Mamaragan

Adad, Mesopotamian storm god, holding an axe and lightning bolt...How old is this association between storm (thunder) gods an (stone) axes? How about at least 40,000 years?

I tried to explain the association between thunder gods and (stone) axes in my post "Jack and the magic beans"..

In which I proposed that some of our myths about sky gods are in fact very very old scientific theories which tried to explain the available observed phenomena in the best possible way with the knowledge of the universe people possessed at that time...Like if giant stones are falling from the sky, there must be a giant (sky god) throwing them from up there on our heads...

These stones that fall from the sky then became "thunder bolts" and "thunder stones" and "petrified lightnings". 

At the end of my post "Kataibates", about stone thunder axes from European folklore tradition, I asked how old this tradition could be...

I suggested that this link between a stone, more specifically flint axes, and thunder gods, already existed in the 4th millennium BC Europe...I explained why I thought so in my post "Sun stones" in which I talked about exploding flint axes...

But then I saw this picture of Namarrkon/Mamaragan, the storm "god" from Aboriginal mythology from Western Arnhem Land in northern territories. He lives high in the sky, rides storm clouds and makes thunders by striking the clouds with stone axes fixed to his head, elbows, and knees...

He also "soaks up the sun's rays and turns them into lightning"...In monsoon regions of the world, the end of the dry season is marked by spectacular electric storms which announce the arrival of the rains...

Also in Northern Australia, the hottest time of the year is also the rainiest time of the year...

So sun's heat is obviously and literally turned into lightning...

BTW, remember this?

"Because it is a great secret how come Svarog (hevenly and earthly fire) is at the same time Perun (thunder and lightning) and Svetovid (Sun)." Modern science explains the link between solar energy, lightning and fire...I talked about this in my post "Sun thunder fire"...

Now, Aboriginals arrived to Australia about 40,000 years ago...Which could mean that the link between thunder gods and stone axes, is more than 40,000 years old??? If we assume common root of the myth...

I already wrote about the age of (some) Aboriginal myths in my post "Dream time" and "Yeti revisited". Some Australian Aboriginal "dreamtime" stories, passed orally from generation to generation, could, according to latest scientific data, actually be over 40,000 years old...

Or, maybe, again, everyone ended up with the same explanation for the same observed phenomena...

Walpurgis Night

Illustration by Bernard Zuber for Maurice Garçon’s La Vie Execrable de Guillemette Babin, Sorciere, 1926. 

May Day Eve (April 30) is across Northern and Central Europe known as Walpurgis Night, the night when everyone is trying to "ward off, scare, witches"...

Why?

Maybe this has something to do with the old Celtic calendar which divided the year into two halves:

Winter (Samhain, 1st of Nov - Beltane, 1st of May)

Summer (Beltane, 1st of May - Samhain, 1st of Nov)

I talked about this in my post "Two crosses"...

This division of the year, is btw based on the old transhumance shepherd calendar:

Lowland grazing and lambing Oct/Nov - Apr/May

Highland grazing and milking Apr/May - Oct/Nov

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

In Serbian Orthodox calendar, the beginning and the end of the "Time of Dragons", the hot sunny half of the year, is marked (guarded) by Two Georges, Summer and Winter St George('s day)...I talked about this in my post "Two Georges"...

This is important to know as a lot of old traditions linked to Beltane were migrated to the Summer St George day...

Where do witches come into the picture here?

Remember this: Hey, you Halloween witches, dressing up in black on the first day of winter...You know that The Witch here is The Hag, Winter Earth, Baba, Cailleach, The Dark, Veiled One...Here she is, all in black, with bare branch, on the four seasons Roman mosaic from the Bignor

The witch here is the Old (Winter) Mother Earth. 

In the Polish Carpathians we find this saying:

"Baba (Grandmother) is already frozen" meaning "The mountain tops are covered with frost or the first snow". 

I talked about this in my post "Gryla" about Winter Hag, Winter Earth...

Baba Dochia was an old woman who insulted the month of March. So, while she was going up the mountain with a herd of goats (symbols of winter), March borrowed frosty days from February and froze her to death...

I talked about this legend from Romania in my post "Baba, cold, winter"...

