Zodiac killer

Elamite seal. Iran. From "The Elamite Cylinder Seal Corpus, c. 3500–1000 BC" by Karen Jane Gardon.

Soooo What's this all about?

Top row:

Autumn (symbolised by a lion) follows summer (symbolised by a bull)...This is the moment in time that this seal marks. This is why we have a lion chasing bull and  the cross in the upper panel...I talked about the symbols of the seasons in this post...

So what about the bottom row with two bulls facing each other? 

Based on the horn shape and no hump, these are bulls of the Eurasian wild cattle, aurochs...

Beginning of August, the end of summer, beginning of autumn, is also when Eurasian wild cattle, aurochs used to mate...During this time auroch bulls fought (faced) each other for females...I talked about the reproductive cycle of aurochs in my post "Ram and bull"....

By the way, this is also the time when Eurasian lions main mating season started too...I talked about this in my post "Musth"...

This is the hottest part of the year in the northern hemisphere, which is why this is the day of Helios...In the Balkans this is the day of St Elijah the Thunderer, the Thundering Sun...

Why Thundering Sun? I talked about the "weird" link between the sun and thunder god in my post about Croesus and Apollo, The thundering Sun...

The reason why we have Thundering Sun God is easy to see from this chart of thunderstorm frequency in Europe...

Interestingly, in Bosnia, on the day of Thundering Sun, the day that marks the end of summer beginning of autumn, the day when aurochs used to fight, people sacrifice bulls and hold bull fights...I talk about this in my post "Alidjun"

So it seems that both the upper and the lower panel of this seal point at the same moment in the Solar year...The moment when the lion (autumn) catches up with the bull (summer) and when bulls fight...

What does this have to do with Europe? Well the key for deciphering images like this one is found in, of all places, Balkan Slavic folklore, remnants of mythologies and religions of ancient people which mixed in the Balkans, and which are preserved to this day by Slavic peasants.

It was the parallels between the bull cult found in Serbia and the bull cult found in Ireland that made me think: "we are dealing with something ancient here"... and led me to deciphering of the first animal calendar marker: bull...

After that I started looking at other well known animal calendar markers, collectively known as Zodiac...And what I found was that they all mark mating or birthing seasons of animals in question...In Europe...I talked about this in the articles linked to this page about "Zodiac"....

After this I started looking at Ancient Eurasian and North African mythologies which were full of animal images...All the ones I touched so far, turn out to also be calendar markers derived from the behavior of animals in question...

It seems that mythologies were built around ancient agricultural calendar, which probably has the common root in the fertile crescent, 15,000-10,000 BC...And which used animal calendar markers to mark different parts of the solar year, important for early farmers...

This same symbolic system was then used throughout the ancient world as the agriculture spread...The mythologies developed around it are full of "monsters made up of different animal parts", "gods with animal heads or bodies", "masters of animals" and "mysterious animal images"...

Which no one understands any more...Well...Maybe we can now understand these crazy bits of our common heritage a bit better...

There is just one problem...

The problem is that "there is nothing mysterious or holy or enlightening or mind blowing" at the bottom of the rabbit hole...

There is no all powerful wizard behind the curtain holding a magic wand looking up at the stars and constellations...Just a sweaty peasant holding a plough and looking up at the sky wandering if the Sky God will be cruel or merciful this year...

Not something you can make a career of "speculating what mystery lies behind"...

I was already told by some people that "when they see that my article is about calendar they just skip it"...

Because it's boring...

The best comment I got so far was that I was a "Zodiac killer"...Cause I killed the mystery that zodiac held for so many people and turned it into an agricultural calendar...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...