Scaring off the dragon

The main worry of the Bulgarian farmers at the beginning of the summer (Apr/May) is drought. 

Traditionally people thought that drought was caused by a winged dragon (zmey), who "stole and locked up" the waters...

And so, to prevent the dragon from steeling the water, in northwest Bulgaria, on a certain date, all the strong and healthy village men would gather at midnight, strip naked and walk the village land in ritual silence brandishing axes or cudgels to scare off the dragon...

It is interesting that they carried axes, just like Perun, the Slavic thunder god, but also like may other Eurasian thunder gods...The dragon slayers...

Article "Kataibates" about the link between stone axes and thunder gods. An altar from Vindolanda dedicated to the late Roman god Jupiter Dolichenus, whose mystery cult was widespread in the Roman Empire in 2nd and 3rd c. AD, wielded an axe. And rode on a bull...

And it is interesting that they carried cudgels...Just like Orion, that father of (sky) gods...Check my posts "Jack and the magic beans" and "Grandmother's cudgels" you might find them interesting...

They are trying to answer the questions such as: Why was Orion seen by Ancient Greeks as a "the greatest hunter" armed with a cudgel (club)? And why do Bulgarians call Orion "cudgels (clubs)" and why do Serbs call Orion "Baba's (grandmother's) sticks" and all the stars "Baba's (grandmother's) cudgels (clubs)"? And why were thunderbolts believed to be made of stone?

Some people might say that maybe they just carried whatever "dangerous implements" they had. But they also had sickles, shovels, hoes, knives, swords, rifles...Why not carry them? I don't know, maybe I am reading too much into it...

Anyway, it is also interesting that the ritual was performed by "healthy naked men"...Considering that rain, and subsequently flowing water, which the "dragon scarers" were trying to protect from the dragon, was considered to be "the semen of the the sky father"...

Is this an example of sympathetic magic? Where men lend their reproductive power to the sky (father) to increase his ability to produce "heavenly semen", rain? Check this out:

In Serbia in the past people lived in extended families called "zadruga". When grain needed to be sown, the family would choose one man to do all the sowing. He had to abstain from sex from that moment until all the seeds were sown...

Sowing (spreading of seeds) is here directly linked with ejaculation (spreading of semen). Male reproductive energy which is usually used to impregnate a woman has to be during sowing period preserved and used to impregnate the Earth...

From my post "Sowing"...

Now while North Western Bulgarians were walking around naked scaring dragons, their North Western neighbours Serbs did this: In the past, during spring droughts, Serbs used to go to mountain lakes and pray for rain on their shores "to a dragon living in the lake who swallowed the rain"...

I talked about this in my post "Dragon who stole rain"...

The dragon that stole water is one of the oldest Indoeuropean myths. In Rig Veda we read:

"I WILL declare the manly deeds of Indra, the first that he achieved, the Thunder-wielder.

He slew the Dragon, then disclosed the waters, and cleft the channels of the mountain torrents."

But why are dragons steeling water is "a bit of a mystery"...Apparently...Well maybe a clue is in the fact that they are always fought by Thunder/Rain gods, who kill the dragon and release the waters...

Question: what causes droughts that the arrival of rains ends? The Sun...Sun's heat...

Now in Slavic folklore (remnants of old mythologies), an animal that is directly associated with the sun's heat is a snake. It eats sun's heat.

Snakes are the only true solar animals. They are in our world when sun is in our world (day and hot part of the year) and they are in the underworld when sun is in the underworld (night and cold part of the year)...Which is why we find them associated with the sun (gods)...I talked about this in my posts "Enemy of the sun", "The chthonic animal"...

Ok, amazing...But what is the link between snakes and dragons? 

Glad you asked...Have a look at this:

God most high...

Snake: Apr/May, beginning of the main snake mating season, beginning of summer.

Lion: Jul/Aug, beginning of the main lion mating season, end of summer. 

From my post "You will trample great lion and serpent"

Now have a look at this:

Possibly earliest depiction of a multi headed dragon...And dragon killer(s). 2200 BC, Akkad...Dragon is a symbol of a destructive sun's heat, and this one has lion body, cause Leo is the hottest time of the year, and 7 snake heads, cause of 7 summer months. I talked about this in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

The reason why Mesopotamian dragon has a lion's body, is the same reason why the Mesopotamian god of death has a lion's body...

I am the (sun) god of death...About Nergal, the destructive sun in Leo, Jul/Aug, the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia...I talked about this in my post "Winged superhuman hero"...

Slavs believed that "dragons are just old snakes"...So if snake marks the beginning of the hot dry part of the year, and if snake symbolises sun's heat, then old snake symbolises old sun, the destructive sun of the late summer which causes drought...The (lion) dragon...

It was this Slavic belief that snakes evolve into dragons which was a key that unlocked all these snake/dragon/lion symbolic links found all over the place...

