Bogovo gumno - God's threshing floor

In several of my previous posts I have been talking about sun circles. I talked about their origin in my post about Henges - rondel enclosures. I talked about how they were used as solar observatories for determining the beginning of the lunisolar calendar in my post about Calendars. In my post about Stone circles on mountain Devica, I talked about the solar observatory called Bogovo Gumno from Serbia. In my post about Ognjena Marija I explained how the sun circles on Bogovo Gumno are linked to the week which starts on the 30th of July and ends on the 4th of August. This week is in Serbia called Kresovi (Fires, Lightnings). In Ireland this week is called Domhnach Crom Dubh, the week of Crom Dubh. This week centers around the 2nd of August, the last day of summer and the first day of Autumn, which is in Serbia known as the day of Thunder god Perun or the day of Triglav, Thundering Sun Ilios, and which is in Ireland known as the day of Triglav, Crom Dubh, but also as Lughnasadh, the day of Thunder god Lugh.

Bogovo Gumno sun circles are extremely important for several reasons:

1. Bogovo Gumno sun circles could be part of an extremely old and complex astronomic and religious complex.
2. Bogovo Gumno sun circles give us a proof that prehistoric astronomic solar observatories continued to be used millenniums after they were built by the local population for calendar calculation and religious practices related to solar cycles.
3. Bogovo Gumno sun circles can help us understand the stone circle complex known as Grange circles from Ireland and the meaning and significance of the term Grange itself.
4. Bogovo Gumno sun circles can help us understand the origin of Jewish and therefore Christian religion.

Being the solar observatory designed to determine and mark the summer solstice, the big stone circle in Bogovo Gumno was also dedicated to the Sun, also known in Serbia as Višnji bog (the high god), Vid. In Serbian tradition, Sun, the "Višnji Bog", the High God, is perceived as a living being, which is born every year in the winter on New Year's day, winter solstice. He then grows into a young man Jarilo on the 6th of May the day of the strongest vegetative, reproductive power of the sun. This day marks the beginning of the heating of the world, the beginning of summer. Then he becomes the powerful ruler Vid at the summer solstice, 21st of June the longest day of the year. He then becomes the terrible warrior Perun on the 2nd of August the hottest day of the year. This day marks the beginning of the cooling of the world. 

Summer solstice, the day of Svetovid, Vishnji bog is exactly in the middle of the summer period marked by the day of Jarilo and the day of Perun. Jarilo (heat, fire), Svetovid (light, sun) and Perun (lightning, electricity, energy) are together forming Triglav, Dabog, Hromi Daba, Perun the main god of the Serbs which is in Ireland known as Triglav, Dagda, Crom Dubh, Lugh. This is the Thundering Burning Sun Ilios, Grom Div, the Three in one, Trinity, Trimurti, Agni. He is the sun at its most powerful and terrifying, the sun that contains the cumulative power of the whole summer. 

In my post about Triglav i quoted this riddle from the book of Veles:

Jer tajna je velika, kako to Svarog biva u isto vreme i Perun i Svetovid.

 Translated into English it means: 

Because it is a great secret how come Svarog (hevenly and earthly fire) is at the same time Perun (thunder) and Svetovid (Sun).

The answer to this riddle is Triglav (three headed), trojan (triple), Hromi daba, Crom Dubh - Lugh, Grom Div, Agni.

This riddle hides in itself the same sacred knowledge contained in Vedas.

The above religious system is related to vegetative agricultural cycle. It is extremely important to farmers in continental Europe, but it is almost irrelevant to the steppe nomads, and it is completely wrong in Indian climate which is governed by a monsoon. The hottest month for the western and southern regions of India is April; for most of North India, it is May. So where did this religious system originate? I would suggest Europe. I believe that Vedic Solar Religion was brought to India by farmers from Europe, not by Steppe nomads from central Asia.


So on mountain Devica we have a Sun circle used for determining the day of the summer solstice. So what? We have these types of circles all over Europe. Why is this one so significant? The answer to this quesiton is: because of its name and what its name means. The meaning of the name "Bogovo Gumno" means God's Threshing floor.There is a local legend which says that the Circle is called God's Threshing floor because in the ancient times god came from heaven with his horses and he threshed grain there.

