House snake

In Belarus, when storytellers want to emphasise that something happened long time ago, they would say "in the old days, when people kept snakes in their houses"...

In the records from the 16th century, Yan Lasitsky says this about house snakes in Belarus: 

"...In Belarusian lands, many people kept pet snakes in their homes and fed them...In large families, during meals, children were fed separately from adults, sitting on the floor around a large bowl of food. When the food was served, the house snake would crawl out of its hiding place and would eat together with the children...Children often pushed the snake away, hit it on the forehead with spoons 🙂, but the snake never got angry nor did it bite them. Belarusian peasants put an uncovered jug of milk on the ground of the house, so that the house snake could feed freely when it wanted...If the house snake lived in a barn, it sucked milk directly from the cows. The house snake was the guardian of the household both magically, and practically, by killing rodents that disturbed animals and brought disease...Therefore, it was forbidden to kill or chase away the house snake..."

The house snake, the protector of the house and the family, was also the thing among Balkan Slavs and the Balts...

That comes directly from the belief that the house snake contains the spirit of the first ancestor that died in the house. The protective spirit...That belief was preserved among South Slavs...

I talked about this in my posts "Stones with narrow bottom bowls" and "New house"...

One other interesting thing. Dabog, old Serbian supreme god, was the sun god. Dabog is also found in Belorussian folklore where they also equate him with the sun...I talked about this in my post about the last megalithic ritual in Europe from Belarus...

Serbian ethnographer Cajkanovic, believed Dabog was also the god of the underworld, god of the dead...Later he was replaced by St Sava, Serbian Patron Saint...

And snakes, being solar animals, follow Sun (Dabog) wherever he goes...It is in our world when sun is here (day, hot half of the year) and it is in the underworld when sun is there (night, cold half of the year)...I talked about it in my posts "The Chthonic animal", "Enemy of the sun", "Letnitsa treasure"...

Which is why snakes are also "Chthonic" animals, and why Slavs believed that house snake contains the spirit of their ancestors...

And why the house snake lived under the hearth/stove...Where the dead gathered too... How old is this belief in the Balkans? Very old...

In Mesolithic - Neolithic Lepenski Vir culture (9000-6000BC) from Serbia, the dead were buried under the floor of the houses, near or under the hearth. The people from Lepenski Vir culture literally "lived with their dead"...

Flag of Widewuto

Flag of the mythical first Prussian king Widewuto. Originally from the tribe of Cimbri, he came to Prussia from Jutland in the 6th century AD, brought culture and agriculture and named Prussia after his older brother Bruteno, who became the high priest...

The flag was drawn in the 16th century by a historian and cartographer Caspar Hennenberger after a description by Simon Grunau, who was the author of Preussische Chronik, the first comprehensive history of Prussia...

Allegedly, it depicted three Prussian gods: 

Peckols, god of the underworld, old man with white hair and long beard 

Perkūnas, god of thunder, middle-aged man with fiery hair and short beard

Patrimpas, god of sea, earth, and crops, beardless young man with a wreath of grain.

The flag also displayed mysterious symbols, which no one have so far been able to decipher. I will leave deciphering of the inscription to others. What I would like to try, is to uncover the true identity of the three "Prussian gods"

There is something interesting about this flag which leads me to believe that the characters depicted on it were not originally three Prussian gods: Peckols, Perkunas and Patrimpas.

The three characters are clearly deliberately depicted in three distinct stages of a man's life: a young man, a man in full strength, an old man. This in no way corresponds with the roles of the three Prussian gods.

The three characters are clearly deliberately depicted in three distinct colours: a young man - green, a man in full strength - yellow, an old man - red. This in no way corresponds with the roles of the three Prussian gods.

The three characters are clearly deliberately depicted with a specific "headgear": a young man - wreath of green leaves, not wreath of grain; a man in full strength - burning flames; an old man - white turban. This in no way corresponds with the roles of the three Prussian gods.

But these three characters correspond to the three ages of the the sun:

Young beardless youth, dressed in green, with green leaves wreath on his head - spring sun

Man in full strength with short red beard, dressed in yellow, with burning fire on his head - summer sun

Old man with long white beard dressed in red, with white turban - autumn

I don't know if such personifications of the three ages of sun, three seasons exist in Prussian mythology. They certainly do exist in Slavic mythology:

Jarilo - young spring sun, the green man, celebrated on the last day of spring, the first day of summer, beginning of May

Svetovid - mature summer sun, the yellow man, celebrated on the mid day of summer, summer solstice

Ilija (Elijah) - old autumn sun, the red man, celebrated on the last day of summer, first day of autumn, beginning of August

The young sun represents fertility and turning nature green.

The mature sun represents ripening and turns nature yellow.

The old sun represents withering and dying and turn nature red and then white.

I don't know what to think about all this. Historians now think that the legends about the first king of Prussians, Widewuto, were an invention of Prussian nationalists in the middle of religious and national strife. What about this flag then?

The symbolism of this group of characters is too complex to be just made up by someone who didn't know what they were doing...So what was this flag inspired by?

Something just occurred to me. Cimbri, the tribe of the first Prussian king Widewuto, were by some believed to be of Celtic origin. And in Celtic calendar the year is divided into two parts, the white part, dominated by the sun, and the dark part dominated by the earth...

Start of the white half: 1st of May, the end of spring, start of summer. Green day. Middle of the white half: 1st of Aug, the end of summer, start of autumn. Yellow day. End of the white half of the year: 1st of Nov, end of autumn, start of winter, white day...

