Taranto

A silver didrachm from Taranto in southern Italy minted during the period 355-340 BC. It features on obverse a male youth riding a dolphin.

Dolphins and a dolphin-rider feature so prominently on the coinage of Taranto. This is unsurprising, given the mythological aetiology of the city from the hero Taras, the son of Poseidon (Pausanias 10.10.8). who was shipwrecked and then rescued by a dolphin. 

On this coin from Taranto minted during the period 355-340 BC, Taras is depicted holding his father's trident...

The dolphin-rider motif appears early on the coins of Taranto. For instance, a silver didrachm from Taranto minted during the period 510-450 BC

With a Reverse this time featuring a winged hippocamp symbol of Poseidon.

Poseidon was god of the sea, storms...and horses. This is reflected in his epithets: Nauklarios (Ναυκλάριος) "belonging to the ship-owners", Pelagikos (Πελάγίκος) "belonging to the sea"...and Hippeios (ἲππειος) "belonging to a horse"...

Sailors prayed to Poseidon for a calm seas and safe voyage, "sometimes drowning horses as a sacrifice"...

In Greek art, Poseidon rides a chariot that was pulled by a hippocampus or by horses that could ride on the sea...

Poseidon is apparently "...more often regarded as the tamer of horses, but in some myths he is their father, either by spilling his seed upon a rock or by mating with a creature who then gave birth to the first horse..."

In Arcadia, one of the most conservative parts of Ancient Greece, Poseidon was worshipped as a stallion...

Why? Why?

The natural breeding season of horses starts in Apr/May and ends in Sep/Oct and is marked by wild stallion fights for mares...

The horse fertility is governed by the sunlight and peaks on summer solstice. I heard summer solstice was a big thing for sun worshipers....

Hence solar horses all over Eurasia...

Articles about solar horse (equid):

Iran "Water carrier equid", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"

Mesopotamia "Shamash playing with the solar horse", "Sun god from Tell Brak"

India "Hayagriva"

China "Longma", "Three legged crow", "Mythical beast from Xian"

Levant "Alexamenos graffito", "Goddess on a horse", "Unicorn"

Europe "Archaic rider", "Beotian solar pyxis", "Pegasus and chimera", "King John", "The horseman"

Ok, but what does this have to do with Poseidon? Well, mating season of horses, overlaps with the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean. Both start in Apr/May and finish in Sep/Oct...

I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse", in which I asked a question: was Trojan horse "hypos" - a wooden horse left as tribute, or  "hypos" - a wooden boat with a horse head used for transporting tributes...

As for dolphins, they are animal calendar markers for Apr/May-Oct/Nov.

The reason for this is that dolphin mating and calving season in Mediterranean spans period May-Oct.

It takes place in the shallows, and is therefore easily observable by people living and fishing along the coast...

So there is actually a symbolic link between the horses and dolphins. Their mating seasons overlap and they overlap with the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean...

I talked about dolphin as an animal calendar marker in many of my posts, like "Boat of Dyonisus", "Apollo and dolphins", "Horned animal attacked by a dolphin", "Minoan dolphin fresco", "Coin from Byzantion", "Eagle eating dolphin"

One other thing...A lot of the coins from Taranto depict a mounted warrior on the obverse. You can find them all here... 

This one even depicts a mounted warrior and Nike, the goddess of victory...

Why?

Because Apr/May - Sep/Oct was not only the sailing season but also the war season...

BTW, some of the Taranto coins only depict horse on both sides, like this one minted during the period  325-280 BC...So horses were definitely important symbol on its own...BTW, one is bridled and the other unbridled...Sailing and non sailing season? What do you think? 

Knowing this makes the original coin even cooler...I think...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Sun disc between two horses

Ahura-Mazda in a circle "worshiped" 🙂 by two rampant horses, below a flying sun disk with tail and streamers. Impression of the stone seal of Ellil-mukîn-aplu son of Nasir. 413 BC. Image and description from the Penn Museum...

What does this really mean?