Threshing floor is a flat, smooth and hard surface used for threshing, a process of separating the grain from the straw and husks. 

The process of threshing is performed generally by spreading the sheaves on the threshing floor and causing oxen, cattle or horses to tread repeatedly over them. If you look at the picture above you can see that that the animals are made to walk in a circle. In order to make the animals walk in circles, a man needs to stand in the center of the pile of grain which is being threshed and restrict and direct the movement of the oxen, cattle or horses using reins or rope. You can see this technique being used on the above picture. Alternatively a central pole can be erected, to which the animals are tied and then they are urged to walk in circles by a man walking behind them. You can see this technique being used on the below picture.

This process loosens the edible part of cereal grain from the scaly, inedible chaff that surrounds it. 

On occasions flails or sticks were used for threshing on their own or in combination with treading by oxen, cattle or horses. 

The stalks of hay are separated from the mixture of grains and scaly husks. Hay is put into haystacks and the grain and chaff mixture is ready for winnowing. 

The winnowing consist of throwing the mixture into the air so the wind could blow away the chaff, leaving only the good grain on the floor. 

Winnowing can be done in two ways.

By throwing the grain chaff mixture into the air using winnowing forks

By pouring the grain chaff mixture from the winnowing basket.

This is why threshing floors are usually built on wind swept places. You need good steady wind for the process of winnowing. So you build your threshing floor on the top of the hill, like this one:

Or on an open plane, like this one:

Both locations also have excellent view of the sky and are ideal for solar observation.

You can see that the above threshing floors have a wall built around it. This is done to mark the edge of the threshing circle and to prevent the grain being blown away. This creates a flat shallow pan like circular enclosure. Does this remind you of anything? A sun circle? The design and constriction is exactly the same. You erect a central pole, you tie a rope to it and then you walk around the pole while holding the end of the rope or animals walk around the pole while being tied to the rope. The produced movement describes perfect circle, the sun circle the threshing circle. Here are two depictions of this circular movement of bulls around the threshing floor from ancient Ilios (Troy). They are from an excellent book called The Swastika, by Thomas Wilson.

What does this remind you of? Swastika, the symbol of the sun, fire, lightning? The spinning of our galaxy? Swastika was the symbol of Ilios, the thundering sun god. Was Ilios the city named after Ilios the god? It is very interesting that Bull and swastika are often found together. And that both Crom Dubh in Ireland and Ilios, Perun in Serbia have a bull as their sacrificial animal.

Once the threshing floor is constructed it can be used for both threshing and as a solar observatory. What you are actually observing is the shadow made by the central stake or a standing stone. At the sunrise and sunset the shadow will be long enough to cut the circle at the oposite end. This is extremely precise way of marking the sunrise point. This stake is in Serbian known as "stožer". This is a very interesting word which means pivot, central standing pole. The sun literally pivots around it both daily and yearly in the same way bulls or horses pivot around the stožer pole during threshing. 

Here are some examples of threshing floors from Croatia. Some of them are still used today in exactly the same way they were used thousands of years ago.

Please note the central stake, pole "stožer" in the middle of the threshing floors.

This film is from 1989 from Croatia, when people still used gumno to thresh the wheat:

Have a look at these pictures from Croatia, showing people in traditional clothing reenacting the harvest procedure on gumno, threshing floor:

There are thousands of these stone circles all over the Balkans. Every village and sometimes every house had one. Sometimes they are made of stone, where stone was plentiful, but sometimes they were just a flat piece of land with a stick stack into the middle of it.

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. The below symbol is usually interpreted to mean sun disc, but I believe that it actually means sun circle, threshing floor and sun cycle observed from the threshing floor.

Greeks called the central solar pole, stožer of the sundial "gnomon" meaning the one which knows. This was because the central stake "new" the time and date.

In Serbian we have these words:

O - the shape of our mouth when it makes sound O. Letter O. The sound of surprise when we see something new, unknown, circle, surrounding.
K - towards (pointing, direction of movement and observation)
L - line
KO = K + O = towards, pointing + surrounding = who, what
OKO = circle + direction + circle = around
OKO = O + KO = circle + who, what = what we use to look around, what we use to determine who is it, eye

According to ethnographic research from the Balkan mountains 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 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. This is probably a remnant of an ancient fertility right, which was originally probably held at the beginning of summer, on the day of the young Sun, Jarilo which falls on the 6th of May.