This now corresponds with the roles of the three "Prussian gods": 

Green young man (foliage) - flourishing vegetation of early white half

Yellow mature man (fire) - heat and thunderstorms of mid white half

Red old man (snow) - withering and death of late white half

That would make the legend about the king who came from the tribe of Cimbri carrying this flag a bit more believable...

Jani

Greeting of "Jāņi children" by the house owners during Jāņi (Yanee) day, Latvian summer solstice festival. Pic: Leonid Vladimirovic.

There is something strange about this Latvian holiday. It has part of what we find in Slavic mid summer rituals and part of what we find in Slavic beginning of summer rituals all mixed in one...

For instance, Gathering the fern flower ritual is in Slavic countries performed during mid summer Ivan dan (Jāņi dan) celebrations, just like in Latvia.  

Bonfire lighting which is done in Latvia on the eve of the Jāņi day, is another ritual which is in Slavic countries done on Ivan dan. Pic: Jāņi bonfire 

I talked about this Slavic custom in my post "Slavic pyramids" 

But, gathering flowers and making flower wreaths is in Latvia done on mid summer, Jāņi day.

While in Slavic (Balkan) countries this is done at the beginning of the summer, in late April, early May...I talked about this in my post "Flower girls"...

And particularly interesting is the belief in Latvia that "medicinal herbs picked on Jāņi day have special powers and are particularly potent". In Slavic (Balkan) countries the belief is that the "medicinal herbs picked at the  beginning of the summer have special powers are are particularly potent". Which is when medicinal herbs are gathered...I talked about this in my post "Herb Friday"...

Finally, Latvian belief that"girls should, on Jāņi day, wash their faces with the morning dew, so their face will always be white and beautiful" is in Slavic (Balkan) cultures and in Celtic (Gaelic) cultures is done at the beginning of summer. I talked about this in my post "Morning dew"...

I wonder if this is an example of customs and rituals, which as they moved up north, to the colder parts of Europe, were moved from the beginning of summer to the middle of summer, to fit with the local climate (medicinal herbs flowering later and dew appearing later)...

The reason why I believe flower wreath, medicinal herbs and morning dew rituals didn't originate in Latvia, and were originally performed at the beginning of summer, is because both the Irish and Serbian traditions agree when dew face wash should be done (beginning of summer)

As we know the Irish and the Serbs didn't really have much cultural contacts in say, few thousand years...🙂 So we could be pretty sure that this is an ancient custom preserved by both people independently, and not borrowed from each other recently...

Anyway, very interesting I think and worth further research...

Knocking stones

Knocking stones, or Clach chnotainn in Scottish Gaelic were exposed bedrock stone or boulders with a pot-shaped concavity cut into them used for husking and pounding barley and other cereals before the introduction of other methods of milling grain...

They were once used by every farming household and abandoned examples are still to be found in Ireland, the Highlands and the Western Isles and remained in use in remote areas until the 19th century...

A large pot-shaped cavity known as "knocking well" was cut into exposed bedrock or boulders. Grain was then poured into the cavity and pounded with a rounded stone or with a hardwood (oak) mell... These were basically bedrock mortars...

One example of a knocking stone at the old St Macarius chapel site of Mackrikil near Dailly in Ayrshire has a prominent cross carved on one side. Locally it was known as the 'font' and that indicates an understandable confusion with a stoup used to hold holy water for baptism...

Well, maybe not a confusion. In Ireland these kind of stones are called Bullaun stones. And there they are "definitely not mortars"...They are holy stones used for blessing and cursing. And when they get filled with rain water, the water acquires miraculous healing properties...

The fact that the same kind of stones like Bullaun stones (pounding stones) were in Scotland used as mortars means nothing in Ireland. The Irish are different... 🙂

I wrote an article about Bullaun stone being mortars few years ago...Which was then followed by another article about Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Bullaun stones...

These stone mortars were considered holy not just in Ireland and Scotland. In South Baltic region they were buried in the house foundations to protect the household...

I talked about this in my post "Stones with narrow bottomed bowls".

This stone from Latvia is called "Lielais Daviņu Akmens" which means great stone of giving, offering, great altar. It seems that the stone was linked to harvest rituals. For the farmers, anything to do with sowing, harvesting, grinding, eating grain had religious significance...

We know this from ethnographic records. This includes tools used for ploughing, sowing, harvesting, grinding grain and making bread. They all had religious significance and were seen as possessing supernatural powers...

Large bedrock stone mortars were communal tools. Once made they could last for generations. This definitely made them special in the eyes of the farmers who used them. These mortars, being permanent in the impermanent world, must have eventually become holy...

Which is why rain water, water that comes from heaven, accumulated in bedrock mortars was also holy and was used in religious, especially healing ceremonies...

Which is why large boulder mortars were moved to churchyards where a lot of them were turned into holy water fonts. Well they already were holy water fonts even before Christians appropriated them...

I wonder if Christian stone fonts, like this Norman font from St Nonna's Church at Altarnun, UK, developed from stone mortars filled with rain water...This one is particularly interesting because it is decorated with Perunikas, flowers of Perun, Slavic thunder, rain god. 

I talked about this symbol in my posts "Burning rolling wheel", "Ognjena Marija" and "Archangel Michael"...

This symbol is also known as Flower of life...Because it is rain that makes grain grow, makes life possible??? Bread of life anyone???

That this Norman font is not just a once off weirdness, have a look at this article: "St Austell font"...