Stake

This Ogham Stone stands overlooking Smerwick Harbour, Co. Kerry, Ireland. It can be found just off the route of the Dingle Way - Slí Chorca Dhuibhne, in Ballinrannig, close to Wine Strand and Béal Bán beaches...

Ogham stones are found mainly in burial grounds, and churchyards. But some ogham stones are found outside of these areas. Here the stones may have been boundary or territorial markers, or perhaps memorials, marking where someone died, or fell in battle, or indeed was buried...

In "A smaller social history of ancient Ireland", published by Joyce Patrick Weston in 1906, we can read that "when tribe-chief had taken possession of a district, he "erected pillar-stones there...in order that his share there may be known"... 

Joice then goes to say "But pillar-stones were erected for other purposes, of which the most usual was as a monument over a grave...Battles were (also) often commemorated by pillar-stones..."

And finally he says that "...pillar-stones were sometimes erected as idols..." and "...that a stone set up to mark a boundary was sometimes called a 'stone of worship'..."

In Serbia, people also erected boundary stones between villages until recently. Erecting of the boundary stones was witnessed by both sides accompanied by many religious rituals aimed at consecrating the stone. Consequently the boundary stone was considered sacred...

Any damage to the stone, falling the stone or moving the stone and even touching the stone was prohibited. These stones were always visited by the village processions from both villages during religious festivals, reaffirming the holiness of the stones and the sacredness of the border they represented...

The use of stones as border markers is very old. But I believe, that before people used stones, to mark the land as theirs, they used stakes...

This ancient tradition was preserved again by culturally super conservative Balkan Serbs...

In Serbia every unclaimed or uninhabited land was considered a wasteland, no man's land, unclean land. In the old times it was enough to stick a stake into such land to clean the land from demons and to claim the ownership of that land...

Interestingly, in Serbia when people wanted to insure that the dead stay dead :) and don't turn into a vampires, they stuck a stake through the dead body lying in the grave to "tie it down". I talked about this in my post "Vampires"... 

It seems that the land, earth was similarly subdued and "tied down" by sticking the stake into it...

The english expression "stake a claim to the land" actually describes this ancient custom. I have tried to find any explanation how this custom and expression entered the English language. I found this explanation in the English Etymological Dictionary: "From early 14c. as 'divide or lay off and mark (land) with stakes or posts'". 

When claiming the land, the stake was usually stuck in the middle of the claimed land where future clan village would be erected. Old clan histories still remember who was the first to stick the stake into the land and therefore claim the land for the clan...

In villages on mountain Rudnik, there was a custom to first stick a stake in the place where a new house was going to be built to purify the land, to clean it of bad spirits, and only then the house was built on "clean land"...

That stake was a tabu, and was never removed or in any way spoiled. People believed that doing so would bring bad luck to the family...

Once few clans moved into the same territory, clan lands would be merged into a village land. At that stage a new communal stake would be stuck into the ground to mark the communal village land...

These communal stakes were usually stuck on crossroads, near wells, in the centre of the future village and that stake would become the cult centre of the whole village. These village stakes would later be the places where churches and or graveyards would be placed...

Until recently in some parts of Serbia stake was also used as grave marker. Archaeologists have discovered remains of wooden stakes, always one stake per grave stuck at the head of the grave where today we find tombstones and crosses...

Stakes were used to mark the borders between private and communal land and also to mark the border between two village or clan lands...

Just like the border stones I talked about earlier, these border stakes were considered holy. And it was their holiness which made moving of the borders a tabu, and therefore prevented expansionist wars between the neighbouring tribes and clans...

In the Balkans, Slavs used the word "stup" (stake) to also denote "arable land, agricultural land, village land, cleared land which wholly belongs to one person"...

The ethnographic data from Montenegro and Stari Ras (Hercegovina), shows that when the new land was claimed, a wooden or stone "stake" was stuck into the land to mark the clan, tribe ownership over the land "until the end of time"...Which is why stake came to mean "owned land"...

Stup is mentioned as the word for arable land is found in 1321-1331 "Dečani charter", signed by Stefan Uroš III Dečanski of Serbia, the Serbian King, which contains a detailed list of households and villages in what is today Metohija and northwestern Albania...

One last thing. 

In both Ireland and Serbia, people lived in kin-groups, based on a belief that there was common male ancestor.

The closest kin group that was specifically defined consisted of the descendants of a common grandfather. In Ireland this group was called "gelfine" and in Serbia this group was called "zadruga".

This kin-group, consisting of grandparents, their sons and their families, could sometimes have over 100 individuals. All the property was owned by the family and the only personal property was what was on ones person.

The leader of this kin-group was the grandfather, and he was known either as "the head of the family", "cenn fine" in Irish and "glava porodice" in Serbian or "the pillar (stake) of the family", "ágae fine" in Irish and "stub porodice" in Serbian. 