At the same time Serbian tradition says that threshing floors are a favorite 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 old gods lived on earth become gathering places of demons and witches. 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....

Western Serbs have also preserved this custom related to the birth of the young Sun god, the beginning of the new solar year, new year. On Christmas day, the hay that was used to decorate the houses on Christmas eve is brought out and strewn on the threshing floor. On the first of January, which is in Serbia called "mladi Božić" meaning young God, a magic ritual threshing is performed. A special votive bread is made in a shape of a circle with a hole in the middle (torus, wheel) decorated with cuts on the outer edge. The bread is called "kovrtanj", "kovrtač" meaning the one that spins, and is used for magical ceremonies linked to fertility. 

First one is performed in the cow shed where the bread is put on a bull's horn. The way it rolls off it is interpreted as an indication whether the next harvest will be good or bad. The second one is performed on the threshing floor. A father gets up before the dawn and takes all the children out onto the threshing floor. He sticks the votive solar bread onto the stožer, central pole of the threshing floor. The father holds onto the bread and all the children hold on to him and they all walk around the stožer pole performing a ritual threshing. Then they all break the votive bread, turn towards the rising sun and cross themselves greeting the young God, Sun on his birthday, the beginning of the new Solar Year. Then they pick up the hay from the threshing floor and decorate fruit trees with it performing fertility rituals. The hay is also added to chicken nests to ensure fertility. No hay is supposed be left on the threshing floor because it contains magical properties. 

In central Serbia, and other parts of the Balkans, on the first day of threshing, the first sheaf of grain is stuck on top of the stožer, the central pole of the threshing floor, as an offering. This picture is from Poreč region of Makedonija:

Then the village or family leader walks across the threshing floor, east to west, north to south, creating the image of the solar cross. The same solar cross that we find on česnica (Cyrillic: чесница, Serbian pronunciation: [tʃeːsnitsa]; derived from the noun čest, meaning "share") which is the ceremonial, round loaf of bread that is an indispensable part of Christmas dinner in Serbian tradition.

So here we have a direct link between the Sun, the Threshing floor, the Solar cross and Bread.

ORO - Slavic circular solar dance. Same dance if found in other parts of the Balkans and was probably originally a ritual solar dance.

Is symbolism of ORO the same as symbolism of Stonehenge? Were the original henges threshing floors as well as a sun circles, solar observatories? 

And is the outer stone circle just a stone representation of ORO, sun dance, sun cycle, sun circle, danced as part of some Solar ceremony representing the never ending turning of the sun wheel?

Serbian peasants have preserved this link between the God (Vid), Sun, Time and Harvest expressed through the threshing floor for thousands of years. Threshing floor is the place where God (Vid), Sun shows himself to people as time and as grain.

But I don't think that it is only the threshing floor which has an astronomical symbolism. I believe that all the items involved in the process of harvest have astronomical symbolism. If threshing floor is symbolically linked to the sun, is sickle symbolically linked to the moon?

These are two neolithic sickles and one modern sickles:

Compare them with the moon calendar from Serbia. They have the same shape, the shape of a young moon.

Sickle is today called Srp in Serbian, but I believe that it was original called something like Latin sekula meaning sickle. Sekula is actually a South Slavic personal name. South Slavic languages have the largest cluster of cutting words based on the root "sec" with only Irish having a similar world cluster. 

If threshing floor is linked to the sun, if sickle is linked to the moon are grain seeds linked to the stars? This is quite possible.

In western culture the name "Milky Way" is derived from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky. The term is a translation of the Classical Latin via lactea, in turn derived from the Hellenistic Greekγαλαξίας, short for γαλαξίας κύκλος (pr. galaktikos kyklos, "milky circle"). The Ancient Greek γαλαξίας (galaxias), from root γαλακτ-, γάλα (milk) + -ίας (forming adjectives), is also the root of "galaxy", the name for our, and later all such, collections of stars. 

You can find an extensive list of names for milky from different languages around the world on  this page and this page (two different lists).
What is interesting is that we can see that by far most Evroasian people use Milk or cow, sheep way metaphor to describe our galaxy. All of these names for our galaxy which are linked to milk have root in nomadic herding people. The second most common metaphor used in Evroasia to describe our galaxy is birds way. This is again linked to migration. 

