The "disc beating" is a fire ritual in which burning wooden discs are hurled into valleys from hill or mountain sides...The ritual is performed on the eve of the first Sunday of Lent. Here is how it's done...
Boys and men climd to the hill, mountain side above the village, town just before dusk.
They bring with them circular "discs", as a rule made of beech wood with a hole in the middle, long sticks, torches and firewood...
Once on the summit, they light a fire until a large bonfire is brightly burning...
Men then take a disc and stick it on a tip of a long stick which is as a rule made of hazel...
Then they light the disc in a bonfire...
They then spin the sticks with the disc around to make discs burn and glow brightly. This also looks very very cool...
Then they hit a wooden ramp, specially made for disc beating, with the stick with tangential blow. This dislodges the disc and projects it forward at hight speed. The disc flies away into the darkness below spinning widely...
Here is the same thing as a sequence of images...
The launch of each disc is accompanied by a loud shout from the launcher, dedicating the disc to a girl or unmarried woman...
On the village square below, a band plays music for the assembled community, which sings the Scheibenschlagen song. When the last disc flies into the valley, the boys and men make their way back home with their burning torches...
In the village, they visit the girls and women to whom their discs were dedicated and enjoy savoury carnival tarts...
This custom was once widespread in and around the southern part of the Upper Rhine Plain, in the Markgräflerland, Black Forest, Breisgau, Basel area and Alsace as well as in Vorarlberg, parts of West and South Tyrol and in the Bündner Oberland and in the Chur Rhine Valley...
I love this bit: The disc beating was first recorded in 1090: On March 21, 1090, an outbuilding of the Lorsch monastery was set on fire by a flying burning disc 🙂
Now considering that this ritual was performed in at the beginning of spring, I would venture to guess that there is some kind of solar symbolism of the "launching burning sun discs into the dark" kind...Most likely related to this oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/10/burnin…
Thread: These strange looking things are "yeast logs", also known as "magic sticks". A "yeast log" is a piece of brewing equipment, unique to Scandinavia used to store live yeast between two brewing sessions...
The log was lowered into the fermentation vat to catch the yeast that formed foam on top. Then the log was pulled out, rolled in flour, dried for a few minutes, dipped again and this process was repeated a few times. When properly covered in yeasty paste, the log was hung to dry.
Whenever brewers needed fresh yeast, they would place the "yeast log" into a covered vessel amongst two or three pints of luke-warm wort, and in two hours thereafter they would have fresh barm fit for immediate use...
Is this grumpy face actually the face of the sun, rather than the face of Medusa? Of the sun which is "pissed off" for some reason and is not doing things it is supposed to be doing? Like shining🙁This mosaic was made during the period of time when temperatures were plummeting...
Thread: Double-sided stamp seal, late 3rd - early 2nd millennium BC. Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex
Official interpretation of the images: "nude winged hero dominating snakes" on one side and "winged dragon" on the other. metmuseum.org/art/collection…
Hmmm...
About the "nude winged hero dominating snakes"...This is not a "master of the animals"...This is Mesopotamian Shamash (or his BMAC equivalent), the sun god, with sun heat rays coming out of his shoulders...
And he is not dominating the snakes, he is holding the snakes because they are symbol of sun's heat. They are out only during hot part of the year...Here is the same dude with snake hands...I talked about the snake symbolism on BMAC artefacts in this post oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/06/bactri…
Thread (longish): This is Diduch or Did, the most important decoration made in the Carpathian villages in Western Ukraine during the traditional winter holidays, originally Winter Solstice, now Christmas...
It is a decorated sheaf of grain (rye or wheat) made from a the first and the last stalks of grain reaped that year and brought home ceremonially from the fields by the queen of the harvest...
Thread: The pale winter sun which doesn't bring warmth but instead brings freezing cold (cloudy winter days are warmer than bright winter days)...In Serbia this sun is called "Zubato sunce" (Toothed Sun, Sun with teeth)...
This is the sun that causes the "frostbite", a burn like wounds which cause parts of your body to fall of...Or have to be amputated...Hence "toothed" sun which literally bites the part of your body off...
In my last thread I talked about strange toothed goats from Norse and Serbian mythology:
In the story "Why is one of Thor's goats lame" we read that:
Once Thor travelled together with Loki. When evening came, they sought cover in a farmhouse. Thor then killed his goats with his hammer, Mjolnir, and skinned them, roasted them and everyone ate the meat...
But, he said, nobody must break any of the bones to suck the delicious marrow.
But Thialfi, the farmer's son, broke one of the bones, because the marrow inside the bones tastes by far the best...