Thread: In Indian mythology we find these 3 sisters:
Saranyu "Wet Monsoon Wind", peaks Jul/Aug
Sarasvati, "Monsoon Flood", also peaks Jul/Aug
Sarama, "The Bitch Of The Gods"?
Also interesting is that "The Bitch Of The Gods" is the mother of the two dogs that belong to Yama (the god of death). The dogs which guard the entrance into the underworld...
This is super interesting...Pariah dogs, the old dog breeds, mate during autumn (Aug,Sep,Oct) starting from Jul/Aug, Dog Days. Gestation lasts 60+ days, so pups are born (Oct,Nov,Dec)... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/05/dog-da…
Guess what happens in Oct/Nov? Mating season of water buffalos begins...Which is why water buffalo was used as an animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov...
Now water buffalo is a very interesting animal calendar marker, because it is found in both Mesopotamia and India, where because of the opposite climates, it has opposite meaning...
So "The Bitch Of The Gods" which marks Jul/Aug, the beginning of the mating season of the old breed Pariah dogs, gives birth to the dogs of Yama, the god of death, who rides on a water buffalo, right at the beginning of the mating season of water buffalos...
And these dogs guard the entrance into the land of the dead...Which is in the places where we have wet (fertile) and dry (infertile) season, associated with the dry season, which in India begins in Oct/Nov...
Interesting...
BTW, one of the two Yama's dogs was called "Sharvara" which means spotty 🙂
The original image: Figurine of spotted dog, Pakistan, Indus Valley, Chanhu-Daro, about 2600–1900 BC. currently in the Museum of Fine Art Boston collections.mfa.org/objects/125131…
More about animal calendar markers found in ancient cultures, start here oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/animal-solar… then check the rest of the blog posts I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 7 months behind now 🙂🙁
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Thread: The other day I posted this article and it went completely unnoticed??? In this thread I want to present the full analysis of all 4 sides of this sarcophagus. Honestly this is as cool an example of symbolic religious calendar art as they come.
First, I definitely don't think that these panels depict funerary rituals, which is the most common interpretation of the scene ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/agia-…
I think that they could be depicting religious rituals related to Proto Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. The "two queens and the king" mentioned In the Mycenean Greek tablets dated 1400–1200 BC.
They are also a religious calendar closely linked to the climatic calendar.
Thread: Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilisation in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no...
...Mead said that the first sign of civilisation in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die...
...You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal...
Thread: Have you ever heard of shepherd's stick calendars? Here's one from Bulgaria...
In the mountains of the Balkans, up until the end of the 20th century, shepherds carried with them calendar sticks...
It was a stick with a notch cut into it for every day of the year and a cross or some other symbol for major holy days, which in Serbia are all linked to major agricultural events and major solar cycle events...
At the end of every day a piece of the stick up to the first notch, representing the previous day, was cut off from the stick. When the last piece was cut, the year was over...
Thread (a quite long one, sorry, but I think worth reading to the end): A while back @another_barbara posted this 1865 beehive panel image with this description: An interesting Shrovetide tradition from Slovenija "babo žagajo" (sawing of an old woman)...
The other day wanted to write an article about this custom, and while looking around the net for more info on the subject, I came across 1960 paper by Niko Kuret "BABO ŽAGAJO, Slovenske oblike pozabljenega obredja in njegove Evropske paralele" etno-muzej.si/sl/etnolog/slo…
In which he presents all the different versions (he knew of) of the "SAWING OF THE OLD WOMAN" ritual found in Slovenian lands, and its European parallels...
Here I will translate the most interesting bits from this paper, and will then give my interpretation of the ritual...
Thread: The žirgeliai (little horses), are common motifs on Lithuanian rooftops, placed there for protection of the house...
They are a symbolic depiction of the Ašvieniai (), Baltic counterparts of Vedic Ashvins, who are said to pull the chariot of Saulė (the Sun Goddess) through the sky. As depicted on this rooftop of a house in Nida... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C5%A1vi…
Both names, Lithuanian ašva and Sanskrit ashva, mean "horse" and are derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root for the horse – *ek'w-...
Maruts came (to earth) along with Agni (fire) from above...
The other day I read a very interesting paper "Comets and meteoritic showers in the Rigveda and their significance" by R.N. Iyengar () academia.edu/7324390/COMETS…
Most Vedas interpreters agree that Maruts are deified moisture laden monsoon storm winds, turned into rain bringing deities armed with thunder and lightning. Even I agree with that and I even wrote a thread talking about this:
But, the Mysore Palace edition of the Rigveda, which gives in 36 volumes an exhaustive introduction, the text, traditional meaning, ritual application, grammatical explanation, and the Sanskrit commentary of Sâyan says that: Vâyu (winds) and Maruts are distinctly different...