Oro

The depiction or the Serbian circular dance "kolo" or "oro" from the 14th century Serbian monastery Lesnovo which is located in today's Republic of Makedonija...

This is the same dance danced 700 years later, Bosnia

And the same dance danced 700 years later, Macedonia

I think that it is important that on this fresco, people are dancing "kolo" under what looks like the sun (see the exaggerated sun rays just above the dancing people)...

This is important because "kolo" or "oro" is a ceremonial circle dance representing the turning of the sun wheel...

Why would something like this be depicted on a fresco in an Orthodox Christian monastery?

Now we know that "kolo" is a Slavic word meaning spinning wheel. However "oro" is apparently not a Slavic word. It is believed to come from Ancient Greek "χορός" (khorós) meaning "dance ring, round dance, dance accompanied by song, chorus, choir, band of singers and dancers, place for dancing" of uncertain origin...

This is the plan of a typical Orthodox Church. You can see that the central part of the church is the "nave", which is in Greek known as "naos".

Now, the word ναός (naos) is an Ancient Greek word meaning temple, the innermost part of a temple, sanctuary, the part of the temple considered most pure and holy...

Which is why the central "naos" dome has an image of "Christ" looking down from heaven...The Central Dome in the "naos" of the mid-13th century Serbian Church of the Apostoles, in the Patriarchate of Pec, Kosovo...

What is very interesting is that in Orthodox Churches, right under the main "naos" dome, right under the image of "Christ in heaven", we find a circular chandelier called "horos" (circular dance???) with many candles on it...

During the chanting of the Polyeleos psalms, all of the candles are lit and chandelier is pushed with a rod so that it spins back and forth during the singing. This practice is still seen in the monasteries of Mount Athos and in other traditional Orthodox monasteries...

Now, Polyeleos is part of the Orthodox monastic nighttime liturgy, ending at dawn. It is called "ὄρθρος" (dawn) in Greek and "Оўтреня" (Oútrenya) in Church Slavonic. In traditional monasteries it is held daily so as to end at sunrise...

In parish churches, this service is held only on Sundays and feast days. Like Easter...

As part of the Easter "dawn" service "the priests open...the church door and together with the people exit the church and go in procession three times around it while singing the hymn of the resurrection..."

Why opening the church doors and stepping out of the church?

I believe that it has something to do with the way early Christians prayed: facing the rising sun in the east... Tertullian (2nd-3rd c. AD ecclesiastical writer) felt constrained to write this in his “Apology,” and again in his writing “Against Valentinian”.

Which is why the first churches were "oriented". The word "oriented" comes from

1. orient - east
2. to orient - to position towards east, to face east.  From Latin oriēns (“east”).
3. orientation - correct position facing east

The earliest allusion to churches being build to face east in Christian literature is in Apostolic Constitutions: "a church should be oblong with its head to the East". Tertullian also speaks of churches as erected in "high and open places, and facing the light". From Catholic Encyclopedia.

This is why in Orthodox Churches the altar is at the eastern end, which means that both the priest and people face both the Altar and the East during the Canon...Which means that the door is at the western end...

So opening of the door during Easter dawn sermon makes no sense from the point of view of praying to the sun...

But it seems that "facing the light" was interpreted differently by the builders of the earliest churches. Roman Basilicas built by the First Christian Emperor, Constantine, were built in a shape of a horse shoe or semi-circle with the priest at the western end, the altar in front of him, and everyone facing east toward the entrance doors and the rising sun...The Lateran, St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and San Lorenzo in Rome, as well as the Basilicas of Tyre and Antioch and the Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem, had their apse facing the West and entrance facing East.

Here is the drawing of The San Lorenzo fuori le Mura from Rome, with orientation. You can see that the doors are facing East...

Now if the doors of the church are facing East. opening the doors at Easter dawn prayer, and stepping out of the church, makes a lot of sense. The doors are opened to let the rising sun into the church and to signal to the faithful that it is time to go out and meet it...It or Him?

As you can imagine, this caused ambiguity, as to whom were the people actually praying...Also people were praying facing the door and not the priest, and we can't have that in a church...So this orientation was quickly abandoned and replaced with the altar, and the priest being in the east, so everyone was facing the same direction while praying...Still praying towards the rising sun though...

