The wheel of fire

In "The Golden Bough" by James George Frazer we can read that:

"Among the Slavs from Masuria the new fire for the village was made on the Midsummer day by making a wheel to revolve rapidly around the axle of oak until the axle took fire..."

"Also among the Magyars in Hungary on the Midsummer Eve in many places it is customary to kindle bonfires on heights by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapped in hemp."

In the "Balder the beautiful : the fire-festivals of Europe and the doctrine of the external soul" by Sir James George Frazer we read that:  "In the Island of Mull in the Hebrides, the need-fire was as late as 1767 kindled like this..."

"People would carry a wheel and nine spindles of oak wood to the top of the Carnmoor hill. Every fire in the vicinity of the hill was extinguished. The wheel was then turned rightward, over the nine spindles...to produce fire by friction. The fire had to be produced by noon..."

We know that wheel is a symbol directly linked with sun. But it is also linked with thunder and fire. We can see this through the symbols of Svetovid (sun) and Perun (thunder): their wheels. The wheel of Perun is "like" the wheel of Svetovid, a fiery version of it...

Sun creating fire through lightning...

Q: "It is a great secret how Svarog (heavenly and earthly fire) is at the same time Perun (thunder and lightning) and Svetovid (Sun)."

Science: easy...Solar fire creates solar winds which trigger lightning which creates earthly fire...I talked about this in my post "Sun, Thunder, Fire"...

Also don't forget St Elijah, who was in Balkan Slavic countries known as St Elijah the Thunderer...And was depicted blazing and thundering over the tops of the clouds...

When I was a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents. One year, around the 2nd of August, the day of the St Ilija the Thunderer, a late summer storm was rumbling over the village. My grandmother turned to me and said: "It's St Ilija the Thunderer driving his chariot over the clouds. The rolling thunder and flashing in the clouds are made by the fiery wheels of St Ilia's chariots bouncing off the bumpy tops of the clouds".

I talked about this in my post "Thundering sun god"...

In North Germany too, the peasants say, when they hear the low rumbling of distant thunder, "Use Herr Gott mangelt" meaning 'The Lord is mangling, or rolling the thunder...

Rolling the burning wheel down the hill was part of the celebrations usually linked with summer solstice across Germanic and Slavic world. I talked about it in my post "Burning rolling wheel". Pic from Belarus.,.

Hence Taranos

In the "Curiosities of Indo-European tradition and folk-lore" by Kelly, Walter Keating, we can read that:

"It appears from the preceding accounts that, both by Celts and Germans, a wheel was often used for kindling the needfire..."

"Jacob Grimm was the first to make it evident that, for the Germans at least the wheel was an emblem of the sun, and numerous facts which have come to light since he wrote, abundantly verify his conclusion..."

"He mentions...that in the Edda the sun is called fagrahvel " fair or bright wheel," and that the same sign ☉ which in the calendar represents the sun stands also for the Gothic double consonant 'hw,' the initial of the Gothic word 'hvil,' Anglo-Saxon 'hveol,' English wheel..."

"In the needfire on the island of Mull the wheel was turned, according to Celtic usage, from east to west, like the sun..."

Digression: Talked about the importance of the "sunwise" movement in

Q: "Which way to turn myself I know not?" 

A: "If you worship the gods, right-hand wise, I apprehend."

Ever wondered why "clockwise" means "circle to the right" and "anti clockwise" means "circle to the left"? 

Cause the original clocks were sundials...

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

"There was a twofold reason for this use of the emblem of the sun, for that body was regarded not only as a mass of heavenly fire, but also as the immediate source of the lightning..."

"When black clouds concealed the sun, the early Aryans believed that its light was actually extinguished, and needed to be rekindled. Then the pramantha [firedril] was worked by some god in the cold wheel until it glowed again..."  

Digression:

Thread: "Hestia, you who tends the holy house of the lord Apollo...come now into this house...having one mind with Zeus the all-wise..." From "Homeric Hymn To Hestia"

What does this mean?

It means that the lightning which was the source (essence) of fire...

I talked about this in my post "Having one mind with Zeus"... 

Apparently, Hestia was for some "inexplicable" reason linked to Hermes...

"...but before this was finally accomplished the pramantha often shot out as a thunderbolt from the wheel, or was carried off by some fire robbers..."

"The word 'thunderbolt' itself like its German equivalents expresses the cylindrical or conical form of the pramantha. When the bolts had ceased to fly from the nave, and the wheel was once more ablaze, the storm was over."

