Eguzkilore

Also Known As: also written Eguzki-lore and Eguzkilorea; Basque eguzki, “sun,” plus lore, “flower”; called kardu santua, “the holy thistle,” and kardu latza, “the rough thistle,” in Zerain; the same plant is the cardo de bruixas, cardo machico or cardincha of the Aragonese Pyrenees
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Basque Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Objects
Mythical Attributes: Nailed to a threshold it stands in for the sun itself, so that whatever hunts by night mistakes the door for the dawn.
Role in Mythos: It is the third and last light the earth gave to human beings, after the moon and the sun both failed to make the night safe.
Relation to Humans: People climb to the high summer pastures to cut it, often at first light on St John’s Day, and fix it to the door of the house, the shepherd’s hut or the byre. It goes up unblessed, on the understanding that the flower’s own solar nature is what does the work.

A witch stands at a farmhouse door in the high Pyrenees, and she is counting. The thing nailed to the left-hand leaf of the door is a thistle flower the width of a saucer, a white-gold disc fringed with stiff spines, and she cannot leave it alone. She counts the spines. Then the fine hairs between the spines. She loses her place and starts again. Behind her the sky is going the colour of ash, and by the time real light comes over the ridge she is still there, absorbed, and then she is not there at all, because that is what morning does to her.

Other tellings give her a worse night. She snags herself on the flower and spends hours picking spines out of her clothing. Or the gold disc simply blazes at her and blinds her. The mechanism varies; the outcome does not. Whatever came down the track in the dark is kept busy at the doorstep until the sun arrives and finishes the argument.

The flower is the eguzkilore, from Basque eguzki, sun, and lore, flower, and it is not a sunflower in any sense a gardener would recognise. It is a carline thistle, Carlina acaulis or its near relative Carlina acanthifolia, and it grows almost stemless, spread flat against the turf of summer pasture as if something had dropped it there. Broad, fleshy, thorn-edged leaves open outward in a rosette. At the centre sits the flower head, a disc of pale gold that unfolds only when the sun is actually on it. Cut it, dry it, and it refuses to slump. It holds its shape and its colour for years, which is the entire reason anybody ever thought to hammer a nail through one.

Look at where it lives and the association stops being poetic. The plant grows on open hillsides and mountain meadows between June and September, at altitude, flat on the ground with nothing between it and the sky. It is a round gold thing ringed with rays, sitting in full light all day, and the only way to get one is to go up after it and carry it down. Nobody had to decide the carline thistle resembled the sun. It simply does, and the tradition treats it less as a picture of the sun than as a piece of the sun, brought indoors and put to work.

The ethnographic record for the Basque Country is specific and local rather than sweeping. In Ataun, in Gipuzkoa, a thistle went on the entrance door against witches. Twenty-odd miles away in Lekunberri, in Navarre, the same flower on the same door was there to turn lightning. In Zerain they explained the trick outright: when a witch sees the thistle flower on the door she takes it for the sun, decides the night is over and her hours are up, and does not come in. Pipaón in Álava and Arrasate in Gipuzkoa put it there against evil spirits generally. Astigarraga and Bajauri fixed it to the entrance door but on the inside face. Beasain and Oñati used one or several on the main door of the farmstead. In Ribera Alta and Telleriarte it went onto a beam in the stable instead, on the reasonable view that the animals were worth defending too.

The origin story most people now tell is tidier than any of that. In the beginning human beings lived in the dark, harried by spirits, witches and things that came up out of the ground, so they asked the earth for help. The earth made the moon. That worked until the night creatures grew used to moonlight, so the people asked again, and the earth made the sun. The sun was better, and it drove those creatures back underground, but only from dawn to dusk. So the people came a third time, and the earth made a flower that the night things would look at and take for the sun. José Miguel de Barandiarán, who spent a working lifetime collecting Basque belief village by village, recorded that sequence, and he was blunt that the first Basque gods were the earth, the sun and the moon. What he did not do was call the earth Amalur. That name for her is recent, popularised by Nestor Basterretxea and Fernando Larruquert’s 1968 film Ama Lur, and it has since been fitted back onto the older story so smoothly that the join is invisible. The tale is old. The goddess’s name in it is not.