Was this rising sun facing "orientation" during prayer a Roman influence on essentially Jewish Christianity? Coming from Sol Invictus cult which was predominant in Rome at the time of Constantine??? Well, you could say that the Romans were reviving the religious practices of the builders of the First Temle...Who also prayed "to the rising sun"...I wrote about this in my post "Sun god from the first temple"...

By the way, did you know that The First Temple was built on a threshing floor? And that threshing floors were in the past used not just for threshing but also as solar observatory, and most likely were regarded by the sun worshipers as holy places? I talked about this in my post "Boaz and Jachin"...And do you know that apparently "oro", the solar circular dance was first danced on threshing floors of Minoan Crete, which were used as solar observatories? I talked about this in my post "Shield of Achilles"...

Sooo...Back to the naos, with the image of Christ in Heaven, under which the "oro" (circular chandelier) is made to spin during the sunrise service...Remember the Serbian medieval fresco depicting the "oro" (circular dance) spinning under the sun?

Remember that "oro" was a ceremonial circular, spinning solar dance...Depicting ever spinning solar wheel...So being danced under the sun is kind of appropriate...But why is "oro" (circular chandelier, source of light) made to spin under Christ during sunrise prayer?

Christ is looking at the spinning "oro" from the dome over "naos" which symbolises heaven. The same way sun is looking at the spinning "oro" from the sky in the fresco from Lesnovo...

Official etymology for "naos" says: from Proto-Hellenic *nahwós, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *nes- (“to join with, to conceal oneself”)...

But I would like to propose another etymology...

In my post "Nav" I talked about this interesting group of words:

In Irish the word for heaven is "neamh" pronounced like "nav".
In Slavic languages the word for otherworld is also "nav".
In Slavic languages the word for sky is "nebo".
All these words come from PIE "*nébʰos" meaning sky...

The word "naos" was written and pronounced differently in different Greek dialects:

ναϝός ‎(nawós) Laconian
ναῦος ‎(naûos) Aeolic
νεώς ‎(neṓs) Attic

νηός ‎(nēós) Ionic

This all looks very similar to both Irish and Serbian words...

Did "naos" originally just mean sky too? Eventually becoming a temple representing sky? Eventually becoming the central part of the temple, where god resides. Up in the dome. In heaven (sky)...

Our lord who are in heaven (sky)...

Have a look at this: Roman green glass cup showing the haloed figure of Christ wearing a tunic and pallium vestments, extending his arms towards a cockerel. Found buried in the peristyle of Desenzano Roman Villa, c. 4th century AD...A figure with halo surrounded by stars with a cockerel...Looks very much like a rising sun to me...

I will finish this post with the picture of a fresco painted on the walls of the 3rd c. baptistry in the Church House at Dura-Europus, Syria. Women visiting the empty tomb after Christ's resurrection.

Is that the rising sun above the tomb?

Shield of Achilles

In "On Dance", Lucian names as the birthplace of Greek dance the island of Crete, were according to Myth, Rhea, the Mother of Zeus, being enchanted by this art, taught the Curetes in Crete how to dance...

Few days ago I read a very interesting article called "Circular Platforms at Minoan Knossos" which was published by Peter Warren in "The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 79 (1984)". 

The article first describes the discovery of three circular platforms located on a hillside at the edge of Knossos.

It then proceeds with proposing that these were threshing floors, which are still found all over mediterranean.

But it then dismisses this explanation and proposes that the discovered structures were dancing floors. And it then goes on to point at various depictions of dancing people found among Minoan artefacts as the evidence that points at these circular structures being dance floors. For instance, this object from the site of Kamilari which depicts four figures holding each other by the arms and shoulders, surrounded by a low wall decorated with Horns of Consecration. Most archaeologists concur that this group is one of the earliest depiction of people dancing. 

In a walled circular structure. Which to me looks very much like a stone walled threshing floor...

There are of course much much earlier depictions of dancing, from other parts of the world. Like this depiction of people dancing holding hands...

Vase fragment, 5th - 4th millennium BC. Discovered at Rayy = Rei (?), Tehran region, Iran. Currently in Louvre, Paris.

Basically this, just 6000 years earlier...

Some people say the above Minoan object could be a depiction of people pressing grapes in a vat? Like it is still done in Duro valley in Portugal

However the structures discovered in Crete were too big to be grape vats...So...

I mean why could the circular structures discovered in Knossos not have been both threshing floors and dance floors? 

