Fige

When I was a little kid, this was "the rude gesture" before I learned the other ruder gestures 🙂. 

It turns out this gesture has been used at least since the Roman time...Apparently in Roman times it was known as "manu fica" (fig sign) "for the resemblance to female genitalia" (???)  Does this remind you of a female genitalia?

Also, this sign "was made by the pater familias to ward off the evil spirits of the evil dead" (???) during Lemuria, the festival of "cleansing the home from the evil dead" (???) 

Are the dead really afraid of the female genitalia?

I actually think that the Romans had actually forgotten the original meaning of this sign. This sign represents male genitalia. Which is why it is pater familias (the father of the family) who is making it.

Here is the origin of the sign

So not a female genitalia, right? That this is actually a sign represented male genitalia, can be seen from the fact that in Poland this gesture, also called figa, means "nothing" as in "you will get nothing (from me)", while in Serbia, the expression "dobićeš kurac" (literally you will get dick) means you will get nothing...

Also the whole "evil spirits of the dead" is another sign that the Romans had forgotten the "old ways"...The dead, the ancestors, were not god or bad...They were good to the living if they respected them, remembered them, and bad if they didn't...

It is the dead, the ancestors who brought all the good things to the living...In return for regular mention, food and drink...I talked about this in my posts "Diduch", "Thirst", "Blood red wine" and "Wolf feast"...

And originally this sign was probably not made "to ward off the evil spirits of the dead"...The pater familias was making it to remind the ancestors that they are all part of the the same family...Paternal family...Symbolised by the...

Or I wonder, was pater familias actually telling the ancestors that they will get dick if they don't behave? Risky, very risky...Look what happened to the Hittites when they forgot their ancestors "House of the bones"...

Scullball

Of the 52 skeletons discovered in the fourth-century A.D. Roman cemetery discovered in the village of Great Whelnetham in Suffolk, England, 17 had been decapitated and the heads were placed between their owner's legs or feet. Why? Well... 

When archaeologists opened medieval graves at a highway construction site near Gliwice, Poland, they came across skeletal remains of humans whose severed heads rested upon their legs...

Apparently this is an ancient Slavic burial practice for disposing of suspected vampires, in hopes that decapitated individuals wouldn't be able to rise from their tombs...Practiced by the Western Slavs mainly...

Now the article about the English Vampire burials says that: "The decapitations might be related to pagan belief systems that held that spirits need to be released for the afterlife or even that the head was a container of the soul."

Which is why the head was cut off...The vampire was "the undead", the body which soul never left...So kind of linked...Otherwise all the dead would have been decapitated, right?

So the question is who were the people buried following Western Slavic vampire burial rituals in the late Roman cemetery in England? Or how did Medieval Western Slavs got to practice Roman Vampire burial rituals???

By the way you do know that Vampire is a Serbian word? 

Few articles related to the Serbian (Slavic) vampire lore: Vampires, Tombstones, Stake, Enemy of demons