Thread by @serbiaireland

Norse thunder god Thor, Slavic thunder god Perun and Baltic thunder god Perkūnas all rode the sky in a chariot drawn by goats...Why?

I think I have answered this question in this article. But it ain't pretty and a lot of people won't like it🙂

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/02/goat-r…

To find why Northern European thunder gods ride around in goat pulled chariots, we have to look southward. To Ancient Greece...Apparently Zeus, Greek thunder god, was suckled as an infant by a goat, on Goat Mountain, on the Island of Crete...

In "Indo-European Poetry and Myth" By M. L. West, Morris West we read that Zeus "Αιγιοχος", the most common epithet of Zeus in Homeric poems, might originally have meant "Zeus who rides on a goat"...Apparently, in one of Orphic theogonies, Zeus rode to heaven on a goat...

But what is the origin of this story from the life of Zeus? Why was Zeus nursed by a goat on Crete? And why did he also ride on a goat as infant? Well to get the answer this this question we have to look at Cretan climate...

The Crete climate is characterised by hot, dry summers and mild, rainy winters. The rainy season starts in late October and lasts till March or even April....

Now what does this have to do with goats?

This is Cretan wild goat (scient. Capra aegagrus creticus), also known as agrimi, kri-kri, or Cretan Ibex, an endemic subspecies of wild goat...

The Cretan Ibex lives in arid high mountain areas. They go out for pasture in the morning and evening, sheltering during the day in rocky recesses and caves!!!

Most of the year they live in same-sex herds, with fully mature males actually living alone. During the breeding season however, male and female animals mix and the most dominant males form harems. The male domination is determined through spectacular fights...

Now here is the important bit: The mating period of the Cretan Ibex goat, during which it radically changes its behaviour starts in October and November. Right at the beginning of the Cretan rain season...

Cretan Ibex goats mating. Middle Minoan II (1900 BC-1750 BC) seal stone. Why would Minoans have wild ibex goat mating on seal?

Minoans could be excused for believing that the arrival of rain was in some way linked to Ibex goats. Every year the beginning of the Cretan Ibex mating season signalled the arrival of the rain storms...It almost looks like the rain storms were caused by, brought by Ibex goat...

In the past people equaled rain storms with storm gods...If goats look like they are bringing rain storms, this will eventually lead to the image of goats bring rain (storm) god...Simple...But this is just the beginning...

Now let's go back to the Ancient Greek legend about the infant Zeus.

The dry season in Crete is the season of death. The sun burns relentlessly. Wells and streams are dry, plants are yellow and withered. And then the Ibex mating season starts, and the first rains arrive. The wells and rivers fill up. The flowers, like crocuses, start flowering...

The life returns.

In Crete, the Storm god, who arrives when Cretan Ibex mating season starts, doesn't just bring rain. He brings life. Well actually, Minoans probably saw Ibex as the bringer of life...Minoan fresco from Knossos. Ibexes flanking "the tree of life"...

The "tree of life" is surrounded by blooming crocuses. By the way, the tree is olive. And olives are harvested from late October, early November...So this fresco depicts the beginning of the rain season, when ibexes shag, crocuses bloom and olives are ready for picking...

Here is another depiction of ibexes facing the tree of life, this time on a Minoan seal from Goulas Crete...

I like this statement: Some academics believe that Cretan Ibex was worshiped on the island during antiquity. But why? The same academics have no idea...

I am actually not spitting on archaeologists, historians, anthropologists...Their education never included natural sciences like study of animals and plants and their lifecycles, climate and its yearly and geographic variations...So no wonder they never saw links like this...

What is interesting about the depictions of Ibexes in Minoan art is that they are depicted in two completely different ways. Depending whether they are depicted with women or with men...Women play with and feed Ibexes. Men hunt and kill Ibexes...Why?

One explanation is that hunting Ibex goats was a kind of initiation rite for young Minoan men...Hundreds of votive plaques depicting young men hunting Ibex were found in the "Simi sanctuary", situated on the southern side of the Goat Mountain where goat suckled infant Zeus...

Maybe. Or maybe the Ibex hunting was reenacting of a cosmic hunt which takes place every year right in the middle of the Eurasian Ibex mating season (November-January) when Sagittarius (the hunter) ends and Capricorn (the goat) begins. On winter solstice...

But why are Sagittarius and Capricorn chasing each other at that precise moment of the Solar year? I talked about this in my articles related to the Natural, Solar Zodiac...Realising the actual meaning of the Zodiac was like discovering Rosetta stone... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/zodiac.html

I couldn't find any explanation why was Ibex apparently treated differently by women and men in Minoan culture?

So here is what I think.

Remember Serbian and Celtic calendar, which divided the solar year into only two seasons: Dark and Light...

Dark, Wet, Cold, Yin, Feminine, Dominated by The Goddess, Mother Earth (Rhea???) (Winter and Spring) which started in November.
Light, Dry, Hot, Yang, Masculine, Dominated by The God, Father Sun (Summer and Autumn) which started in May...

Where did Serbs and Celts get this idea of two season year? Where did the Celts get the idea that the New Year should start on Samhain, 1st of November? This certainly doesn't match the Central European climate...From Minoans maybe???

In this post "Symbols of the seasons", I talked about animal symbols of the seasons: Goat, Ram, Bull and Lion and why they are located where they are in the Zodiac...And why they are found all over ancient artefacts... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/10/symbol…

The reason why Ibex is the symbol of winter is because Eurasian Ibexes mate during the winter. The reason why Bull is the symbol of summer is because aurochs (wild Eurasian cattle) both mate and calve during the summer...

We actually find this division of the solar year between bull and goat part in Mycenaean art. This is a larnax, an "ash-chest" used as a container for human remains. It was found in Mycenaean Tanagra cemetery which was dated to 14th - 13th century BC...