Slovenian folk play called "Baba (grandmother) and Ded (grandfather)": "As they get older he gets weaker and she gets stronger. At one point she takes over him and rules until spring".  

This makes a lot of sense if Baba (Earth, Yin, Cold) and Ded (Sun, Yang, Heat)...

Ever changing Yin-Yang symbol is most likely description of the ever changing daily amount of light and darkness and the effect this change has on Earth's temperature...

More about it in my post "Yin and Yang"...

The winter earth is actually depicted as a witch in the Snow White. 

Crab apples are the last fruit to stay on the branches in Continental Europe, well into winter. 

Winter, which was imagined by our ancestors as "an old hag, and old witch" veiled in black, the bringer of death...

The one Slavs called Morana (the goddess of death) and Marzana (the goddess of cold). From my post "Snow-White"...

Some Slavs performed burning of the witch of winter/goddess of death at the beginning of spring (Jan/Feb)...

"Maslenitsa" by Simon Kozhin. 

As I said, Slavs equated The Goddess of Death, Morana (mor=death) with The Winter Earth, Marzana (marz=frost). She is ceremonially burned (warmed) or drowned (thawed) or both (to de sure to be sure 🙂) during Slavic spring festivals...

Here are some posts in which I talk about this ritual and related customs: "Gryla", "Party" "Bannock", "To kill a witch", "Baba's day", "Living stone"...

And some Slavs performed burning of the witch of winter/goddess of death at the beginning of summer (Apr/May)...

Like Sorbs (Slavs) from Germany, who at the end of April perform "Chodojtypalenje" (the witch burning). A large stack of branches is piled and a straw witch effigy is placed on top. The whole thing is then set ablaze symbolically "killing winter" (witch=hag=winter) 

As I said above, in Serbian and Celtic calendar, year had two seasons: winter Samhain (start of November) to Bealtaine (start of May), and summer Bealtaine to Samhain. Hence Sorbian witch burning at the end of April, just before the start of summer...  

Here is a picture of one of these "witches" (hags) being burned. 

Christianised version of this custom is Walpurgis Night. "As a result of Saint Walpurga's evangelism in Germany, the people there converted to Christianity from heathenism. Saint Walpurga was also known to repel the effects of witchcraft..." 😉

I think that by now you can all see that what was burned on these bonfires was not a witch but the Hag, Ugly, Evil, Winter earth, The Goddess of Death. Who is transformed, every spring, by the fire of the sun into Beautiful, Good, Summer Earth, The Goddess of Life...This "burning" is not destruction but transformation by fire...

The fire lit at these ceremonies is supposed to ignite the reproductive fire of the mother earth. We don't want frigid winter hag, we want hot spring maiden 🙂 burning with desire for her young sun lover. Without this fire there is no life...

In the Balkans they also performed the scaring of the witch of winter

As part of end of winter, beginning of summer rituals, men and boys in Bosnia blew willow horns to scare the witch (winter) away...As I said, the old Serbian year, just like the old Celtic year, was divided into summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and winter (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

I talked about this in my post "May horns"...

This link between Mother earth and Yin, dark, wet, cold weather, resulted in the women being the ones who in Slavic tradition performed Yin, dark, wet, cold magic. 

I talked about this in two posts, "Weather stones", about the use of "weather stones" among Slavs and "The last megalithic ritual in Europe", which talks about a ritual from Belarus, where women (Yin, dark, wet, cold) raise Dabog's (sun and rain god) stone during drought to get cool and wet weather...

And in the post "Thunder book" where we read about the prosecution of female witches in medieval Serbia for performing weather magic...

The association between (Yin, dark, wet, cold) magic and women seems to have been common in the past in the rest of Europe too. 

Two witches conjuring a hailstorm, an illustration from the 1489 book "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus" by Ulrich Molitor which talks about weather altering magic (witchcraft) performed by women...

Did you know that the sudden climate change which resulted in the medieval mini ice age was blamed on the weather controlling witches and was the excuse for the subsequent witch-hunt? I talked about this in my post "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus"...

Now that we know who witches were, I think it is interesting that witches seem to have liked riding on two things which are both associated with storms and winter: brooms and goats...

Broom...Remeber my post "Donderbezem" about Donderbezem (thunder broom), a protective symbol used in Holland and northern Germany as a protection from lightning strikes and evil spirits.

