Thread: Willow whistles and flutes are made in the spring when willow sap rises and loosens the bark...
Because they were easy to make, these flutes and whistles were favourite kids instruments...(Pic The Willow Whistle, 1888, Ellen Day Hale)
Now if you wanted to have a musical child, that can make music and not noise, this is what you were advised to do in 18th century Sweden:
"In the spring fetch water from a stream that flows southwards. The water should be taken where it murmurs the most loudly..." (Pic Kamajokk river Sweden)
"...Then a child's parent should blow into the water with a willow flute that a child had used. The child then has to drink this water for three days on an empty stomach. This would ensure that the child would have a very good ear for music"...
That would also insure that the child's parent would save his/her ears 🙂
This music spell can be found (with loads of other interesting stuff related to ancient European musical instruments) in "Music and sounds in ancient Europe" emaproject.eu/images/stories…
Now there were times when you wanted to make noise and not music with your willow whistles, flutes and trumpets...During the night before St George's day, when these instruments were blown "to scare witches (winter) away"... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/03/may-ho…
A lot more interesting willow folklore can be found in this thread
Thread: This Is Mad! The almost complete collapse of the Earth's magnetic field around 41000 years ago most likely majorly contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals...
In the recent geological past, Earth’s magnetic field reduced to ~10% of the modern values and the magnetic poles shifted away from the geographic poles, causing the Laschamps geomagnetic excursion, about 41 millennia ago...
The excursion lasted ~2000 years, with dipole strength reduction and tilting spanning 300 years. During this period, the geomagnetic field’s multipolarity resembled outer planets, causing rapid magnetospheric changes...
Thread: Another interesting detail from this Daunian globular pottery askos, made in Canosa di Puglia and dated to 350BC-325BC, "painted with bands of decoration. This consists of flora and fauna, geometric patterns and swastikas"... metmuseum.org/art/collection…
Is this the symbol? Christmas cake from Serbia with the sun and "the hands of god" cross. The hands of god cross by itself in the next picture. The hands of god represent 4 seasons with 3 months each, which means that the god whose hands these are is the Sun
Thread: Daunian globular pottery askos, made in Canosa di Puglia and dated to 350BC-325BC, "perhaps for funerary use, painted with bands of decoration. This consists of flora and fauna, geometric patterns and swastikas"...
What about this detail? A curly swastika with each arm connected to a sun. Two of which are red and two of which are black.
That this is not a one off squiggle, can be seen from the fact that we find the same motif on this Daunian askos from the Heinz Weisz collection christies.com/en/lot/lot-572…
The problem was that The Roman winter was an Ugly Old Hag...And the woman on John William Waterhouse's painting was young and beautiful. I was sure I was missing something important, but I didn't know what...
Thread: Buckle up, this is going to be quite a ride.
Meet Cetus, Poseidon's pet which he released on people that really pissed him off. Usually kings with beautiful daughters.
3rd c. BC mosaic depicting Cetus, from Ancient Kaulon, Calabria, Italy
Two most famous Cetuses 🙂 were so called Æthiopian (Levantine) Cetus and Trojan Cetus. This thread is about them, the two beautiful babes that were supposed to be sacrificed to them to appease them and the two heroes who strongly objected to such arrangements...
Here we go:
Queen Cassiopeia boasted that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than the Nereids. This angered Poseidon so much that he sent the sea monster Cetus to attack Æthiopia (Levant)...