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The Kalevala · 195 of 275 · tr. John Martin Crawford

Rune XXXIII-b

How shall I repay this insult, How avenge this woman's malice, What the wages for deception?" From a tree the raven answered: "O thou little silver buckle, Only son of old Kalervo, Why art thou in evil humor, Wherefore sad in thy demeanor? Take a young shoot from the thicket, Take a birch-rod from the valley, Drive thy herd across the lowlands, Through the quicksands of the marshes; To the wolves let one half wander, To the bear-dens, lead the other; Sing the forest wolves together, Sing the bears down from the mountains, Call the wolves thy little children, And the bears thy standard-bearers; Drive them like a cow-herd homeward, Drive them home like spotted cattle, Drive them to thy master's milk-yards; Thus thou wilt repay the hostess For her malice and derision." Thereupon the wizard answered, These the words of Kullerwoinen: "Wait, yea wait, thou bride of Hisi! Do I mourn my mother's relic, Mourn the keep-sake thou hast broken? Thou thyself shalt mourn as sorely When thy, cows come home at evening!" From the tree he cuts a birch-wand, From the juniper a whip-stick, Drives the herd across the lowlands, Through the quicksands of the marshes, To the wolves lets one half wander, To the bear-dens leads the other; Calls the wolves his little children, Calls the bears his standard-bearers, Changes all his herd of cattle Into wolves and bears by magic. In the west the Sun is shining, Telling that the night is coming. Quick the wizard, Kullerwoinen, Wanders o'er the pine-tree mountain, Hastens through the forest homeward, Drives the wolves and bears before him Toward the milk-yards of the hostess; To the herd he speaks as follows, As they journey on together: "Tear and kill the wicked hostess, Tear her guilty flesh in pieces, When she comes to view her cattle, When she stoops to do her milking!" Then the wizard, Kullerwoinen, From an ox-bone makes a bugle, Makes it from Tuonikki's cow-horn, Makes a flute from Kiryo's shin-bone, Plays a song upon his bugle, Plays upon his flute of magic, Thrice upon the home-land hill-tops, Six times near the coming gate-ways. Ilmarinen's wife and hostess Long had waited for the coming Of her herd with Kullerwoinen, Waited for the milk at evening, Waited for the new-made butter, Heard the footsteps in the cow-path, On the heath she beard the bustle, Spake these joyous words of welcome: "Be thou praised, O gracious Ukko, That my herd is home returning!
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Themes
Animismcosmology

The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.

The passage depicts nature as spiritually active, with a raven speaking from a tree and wolves/bears addressed as kin, reflecting a worldview populated by local divine agents.

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Shapeshifting Transformationtheology

Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.

Kullervo explicitly uses magic to transform his herd of cattle into wolves and bears, demonstrating form-mutability as a preternatural capacity.

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Word Power Incantationpraxis

The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.

Songs and flute playing are used to command beasts and effect reality changes, demonstrating the causal-magical force of spoken or sung words.

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