But in Serbo Croatian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Kirgiz, Uighur, Uzbek, Chechen tradition, the metaphor for our galaxy is linked to straw, hay. What is connection between these people? 

Maybe Serbian tradition can help us understand this straw link. In Serbian tradition that our galaxy is known as "Kumova Slama" meaning "The Godfather's hay". But what if the original expression was "Gumnova Slama" meaning "Threshing floor hay"? Gumno is Serbo Croatian word. And it is only in Serbo Croatian tradition that we have the link between our galaxy, hay and threshing floor. That "Gumnova Slama" meaning "Threshing floor hay" is probably the original name for our galaxy in Serbo Croatian tradition can be seen from the name Serbs have for the constellation of Orion. In Serbian tradition he is known as Orač, meaning the plowman. In Serbian Orion = Ore + on = Plows + he = Plowman. In Serbian tradition, Kumova Slama (Gumnova Slama), threshing floor hay, is what a soul needs to cross to reach God. What do we reach when we cross threshing floor hay? We reach stožer, the central pole of the threshing floor. Is this the representation of the center of our galaxy? Is this where or what god is? Is the stožer earthly representation of the galactic pole around which galaxy rotates?

I said many times that Serbs are a mixed population of many different peoples. Each of them brought into the mix part of their own culture and language. Looking at the Serbo Croatian metaphors used to describe our galaxy, we see that we can find both "Mlečni put" meaning milky way, which comes from the Slavic tradition and "Gumnova Slama" meaning "Threshing floor hay". Whose is this second culture that we are unraveling here? Why is it that we find such a strong solar - agricultural belief system in Serbian tradition? Is this tradition found in Serbian Croatian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Kirgiz, Uighur, Uzbek, Chechen people coming to us from the time of the first farmers? Did you notice that Hebrew tradition also uses Milk way metaphor characteristic of nomad herders to describe our galaxy, which is in keeping with their nomadic history? So who were the first farmers then? 

So we have gumno (threshing floor, circle, sun, bread), stožer (threshing floor pole, galactic axis), srp (crescent, moon), slama (hay, galaxy), zrno (grain, stars), all linked to a harvest, the culmination of the agricultural year.

The threshing process is the final part of the harvest. It is the moment when the months of hard work finally turn into food. This is the moment when the people will find out whether they will feast or whether they will starve through the winter. But it is not just the months of hard work that were put into producing the grain that is being threshed at the threshing floor. These months were also months of prayers to the Sun, the god of Grain.

First there were spring prayers to the young god of Grain Jarilo. These prayers were performed during plowing, sawing and sprouting season. The prayers were asking the young god of fertility to help insure that the land gets impregnated with the wheat seeds and that the wheat sprouts.

Second there were prayers to the mature god of Grain Vid. These prayers were performed during the growing of the grain, when sun is needed to grow the wheat seeds and fill them with goodness.

Third there were prayers to the old god of Thunder and Rain, Perun, Ilios. These prayers were performed during the ripening of the grain just before the harvest, when light rain is needed to ensure that the wheat is not destroyed by the drought.

But all these three gods are just three faces, three ages of one god, the god of grain, Dabog, the God that gives also known as Hromi Daba, Triglav, Thundering sun Ilios.

Just before the harvest, the final, most important prayer to the Sun, the god of weather and the good of Grain is uttered: "Please god give us enough grain so that we can survive through the winter". Then the grain is harvested and threshing starts. The threshing is the moment when the months of hard work finally turn into food. The threshing time is the time of truth. The threshing floor becomes the place where every year the relationship between the people and their god is being tested. If the harvest was bountiful, the god heard our prayers and has delivered. If the harvest was poor, the god did not hear our prayers or heard them and decided to ignore them. Why? What did we do wrong? What if we didn't do anything wrong, what if we were praying to the wrong god? 

Were threshing floors, sun circles, the first temples dedicated to the Sun, the god of grain farmers?

Stone circles on mountain Devica

Karst is a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterised by underground drainage systems with sinkholes, dolines, and caves.