Interestingly, it is Hermes, the younger brother of Apollo (Sun god) who invented fire (!!!) drill...

That's the same Hermes who later became Messenger (Thunder) of Zeus (Thunder god)...

What did Hermes do on the day he was born? He stole Apollo's cows. He then invented fire drill, made fire, and sacrificed one of the cows to the gods...I talked about this in my post about (apparently inexplicable 🙂) link between Hermes and Hestia (fire)...

I talked about this in my post "12 Olympians"...

Also interestingly, the term pramantha is closely associated with the, sacred, ancient symbol of the swastika, particularly in Vedic and metaphysical contexts, acting as a metaphor for the creation of fire and, by extension, cosmic creation... 

In Sanskrit, pramantha is an instrument used for kindling fire through rotary motion (a fire drill)...

The swastika (卍 or 卐) is traditionally seen as a symbol representing the pramantha (drill) and the arani (the baseboard) used in Vedic rituals to produce sacred fire (Agni)...

The rotary action of the fire drill—symbolized by the bent arms of the swastika—represents the creation of life and energy. It is considered a "summary in a few lines of the whole work of creation or evolution"...

Swastika is also a solar symbol, a symbolic depiction of ever turning solar wheel, solar year...

I talked about this in my post "Kolo-Vrt"...

And considering that it is sun that powers lightning that creates fire...

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"...

Holy fire-drill

The Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I with a torch, worshipping the fire god Nusku. About 1200 BC. The artifact is in Berlin. Pic by petrus.agricola.

In Babylonia and Assyria Nusku is the symbol of the heavenly as well as of the terrestrial fire. As the former he is the son of Anu, the god of heaven...

Well no surprises here. Originally fire from sun descended to earth through lightning...So fire was the child of heaven...

I wrote about this in my article "Sun, Thunder, Fire"...

He was also looked upon as the protector of the family. No surprise here either, as fire has always been "the protector of the family from wild beasts"...

He was also the mediator between humanity and the gods, since it is through the fire on the altar that the offering is brought into the presence of the gods...Fair enough...The smoke of the offerings rises to heaven bringing offerings to the Father Sky...Logical...

The fire-god is also viewed as the patron of the arts and the god of civilization in general. Well a great surprise here...Apparently, because of "the natural association of all human progress with the discovery and use of fire"...

"While temples and sanctuaries to Nusku-Girru are found in Babylonia and Assyria, he is worshipped in a more symbolical form than the other gods"...

What does this even mean? 

Wait for it...

Nusku is basically Asyro Babylonian version of the Sumerian god of fire Gibil, god of fire, the son of An (Sky) and Ki (Earth)...

Well, as I already said, no surprises here. Originally fire from sun descended to earth through lightning...The Sumerians actually spell it out pretty clearly here: The fire is the product of lightning which connects the father sky and mother earth...

In some versions of the Enûma Eliš, Gibil is said to have broad wisdom, and that his mind is "so vast that all the gods, all of them, cannot fathom it". 

Again a great surprise here...Why would fire god be smarter than all the other gods put together?

Some versions state Gibil, as lord of the fire and the forge, also possesses wisdom of metallurgy...Again no surprise here as without fire there can be no metallurgy...

No I went and checked the etymology of the name "Gibil"...I came across a very interesting paper entitled "The Vocabulary of Sumerian" that talks about the habit of Sumerian priests to encode gods' names by inverting them...

So Gibil was written bil-gi, where "bil" means fire and "gi" means reed, stick...So Gibil is not a name. It means fire stick, fire drill...Gibil, the fire god is actually a deified fire stick, the tool used for making fire...

Which is exactly what the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I is worshiping: a fire stick on a throne, altar...

Babylonians and Assyrians are not worshipping Nusku "in symbolical form"...They are worshiping Nusku in his original form, Gi-Bil, Bil-Gi, Fire Stick...

Anyone stopped to think why would Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, people from some of the most developed ancient civilisations, worship a fire stick? If making fire was by their time already a common knowledge for eeee 1 million years (according to official history books)...

Ah wait. I did 🙂

And I published what I thought about it in these three articles: "Fire-drill", "Fire bird", "Prometheus"

Did Sumerians believe that the fire god possessed unfathomable wisdom, because they considered the invention of fire making to be such an amazing thing, that it could only have been a product of "unfathomable wisdom which all gods together could not get". Let alone mortals...

But that is ridiculous....Right? We all "know" that humans have been able to make fire like for ever...