oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Jun 21, 2021 15 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Thread: "In the beginning, Agni burned all things, but at the insistence of Shiva, Brahma withdrew Agni, and instead created Yama, the god of death" from: "Encyclopaedia of the Hindu World, Volume 1" By Gaṅgā Rām Garg...
Very interesting...Because of this: Nergal, the Mesopotamian god of death, who "represented the high summer sun which scorched the earth...which hindered crop production"...

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/05/winged…
In Mesopotamia, Nergal is associated with lions (is actually depicted as a lion). Why? Because in Mesopotamia, Jul/Aug, Leo, is the hottest and driest part of the year. The time of drought. The time of death...
Why Leo? Cause the end of Jul, beginning of Aug marks the beginning of the Eurasian lions main mating season...
But in Indian subcontinent, Leo is the peak of Monsoon season...The wettest time of the year...

The climate in Leo in India is the opposite to the climate in Leo in Mesopotamia...Which is why lion is a negative symbol in Mesopotamia and a positive symbol in India...
So when is the hottest and driest time of the year in India? As you can see on the previous chart, the temperatures start rising during Jan/Feb, beginning of spring, and peak during Apr/May, the end of spring...This is also when we have minimum precipitation...
So the hot/dry season in India is spring, symbolised by ram...I talked about the animal symbols of the seasons in this article oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/10/symbol…
And the hottest/driest time of the hot and dry season, the time of drought, the time of death, is during Aries...Which is why, I think, Agni rides on a ram...
This is the time of the burning sun, sun's fire, Agni, "which destroys all things"...Remember, in Hindu mythology, Agni (fire) was believed to have three manifestations: Sun, Lightning, Fire...Which is why he had three heads...
So, Agni, in his "burning sun" form, gets replaced by Yama, the god of death, who is in the Rigveda, the son of Surya, the Sun God...Now that makes sense I think...🙂And Yama is also closely associated with Agni, who is both Yama's friend and priest...That too now makes sense...
All very interesting...BTW, Aries this is when Slavs celebrate Jarilo, Sun god whose name means Brightly burning one...I wrote about Jarilo in this thread

Jarilo, the dragon (symbol of the destructive sun's heat)...Like this Mesopotamian dragon, with 7 snake heads...Snake, symbol of sun's heat, one for each summer hot dry summer month...

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/07/seven-…
Anyway, in Europe, Jarilo, the dragon was turned into dragon killer, St George...

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2018/07/aries-…
oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/01/two-ge…
And in India, Agni, the dragon, the one who destroys everything, the one who brings death, was replaced by the god of death, Yama...

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More from @serbiaireland

Aug 11
Thread: Late Sassanian depiction of a deity on a column capital now held in Taqe Bostan , which @persiaantiqua identified as Mehr (Mithra) based on the fact that he is surrounded by blooming lotuses... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taq-e_Bos…Image
Mithra was directly associated with lotus, to the point where on the most famous relief of Mithra, the one from Taqe Bostan, he is actually depicted standing on a lotus flower, radiating light, while witnessing Ahura Mazda giving ring of power to king Ardashir II... Image
Why Lotus? Mitra originates in India. Where he was, in the earliest times, directly associated with Varuna, the old Monsoon good whose Vahana was a crocodile, an animal calendar marker for the monsoon season in India....

Read 28 tweets
Aug 6
Thread: Two Sassanian wall relief slabs dated to the 5th-6th c. AD, depicting rampant ibex goats flanking "the tree of life"... Image
Image
This is an ancient symbol found throughout Iran, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Levant, Crete. The reason for that is that in all these regions, year is divided into two halves:

hot, dry half, roughly Apr/May - Oct/Nov
wet, cool half, roughly Oct/Nov - Apr/May Image
And the wet, cool half begins when ibex goats start their mating fights...see, "flanking"... Image
Image
Read 11 tweets
Aug 1
Thread: 900-700 BC Syro-Hittite relief from Carchemish which everyone believes depicts the ancient Sumerian Hero Gilgamesh as master of animals, holding the horn of a bull and the leg of a lion. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Ankara, Turkey). Who is this dude really? Image
If we interpret the animals as animal calendar markers, which they always are in compositions like this, The Dude (with big D) stands in the moment when bull (summer) ends and lion (autumn) begins (end of Jul start of Aug)...

The moment usually depicted like this
Read 11 tweets
Jun 9
Thread: Silver Stater from Mallos, Cilicia, C. 425-385 BC. Depicting (???)

Obv: Winged male deity advancing right, holding solar disc; Aramaic legend.
Rev: MAΛP , swan standing to left, flapping its wings. Rare.

I would suggest that this is (a local version of) Apollo... Image
An anthropomorphised, Hellenised, version of the winged sun disc...Like this one depicted on Stele to Assurnasiripal II at Nimrud (9th c. BC)... Image
BTW, do you see the Sun Cross (Cross of Shamash) inside the winged Sun Disc? I talked about Sun Cross (of Shamash) here
Read 9 tweets
Apr 30
Thread: Illustration by Bernard Zuber for Maurice Garçon’s La Vie Execrable de Guillemette Babin, Sorciere, 1926.

May Day Eve (April 30) is across Northern and Central Europe known as Walpurgis Night, the night when everyone is trying to "ward off, scare, witches"...

Why? Image
Maybe this has something to do with the old Celtic calendar which divided the year into two halves:

Winter (Samhain, 1st of Nov - Beltane, 1st of May)
Summer (Beltane, 1st of May - Samhain, 1st of Nov)

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/07/two-cr…Image
This division of the year, is btw based on the old transhumance shepherd calendar:

Lowland grazing and lambing Oct/Nov - Apr/May
Highland grazing and milking Apr/May - Oct/Nov

Check this whole thread:

Read 17 tweets
Apr 27
Thread: Goats flanking the tree of life. Ritual vessels from Gonur-depe, the administrative and ritual center of Ancient Margina, the Northern regions of the Oxus civilization, dated to 2300˗1600 BC. Pic from researchgate.net/profile/Nadezh…Image
The reason why we find goat flanking the tree of life in Iran, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Levant, Crete is because in this part of the world, the climatic year is divided (roughly) into hot/dry summer (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool/wet winter (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)... Image
Image
Image
Image
Oct/Nov is also the time when male ibex goats start their ferocious mating fights...And because the wet season in these parts of the world starts when ibex goats start mating, ibex goat became an animal calendar marker for the beginning of the rain season... Image
Image
Read 27 tweets

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