The Blood Run stone

This is a cup marked granite boulder located on the "The Blood Run" archaeological site in Iowa, USA. The site once contained an extensive complex of burial mounds, stone circles, village areas, and an enclosure...

According to "The Cupmarked Boulders of Blood Run, Iowa" and "Ethnographic Analogy and the Folklore of Cup and Ring Rock Art" by Kevin L. Callahan, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, this stone is one of the so called "death stones"...Death stones? Could this be in any way related to what I wrote about the in this post, "Lapis manalis", about "Blessed dead stone"? 

Of course it is 🙂

Here is what Kevin says (paraphrased):  "We examined the pitted boulders and nearby burial mounds at Blood Run, Iowa and Fort Ransom, North Dakota and we reviewed the ethnohistoric sources of historic period Plains Indians, and Indians from the Far West"...

"The data suggests the possibility that the primary social function of these cup marked boulders may have been as “death stones” to mark each new death or burial"... 

Very very interesting, right?

Kevin then says: "Such sacred stones were not considered inanimate objects, but the occasional dwelling place of spirits, and may have had related functions as a place for contacting the spirit world, vision questing, and as “baby rocks” for couples wishing to conceive"...

Ahh, so they believed that spirits lived in stones...Interesting...But what does this have to do with Old European culture? Well, a lot. In my post, "Lapis manalis", I wrote that Slavs believed that stones can "capture" souls of the deceased, who then continued to live in them...

Today, I came across this paper: "Portals to Other Realms: Cup-Marked Stones & Prehistoric Rock Carvings" by Gary Varner. And in it I found this being said about cup marked stones and the dead:

"The link to the dead is illustrated also in Swedish folklore which refers to cup-marked stones as “elfstenar.” Elfs are believed to be the souls of the dead who frequent, if not live in or below the stones"...

"The cups are often used for offerings to ensure that the elfs are not offended or their peace disturbed...Some of these gifts were rag-dolls left by women who wished to become pregnant"...🙂

"One cup-marked stone on Seil island...Scotland, has been used into contemporary times to appease the “wee folk”. Each spring the cup is filled with milk in the belief that if it wasn’t, the Little People would ensure that the cows did not produce any milk in the summer"...

Drought causing spirits who live in stones? Interesting, really interesting...In Finland these cup marked "sacrificial stones" were used to pour the first cows milk or first grain harvested as an offering to the spirits living in the stone...And they were offered first fruits? 🙂

"In Estonia as well 'offering stones' were used to mark the passing of people: "a close relative of each dead person had an obligation to bore a hole in the offering stone"...

"A large number of ancient cup-marked stone sites in the UK are associated with cremations, tombs and burials...Like Witton Gilbert cist burials near Durham City in the UK"...

"One of these cists, which dates to the Early Bronze Age (2300 BCE to 1500BCE), was covered by a slab of sandstone which was decorated on one side with cups and rings and on the other with only cups"...

"The current theory is that cup-marked stones, often associated with burials, resulted from the introduction of farming in Europe and the UK and may have been part of fertility rites and sacrificial offerings to the dead as a part of ancestor worship"...

But also with fertility...Interesting, and not at all surprising, considering the ancient belief that the fertility of the people, animals and the land is the gift of the dead...I wrote about this in my post, "Lapis manalis"...

Anyway, very interesting indeed...

PS: In this old article, "Rebirth", I proposed that the cup and ring mark cut into this Bronze Age tomb in Ireland, and illuminated every equinox, represented rebirth of the sun, solar year, which was then linked to the rebirth of the people buried in the tomb...

Lapis manalis

While I was looking for a suitable illustration for this post about "lapis manalis", the sacred stone used as part of a Roman "aquaelicium" (calling of the waters), rain making ceremony performed during droughts, I suddenly realised what cup and ring marks look like...

I'll just leave this here...

Anyway, we have no ideas what this magic Roman "weather stone" looked like...What we know is that it was kept inside the Temple of Mars in Clivo near the Porta Capena...

From there, the stone was brought into the Senate, where offerings were made to Jupiter petitioning for rain, and water was ceremonially poured over the stone...

Now, have a look at this: In his 1925 paper "The Ring of Nestor", Sir Arthur Evans, mentions a curious rain-making ritual which was performed in Ibrahimovci, near Skoplje, Macedonia, during droughts. Pic: Altar dedicated to Jupiter, Macedonia

This is 1925 we are talking about. At least 1500 years since Jupiter was officially a god of rain...And yet, uneducated, illiterate SLAVIC villagers in Macedonia still remembered him in times of desperation...

What is very interesting is that this altar "was lying face down normally but was lifted when the rain was needed". 

Compare this with this Slavic rain making ritual from Belarus in which Dabog's stone is ceremonially lifted (and water is poured on it 🙂). I talked about it in my post "Last megalithic ritual in Europe"...

And compare this with other weather controlling Slavic rituals involving stones and rocks. I talked about this in my post "Water stones"...

Have a look at this article too, "White cross", about weather control "temple" from Slovenia...

And now compare all this with the Roman "calling the waters" (Latin: aquaelicium) ritual with the "lapis manalis" sacred stone...Interesting, right? It gets better...

