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: 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…
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...
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....
Thread: Two Sassanian wall relief slabs dated to the 5th-6th c. AD, depicting rampant ibex goats flanking "the tree of life"...
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:
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?
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)...
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?
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)
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…
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)...
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...