Serbian sources:

Душан Бандић–"Народна религија Срба у 100 појмова" 
Бранислав Русић–"Старији обичаји код одређивања земљишних међа и око пољских радова у Кичевији, Гласник етнографског музеја у Београду XIX"
Група аутора-"Српски митолошки речник"

Colossos

The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of the Greek sun-god Helios, erected in the city of Rhodes, island of Rhodes, in 280 BC. The Colossus stood approximately 33 metres (108 feet) high. It collapsed during the earthquake of 226 BC, although parts of it were preserved...

Now the word Colossus comes from the Ancient Greek κολοσσός (kolossos) meaning "large statue, large idol"...Official etymology says: origin unknown, possibly Pre-Greek (perhaps Minoan)...I would like to propose alternative origin here...

In the 1960s three Mesolithic postholes were discovered near Stonhenge. These timber features were interpreted as remnants of "totem poles" and laboratory carbon dating showed that the postholes dated from 8800 BC...

Interestingly, these three massive wooden stakes, which once stood 14 feet high, were aligned to face the direction of the spring and autumn equinoxes...

Meaning that the people who erected them knew how to determine true east, and were most likely sun worshipers. And they probably used the same ancient method of determining true east used by the builders of many "oriented" structures which I described in my post "Boaz and Jachin"... 

Once you determine true east, all you need is another pole stuck into the ground to mark that point on the horizon...Which is why originally there were only two Stonehenge solar poles. Third one seems to have been added later...

It seems that in the Balkans people used threshing floors as solar observatories, and the central pole as the gnomon (Greek for "the one who knows"). The central pole was the one who knew and was able to tell us where sun was...

Which is why these central threshing floor poles acquired sacred status and were directly linked to the sun and grain cult. Rituals were performed at the pole and even sacrifices were offered to it. I talked about this in my post "Shield of Achilles" and "Bogovo gumno, god's threshing floor" 

I would propose, that the first totems, were poles, stakes probably related to solar cult. Later they were carved with faces and became idols. Like the Shigir Idol, the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world carved 11,500 years ago, which once stood 5.3 meters high...

Even later, these totems were made of stone. They last longer, and are more showoffy...First just plain standing stones. Like Cahersiveen standing stone, in Co. Kerry, Ireland. (Pic David Smyth)

Then carvings and eventually faces were added to these stone poles, stakes and we ended up with statues, idols. Like Urfa Man, 1.80 meters, c. 9,000 BC sandstone free standing idol made in Upper Mesopotamia, today's Turkey...

So if the original totems, idols, statues were large stakes, is it possible that the origin of the Greek "κολοσσός" (kolossos) could be Pre Greek word for stake? Interestingly Greeks also used κολοττός (kolottós). Now add t+s and pronounce them together. Keep repeating this...

How do we make a stake? We cut down a tree, we strip in bare of branches. 

Then we sharpen one end...

In Serbian "gol" means naked, bare, "golac" means that which is naked, bare and "kolac" (pronounced kolats) means stake...

I talked about this etymology in my post "Kolac-Golac"... 

Now if you combine "colossos" and "kolottos" you get "kolotsos"...

Is it possible that the unknown, Pre Greek root of these two words is Serbian word "kolac" (pronounced kolats), meaning stake, pole (and symbolically totem pole, idol)??? I don't know, but it is definitely possible...

In Slavic languages the word "balvan" means roundwood, beam, log, piece of timber, idol...

Omphalos

A Delphic Amphictyonic League Coin (c.336-335 BC). The obverse shows the veiled head of Demeter and the reverse shows a serpent (Python) coiled around a net-covered omphalos stone.

What is omphalos? Here is the short version:

This relief depicts Rhea deceiving Cronus by giving him swaddled omphalos stone instead of newborn Zeus.

Here is another Greek coin depicting omphalos stone. Bronze Coin of Pergamon in Mysia, c. 133-16 BCE. On this image the net covering the stone is much clearer to see. This net was called "agrenon".

Agrenon is a Greek word for the white wool netting which covered the Omphalos, and was also worn by bacchanals and soothsayers. It was made of raw wool which had been carded, but not spun or died. Paintings and copies of the Omphalos showed it covered with this netting.

This is a torso of Apollo wearing the agrenon, found at Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli

This is the omphalos stone from Delphi. This is thought to be a (Roman?) replica of the original sacred stone which mysterious disappeared. You can see that agrenon, which originally covered omphalos was engraved into the stone.

Here is something interesting. This is a small clay object from Karanovo I culture, dated to the 6th millennium BC and found in the location Pernik, Bulgaria. It is currently kept in Sofia Museum, Bulgaria. Please note the net cover...

Is it possible that this is a depiction of the Omphalos stone? I mean it is a depiction of a baby swaddled in a cloth?...Crying...Or yawning...Right? Baby Zeus? If so, this would means that the Omphalos legend survived in the Balkans for 5 millennia??? During this time the small clay depiction of omphalos of the Karanovans became large stone depiction of omphalos of the Greeks...