Many Greek villages have a flat place called χοροστάσι (αλώνι-χοροστάσι)(Chorostasi/Khorostasi/Horostasi), where dances, weddings and other events used to take place. 

The term "αλώνι-χοροστάσι" denotes "threshing floor", the place where the threshing of wheat was done. This is how this is done in Croatia. Horses are tied to the central pole and walk around it trampling the sheafs of grain and breaking off the seeds.

After the end of threshing, and until the next harvest, it was clean and empty and hence a natural place for celebration. 

Dancing Linđo (images from this video) on an threshing floor in the village of Mrčevo, Croatia...

As I said, in mountain villages threshing floors were usually the only flat platforms suitable for social gatherings...

I give few more examples of the dancing on threshing floors from the Balkans in my post "Sacred marriage on a threshing floor", where I also talk about the fact that threshing floors were sacred places of Inanna (Sumerian Mother of Grain) and Demeter (Greek Mother of Grain)...

Apparently the word χοροστάσι comes from χοροσ+τάσι (dance+tray) and literally means "a tray like place where singing and dancing takes place". 

According to ethnographic research from the Balkan mountains inhabited by Serbs, conducted in the 19th century, threshing floor was the place where all the village meetings, celebrations and ceremonies took place.The ethnographers say that this is because "threshing floors were the only flat smooth surfaces big enough to accommodate many people". 

But was this the only reason? Were threshing floors places where village meetings, celebrations and ceremonies took place because they were considered to be the sacred ground? The place where god lived on earth? I believe so.  

In 1950, Serbian ethnographer Nenad Janković published a book on folk astronomy called "Astronomija u predanjima, obicajima i umotvorinama Srba" (Astronomy in legends, customs and oral and written tradition of the Serbs). In it he expressed his great surprise at the ability of ordinary illiterate peasants to tell exact date and time without calendars and clocks. Professor Jankovic states that one of the main instruments used for these calendar and time calculations was the threshing floor. By looking at the shadow cast by the stožer, the central pole at sunrise, they were able to tell the date. And by looking at the shadow cast by the stožer, the central pole during the day they were able to tell the time. Threshing floor is a universal solar observatory, which at the same time can tell the date and the time. The main parts of this solar observatory were solar circle and its center, solar pole, stožer. Or if viewed from above, from heaven, the way Sun God would see it, a circle and a dot representing its center, solar pole, stožer. This is the symbol found all over the world and in Egypt it was the symbol of the sun, Ra. 

This circle, the symbol of the sun, Ra, is usually interpreted to mean sun disc, but I believe that it actually means sun circle, solar year, the manifestation of the Ra's power on earth...

That I am correct can be seen from the fact that this symbol, known as "sun hieroglyph" is used in the Ancient Egyptian language hieroglyphs as a determinative to refer to events of time, for example when referring to '"day xx" (of month yy'). For example, in the 24th century BC Palermo Stone, the sun hieroglyph is used to identify dates, or specific "day-events", ..."day of ....".

It also means "threshing floor", "solar observatory" and if you are a sun worshipper that equates to "temple"...Because it is from threshing floors that the Sun God was observed and his movement was interpreted as seasons, date and time...Threshing floors were the first sundials...And interestingly Greeks called the central pole of the sundial "gnomon" meaning the one which knows. This was because the central stake "new" the time and date.

How can threshing floor be used as a solar observatory?

What you are actually observing is the shadow made by the central stake. At the sunrise and sunset the shadow will be long enough to cut the circle at the opposite end. This is extremely precise way of marking the sunrise point. Which is very useful if you want to determine solstice and equinox points. And for instance align your temple with the true east, or winter or summer solstice...

Did you know that the orientations of the central courts of the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Gournia were to the rising sun...

You can also observe the shadow during the day and use that to determine the hour of the day...

A place like this, where sun and grain were directly connected, must have been seen as sacred by the Greeks. We know they were seen as sacred by the Serbs. 

Rituals were performed on the threshing floor, at winter solstice, the birth of the new solar year, and some at the beginning of the threshing. During these ceremonies, sacrifices were performed on the central pole. 

There are some ethnographers who believe that this pole was the earthly representation of the Sun God...That this pole was a totem pole...I talked about this in my post "God's threshing floor".

