5th c. BC Etruscan fresco, Tarquinia, Tomb of the whipping...Depicting...Well you can all see the obvious bit that it is depicting...
I will not talk about that. I will talk about the things "hidden in plain view", that most people who look at this fresco don't see 🙂
Do you see the guy on the left who is ... the woman from behind and also whipping her?
What's with the green branches (growing out of) on his head? Are these willow branches? They look like willow twigs to me...
This insignificant detail 🙂 indicates, at least to me, that this is not just a depiction of an ordinary "fun with friends"...I think this is a ritual, a fertility ritual...
Whose traces, a believe, we can still find among Slavs...As part of willow related spring, rebirth (resurrection) of nature, fertility folklore...
Here is why I think that:
Saturday before Palm Sunday is in Serbia known as Vrbica (Willow day). On that day kids and young women make and wear wreaths made of willow twigs and flowers...
On that day, willow twigs with young leaves and flowers, like these, known in English as Pussy Willow are brought to the church where they are blessed the next day, Palm Sunday, which is in Serbia known as Cveti (Flowers day)...
According to the church, this whole willow business is the consequence of the fact that there are no palms in Serbia, and people replaced palm branches with willow branches...Move on, nothing so see here...
There are few problems with this explanation...
Vrbopuc (Willow burst) is an expression which in Serbia means "part of spring during which willow starts growing new green shoots"...
Vrbopuc is also a term used in Serbia for the period of sudden surge of sexual hormones in teenage boys and girls...
Basically willow was directly linked with human fertility...Which is why in the past in Serbia, girls used to make belts from willow twigs (wrap willow twigs around their bellies), and wear them going to the rivers to perform ritual baths performed during this time...
Among Slavs, willow was directly linked with water, water divination....Dodole, young women which took part in rain bringing magic rituals performed during hot summers also wore willow twig belts...
Mother Earth = Yin = Winter, Cold, Wet, Night, Down = Female fertility
Father Sun (Sky) = Yang = Summer, Hot, Dry, Day, Up = Male fertility
Which is why rain, water magic is female magic...
And which is why willow, the tree which grows next to water, is associated with rain, water and female fertility, female sexuality...
Hence ritual whipping of teenage girls by teenage boys using willow whips, performed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia on Easter Sunday...
The teenage boy first sang a a ritual song about spring, bountifulness and fertility, and "the young woman then turned around and got few whacks on her backside with the willow whip"...
Sounds familiar?
This was done "so girl would be healthy, beautiful and fertile throughout the following year"...They would also splash each other with water...
Cause it is water that makes land fertile...And Slavs directly linked female and land fertility...
I talked about Slavic willow folklore in my post "Willow in Slavic folklore"...
Sooooooooo...What do you think? Just a casual threesome or a fertility ritual?
For those who ask if there is a link to Lupercalia?
These are symbolically similar rituals. During Lupercalia, young men whipped women with sacrificial goat skin thongs. Dead goat was, and still is in Europe, symbol of spring...Goat being the symbol of winter. I talked about this in my posts "The birth of Romulus and Remus", "Goat in European culture"...
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