APÉRO HISTORY
The bear. In the imagination and in traditional history
22nd January 2025
Café culturel La Cafetière, Aurignac, Haute Garonne (FR)
On 22 January we chose to focus on the bear, a mythical and ambivalent animal, as hated as it is respected, as captivating as it is controversial. From cave art to contemporary representations, via Christian interpretations and medieval manuscripts, we’ve tried to paint a portrait of this ‘Mossur’, king of animals for the Pyreneans. Mossur is the subject of numerous legends, beliefs and calendar rites in Upper Gascony: carnival, cult of fertility and the dead, life force, protector and healer, but also a rival and competitor for man in his pastoral activities and occupation of the mountain area. There was also talk of the animal’s prestige, bear shows, bear hunting, the consumption of bear meat and the virtues of certain parts of the animal’s body. Without getting into the debate about ‘for or against’ the reintroduction of the bear to the Pyrenees, this discussion enabled us to return to the bear’s major place in our bestiary and in the carnival cycle, its magical symbolism of the awakening of nature and the fertility of the world, its role as ancestor or mythical cousin of Man, points shared by many cultures in contact with the bear. In a world increasingly globalised and submerged by mass culture, we have raised the question of what is at stake in its reintroduction into our collective imagination and our current cultural references and actions, as a symbol of the regeneration of all Occitan culture in hibernation.