Thread: "Hestia, you who tends the holy house of the lord Apollo...come now into this house...having one mind with Zeus the all-wise..." From "Homeric Hymn To Hestia" (perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…)
What does this mean?
In Hindu mythology, Agni (fire) was believed to have three manifestations: Sun, Lightning, Fire...Which is why he had three heads...
Just like Slavic Triglav (Three headed)..."Because it is a great secret how Svarog (heavenly and earthly fire) is at the same time Perun (thunder) and Svetovid (Sun)"...oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2014/07/trigla…
Interesting right? Cause before people learned how to make fire, fire descended from the sun through lightning...Basically sun makes fire using its "heavenly fire drill", lightning...
Basically, sun gives birth to fire...Which is why Surya, the sun god, had a daughter, Tapati, whose name literally means the "warming", "the hot one", "burning one"...
This fire which descended from the sun, was imagined as a fire bird which comes down from the sky to earth to nest...
It then had to be found and "caught" and brought home...Which is why we have legends about "the hunt for the firebird whose one feather can light up the whole room"... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/11/firebi…
How old are these legends? Well they most likely predate the moment when "Prometheus stole the fire from the gods"...
What does stealing fire from the gods mean? Did Prometheus steal knowledge of making fire from the gods? Or did people accidentally discover fire making while drilling? oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/11/drill.…
And how long ago did people become masters of fire?
Considering that "fire-drill" was still worshiped as deity in Mesopotamia
And considering that rekindling new fire was one of the most important annual ceremonies all over Eurasia until recently...Like in Slovenia for instance where all the fires in the village are ritually rekindled once a year from a communal fire:
And considering that in Serbia, Yule log, the magic log that has to burn through the longest night of the winter solstice, "so sun's fire would not get extinguished" was traditionally a log from an oak tree, the holly tree of Perun, the thunder god... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/01/badnja…
But I am digressing...
The important thing here is that originally fire descended from the sun to earth through lightning...Which is why Hestia "tends the holy house of the lord Apollo" and "has one mind with Zeus"...
BTW, Hestia, (the etymology unknown, believed to be Pre-Greek) has only one cognate, Slavic word jesteja (yesteya) meaning "hearth, paved area around or in front of a hearth used for cooking food" which comes from "jesti" (yestee) meaning to eat.
Which would make Jesteja (Yesteya) the place where food was cooked...Which is exactly what hestia was...Not any fire...Domestic fire...The fire where food was cooked...
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Thread: In which I would like to again point at things hidden in plain sight...Around 435 BC, Greek sculptor Phidias made a giant seated statue of the sky and thunder god Zeus for the Temple of Zeus in Olympia...
Unfortunately the statue was destroyed during the 5th century AD; but we know what the statue looked like from Greek and Roman coins...
And from written records, like the one left by the 2nd c. AD geographer and traveler Pausanias (bartleby.com/library/prose/…)
Thread: A while back I wrote an article about this the Khafajeh vase, which was made in Iran in the mid 3rd mil. BC by the people of the Jiroft culture...It is still one of the most amazing animal calendars I have seen so far oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/09/khafaj…
This particular scene depicts the driest and hottest part of the year in the Jiroft County, located in the Kerman Province of the South-Eastern Iran...Jul/Aug...This is symbolised by the person holding two snakes (symbols of sun's heat) standing between two lions (in Leo)...
This "person" is the sun god, the same dude depicted on this Bactrian seal from the same period. I talked about Bactrian snakes and dragons in this article
Thread: This is Manjushri, a bodhisattva associated with prajñā (wisdom)...He is the oldest and most significant bodhisattva in Mahāyāna literature, first mentioned in the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras, which were composed somewhere on the Indian subcontinent between 100 BC and AD 600...
Let's have a look at the symbols associated with Manjushri...
He is siting on a blue lion (symbol of wild mind tamed by wisdom), with his feet resting on a lotus flower (symbol of infinite wisdom)...
He is holding another lotus flower (more infinite wisdom) with Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) sūtra placed on top of it, while wielding a Flaming Vajra Sword (sword of wisdom) in his right hand...
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...
Thread: In which I would like to talk about animal calendar markers depicted on this Bronze mirror found in the Volga River region, Russia, and dated to the 8th-7th century BC. Published: Sotheby's, New York, sale cat. December 8, 2ooo.
The mirror is decorated in relief with: wild ibex goat, (wild) horse, (wild) bovine, and wild Bactrian camel.
The fact that wild Bactrian camel is depicted on the mirror, tells us that this object was made somewhere in Central Asia, where we used to find wild Bactrian camels.
Look at the arrangement of the animals around the rim:
We have
horse paired (depicted across from) bull
ibex goat paired (depicted across from) bactrian camel
I don't think this pairing is a coincidence. It indicates that these animals are used as animal calendar markers...
Thread: 5,000 year old Egyptian wooden statue of a man with lapis lazuli eyes...
My wife, an English literature graduate, who "hates science fiction" is reading Dune. And is totally engrossed...Verdict: "one of the best books she ever read"...An she read a lot of good books...
Good, cause I spent months trying to persuade her that this wasn't really a science fiction book, but rather a grand philosophical tractate written as a page turning epic set in a fictional future universe...
I read Dune myself when I was 19/20 years of age. I couldn't put it down and I couldn't stop thinking about it for months after I finished... It blew my mind...So a year ago I bough the book for my 15 year old son. And he read the whole trilogy in one breath...