The main question here is why was this panel divided like this? And why were goat hunts and bull fights separated like this? I would say that both goat hunt and bull fighting were religious ceremonies performed during the goat and bull part of the year...

We know that the Ibex cult existed in Mycenae, to where it was most likely brought from Minoan Crete. We can see this from seals found in Mycenaean sites.

This is a Lentoid Gem depicting Sacred Tree and Ibex Goats from Mycenae.

This is next artefact, a Gold Signet Ring from Mycenae, is even more interesting.

Arthur Evans says this about this artefact:

This is very very interesting on so many levels... Cretan wild goat, an animal seen elsewhere in connexion with women (Goddess, part of the year), was once the symbol of Zeus, who was later associated with the bull. But Evans didn't know why... I think we know now...

Now the climate in Mycenae, on Peloponnesus, is similar the climate in Crete, consisting of hot dry summers and mild wet winters. But year is not clearly divided into dry and wet period, as can be seen from the precipitation table...

It basically can rain all year round, and the rains start in September, right after the Aurochs mating season, which is why eventually, Zeus, rain storm, became associated with bull...Storm gods are still celebrated in August...I wrote about this a lot... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-th…

So Mycenaeans didn't have a direct obvious reason to associate Ibex with Rains storms. Yet in Greece, Ibex was still seen as "the bringer of life"...Except after a while everyone forgot why...

Which is why eventually this life bringing goat, whose mad mating causes nature to flourish, flowers to flower, trees to bud, rivers to flow....became Πάν (Pan)...Horny "Archaic" (meaning Pre Olympian) Goat God...

Whose skin is Pan carrying? Is this "magic Aegis", the skin of the goat who suckled infant Zeus, and which Zeus took with him? It just occurred to me. What do you get if you clothe Holy God Zeus, the bringer of rain, in goat skin? Holy Goat, the bringer of rain, of course... 🙂

Pan, the god of wild nature, natural life cycle caused by gods rather than men...Lover and companion of the Nymphs (nature sprits) and particularly of Naiades (fresh water spirits)...It is after all the Holy Goat who used to bring rain, water and life to Minoan Crete...

Pan, who from his earliest appearance in literature, was associated with a mother goddess. Perhaps Rhea??? The Goddess which is always playing with goats on Minoan artefacts??? And who gave Zeus to a she goat to suckle him?

Pan, who as a "rustic god", was worshipped in natural settings, usually caves like the one on the slope of the Acropolis of Athens. Referred to as the Caves of Pan. Hmmm... Cave... Just like the holy cave in holy Goat Mountain here the Holy Goat nursed the Holy Infant Zeus...

Pan, who was a hunter, and to whom hunters owed their success or failure and whose statue Arcadian hunters used to scourge if they had been disappointed during hunt. Hmmmm....Holy hunt again???

Pan, whose worship began in Arcadia. Remember, Greeks considered Arcadians the oldest inhabitants of Greece, Pelasgians...Ahh. Arcadia is soo close to Mycenae...Where Minoan Holy Ibex landed on the Greek mainland...It looks like Arcadians preserved a bit of Mycenaean old faith...

Pan's parentage is unclear. In most accounts though, he is the son of Zeus...Hmmm...Considering that it is the Holy Goat which brings forth the Holy God...

Legend says that Cretan princess Aega (She Goat) was chosen to suckle infant Zeus. But she had no milk. So goat Amalthea suckled infant Zeus. Aega was married to Pan but had a son by Zeus called Aegipan (Goat Pan), and who was also suckled by goat Amalthea...Hmmm...

Zeus actually tells Athena that "...goatfoot Pan...once was mountain-ranging shepherd of the goat Amaltheia my nurse, who gave me milk"...Meaning that Pan, Holy Goat, was there before the arrival of Zeus, Holy God (of rain storms)...

And finally, the BESTEST :) bit about Pan:

Pan aided his foster-brother Zeus in the battle with the Typhon, officially "a monstrous storm-giant...the source of devastating storms which issued forth from that dark nether-realm"...

I don't think Typhon had anything to do with storms...I think he was The Dragon, the symbol of destructive summer heat which causes droughts...The enemy of every self respecting Thunder god...He was described as "breathing fire" and "flashing fire from his eyes" for god's sake...

Hesiod in his Theogony dated to 8th or 7th century BC describes him like this:

Here is the explanation of all this symbolic madness:

I love that Typhoeus apparently also had "a filthy, matted beard and pointed ears"...Just like Pan who looks suspiciously like an Ibex goat. The Holy Goat which brought rain to Minoans every October-November and ended the drought...The Goat who killed The Dragon...

Oh, by the way, did you know that we also have Panes, "rustic spirits" depicted as goat-footed men with the horns, tail, beard, snub nose and ears of a goat or sometimes with goat heads. As lascivious fertility spirits they were often depicted with erect members...

Jumping, noise making, horny Ibex Goats during their mating season, which announce the arrival of life bringing rain to Minoan Crete, springs to mind immediately...No wonder Panes were "the attendants upon the sacred rites of Rhea and Dionysos"...Rhea again...

Why are Norse thunder god Thor, Slavic thunder god Perun and Baltic thunder god Perkūnas all riding the sky in a chariot drawn by goats? In the north of Europe where goat riding Thunder god makes no sense at all, because the climate there is completely different...

How and when was this image of a rain god arriving on a goat, which is found in Minoan and Mycenaean culture, brought to the North of Europe? And how come it was preserved there but not in Greece, where instead we ended up with Pan?

Well I am too tired to continue writing tweets. You can find how the story ends in my article 🙂

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/02/goat-r…

Good night. Sweet dreams...