The natural breeding season of horses starts in Apr/May and ends in Sep/Oct and is marked by wild stallion fights for mares...

The horse fertility is governed by the sunlight and peaks on summer solstice. I heard summer solstice was a big thing for sun worshipers....

Hence solar horses all over Eurasia...

Articles about solar horse (equid):

Iran "Water carrier equid", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"

Mesopotamia "Shamash playing with the solar horse", "Sun god from Tell Brak"

India "Hayagriva"

China "Longma", "Three legged crow", "Mythical beast from Xian"

Levant "Alexamenos graffito", "Goddess on a horse", "Unicorn"

Europe "Archaic rider", "Beotian solar pyxis", "Pegasus and chimera", "King John", "The horseman"

So prancing ponies under the sun disc...Interesting... 

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Scorpion under the bed

A drawing of an archaic seal impression from Ur depicting a copulating couple and a scorpion, from "Ur Excavations (Volume 3) Archaic seal impressions".

 

Today I came across this article entitled "Medicine in Ancient Assur..." by Troels Pank Arbøll. And in it, starting from the pate 74, I stumbled across very interesting note about the link between scorpions and snakes and human fertility:

Snakes and scorpions were and still are very common in Mesopotamia. Both animal are normally seen in nature, in fields, gardens, forests, marshes, desert, surrounding the human settlements...

But, the ancient texts and seals also tell us that scorpions could be found under the bed or in store rooms. 

A number of seals with bed scenes display a scorpion underneath the bed. 

I couldn't find any better image of these seals or any info about this seal, so would be grateful if someone could send me a picture of one of them so I can include it here. And, scorpions were referred to as the "wolfs of the storeroom, lions of the larder"...

Snakes were also said to venture into human habitations, usually through drainage pipes and sewers and are said to be sometimes giving birth in people's houses...

According to Troels, scorpions were the symbol of motherhood and were related to fertility and the image of the married woman...And, apparently, one of the symptoms of the scorpion invenomation is priapism (enlarged forced erection)...

Troels then says, "one cannot help but associate the scorpion stings with potency, as well as the various metaphoric relationships inherent in scorpions, such as motherhood and the marriage bed...Scorpion underneath the bed, probably refferrs to the couple's married aspect."

And, "Snakes were used to to describe an infant child coiled up within the mother and coming out slithering like a snake...Snakes may have been related to fertility or youth on the basis of their "renewal" when shedding their skin"...

Interesting...But there is one other, I think, very interesting thing about scorpions and snakes and their link to (human) fertility. This is the climatic year in Mesopotamia. You can see that the cool, wet season starts in Oct/Nov and ends in Apr/May...

Oct/Nov is also when the climate in Mesopotamia gets cool and wet enough for scorpions to start looking either for a hole to hibernate in, or for a dry warm place to live in...Like people's houses...Say under people's beds...

What about snakes? They go to hibernation too, thankfully not inside people's houses...They emerge out of hibernation in the spring, change their skins, and the most common Eurasian snakes, vipers, start mating in Apr/May...

This is why scorpion is an animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov, end of the hot/dry season and the beginning of the cool/wet season. 

This is why snake is an animal calendar marker for Apr/May, end of the cool/wet season and the beginning of the hot/dry season.

Oct/Nov, the time of the year marked by scorpion, was the time of the year when fields were ploughed and grain was sown in Mesopotamia, after the first rains fall (rain was also seen as the heavenly semen, seed of the rain god) that fertilises mother Earth...

Apr/May, the time of the year marked by snake, was the time of the year when the Tigris and Euphrates flood spilled out, and when fertile mother earth gave birth to grain, when grain was harvested in Mesopotamia...

So 

Oct/Nov, scorpion, semen, corn seed, sowing, rain (heavenly seed), fertilisation...

Apr/May, snake, baby, corn ears, sheaves, harvesting, flood (earthly flood is the child of the heavenly seed, spilling of waters), delivery...

