Bear worship (also known as the bear cult or arctolatry) is the religious practice of the worshiping of bears found in many North American and North Eurasian ethnic circumpolar religions such as the Sami, Nivkh, Ainu, and pre-Christian Finns. There are also a number of deities from Celtic Gaul and Britain associated with the bear and the bear is featured on many totems throughout northern cultures that carve them. Bear worship may have been practiced as far back as the Middle paleolithic period amongst Neanderthal societies.
Read more about Bear Worship: Nivkh Bear Festival, Finns, Paleolithic Cult, The Ainu, Other Cultures
Famous quotes containing the words bear and/or worship:
“Yet I would bear my shortcomings
With meet tranquility,
But for the charge that blessed things
I’d liefer not have be.
O, doth a bird deprived of wings
Go earth-bound wilfully!”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“If worship have kept me, I had not gone.
If wit might have me saved, I needed not fear.”
—Sir Thomas More (1478–1535)