The English word karst was borrowed from German Karst in the late 19th century.[4] The German word came into use before the 19th century.[5] According to the prevalent interpretation, the term is derived from the German name for the Kras region (Italian: Carso), a limestone plateau surrounding the city of Trieste in the northern Adriatic (nowadays, located on the border between Slovenia and Italy, in the 19th century part of the Austrian Littoral).[6] Scholars however disagree on whether the German word (which shows no metathesis) was borrowed from Slovene. The Slovene common noun kras was first attested in the 18th century, and the adjective form kraški in the 16th century.[9] As a proper noun, the Slovene form Grast was first attested in 1177,[10] referring to the Karst Plateau—a region in Slovenia partially extending into Italy, where the first research on karst topography was carried out. The Slovene words arose through metathesis from the reconstructed form *korsъ,[9] borrowed from Dalmatian Romance carsus. Ultimately, the word is of Mediterranean origin, believed to derive from some Romanized Illyrian base. It has been suggested that the word may derive from the Proto-Indo-European root karra- 'rock'. The name may also be connected to the oronym Kar(u)sádios oros cited by Ptolemy, and perhaps also to Latin Carusardius.

You can see that wiki says that "Ultimately, the word is of Mediterranean origin, believed to derive from some Romanized Illyrian base." However the word has full etymology in SerboCroatian. In SerboCroatian we have following words:

Rezati, Rizati, Risati - to cut, to gouge with a toothed implement
Krš - something broken
Kršiti - to break
Kresati - to break off, to chip
Krzav - something which is jagged, toothed
Krezav - someone with missing teeth, with gaped teeth
Krist, Kras - Karst 

Krist, Karst = ka + r(i)s + t(o) = like + cut, chiseled, gouged + it 

Related to karsts are dolinas.The dolina is the most representative landform of the karst surface. The name derives from the word dolina, a Slavic term indicating any depression in the topographical surface. For nearly a century, this name acquired widespread use and a well defined meaning in the international literature; as a result it is not possible to substitute it with another term such as “vrtača” or “kraška dolina”, for example, as proposed by some authors(Gams, 1973, 1974). The use of sinkhole as a synonym for doline in the American literature has also created some ambiguity, because sinkhole is mostly applied in the sense of collapse doline or of cover doline.

English Etymological dictionary says this about the English word dale:

dale (n.) - Old English dæl "dale, valley, gorge," from Proto-Germanic *dalan "valley" (cognates: Old Saxon, Dutch, Gothic dal, Old Norse dalr, Old High German tal, German Tal "valley"), from PIE *dhel- "a hollow" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic dolu "pit," Russian dol "valley"). Preserved by Norse influence in north of England. 

dell (n.1) - Old English dell "dell, hollow, dale" (perhaps lost and then borrowed in Middle English from cognate Middle Dutch/Middle Low German delle), from Proto-Germanic *daljo (cognates: German Delle "dent, depression," Gothic ib-dalja "slope of a mountain"); related to dale (q.v.).

Slavic word dole means down, depressed, hollowed out below the surface level, something below the place where we stand. Is this the root for all the above words. Proto-Germanic *dalan "valley" is identical with Slavic dolina "valley"...

The Slavic word dole comes from do + le = to + ground, horizontal, level...Le is another ancient root word. It is the root of the word level. I will talk about this word in one of my next posts. 

Here is another example of a natural dolina, vrtača from central Serbia:

What is interesting about these landscape formations is that from their center all you can see is the edge of the hole and the sky. This makes them ideal solar observatories as I already explained in my article about rondel enclosures. There are thousands of these circular vrtača sink hole valleys strewn across Balkan peninsula.

In Slovak and Czech word vrt means to drill, a hole, a well. In SerboCroatian word "vrteti" means to spin, to turn but also to drill. This is what you do with a drill when you drill a hole, you spin it you turn it. Vrtača valleys sometimes appear suddenly and do look as if they have been drilled into the ground like this one which recently appeared in Bosnia.

Eventually the edges get smoothed up and covered with vegetation. This one looks exactly like the one I used to play in when I was a kid:

Quite often wells and lakes are found at the bottom of vrtača sink holes.

In particularly eroded karst areas vrtača sink holes accumulate the eroded soil and are the most fertile peaces of land around. This is why they are in these areas used as gardens.

SerboCroatian and Slovenian word "vrt" means garden and it probably comes from the same root as vrtača.