Interestingly, at the same time Serbian folk tradition says that threshing floors are a favourite meeting place of demons and witches and one of the main places that should be avoided during the night. Witches come to threshing floors to dance. This is typical reversal of positives into negative which was a favorite method of brain washing used by Christians during forced conversions. Old gods become devils and demons, and places where people gathered to celebrate Sun God through circular solar dance, become the place where demons and witches gathered to dance. What is interesting is that people believe that witches only live on unused threshing floors. Once people stop visiting god's house on earth, the god leaves as well, and demons move in....

In Montenegro, young people, wearing flower wreaths on their heads, would gather on "Vilino Gumno", Fairy threshing floor, on the Feast of Ascension to sing songs about fairies and dance a circular dance kolo, oro. 

Christ's ascension to heaven? 
Marked by a circular solar dance? 
On a solar observatory? 

The fact that threshing floors were used as solar observatories just made me think of something...What if the word χοροστάσι was originally ὥραστάσις (horastasis) which can be broken into ὥρα+στάσις?

ὥρα - "any defined period of time, season, climate, year, time of day, hour, some specific time: right time, time for something, time of life: youth..."
στάσις - "Standing stone, pole"

Time pole...

Can we have a better description of a solar observatory? All it is is a pole stuck in the ground with a circle drawn around it...Like a threshing floor...

And because threshing floors were also sacred places where things like village councils, weddings...were held, often accompanied by dancing, the ὥραστάσις were also χοροστάσι...

Anyway...

Warren ends his article with the mention of The Shield of Achilles:

The Shield of Achilles is the shield that Achilles uses in his fight with Hector, famously described in a passage in Book 18, of Homer's Iliad. In the poem, Achilles lends Patroclus his armour in order to lead the Achaean army into battle. Ultimately, Patroclus is killed in battle by Hector, and Achilles' armour is stripped from his body and taken by Hector as spoils. The death of Patroclus prompts Achilles to return to battle, so his mother Thetis, asks the god Hephaestus to provide replacement armour for her son. He obliges, and forges a shield with spectacular decorative imagery. Homer gives a detailed description of the imagery which decorates the new shield.

This is the shield's design as interpreted by Angelo Monticelli, from Le Costume Ancien ou Moderne, ca. 1820.

One of the things Homer says was depicted on the shield was "a dancing-floor where young men and women are dancing"...

Here is the part of the Book 18 which describes the dance scene from the Shield of Achilles:

The renowned one [= Hephaistos], the one with the two strong arms, pattern-wove [poikillein] into it [= the Shield of Achilles] a place for singing-and-dancing [khoros].

It [= the khoros] was just like the one that, once upon a time in far-ruling Knossos, Daedalus made for Ariadne, the one with the beautiful tresses [plokamoi].

There were young men there, and young women who are courted with gifts of cattle, and they all were dancing [orkheîsthai] with each other, holding hands at the wrist.

...

Half the time they moved fast in a circle, with expert steps, showing the greatest ease...

The other half of the time they moved fast in straight lines, alongside each other....

A huge crowd stood around the place of the song-and-dance [khoros]...

Two special dancers [kubistētēre] among them were swirling...in their midst...

Now this is very very interesting.

Circular dances with the name like "horos" are found in all Balkan and East Slavic countries as well as in Romania and Turkey. One of the places is Montenegro where we find circular dance called "oro". 

Anthropologist Chris Boehm spent 3 years, between 1963 and 1966, doing fieldwork in Montenegro in Gornja Morača region. He called the people that he encountered there "Mountain Serbs of Montenegro".

One of the pictures taken by Chris Boehm has this capture: "All important tribal events took place on the plateau in front of the church. Oro (traditional circle dance) was often part of the event."

In the past, before churches, these events were held on threshing floors, "the only flat piece of ground in the mountain villages"...

The oro dance is typically danced at the weddings and celebrations of the Serbian Orthodox population in Montenegro and Herzegovina...

Now, in "The Geographical Journal, Volume 4, Issues 2-6 Royal Geographical Society", published in 1894 we can read

So local people believed that the name of the dance "oro" meant "eagle" dance??? Which was dismissed by the author of the above article...

But there is something remarkable about this mountain dance...It is identical to the description of the dance from Iliad:

Half the time they moved fast in a circle, with expert steps, showing the greatest ease...

The other half of the time they moved fast in straight lines, alongside each other....

A huge crowd stood around the place of the song-and-dance [khoros]...

Two special dancers among them were swirling...in their midst...

You can see the Montenegrin oro dance performed here.

Is this the kind of dance Homer saw depicted on The Shield of Achilles?