But this would not be the first case where we find earlier small Vinča clay ritual objects transformed by other cultures into later large stone ritual objects. Here is one example:

1) Ritual clay votive bread, carved diamond and spiral ornaments, Potporanj - Kremenjak, Serbia, Vinča culture, 5th mill. BC

2) Entrance stone, carved diamond and spiral ornaments, Newgrange, Ireland, 4th mill. BC
Curiously similar.

I talked about this in my post "Newgrange"

Here is another example:

1. Vinca clay "carved balls"

2. Scottish stone "carved balls"

I talked about this in my post "Clay balls stone balls".

Back to omphalos. What is the actual meaning of this swaddled omphalos stone and snake wrapped around it? Omphalos means "navel". When does navel look like omphalos? When a woman is heavily pregnant. Just before she is about to give birth....

The "woman" which legend connects with the omphalos is Rhea. Rhea, the mother of gods, was according to Greeks "daughter of Gaia" the Mother Earth. Some ancient etymologists derived Rhea (Ῥέα) (by metathesis) from ἔρα, "ground" basically equating Rhea and Gaia...

Rhea was probably just Young Spring Earth, Fertile Earth, which is in Slavic and Celtic mythology described as the Daughter of the Old Winter Earth...

I talked about this in many of my post, most recently in my post "The old woman of the mill-dust".

It is interesting that Plato connected Rhea with ῥέω (rheo), "flow", "discharge". Imbolc, the beginning of Spring, falls in the middle of Aquarius, the water pourer. This is also the time of the first snow melt in Europe, the first "flow, discharge" of the Young Spring Earth...

The Young Spring Earth meets Young Spring Sun and soon turns into Pregnant Summer-Autumn Earth who starts giving birth to food. The middle of this birth giving period is 2nd of August, which falls in the middle of Leo. This date marks the end of summer and beginning of autumn. And surprise surprise we find Rhea, whom the Romans identified her with Magna Mater (their form of Cybele), sitting on the lion throne.

It seems that Rhea is another "Lion Lady" which I need to add to my list of Goddesses which "Stand on a lion", "Sit on a lion throne", "Ride in lion pulled chariot"...Basically she is another Virgo arriving after Leo to announce the Harvest. I talked about this in my post "Assumption of Mary".

Oh, you are going to love this bit. Rhea, created "omphalos" as a replacement for the newborn Zeus, the Thunder god. She sits on a lion throne, between two lion figures. This means middle of Leo...

And in the middle of Leo is the 2nd of August, which is in Serbian mythology the day of Perun, Slavic thunder god. The day when he "arrives"...Or is born? When the first autumn rains arrive to Continental Eurasia...

Coincidence, coincidence...

You can find more info about this in my posts "The thundering sun god" and "Alidjun".

This was the day when bulls were sacrificed by Slavs and Gaels to their sky gods...Why are bulls sacrificed at the end of summer? Because bull is the symbol of the summer. Killing of a bull symbolically ends the summer. And why is bull the symbol of summer? Because beginning of May, beginning of summer, marks the beginning of the calving season on Eurasion wild aurochs cattle. And the beginning of August, the end of summer, marks the beginning of the mating season of the Eurasian wild aurochs cattle... I talked about this in my posts "Symbols of the seasons" and "Ram and bull".

In the past the Irish sacrificed bulls to the god Crom Dubh. I talked about this in my post "Bull of Crom Dubh".

Is Crom Dubh = Grom Div (Thunder Giant), Perun, to whom Serbs used to sacrifice bulls on the same day? Div today means Giant, but once meant God...I talked about this in my post "Bull of Grom Div".

Here is an interesting fresco from Pompeii depicting omphalos covered with agrenon with a snake coiled around it. And a bull???

Why is there a bull next to omphalos on this fresco from Pompeii? Is this just a coincidence? Apparently not a coincidence. Official description of the scene says: "The fresco shows the Omphalos stone covered with a net and the Python wrapped around it. A priestess stands at left with a sacrificial bull..."

Guess what, Zeus was also associated with the bull..Any guesses why?

In the end, why is snake coiling around omphalos? Snakes are out during the "sunny, warm, fertile" part of the year. They are the symbol of the sun's heat. And when is the sun's heat the strongest? Right at the end of summer beginning of autumn, in the middle of Leo, during the period which Balkan Slavs called "kresovi" (fires)...I talked about this in my post "Two crosses" and "Ognjena Marija".

At the time when the pregnant belly of the Mother Earth is bursting. In the middle of the time when Mother Earth gives birth to food (Summer-Autumn)...

I talked about the link between snakes and the sun in my posts "The sunny part of the year", "The enemy of the sun" and many other...

But there is more that needs to be said about the serpent which encircles the omphalos. Soon...

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?