Again it seems that in Mesopotamia human and earth fertility was symbolically linked...This time through animal calendar markers: scorpion and snake...

You can find more about the use of scorpion as an animal calendar marker in these posts...

You can find more about the use of snake as an animal calendar marker in these posts...

BTW, I just remembered this drawing of an archaic seal impression from Ur, also from "Ur Excavations (Volume 3) Archaic seal impressions". Self explanatory after what you just read? I think so...

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Oldest symbolic monument

According to this paper, the oldest symbolic monument, that is to say, one with no obvious practical use and probably responding to a belief, is this pile of stones piled up next to a spring at El Guettar (Southern Tunisia)...

This pile of stones formed a regular cone 0.75 meters high and 1.50 meters in diameter at the base. At the top were placed a few flint balls, all the others were limestone spheres...

None of these stones are natually found on site, which means that they were deliberately brought there and arranged in a pile by man. This pile of balls was riddled with Mousterian type chipped flint, which dates the pile to 160,000 to 40,000BP...

What is really really cool and interesting is that this pile of stones was topped with flint nodules. Most likely like these ones I have on my desk...

Flint is the thunder stone...Hitting one flint nodule with another one will produce a weak spark...which looks like lightning...and a smell of burning...like when lightning hits vegetation and ignites it making fire...

Fire which our ancestors had to catch before they learned how to make it...

How old are fairytales about "the hunt for the firebird"? Well they could predate the time when people learned how to make fire...Because before people knew how to make it, fire descended from the sky and had to be found and caught...I talked about this in my article "Fire bird"... 

How was fire making invented? Most likely as a wood drilling accident...I talked about this in my article "Drill"...

And when was fire making invented? Can't be that long time ago, considering the worship of fire and fire makers that persisted until very recently...I talked about this in my articles about the fire creation worship and the invention of the fire drill and the tool for making fire: , "Holly fire drill", "Prometheus", "12 Olympians"...

Now if you replace one of the flint nodules with a pyrite nodule, a spherical or ovoid masses of pyrite, often found in sedimentary rocks together with flint nodules...

You can actually make big enough spark that will allow you to ignite dry bark or grass...and make fire...This process is explained in this video

And believe or not, based on the strike marks found on some flint and pyrite nodules from the same Mousterian period found in Southern France, archaeologists have proposed that Neanderthals used flint and pyrite nodules to make fire. You can read about it in this article...

Using human made lightning...Lightning which most often strikes mountain tops...

Lighting which announces the arrival of rain...Rain which is the source of drinking water...Water which comes out of springs like the one next to which the pile of stones we are talking about was made...

Were people who built this pile of stones topped with flint nodules aware of all this?

And does this mean that the myths and the worship of the fire makers could be over 40,000 years old? You might want to read my articles which talk about the age of (some of) our myths: "Mamaragan", "Dreamtime", "Yeti", "Yeti rivisited", "Third death", "The young one", "Sun mountain", "Partholon and the great flood", "How grain came to Sumer", "Fire bird"...

Mamaragan

Adad, Mesopotamian storm god, holding an axe and lightning bolt...How old is this association between storm (thunder) gods an (stone) axes? How about at least 40,000 years?

I tried to explain the association between thunder gods and (stone) axes in my post "Jack and the magic beans"..

In which I proposed that some of our myths about sky gods are in fact very very old scientific theories which tried to explain the available observed phenomena in the best possible way with the knowledge of the universe people possessed at that time...Like if giant stones are falling from the sky, there must be a giant (sky god) throwing them from up there on our heads...

These stones that fall from the sky then became "thunder bolts" and "thunder stones" and "petrified lightnings". 

At the end of my post "Kataibates", about stone thunder axes from European folklore tradition, I asked how old this tradition could be...

I suggested that this link between a stone, more specifically flint axes, and thunder gods, already existed in the 4th millennium BC Europe...I explained why I thought so in my post "Sun stones" in which I talked about exploding flint axes...