All this makes the areas around vrtača sink holes ideal places for human habitation in karst areas where water and arable land is scarce.

There are particular types of vrtača like depressions which are mostly perfectly circular and very shallow. They look very much like a shallow pan. These vrtačas all have stone walls built at their edges and it is very difficult to determine whether they are natural vrtača sink holes cleared and walled up by people or whether they are completely artificial man made structures. Here is one from Slovenia:

Now I would like to talk about one particular Karst region of Serbia and some of its shallow pan shaped walled vrtača structures.

Devica (Virgin) is a mountain in eastern Serbia, near the town of Sokobanja. Its highest peak, Čapljinac (also called Manjin Kamen) has an elevation of 1,187 m (3,894 ft) above sea level. It belongs to the boundary of Carpatian and Balkan mountain ranges, which meet in eastern Serbia.

On mountain Devica there are hundreds of vrtača sink holes and many of them belong to the above pan shaped shallow ones with stone circles built around them. These stone circles are of unknown origin and age as none of them was ever excavated or investigated by archaeologists. The stone circles were located very recently using Google maps after someone overheard a local forest warden telling his friends about strange stone formations he had seen on the mountain.

Here are the pictures of the two of these pan shaped shallow vrtača sink hole with the surrounding stone circle where you can clearly see the stone wall.

The first one is located on the hill called Gvozdinski  Kamen (Iron stone).

The second one is located on the hill called Busarnik.

Both of these are could be natural circular depressions which people cleared of stones and then built stone walls around them or could be completely artificial. Both of them are ideal for solar observation, and could have been used for it at some stage.

But there are two more stone circles on the mountain Devica (Virgin) which are definitely completely artificial and were definitely used as solar observatories. These two stone circles are located on a plateau called "Bogovo gumno". The circles are built as walls of what looks like a pair of of natural shallow pan shaped vrtača sink hole depressions. The bigger circle is 150 meters in diameter and the smaller one is 80 - 90 meters in diameter. The depressions are perfectly circular with perfectly flat bottom and are 50 - 60 cm lower than the surrounding therein. The stone walls which define the sides of both depressions are one meter wide and is at the moment one meter high, but originally the wall could have been  much higher. This is the picture of these two stone circles from Google maps with the pointer pointing at the bigger one:

What makes these two stone circles from Bogovo Gumno special, and what makes it absolutely clear that they were built and used as a solar observatory is their alignment. If you look at the alignment of the two linked stone circles on the picture below, you will see that the line connecting the centers of the two circles has azimuth 57 degrees, which means that it is aligned to the sunrise at the summer solstice. Azimuth is the angle of the sun at sunrise and sunset which may be expressed as degrees deviation from North (with East at 90 degrees). It varies by about 66 degrees over the year, from 57 degrees at the summer solstice to 122 degrees at the winter solstice. (That is, East +/- 33 degrees).

In the excellent film called "Circles on mountain Devica", Dr Aleksandra Bajić there is a great scene (starting at 6:48) taken from a helicopter flying over the Bogovo Gumno in a circle. In these scene you can see how that particular location has completely unobstructed 360 degrees view of the sky, and is therefore ideal for solar observation. Here are some stills from the film showing the location of the Bogovo Gumno complex and the four directional view from the large circle.

You can have a look at the Bogovo Gumno circles on Google maps yourself at this coordinates here.

In my article about henges and calendars I explained how henges were used for calendar calculation. In order to determine the beginning of the year, you need to determine the day of the solstice. To do that you need a sun circle, a large circle which is permanently marked on the ground. How can you permanently mark a circle on the ground? You start by marking the centre of the circle by either a stake or a standing stone. You then draw a circle on the ground using a rope and a stick. To mark the circle edge permanently, you can build a henge if the soil is soft and easy to dig deep. But if the therein is rocky, if the soil is hard stony and unsuitable for deep digging, or if there are a lot of boulders lying around, then it is much easier to just use stones, place them along the line that defines the circle and create a permanent marking by making a circular wall.