On the Aragonese side of the mountains the same flower does the same job with a sharper etiquette. It goes on the left leaf of the door, because left is the witches’ side, and the point is to put the charm where she will walk into it. It hangs on houses, shepherds’ huts, upland farmsteads and stables, and it goes up without a blessing, the plant’s own nature being held sufficient. It is one half of a pair. The door has its thistle; the chimney, the other way in, gets a stone figure called an espantabrujas set on the flue, squat and unclear in outline, meant to repel by looking wrong rather than by shining. The flower keeps her busy. The stone puts her off.

What it wards is a single category wearing several faces. Witches, night spirits, sorcery, curses, the evil eye, sickness, storms, hail and the lightning stroke all belong to the same dark side of the ledger, storms being the witches’ work in the first place, and the flower opposes them all by the same means. It does not attack. It manufactures a small local morning at the doorstep and lets the actual morning do the rest. The flower does not fight anything. It stalls.

That is also the limit of it. Its power is borrowed and its effect is delay, so it needs the sun to turn up, which the sun does not always do promptly in a Pyrenean winter. It guards one opening only. It has to be brought down from the heights by somebody willing to make the climb, and gathered at the right moment, the dawn of St John’s Day being the strongest, when the belief holds that its virtue runs higher than at any other point in the year. There is a smaller courtesy in it as well: on damp air the leaves soften and fold shut over the gold disc, and stiffen open again when the weather clears, so the flower on the door tells you rain is coming by hiding its own sun.

The last limit is the newest. Carlina acaulis is now a protected plant across much of its range, thinned by climate and by decades of people picking it, and cutting or uprooting one is illegal. Most of what hangs on Basque doors today was bought rather than climbed for, and a good deal of it is a craftsman’s copy. In Aoiz the informants noticed something that ought to be encouraging and is at least interesting: it is the young who have started putting the flower back up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the eguzkilore?

The eguzkilore is a dried carline thistle flower fixed to the doors of Basque houses, shepherds’ huts and stables as protection. Its Basque name means “sun flower,” from eguzki (sun) and lore (flower), and it refers to two related plants, Carlina acaulis and Carlina acanthifolia. Neither is the sunflower of gardens; both are low, spiny, stemless thistles that keep their shape and gold colour after being cut.

How is the eguzkilore supposed to protect a house?

It works by impersonating the sun. In Zerain in Gipuzkoa, people explained that a witch arriving at a door sees the thistle flower, mistakes it for the sun, concludes that night is over and turns away. Elsewhere the story has her stopping to count the flower’s spines, or getting tangled in them, until sunrise catches her. In every version the flower delays the intruder rather than destroying her, and the real defence is the dawn.

What does the eguzkilore protect against?

Witches and night spirits mainly, but the same charm is credited with turning sorcery, curses, sickness, storms and lightning. Records from Lekunberri in Navarre have it placed on the door specifically against lightning, while Ataun in Gipuzkoa used it against witches and Pipaón in Álava against evil spirits in general. Storms were themselves often blamed on witches, so the categories overlap.

Who created the eguzkilore in Basque myth?

In the legend, the earth created it as the third of three lights. Humans living in darkness asked for help, and the earth made first the moon, then the sun, and finally the eguzkilore, because the night creatures had grown used to moonlight and the sun only shone by day. José Miguel de Barandiarán recorded this sequence, though he did not name the earth goddess Amalur; that name was popularised much later by the 1968 film Ama Lur.

When is the eguzkilore gathered, and can you still pick one?

Tradition holds that its protective power is strongest at dawn on St John’s Day, 24 June, and the plant flowers between June and September in mountain pastures. Picking one today is another matter: Carlina acaulis is a protected species across much of its range and cutting or uprooting it is prohibited, so most eguzkiloreak now sold and hung on doors are cultivated specimens or artisan replicas.