But then I saw this picture of Namarrkon/Mamaragan, the storm "god" from Aboriginal mythology from Western Arnhem Land in northern territories. He lives high in the sky, rides storm clouds and makes thunders by striking the clouds with stone axes fixed to his head, elbows, and knees...

He also "soaks up the sun's rays and turns them into lightning"...In monsoon regions of the world, the end of the dry season is marked by spectacular electric storms which announce the arrival of the rains...

Also in Northern Australia, the hottest time of the year is also the rainiest time of the year...

So sun's heat is obviously and literally turned into lightning...

BTW, remember this?

"Because it is a great secret how come Svarog (hevenly and earthly fire) is at the same time Perun (thunder and lightning) and Svetovid (Sun)." Modern science explains the link between solar energy, lightning and fire...I talked about this in my post "Sun thunder fire"...

Now, Aboriginals arrived to Australia about 40,000 years ago...Which could mean that the link between thunder gods and stone axes, is more than 40,000 years old??? If we assume common root of the myth...

I already wrote about the age of (some) Aboriginal myths in my post "Dream time" and "Yeti revisited". Some Australian Aboriginal "dreamtime" stories, passed orally from generation to generation, could, according to latest scientific data, actually be over 40,000 years old...

Or, maybe, again, everyone ended up with the same explanation for the same observed phenomena...

Walpurgis Night

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)

I talked about this in my post "Two crosses"...

This division of the year, is btw based on the old transhumance shepherd calendar:

Lowland grazing and lambing Oct/Nov - Apr/May

Highland grazing and milking Apr/May - Oct/Nov

I talked about this in my post "April"...

In Serbian Orthodox calendar, the beginning and the end of the "Time of Dragons", the hot sunny half of the year, is marked (guarded) by Two Georges, Summer and Winter St George('s day)...I talked about this in my post "Two Georges"...

This is important to know as a lot of old traditions linked to Beltane were migrated to the Summer St George day...

Where do witches come into the picture here?

Remember this: Hey, you Halloween witches, dressing up in black on the first day of winter...You know that The Witch here is The Hag, Winter Earth, Baba, Cailleach, The Dark, Veiled One...Here she is, all in black, with bare branch, on the four seasons Roman mosaic from the Bignor

The witch here is the Old (Winter) Mother Earth. 

In the Polish Carpathians we find this saying:

"Baba (Grandmother) is already frozen" meaning "The mountain tops are covered with frost or the first snow". 

I talked about this in my post "Gryla" about Winter Hag, Winter Earth...

Baba Dochia was an old woman who insulted the month of March. So, while she was going up the mountain with a herd of goats (symbols of winter), March borrowed frosty days from February and froze her to death...

I talked about this legend from Romania in my post "Baba, cold, winter"...

Slovenian folk play called "Baba (grandmother) and Ded (grandfather)": "As they get older he gets weaker and she gets stronger. At one point she takes over him and rules until spring".  

This makes a lot of sense if Baba (Earth, Yin, Cold) and Ded (Sun, Yang, Heat)...

Ever changing Yin-Yang symbol is most likely description of the ever changing daily amount of light and darkness and the effect this change has on Earth's temperature...

More about it in my post "Yin and Yang"...

The winter earth is actually depicted as a witch in the Snow White. 

Crab apples are the last fruit to stay on the branches in Continental Europe, well into winter. 

Winter, which was imagined by our ancestors as "an old hag, and old witch" veiled in black, the bringer of death...

The one Slavs called Morana (the goddess of death) and Marzana (the goddess of cold). From my post "Snow-White"...

Some Slavs performed burning of the witch of winter/goddess of death at the beginning of spring (Jan/Feb)...

"Maslenitsa" by Simon Kozhin. 

As I said, Slavs equated The Goddess of Death, Morana (mor=death) with The Winter Earth, Marzana (marz=frost). She is ceremonially burned (warmed) or drowned (thawed) or both (to de sure to be sure 🙂) during Slavic spring festivals...

Here are some posts in which I talk about this ritual and related customs: "Gryla", "Party" "Bannock", "To kill a witch", "Baba's day", "Living stone"...

