Rain-Calling Traditions

Wherever the rain is uncertain, the people of the land have asked for it. The rain-calling traditions of the world are as various as the landscapes in which they arose, but the hope is the same: that the sky will open, that the field will drink, that the harvest will come. The rites include dances in the dust, processions through the village, the recitation of the names of the water-gods, the pouring of libations, the handling of snakes, and the slow building of fire on the hill. Each is a small conversation with the sky, and each is a way of reminding the people of their dependence on it.

Dodona and the Oak Leaves of Zeus

The oldest of the great rain-calling sites of Europe was the oracle of Dodona, in Epirus, in the northwest of Greece. The oracle was sacred to Zeus, and the answers to the questions of the pilgrims were given in the rustling of the leaves of a great oak, in the cooing of the doves that nested in the tree, and in the sound of the water that ran at the base of the trunk. The priests of the oracle, the Selloi, slept on the ground and went barefoot, and they listened for the voice of the god in the tree. Dodona was consulted in times of drought, and the answers often took the form of a ritual: the planting of a particular tree, the pouring of a libation, the sacrifice of an animal. The oak of the Celts was a similar tree, and the Greek and Celtic traditions are often read as cousins under the skin.

The Japanese Ame-no-Iwato

In the Japanese Kojiki, the oldest of the Japanese chronicles, there is a great story of the sun goddess Amaterasu. After her brother the storm-god Susanoo behaved badly, Amaterasu withdrew into a cave called the Ame-no-Iwato, the “heavenly rock cave,” and the world was plunged into darkness. The other gods gathered at the mouth of the cave, and they tried various ways to lure her out: a mirror, a string of jewels, laughter, and a dawn-goddess who performed a wild dance on an upturned bucket. Amaterasu peeped out, curious, and the gods pulled her into the light. The story is, on one level, a myth of the sun’s return after the dark of the year; on another, it is a story of the sky’s recovery after a long storm. The Shinto rite of the mizu-kake, the pouring of water, and the rain-prayer of the Shinto shrines, are direct descendants of this older understanding.

The Hopi and the Zuni

The Hopi and Zuni of the American Southwest have a long tradition of rain-calling. The Hopi snake dance is famous: the priests of the Antelope and Snake clans gather snakes — rattlesnakes, bull snakes, racers — from the four directions, and they dance with them in their hands, carrying them to a designated spot and releasing them. The dance is a way of asking the snakes to carry the prayer of the people to the underworld, where the rain is held. The Zuni Shalako is also a rain-calling rite, performed in late autumn or early winter, with masked figures representing the messengers of the rain. The rain-calling dances of the Southwest are some of the most fully preserved in the Americas, and they are still performed today.

The Indian Varuna-Japa and the Vedic Rains

In the Vedic tradition of India, the great rain-calling rite is the Varuna-japa, the recitation of the names of Varuna, the lord of waters. Varuna is the older Vedic god, the god of the cosmic ocean, the one who watches the order of the world and the order of the rains. The Vedic soma sacrifice is also a rain-calling rite, in which the soma juice is poured into the fire and the god Indra is asked to break the dragon Vritra and release the waters of heaven. The same logic runs through the Vedic rite: the human pours, the god pours back.

The Slavic Dodola and the Perperuna

In the Slavic world, the rain-calling rite of summer was the Dodola, in some regions called the Perperuna. A young girl was chosen and dressed in a long gown of fresh leaves and flowers, her head crowned with meadow herbs. She was led from house to house, while the women of the village sang songs asking the sky to send rain. The girl was sprinkled with water, and the people of the house poured water on her feet. The figure of the Dodola is closely connected to Perun, the Slavic thunder-god, and the songs of the procession are full of his name. The Bulgarian and Serbian versions of the rite are still performed in some villages.

The Christian Rogation Days

The Christian calendar also has its rain-calling rites. The Rogation Days, in the English, French, and other Latin calendars, were processions in which the fields were blessed and the people walked the boundaries of the parish, asking God’s blessing on the harvest. The processions were often led by a man in a costume of green leaves, very like the Dodola of the Balkans. The Greek Analipsos and the Russian Epiphany procession are similar Orthodox rites, in which the fields and the rivers are blessed for the coming of the rain.

The Greek Sacrifice of Iphigenia

The Greek story of Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, is one of the deepest of the European rain-calling stories. When the Greek fleet was gathered at Aulis to sail against Troy, the winds failed. The seer Calchas declared that the winds would not return until Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis. In some versions, Artemis substituted a deer for the girl at the last moment, and carried Iphigenia off to be a priestess in Tauris. The story is, on one level, a myth of the weather: the wind that did not blow was the sky’s refusal, and the rite that followed was a way of breaking that refusal. The same pattern appears in the rite of the Greek pharmakos, the scapegoat driven out of the city in time of drought.

The Mongolian and Tibetan Rain Ceremonies

In the Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the rain-calling rites are bound up with the figure of the nāga, the serpent-being of the water. The Mongolian Tsagaan Sar and the Tibetan Serkym are rites in which the nāgas are honoured, and milk and water are poured as offerings. The Tibetan sang, the offering of juniper smoke, is a way of asking the sky to pour. The Mongolian ovoo, the cairn on the hill, is a place where the smoke rises, and the cairn is a kind of channel between the earth and the sky. The modern ceremonies combine Buddhist and older shamanic elements.

Sources and Further Reading

Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries. University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 12 vols. Macmillan, 1906–15.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane. Harcourt, 1959.
Noy, Dov. Ain Meassef. 2003. (Selected essays on Jewish folklore, including rain-calling.)