paws. It keeps the paste, which helps the bear maintain its strength during hibernation, on the inside of its paws and licks them from time to time. It is this ant paste that makes the winter gall especially valuable; hunters in search of this amber gall head out before the spring equinox, lodge rocks and a crossbeam over the entryway to the bear’s den, and then smoke the bear out with tobacco and hot peppers. When it storms out of its den in anger, it trips over a taut strategically placed rope. The beam and rocks fall on the bear; it is best if the bear dies with little or no loss of blood. The Japanese say that, whenever a bear is killed like this, a mighty storm begins, which they call kama-are, raging bear.

Bear Fat

Bear fat is almost in more demand than bear gall and also has the reputation of being a perfect cure-all. Since antiquity, it is believed to be unbeatable for making hair grow and healing rheumatism. It alleviates internal pain and heals battered skin, abscesses, and gout. It was recommended to women for a prolapsed womb. Not surprisingly, corrupt druggists often sold simple pig fat as expensive bear fat. Even in the nineteenth century, a druggist from northern Germany is reported to have sold fifteen to twenty hundredweights (approximately 100 pounds) of American pig fat yearly as bear fat.

In the times of long ago, when there were still bears in European forests, people barely distinguished between scientific facts and magical effects, between “reality” and miracles. Sickness was not seen as a functional disturbance of biological processes or damage done by microorganisms; instead, it was seen as the result of evil magic or the wicked doings of invisible, evil spirits. Bear fat would protect not only from cold, raw winter weather but also—and even mainly—from black magic, bad spells, and other invisible wicked doings. According to the principle that one must fight fire with fire and demons with demonic power, the accumulated bear power in bear fat was used as an apotropaic (from Greek atropopaios = evil averting) against various diseases. Fearful people still saw the bear itself as a forest demon and ogre.

Bear trainers rubbed themselves down with bear fat to protect themselves from their dancing bears—which was surely effective as they then smelled like a fellow bear. For similar reasons, Roman wine producers oiled their pruning knives with bear fat to keep vine fretters and other visible and invisible vermin out of the vineyards. Warriors and hunters applied bear fat to their knives less for keeping them rust free than for making them seem like the lightning-fast strike of a bear’s paw. The smashes and sparks of swords and battle-axes were always associated with the thunder and lightning of Asbjørn, the bear in the heavens. The Kamchadals and Ainu still call thunder the divine bear’s roaring, and in the ancient Indian Vedas, storm and thunder gods, the warrior-like Maruts, are also often referred to as bears in the sky. This association was transferred to modern firearms that also spark and rumble. It is also not so very long ago that European hunters and troopers oiled their weapons with bear fat salves.

Bear fat is also supposed to magically help a failing memory; after one rubs it into the temples, thoughts and memories shoot through the head like wildfire. Conrad Gessner, renowned scientist of his time, claimed in his book about animals, Thierbouch (Zurich, 1563), that rubbing bear fat onto one’s face will ensure a keen understanding of everything read and heard. This practice was probably a remnant of an old heathen custom. Shamans and berserkers rubbed bear fat enhanced with psychedelic plants into their skin before falling into trance-like states. Thus, worlds opened up that otherwise remained closed. They were then able to communicate with otherworldly beings, nature spirits, ghosts, kobolds, and other spirits, or they were able to roam the forest in the body of a wild animal. Nightshade plants, such as dangerous henbane or belladonna, and poisonous plants, such as monkshood or poison hemlock, were sometimes used as well, in appropriate minimal dosage. Bear fat is easily absorbed into the skin and releases such plant substances in an easily controlled way.

For Christian monks, these kinds of salves were understandably anathema. There was no doubt in their minds that the devil himself had created these wicked plants and that not only bear fat was used to produce these devilish salves but also the fat of assassinated infants or secretly exhumed corpses. But not all the pagans let themselves be scared away from such salves, and the knowledge regarding these “flying ointments” went underground. However, it was criminalized to the degree that ultimately hundreds of thousands who dared use them, and got caught doing so, were publicly burned as witches. Even as late as 1749, Maria Singer, a second abbess in Unterzell, Germany, was beheaded as a sorceress for the simple fact that she had planted belladonna in the garden.

83_the_flight.tif — The flight (Ulricus Molitoris, 1489)

Many Native Americans did not hunt the sacred medicine animal at all. But when they did, it was mainly for its valuable fat. They believed that the magical medicine power of the animal was stored there and that almost all ailments could be healed with it—from abscesses, eczema, epilepsy, and rheumatic pain to worms. Healing plants, especially tobacco, were cooked in bear fat, and the resulting salve was applied to the ailing body parts. A typical recipe from Virginia made from bear fat and mashed angelica and pokeweed was used to “strengthen the body” and to keep fleas and lice away (Vogel 1982, 218). Mixing color into bear fat also intensified the magical power of war paint.

Amber

The magical medicine power that was ascribed to all of the bear’s body parts, especially the teeth and claws, was also transferred to honey-colored amber, which is petrified, fossil pine tree resin. In German, amber is called Bernstein; Bern comes from Brennen (“burn”), that is, a stone that can be burned, but folk-etymologically, it is “bear-stone” because the German word for bear, Baer, sounds similar to Bern. Just as a necklace made of bear claws or an amulet made of bear tooth, an amber amulet can also protect from disease and demons. An amber necklace is said to help infants grow strong, healthy teeth. Like bear fat, this “electric” stone is said to protect against enchantment and treat rheumatic pain. Pregnant women who wear an amber necklace will have an easier birth. It is as if some bear spirit lives in the honey-colored stone.