And some Slavs performed burning of the witch of winter/goddess of death at the beginning of summer (Apr/May)...

Like Sorbs (Slavs) from Germany, who at the end of April perform "Chodojtypalenje" (the witch burning). A large stack of branches is piled and a straw witch effigy is placed on top. The whole thing is then set ablaze symbolically "killing winter" (witch=hag=winter) 

As I said above, in Serbian and Celtic calendar, year had two seasons: winter Samhain (start of November) to Bealtaine (start of May), and summer Bealtaine to Samhain. Hence Sorbian witch burning at the end of April, just before the start of summer...  

Here is a picture of one of these "witches" (hags) being burned. 

Christianised version of this custom is Walpurgis Night. "As a result of Saint Walpurga's evangelism in Germany, the people there converted to Christianity from heathenism. Saint Walpurga was also known to repel the effects of witchcraft..." 😉

I think that by now you can all see that what was burned on these bonfires was not a witch but the Hag, Ugly, Evil, Winter earth, The Goddess of Death. Who is transformed, every spring, by the fire of the sun into Beautiful, Good, Summer Earth, The Goddess of Life...This "burning" is not destruction but transformation by fire...

The fire lit at these ceremonies is supposed to ignite the reproductive fire of the mother earth. We don't want frigid winter hag, we want hot spring maiden 🙂 burning with desire for her young sun lover. Without this fire there is no life...

In the Balkans they also performed the scaring of the witch of winter

As part of end of winter, beginning of summer rituals, men and boys in Bosnia blew willow horns to scare the witch (winter) away...As I said, the old Serbian year, just like the old Celtic year, was divided into summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and winter (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

I talked about this in my post "May horns"...

This link between Mother earth and Yin, dark, wet, cold weather, resulted in the women being the ones who in Slavic tradition performed Yin, dark, wet, cold magic. 

I talked about this in two posts, "Weather stones", about the use of "weather stones" among Slavs and "The last megalithic ritual in Europe", which talks about a ritual from Belarus, where women (Yin, dark, wet, cold) raise Dabog's (sun and rain god) stone during drought to get cool and wet weather...

And in the post "Thunder book" where we read about the prosecution of female witches in medieval Serbia for performing weather magic...

The association between (Yin, dark, wet, cold) magic and women seems to have been common in the past in the rest of Europe too. 

Two witches conjuring a hailstorm, an illustration from the 1489 book "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus" by Ulrich Molitor which talks about weather altering magic (witchcraft) performed by women...

Did you know that the sudden climate change which resulted in the medieval mini ice age was blamed on the weather controlling witches and was the excuse for the subsequent witch-hunt? I talked about this in my post "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus"...

Now that we know who witches were, I think it is interesting that witches seem to have liked riding on two things which are both associated with storms and winter: brooms and goats...

Broom...Remeber my post "Donderbezem" about Donderbezem (thunder broom), a protective symbol used in Holland and northern Germany as a protection from lightning strikes and evil spirits.

Goat...Goat is universally associated with dark, cold, wet half of the year (Oct/Nov - Apr/May) in Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, Western Asia, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Iran...This is because ibex goat mating season starts in Oct/Nov and the ibex goat birthing season finishes in Apr/May...

I talked about symbolism of ibex goats in many of my posts, like 

Europe:

"Pitys", "Goat in European culture", "Patera of Rennes", "Gotland sun stone with horses and ibexes"... 

Levant:

"The tree of life/light", "Lachish animal calendar"...

Mesopotamia:

"Feast plaque from Louvre", "Green pastures", "Problems with Abzu", "Relief from Dur Sharrukin", "Goatfish"...

Iran: 

"Flamingos from Susa", "Goat carrier", "Iranian goat of rain", "Strider", "A vessel from Tepe Hissar", "Rhubarb and ibex"...

Interesting, right?

Anyway, don't just sit there. Go burn a witch. We all had enough of winter...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which were the key to deciphering all this, 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...