Goat...Goat is universally associated with dark, cold, wet half of the year (Oct/Nov - Apr/May) in Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, Western Asia, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Iran...This is because ibex goat mating season starts in Oct/Nov and the ibex goat birthing season finishes in Apr/May...

I talked about symbolism of ibex goats in many of my posts, like 

Europe:

"Pitys", "Goat in European culture", "Patera of Rennes", "Gotland sun stone with horses and ibexes"... 

Levant:

"The tree of life/light", "Lachish animal calendar"...

Mesopotamia:

"Feast plaque from Louvre", "Green pastures", "Problems with Abzu", "Relief from Dur Sharrukin", "Goatfish"...

Iran: 

"Flamingos from Susa", "Goat carrier", "Iranian goat of rain", "Strider", "A vessel from Tepe Hissar", "Rhubarb and ibex"...

Interesting, right?

Anyway, don't just sit there. Go burn a witch. We all had enough of winter...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which were the key to deciphering all this, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Thunder book

In the Annals from 1605, the Dubrovnik writer Jakov Lukarević says that Serbian kings Stefan Nemanja and Dušan "persecuted witches", whom he calls "evil women from Mount Hemo", and burned their book of magic, which was in Slavic tongue called Grominjak (Thunder book)...

That book probably had spells and rituals for affecting meteorological phenomena. St. Sava, in the "Zakonopravilo", condemns the magical summoning of hail, although he himself summons hail, in the story about the Hungarian king.

St Sava from Serbian folktales basically replaced Dabog, the old Serbian supreme god and took all his magical powers, including weather control...I talk about Dabog as both sun and rain god in two article "The last megalithic ritual in Europe" and "Weather stones" about the use of "weather stones" by Slavs to manipulate weather. Like here, where women raise Dabog's stone during drought to get cool and wet weather...

Another interesting bit here is that it is women who were always associated with rain (hail) storm rituals. 

Did you know that the sudden climate change which resulted in the medieval mini ice age was blamed on the weather controlling witches and was the excuse for the subsequent witch-hunt. I talked about this in my article "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus" about the 1489 book "De Lamiis et Pythonicis Mulieribus" by Ulrich Molitor which talks about weather altering magic (witchcraft) performed by women...

This is an illustration from the book depicting "two witches conjuring up a destructive (hail) storm"...

In South Slavic folklore, cold, wet weather is "feminine"...Yin...

Which is why, in South Slavic folklore, it is a female dragon, ala, that brings hailstorms and unseasonably cold, wet weather during summer months, which destroys crops...I talked about this in my article "Pozoj"...

While male dragon, zmaj, brings hot, dry weather which brings drought, which destroys crops...Yang...I talked about this in my articles "Scaring off the dragon" and "Letnitsa treasure"...

Halton Moor cup

This is the so called Halton Moor cup, made in the 8th c. AD somewhere in the Carolingian empire, France. It was then deposited in the 11th c. AD, as part of a mixed silver and gold hoard in the Halton Moor in England, where it was discovered in 1815...

Stunning object. According to the British Museum, where his object is currently kept, "of the four medallions which decorate the cup, two contain the figure of a lion, and the other two contain the figure of an ox with humped back and forked tail"...

The British Museum then goes on to say that these medalions are separated by "a formal plant with radiating branches from which issue four dog-like heads near the extremities, biting foliage". Full description can be found here...

Now according to The Halton Moor Cup and the Carolingian Metalwork in the Cuerdale Hoard By Egon Wamers, "the four roundels on the Halton Moor cup alternate depictions of two different animals, which may be identified as a lion and a unicorn..."

"...these roundels are separated by acanthus plants wih the animal (dog) heads sprouting from their tips". Egon Wamers then says that this is an illustration for Psalm 22 (verses 16–21) where Christ says:

12 Many bulls surround me...

13 Roaring lions [surround me]...

...

16 Dogs surround me...

...

19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me...

20 Deliver me...from the power of the dogs.

21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

Interestingly, in the verse 21, the King James's bible actually says:

21 Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

WTH does this mean? Ok, let's first sort this unicorn thing out. 