Just search my twitter account or my blog for snake or dragon and you'l see what I mean...

Anyway, you can find more about Slavic snakes and dragons in this article "Letnitsa treasure"...Follow the links at the end of the article to (only some) related articles about snakes and dragons from other mythologies 🙂 

Sources for Bulgarian folklore: 

Ivanichka Georgieva's book "Bulgarska Narodna Mitologia" (1993) p 113, and Vihra Baeva's "Zmey, Zmeyitsa, Lamia, Hala" (2016) p316

I want to thank "A Spell In Time: British-Bulgarian storytelling company" for the info...

You can read more about snakes, dragons and lions in my posts "You will trample great lion and serpent", "Chimera", "Lion killing snake", "Jörmungandr", "Bactrian snakes and dragons", "Seven headed dragon", "Khafajeh vase", "Nude winged hero dominating snakes", "Winged superhuman hero", "Tiger and dragon", "Eagle snake struggle", "Wolf vs snake"...

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...

Koloocheh

These are Koloocheh (Persian کلوچه) or Koleecheh (Persian کلیچه ) - golden round cookies decorated with spirals and made for Perisan new year. 

The name of these cookies comes from Middle Persian "kulachag" (round bun). Further etymology is unknown... 

Hmmm...Maybe...

In Slavic languages any round (originally ceremonial) bread or cake was called "kolač" (pronounced kolach).

Serbian Christmas and Slava "kolač" examples...

The word "kolač" comes "kolo" (wheel, spinning circle). Hence "kolo" also being the name for the Slavic ceremonial circular dance...I talked about this in my post "Oro" and "Shield of Achiles"...

Fresco from the 14th century Serbian Lesnovo monastery, today located in Macedonia.

So the word "kolač" does mean "round, circular" bread, cake...But the name has additional meaning of "spinning, turning, rotating"...

Ceremonial cakes are rotated 3 times "s leva na desno" (from left to right), by the family members, before they are broken and eaten...

Turning "from left to right" is also known as "sunwise" and was apparently a big thing in the past...Cause that's the way sun moves across the sky...I talked about this in my post "Sunwise"...

Now it is interesting that the Iranian Koloocheh/Koleecheh cookies are made with spirals...Which are a symbol of rotation...

They are also made as ritual cookies for New Year...The day when the old solar year ends and new solar year begins...Now Slavs imagined solar year as an ever spinning solar wheel (kolo)...

The Slavic name of the old "New Year" celebration, Winter Solstice celebration, was Koljada, Koleda, Kolenda...It marked the end of one and the beginning of another spin of the solar wheel...Kalendar...🙂

Remember this post, "Janus", about Janus and Juno and wheels within wheels? 

Or this post, "Young god", about the Serbian folk song celebrating the birth of the New Sun (God) or New Solar Year: "Pass me cold water, o Koledo, to bath the young god, Božića Svarožić...His horse is the bright sun, a flaming war steed"...

Or this post, "The end of time", about the Koledari, traditional Slavic carol singers who went from house to house during Koleda (Originally Winter Solstice, but now Christmas) singing ritual songs celebrating the immanent brith of the new god (once new Sun God, now Son of God)...

But look a this...This is one of the traditional Koleda (Christmas, Winter Solstice, New Solar Year) ritual breads from Bulgaria...Looks familiar? 

Also some Serbian votive breads were actually made in a shape of "kolo" (wheel). Serbian Votive bread (kovrtanj, kolač, kravaj).  

The word "kovrtanj" most likely comes from "kolo" (wheel) + "vrt" (spin)...We find the same word in Russian kovriga (коврига) meaning "round bread", which was mentioned in the Primary Chronicle under year 1074. Funnily enough, according to the linguists, "its ultimate etymological origin is uncertain"...How about Ko(lo)+vr(t)+ga = wheel+spin+it???

On Xmas morning the bread was brought to the threshing floor, pulled on the central stake, and then the father and the children would walk on hay, around the stake, holding onto the bread... 

You know, threshing floors, circular platforms with the central pole...

Where grain was threshed by waling around the and around the central pole

I talked about this in my post "God's threshing floor"...

Threshing floor which was in the past used as a solar observatory, with the central pole serving as a "gnomon"...

Threshing floor on top of which, for some weird reason, the First Temple was built. The First Temple, which according to the Josiah, Jews worshiped the Sun God...I talked about this in my posts "Boaz and Jachin", "The sun god from the First Temple" and "The tree of light (life)"...

But I am digressing...

These Serbian "wheel breads" (kolač, kovrtanj, vrtanek) were also used as part of the first footer (Christmas, New Year) rituals in Serbia and Bulgaria...

If the first footer was a man, kovrtanj was placed on man's head. 