Now that you have your permanently marked sun circle, you can start observing the sunrise and sunset from the center of the sun circle. What you are actually observing is the shadow made by the central stake or a standing stone. At the sunrise and sunset the shadow will be long enough to cut the circle at the oposite end. This is extremely precise way of marking the sunrise point. This stake is in Serbian known as "stožer". This is a very interesting word which means pivot, central standing pole. The sun literally pivots around it both daily and yearly. This is a very ancient word built from stoj, staj + ga, gar, ger = standing, upright + stick, pole, stake, spear = pillar. Greeks called it "gnomon" meaning the one which knows. This was because the central stake "new" the time and date.

As you observe the sunrise through the year, you will notice that during the first half of the year, the sunrise point will move further and further to the left and the point where the first shaddow cuts the circle further and further to the right. When the sunrise point stops moving to the left or when the point where the first shaddow cuts the circle stops moving to the right and starts moving back you have found the point of the summer solstice. You mark that point in some permanent way, like with a stone which is higher than the rest of the stones which form the edge of the circle.

Now you can easily determine the day of the summer solstice every year. It is the day when the sun, observed from the center of the sun circle, rises behind  the large solstice marker stone. If you mark both summer and winter solstice turning points then the point exactly in the middle between these two points marks true east. This is the point of the spring and autumn equinox sunrise. Once you have this point and the center of the circle, you can precisely mark all four cardinal directions without use of a compass.

You can read in more about how the ancient sun circles were used for calendar creation in my article about rondel enclosures and my article about calendars. Once the sun circle is built and marked it can be used basically for ever. As long as the main markers are still present the observatory is functional. All we need is the two main aligned stones, the central pillar stone and the large sun stone from the edge of the circle.

In Bogovo Gumno observatory, the summer solstice turning point, was marked with a large white stone placed in the stone wall. Observer standing in the center of the large stone circle on the morning of the summer solstice would see the sun rise behind this large white sun stone. However in Bogovo Gumno  the observatory builders added another stake lying outside of the sun circle in line with the center of the large sun circle and the sun stone marking the summer solstice turning point. Then the observatory builders used this second solstice turning point marker, as a central point, stožer,  around which they built another smaller stone circle. The fact that we have two stone circles linked in such a way makes it impossible for them to be built around natural vrtača sink hole depressions. The chance that two perfectly circular natural vrtača sink hole depressions would naturally appear aligned in such a way is less than zero.

Several strange observation columns built form flat stones exist around the Bogovo Gumno circles looking at the main sun stone circle. This one is aligned exactly east - west. When you look through the little opening at the top of the column you look westward across Bogovo Gumno Circle. 

This is another stone viewing point aligned east - west and looking at Bogobo Gumno:

I like these next two stone "statues" viewing points because of their weirdness. I don't know if they are aligned and with what. 

The astronomical complex at Bogovo Gumno is not the only man made and aligned complex of stone circles on mountain Devica. 

Have a look at these three aligned stone circles on location Krst (Cross):

This very odd looking rock outcrop is called  Oštra čuka:

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Below this rock outcrop on its western side there are remains, part of the foundation stone wall,  of what people believe is an ancient church which local people call the Vidovdan church, meaning the church of the summer solstice, the church of Svetovid. People from local villages still come to the place, light candle and being flowers considering the place holy and preserving the tradition. I don't have the pictures of the actual remains and would be grateful to anyone who can send them to me. But I have Google map picture of the area and what you can see on it is truly impressive. At least three aligned circles can be seen here.  I have outlined the circles here just to emphasise their relationship. I didn't do drawing precisely and alignment is not exact. But it is still very obvious that the circles were man made and aligned and the whole area is definitely worth exploring. 

In the end have a look at this stone circle with a small church built in its center:

Mountain Devica could be a huge ancient astronomical and religious center with dozens of aligned stone circles.  But at the moment we just don't know. 

As I said already, none of these stone circles has ever been excavated or investigated by archaeologists. 

Also we might never be able to determine when they were built even if we do conduct archaeological investigation in the are, because they remained in use until very recently. We know that at least Bogovo Gumno complex was recognized as an astronomical observatory and was used as such by the local peasant population until the end of the 19th and the the beginning of the 20th century . This is when the last aligned stone, an anthropomorphic cross with a votive inscription was added to the Bogovo Gumno complex. 

I will talk about this cross and its significance in my next post. This small stone cross links the Bogovo Gumno stone circles with another complex of stone circles built thousands of miles away in Ireland: the Grange circles near Lough Gur...