Ever heard of Re'em? A re'em is an animal mentioned nine times in the Hebrew Bible. The Greek Old Testament (3rd-2nd c. BC) translated re'em as "unicorn" which stayed as the main translation of this word until the end of the 19th century...

Then, in 1899, Johann Ulrich Duerst discovered that the word "re'em" was based on the Akkadian cognate "rimu", meaning "Auroch", the Eurasian wild cattle...This has been "generally" 🙂 accepted today as the correct translation, "even among religious scholars" 🙂...

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

Those interested in unicorns should check my post "Stag and Unicorn", where I analyse figure 3 from "Alchymistica", 17th/18th century document found in Benedictine Abbey Admont, Austria...

Back to the Halton Moor cup. As you can clearly see, the horned animal depicted on the Halton Moor cup is a bull which looks very much like an Auroch (wild Eurasian cattle) bull. 

Bull is a symbol of summer (Apr/May -  Jul/Aug). This is because Apr/May was when wild Eurasian cattle used to start calving, and Jul/Aug was when wild Eurasian cattle used to start mating (and fighting)...

I talked about (most common) animal symbols for seasons (still imbedded into out zodiac today), found all over Eurasia and North Africa since Neolithic, in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

Hence Taurus, an animal calendar marker which marks (Apr/May), the beginning of the calving season of the wild Eurasian cattle, and the beginning of summer, the season of the wild Eurasian cattle...I talked about this in many of my posts...

The bull depicted on the Halton Moor cup is depicted in a charging (fighting) pose. Just like it looks during the mating fights which take place in Jul/Aug...I talked about symbolic meaning of the charging bull in many of my posts...

And the bull is charging towards a lion...

Lion which is an animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug, because this is when the main mating season of Eurasian lions starts...Which is why Jul/Aug is marked with a lion, Leo...I talked about this in many of my posts...

So, charging bull and a lion meet in Jul/Leo...This is when Summer (Starts in Taurus, Apr/May - Jul/Aug) ends and Autumn (Starts in Leo, Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov) begins...

Like in India, where we find the Ardhanarishvara, the union of Shiva and Parvati producing river Ganga...

Maximum monsoon, which feeds the river Ganga, falls at the meeting point of Summer (symbolised by Bull) and Autumn (symbolised by Lion), Jul/Aug...

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

But in Mediterranean and Western Asia, this is symbolically depicted like this: Lion (Autumn, starts in Leo) kills (ends) Bull (Summer, starts in Taurus)...Coin from Cilicia, dated to 361-334BC. I talked about this calendaric symbol in many of my posts...

So, the bull is charging towards the lion, but on the Halton Moor cup he will never reach the lion because bull and lion are separated by "acanthus plants with the animal (dog) heads sprouting from their tips"...

Very interesting...Why? Well, first, the leafs of this plant, if it indeed is acanthus, are the leaves which Ancient Greek sculptor Callimachus (5th c. BCE) used to model the capital of the Corinthian column...

The plant main flowering season is from May to Aug... 

After the flowering season, the plant develops a sharply-pointed capsule shaped fruit...Fruiting season is normally Jul/Aug/Sep...Interesting right?

And on the Halton Moor cup the fruit looks like dog head...Why? Cause the old dog breeds mating season started in Jul/Aug...This is why we find dog days in Jul/Aug. And why Sirius is called the Dog Star. When our mythologies were made out of animal calendar markers, Sirius, the Dog Star rose with the sun in Jul/Aug, when mating season of the old dog breeds began...I talked about this in my posts "Dog days", about the Dog star in Egypt, "Tishtrya", about dog star in Mesopotamia and "The bitch of the gods", about the dog star in India...

Anyway, this is why on the Halton Moor cup we find the acanthus plant with dog head fruits between the charging bull and the lion...

BTW, do you see the tree depicted behind the lion? It looks very much like a date palm tree. In Mesopotamia, where most of the date palm symbolism comes from, date harvest starts in Jul/Aug...When Lion kills Bull. In dog days. Under a palm tree. I talked about it in my post "Lion killing bull under date palm"...

But why would someone in Carolingian empire make something like this? Did they know what they were doing or is this just a giant coincidence? 

I don't think it's a coincidence. The legend about Re'em has this interesting bit in it. I provide full symbolic analysis of the Re'em legend in my post "Reem"...