If the first footer was a bull, kovrtanj was placed on bull's horns...If anyone knows of a picture of a bull with kovrtanj on his horn, please post the link in the comments, so I can add it to the article. I talked about this in my post "First-footer"...

And in Bulgaria, In return for good wishes, the Koledari Carol Singer, receive gifts of food and ritual ring-shaped breads, "Коледно колаче" (Koledno kolache) meaning little Christmas circular bread or "кравай". 

Which they string on the wooden sticks they carry with them...

Pic from "Българска Етнография" by Николай Колев

These breads were often made by the young women in the family...Some kind of symbolism here, wheel breads and sticks...

So we have all these Slavic words with the root "kolo" (wheel) used for ritual circular breads, ritual circular dances, new year rituals...

And yet...

According to linguists: 

The similarity of Slavic "kolač" to Middle Persian "kulachag" (small, round bun) and Ancient Greek "κολλύρα" (koloura) (loaf of bread) may be coincidental as it is difficult to explain through usual models of inheritance and borrowing...

BTW, the Ancient Greek "κολλύρα", from which modern Greek "κουλούρι" (kuluri) is believed to be "of Pre Greek origin"...

I know, difficult, difficult...Not difficult to explain...Difficult to accept...That all these ancient Non Slavic words for round breads have the root in Slavic "kolo" (circle, wheel)...

BTW, in Turkey, this type of wheel bread is called simit. 

The word simit comes from Arabic samīd (سميد) "white bread" or "fine flour". Ceremonial breads were in the past the only breads made from white flour...

Another name for these breads in Turkish is gevrek meaning "crisp", and this word in a form of "djevrek" is now used for these wheel breads in all the Slavic Balkan lands, thanks to multi century Ottoman Turkish cultural influence...

What is very interesting is that simit/gevrek only became a thing in Ottoman Empire since the 16h century...It was most likely a Slavic cultural import... 

I forgot the most important bit. The recipes 🙂

Recipe for Koloocheh, Recipe for Koledno kolache, Recipe for Kovrtanj

Solar bull

Sumerian lapis lazuli amulet of a bull, early dynastic iii period, 2650-2350 b.c. the reclining bull with bearded human head, curved horns...Sold by Christies...

Who's this guy?

Well, Utu / Shamash, the sun god...

Every spring, the sun god Utu / Shamash climbs the holy mountain (Abzu) to free Enki / Ea, the god of sweet water from his icy prison...I talked about this in my post "Shamash young and old"...

This freeing of Enki is an euphemism for snowmelt, in the mountains north and East of Mesopotamia, which are the source of Tigris and Euphrates. Snowmelt contributes more than 70% to the annual water flow of these great rivers. And this water flow peaks at the beginning of summer, Apr/May in Taurus...

Tigris annual flow chart:

Euphrates annual flow chart:

Which is why Shamash is depicted as a golden bull with long flowing "lapis lazuli" (water) beard...

Or as a lapis bull with human head...

"Enki placed in charge of the whole of heaven and earth the hero, the youth Utu (Shamash), the bull standing triumphantly, audaciously, majestically...the great herald in the east of holy An...with a lapis-lazuli beard, rising from the horizon..." 

Do you want to know why there is a winged lion chewing on the butt of Utu / Shamash? I talked about this in my post "Butt chewing"...

Anyway, we can see that in Mesopotamia bull with a human face and beard was a solar symbol...

What is amazing is that few thousand years earlier in the Balkans we find this guy...

Oh hello there, gorgeous 🙂 A Neolithic bull with human face and beard from Bulgaria...Karanovo Culture, 5th mill. BC...

Another neolithic depiction of a bull man from Bulgaria...Tell Rousse, 5th mill. BC...

This version of the bull man seem to have been popular across Neolithic Central Europe...

This 7,000-year-old ceramic horned face pot shard, was discovered in Poland. The object was found during the excavation of the Early Neolithic site in Biskupice, southeast of Krakow... 

Now we don't know if this bull man was also a solar bull, like the Mesopotamian one...

But we know that until recently bull was seen as a solar animal in the Balkans...

In Serbia and Bulgaria there are legends about monstrous bulls who lived in lakes and to whom local people sacrificed young girls...Anyone reminded of any famous legends? 

And around one lake in Serbia, there are two versions of the same legend, one talking about a bull living in the lake, and one talking about a dragon living the lake...I talked about this in my post "Water bull"...

Sooo???

Now we know that dragon of a fire breathing variety, is a symbol of the summer, and particularly the end of summer, Jul/Aug, the hottest and (usually) driest part of the year, the time of droughts...Dragon was used as symbol for dry hot part of the year in Eurasia since Neolithic until today...I talked about this in many of my posts, for instance "Dragon who stole rain", "Seven headed dragon", "Winged superhuman hero", "Is that you Gilgamesh"...

