On this picture you see "badnjak", Serbian Yule log, a young oak sapling which was ritually cut on Christmas Eve and "pečenica", Serbian Yule roast, a pig on a spit, which was ritually slaughtered and roasted on Christmas Eve...
I talked about Serbian Yule log and the rituals surrounding its cutting, bringing into the house and burning in the heath in my posts "Badnjak" and "First footer"
And I talked about the Serbian Christmas roast in my post "Sacrificial animals", which is about the sacrificial animals (boar, ram, bull) in Serbian tradition and their Indo-European root...
Serbs were not the only people who had this triple animal sacrifice:
Lusitanians sacrificed a sheep, a pig and a bull to some local gods. Indians sacrificed a ram, a bull and a goat to Indra. Iranians sacrificed sheep, cattle and stallions to Anahita.
Greeks sacrificed ram, bull, and boar to Poseidon. And the Umbrians ram, bull, and boar to their main Grabovian Triad of gods...And Romans sacrificed boar, ram and bull to Mars...
We can see that this "triple" animal sacrifice was quite widespread...
But I don't think it was well understood...Even by me 🙂 at the time when I wrote my article about the Serbian sacrificial animals...
In that post I mentioned that the order in which animals are sacrificed in Serbian tradition was identical to the order of animals in suovetaurilia, one of the most sacred and traditional rites of Roman religion: the sacrifice of a pig (sus), a sheep (ovis) and a bull (taurus)...
This ceremony was performed "to purify and protect the land". The first step was to lead the three animals, in precise order, boar, ram, bull, around the boundaries of the land, and then sacrifice them to the god...
During public, state sacrifices, which could be held at any time of the year, the animals were dedicated to the god Mars...But during private, family sacrifices, which were held in May, the animals were dedicated to the Goddess Ceres...Goddess of grain harvest...
The significance of this completely escaped me at the time when I wrote my original post, cause at that time I was only beginning to discover animal calendar markers and still didn't understand their significance and their link with grain agricultural calendar...
I did notice the strange correlation between the order in which animal were sacrificed by the Romans (boar, ram, bull) and the order of months in which the same animals were sacrificed by the Serbs:
Boar - Dec
Ram - Apr
Bull - August
I also noticed that if you replace Serbian and Roman sacrificial animals (boar, ram, bull) with Indian sacrificial animals (goat, ram, bull), and if you place them on the zodiac circle you get this...
I thought this was interesting, not known how interesting...
Cause, for instance, at that time I didn't know that there was such a thing as animal symbols for seasons...
Goat - winter, followed by Ram - spring, followed by Bull - summer
I also didn't know that these animal calendar markers were derived from the mating and birthing seasons of depicted animals.
Goat - Oct/Nov - mating season of wild goats
Ram - Mar/Apr - lambing season of wild sheep
Bull - Apr/May - calving season of wild cattle
My main problem was with the fact that our European Zodiac uses animal calendar markers derived from the behaviour of animals in Europe...I talked about this in the articles lined to this page about Zodiac...
In Europe, Alpine ibex goats mate later than everywhere else...Hence Goat in the middle of winter...Not beginning...
So when I was looking at goat as the sacrificial animal, I made the same mistake interpreting this animal symbol, which lead me to misinterpret the meaning of Chimera.
This is wrong...
I corrected my interpretation of Chimera in my post about Pegasus and Chimera...
The correct interpretation of Chimera is that it is a complex animal calendar marker for the hot, dry half of the year in Eastern Mediterranean, Levant and Mesopotamia...
Knowing what I know now, I would like in this post to correct my interpretation of the triple animal sacrifice...
First, goat and boar are mutually interchangeable as animal calendar markers. Both point to Oct/Nov, beginning of the mating season of wild goats and wild pigs...
Third Boar-Ram-Bull as animal calendar markers mark the period between Oct/Nov and Apr/May...
Very important period in grain agricultural calendar:
Oct/Nov - beginning of the grain planting season
Apr/May - beginning of the grain harvest season
Which becomes very important for understanding of this sacrifice when we realise that Roman peasants performed Suovetaurilia dedicated it to Ceres, Goddess of grain harvest in May, at the beginning of the grain harvest...
The meaning of Suovetaurilia then becomes: We will harvest when boar (Oct/Nov), ram (Mar/Apr) and bull (Apr/May) have passed (remember they are taken around the fields in that order)...
That's it...Most people think that Roman mythology is just recycled dumbed down Greek mythology...But actually, Roman peasants have preserved in their village rituals some very very ancient stuff indeed...
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...
That's it...I hope you enjoyed this...Have a nice evening...
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