This was not the only sacred "lapis manalis" stone Romans played with...There was one more...This one covered the "mundus Cereris" (The world of Ceres), a pit thought to contain an entrance to the underworld...

This "lapis manalis" was removed on August 24, October 5 and November 8 and the pit was opened with the official announcement "mundus patet" ("the mundus is open")...

Its opening offered the spirits of the dead temporary leave from the underworld, to roam lawfully among the living...This is very interesting...You'll see soon why...

Anyway after the pit was opened, offerings were thrown into it for "the underworld deities" and "the agricultural deities", including Ceres the goddess of grain "and guardian of underworld portals"...This is also very interesting...You'll see soon why...

Roman tradition held that the "mundus Cereris" had been dug and sealed by Romulus as part of Rome's foundation...

There are some suggestions that the "mundus Cereris" was the Rome's first storehouse (penus) for seed-grain, which later become the symbolic penus of the Roman state...Which makes sense cause the pit was called "mundus Cereris" (The world of Ceres)...

However, most cities of Latium and Etruria contained a similar pit or ditch...Plutarch suggests that the custom of the "mundus Cereris" was of Etruscan origin...

He compares it to pits dug by Etruscan colonists, containing soil brought from their parent city, and into which they sacrificed the first fruits of the harvest...

Sooo...Here we have two stones with the same name, one used in rain making ritual, the most important agricultural ritual that there is, and the other one used in a thanksgiving agricultural ritual involving "the dead" and grain...

Apparently, grammarian Festus, who worked  in the later 2nd century AD, "held the cover to the gate of the underworld and the rainmaking stone to be two distinct stones"....

Possibly...But they were functionally and mythologically definitely related...Except, by the time of Festus, Romans probably had forgotten that fact...Well, not everyone forgot the link between the dead, the grain, the stones and the rain...Check this:

In the Balkans people believed that if the dead were not given water, they would drink it from the clouds, and would cause drought. More about the eternal thirst of the dead can be found in my post "Thirst"...

This is why Bosnian Muslim Slavs would during droughts throw stones in the air making sure they fall in a river. The reason why a stone was thrown up in the air was "to bring the thirsty souls down from the clouds"...

Slavs believed that stones can capture the spirits of deceased...

Slavs used to place stones in, on and around graves to prevent the dead from rising. I talked about this in my post "Tombstones"...I this why suspected vampires were buried with stones in their mouths...

Hence why Romans also believed that their "lapis manalis" stone would keep the souls of their "blessed dead" inside the "mundus Cereris"...

This belief in thirsty ancestors most likely originates in Neolithic...In this post, "One for the road", I talk about the possibility that vessels placed in graves since Neolithic were not left there empty, but originally contained drink for the thirsty dead...

We find the same belief among the Hittites, who blamed the effects of the climate change which eventually led to the collapse of the Bronze Age empires around Mediterranean, on themselves. Because they have forgotten to honour their ancestors.  I talked about this in my post "House of bones"...

BTW, Slavs didn't just believe that the ancestors controlled only rain. They firmly believed that it was their ancestors who were the source of all the good and all the bad in their lives. And particularly grain...

Making Diduch or Did from grain, meaning grandfather, ancestor, the most important decoration made in the Carpathian villages in Western Ukraine during the traditional winter holidays...I talked about this in my post "Diduch"...

Greeks believed that too, BTW. It is this life giving power of the dead, which Pluto (Hades), the giver of wealth, appropriated for himself. And this is why Hades and Persephone are depicted sitting on their throne in the land of the dead, with sheafs of wheat and flowers...I talked about this in my post "Pluto"

So...Back to Romans and their sacred "lapis manalis" stones. Were they named the same because they were both linked with the worship of the ancestors? Doesn't "lapis manalis" mean "Manes (blessed dead) stone"?

Was the water poured on the rain making "lapis manalis"  during the rain making ceremony, because it contained "thirsty souls of the ancestors"?

You know,  Manes, the blessed dead, who lived in the pit covered with the other "lapis manalis"...The pit which Romans opened so they can sacrifice to "the underworld deities" and "the agricultural deities"...

The pit which could have originally been the grain seed store...Thankfully, Slavs still remembered who to blame for the drought, and who to thank for rain and grain until recently: the ancestors...So we can now understand these ancient "obscure" Roman rituals a bit better...

Oh, forgot. Slavs also prayed to and sacrificed to Dabog. Don't forget Dabog, The Giving god. Dabog, The Sky god, Sun and Rain god, to whom Slavs prayed for just enough rain and sunshine, so their grain fields would yield plenty of grain...

Also Dabog, the god of the dead...Whom Serbs considered their ancestral deity, the first, original ancestor...And whom other Slavs knew as "Djed" (Grandfather)...So we are still in the realm of the ancestor cult...

So there you have it...

Finally, have a look at this: 

Food for thought...

Norman font from St Nonna's Church at Altarnun. Decorated with Perunikas, Perun's flowers,  also known as thunder marks...and water marks...and flowers of life...Because it is rain that makes life possible??? What is the origin of stone fonts? Maybe rain filled ancient stone mortars? I talked about this link between holy water fonts and mortars in my post "Knocking stones"...