Summer which starts in Taurus, Bull...Hence the equating of bull and dragon in this Serbian legend...Which would make bull a solar animal too...

In my post Re'em, about the origin of a unicorn, I mention this Serbian riddle:

Q: "I slaughtered a bull behind one hill and the blood spurted from behind another" 

A: Sun, setting in the west and rising in the east

Another example of the deep link between bull and sun in Serbian culture...

I talked about the killing of the bull of summer, which was once performed in the Balkans as a sacrifice to Perun, the thunder god, on the fist day of autumn, in my post "Alidjun"...On the first Sunday (!) in August, local people also organise bull fights...Interestingly, this is also when in the past Auroch bulls used to start their mating fights...I talked about this in my post "Ram and Bull"...

How old are these Balkan legends and rituals? 

Kassandra

Scene from the trojan war: Cassandra clings to the Xoanon, the wooden cult image of Athene, while Ajax the Lesser is about to drag her away in front of her father Priam (standing on the left) and rape her. Roman fresco from the atrium of the Casa del Menandro, Pompeii.

Cassandra was a Trojan priestess of Apollo. According to the legend, Apollo fell in love with her, and sought to win her by giving Cassandra the gift of prophecy...

Some sources say that she promised Apollo her favors, some say that she promised nothing. Regardless, after receiving the gift, she refused the god, which as you can imagine pissed him off...A lot...

The enraged Apollo could not revoke a divine power, so he added to it the curse that though she would see the future, nobody would believe her prophecies...

Her cursed gift from Apollo became an endless pain and frustration to her. She was seen as a liar and a madwoman by her family and by the Trojan people...

Cassandra foresaw the destruction of Troy, she warned the Trojans about the Greeks hiding inside the Trojan Horse, Agamemnon's death, her own demise at the hands of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, her mother Hecuba's fate...Everything...However, her warnings were all disregarded...

So far, a classic Greek tragedy...But here is the interesting bit (for me):

In some versions of the myth, it wasn't Apollo who gave her the prophetic powers directly. She was asleep in the Apollo's temple, where the snakes licked (or whispered in) her ears so that she could hear the future...

You know snakes, the only true solar animals, working on behalf of the sun god and following him everywhere. They are in our world when the sun is in it too (day, and hot, dry part of the year), and in the underworld when the sun is there too (night, and wet, cold part of the year) 

I talked about this in my posts "Enemy of the sun", "The chthonic animal", "Bactrian snakes and dragons", "Dragon who stole rain"... 

And this is even better. In some versions of the myth, Apollo curses her by spitting into her mouth...

Well well well...

This is really interesting. Why? Because this is the third case of "spitting into someone's mouth" was used to either transmit sacred knowledge, ability to see (know) things others don't, or to revoke this knowledge or to mess it up...And that snakes are somehow involved...

The other two examples of this story can be found in my post "Glaucos"...

Oh, and wasn't Delphi, the most famous prophetic centre of the old world, originally the place where a giant snake (symbol of sun's heat) / dragon (symbol of extreme sun's heat) lived, until it was killed and replaced by....Sun god Apollo...

It is believed that snakes are linked to prophecy because they can travel between our world and the underworld, the world of the dead...And it is the dead that posses the knowledge of the future...But as I already said, snakes follow sun to the underworld...Hence Apollo and the snake at the centre of Delphi...

Rooster day

In Bulgaria, the 2nd of February is known as Petlovden (Rooster Day). On this day a special ritual is performed that is intended to insure fertility and health of young boys. 

The day before Rooster Day, the house is cleaned, washed and whitewashed. 

In the morning the oldest woman in the house would catch a healthy and virile bright coloured (in some areas black) rooster specifically grown or purchased to be sacrificed on this day. 

She would slaughter the rooster on the house threshold (sometimes on the house compound gate) and would make sure to splatter its blood on the door (gate) as well. 

Young boys were then invited to touch the knife or the axe with which the rooster was killed. The rooster's head was then used to draw a bloody sign of a cross on the house wall. 

Blood mark (cross) was also smeared on the foreheads of the young boys. 

The rooster's body was roasted and eaten at the evening feast. The rooster's head was stuck on the house gate or the yard fence with the beak pointing outwords.

In some parts of Bulgaria (the villages of Golitsa, Kozichino, Solnik, Dobri dol...) Petlovden is directly linked with Babinden (The midwife day) the celebration of birth givers. In the village of Kozichino ethnographers were told that "Petlovden is like Babinden, except that you kill a cock". In this part of Bulgaria, in the evening of the Rooster day, women of the village would gather in the house of the oldest woman and have a party. No married woman without kids was allowed to attend the party. At the beginning of the party, the oldest woman would take the burning candle from the feast cake and puts it under young women's skirts "so that they will have male children". The rest of the evening the women would spend eating and drinking and singing lewd songs.