Thread: I want to thank @realgavinlee for posting this pict of a very interesting, 1-3 C. AD Eastern Han Empire, bronze mirror.
The mirror is decorated with repeated scenes of "a tiger following a goat" and "a dragon facing a monkey". Except these are not ordinary decorations...
These are animal calendar markers for
winter - "a tiger following a goat"
and
summer - "a dragon facing a monkey"
The reason for this kind of symbolic division of the calendar year is because of the climate in the North Eastern china: The climatic year is divided into cold, dry winter (tiger) and hot, wet summer (dragon)...Xian climate. But the climate for the whole Han area is very similar.
Tiger is a winter symbol because the mating season of the Siberian / Amur tiger, which once lived in the North Eastern China, is Dec/Jan...Midwinter...
Ibex is a winter symbol because Siberian ibex, which lives in North Eastern China starts mating in Oct/Nov and mates throughout the winter...
Which is why "tiger" (Dec/Jan) follows (comes after) goat (Oct/Nov)...
Snake is the only true solar animal. It is in our world when sun is in our world (day and hot part of the year) and it is in the underworld when sun is in the underworld (night and cold part of the year)...Hence snake as a symbol of the sun and more specifically of sun's heat...
Now summer (Apr/May - Jul/Aug), the domain of the sun, starts with the beginning of the mating season of Eurasian viper snakes and ends with the beginning of the mating season of Eurasian lions...
Dragon is also a symbol of sun, and sun's heat during the hottest time of the year, Jul/Aug...Which is why dragon is just "an old snake which looked at the sun for a long time". And why dragon was depicted as lion with snakes heads...Or snake with lion's head...
In Western Asia, North Africa, Europe, Jul/Aug is also the driest part of the year...The time of droughts...
Which is why in these parts of the world dragons breath fire, steal water and cause droughts and death...
And we have all the thunder gods chasing them away...
But in China, the hottest part of the year is also the wettest part of the year...Xian climate again...
Hence in China, the fire breathing dragons bring rain...
According to the Chinese mythology, dragon was helped in its water fetching duties by en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kui_(Chin…, a "one-legged mountain demon or rain-god, variously said to resemble a Chinese dragon, a drum made of a skin of a water ox with no horns, or a monkey with a human face".
At first I wasn't sure what the dragon was facing on the Eastern Han mirror, but have a look at this:
Left: archaic oracle script symbol for "nao" (monkey)
Right: monkey from the Eastern Han mirror facing the dragon
The most common identification of this "monkey with the human face" is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_sn… Which is in China known as "Sichuan golden hair monkey" cause it lives in the mountains of Sichuan...Which was, I think, within the area of the core Han land...
Now I think it is interesting that the monkey is facing, stopping the rain bringing dragon...Why? Have a look at the climate in Sichuan...The rain stops in October...And the mating season of the "Golden snub-nosed monkey" is...October...
Oh yeah. Why "one legged mountain monkey/dragon rain god"? Apparently no one knows..."The Confucianists, detested the idea that K'ui had only one leg..." Cause they couldn't explain it. Maybe because...
Or maybe because dragon, which is the symbol of the sun's heat during the hottest part of the year, late summer, is "just an old snake" which is the symbol of the sun's heat in general...And snakes only have "one leg", or none, depending how you look at it...
To see that I am not barking mad: Groot infers that the in "one-legged dragon" Kui, "which was amphibious, and caused wind and rain", "we immediately recognize the Dragon, China’s god of Water and Rain". Carr interprets this as "a crocodile-dragon with its tail seen as 'one leg'"
And, why was the thunder drum made from the hide of an "blue ox with no horns who comes out of the eastern sea"? Well, remember that the bull, ox, cow and calf, are animal calendar markers that mark the beginning of the calving season of the wild Eurasian cattle, Apr/May...
Ox with no horns is a wild cattle calf...Which start being born in Apr/May...Which is when the summer monsoon winds arrive from the eastern sea carrying the clouds full of rain and thunder and lighting...Hence blue ox with no horns...
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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...