David is the guy who built the solar temple on a threshing floor...

If you wanted to make a (First) Temple on a Threshing Floor, and "orient" it (make it to face east), if you wanted to make a "House of God" to face the "House of (Sun) God", how would you do it? Like this...

I talked about this in my post "Boaz and Jachin" and "Sun god from the first temple"...

Solar temple dedicated to a Sun god in a chariot pulled by 4 horses...I originally thought that this god was some kind of local Helios...But since then I learned that Shamash also traveled in a chariot pulled by four equids...

I talked about this in my posts "Sun god from Tell Brak" and "Shamash playing with solar horse"... 

So the Sun God that Josiah says the Jews worshiped in the First Temple was most likely Shamash...They still do worship him BTW...

Remember this post, "The tree of life, light", about the origin of the Hanukah (Winter Solstice) celebration? And the link between Yahweh and Shamash, the old Semitic (Akkadian) sun god...

Now in this post, "Menorah from Nipur", about this 3rd mill. BC seal from Nipur, I postulated, based on the fact that Shamash is depicted sitting between two bulls, that the Shamash worshipped through Menorah was Sun in Taurus, Apr/May. The good sun, the sun of life...

But I completely missed the fact that the two bulls have erections, which means they symbolised Jul/Aug, the start of the beginning of the mating season of wild cattle...I talked about this important "detail" in my post "Tree huggers", about this strange moulded plaque, Babylonian, ca. 2000–1600 BC. 

And I also, for some weird reason, ignored the fact that Shamash is holding the reed cutting knife. I talked about the importance of the reed cutting knife in my post "Canals", where I explain why Shamash holds reed cutting knife when he is depicted standing in an empty canal/river bed. About Jul/Aug being the best time to cut reed in Mesopotamia if you want to make long lasting reed boats, houses and canal dams...BTW, see how he is standing between two lions, in Leo...

Both pointing to the fact that the Shamash of the Menorah is Shamash in Jul/Aug...See how Shamash has (mostly) 3 heat waves coming from each shoulder? Togehter whith his head, that is 7...7 months of the Sumerian summer...With the head in Jul/Aug, the hottest part of the year...

Sun in Jul/Aug. Nergal...The deified destructive "burning" sun, which was depicted as a lion man

because Jul/Aug, Leo, is the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia...

Talked abut Nergal in my post "Winged superhuman hero"...

Nergal the god of death...

Hello Mot! 

In the deserts of Levant, Middle East and Arabia, it was The Sun who was "The God of Death". It is in climate and nature it produces, that we find the root of all our religions... Pic: Over 2000 years old poem about the god of death Mot. From my post "The oldest Arabic poem"...

Nergal, whose seat is located between bull and lion (Jul/Aug, the hottest time of the year, the time of death) and is guarded by a three headed dog (End of Jul beginning of Aug, the dog days)...

Hello Hades!!!

Meet Kerberos, the three haded dog, guardian of the doors of hell...He also had snakes coming out of his body...

Dog, animal calendar marker for the hottest time of the year, the time of the year ruled by Nergal, The God of Death, The personification of Destructive sun's heat, and snakes, symbol of sun's heat...

Nergal who also had a pet three headed dog...Depiction of Nergal from Hatra...

Oh and is that Heracles standing behind Kerberos pretending to be a lion man???

Hello Heracles!!! Who are you really?

Relief featuring the symbols of Herakles, the bow and the lion skin. 1st c. BC, Aedepsus, Euboea. New Archaeological Museum of Chalkis Arethousa, Greece.

The true identity of the Heracles the Archer was discussed in my posts "Cetus" and "Mithras"...

Where are you going with all of this, I can hear you wondering...

As far as I can remember, the god of Menorah is the god father of Christ...

Christ as the sun-god Helios/Sol, 3rd c. AD, Vatican. Christ is born on Winter Solstice, (re)birth day of the sun (god), he enters Jerusalem on a donkey, "animal of the (sun) gods and kings", and gets put on a cross, symbol of the sun (god). Interesting. From my post "Alexamenos graffito"...

And so, according to the psalm 22, Christ, while awaiting death on the cross, the symbol of Shamash, and while being surrounded by bulls, lions and dogs, animal calendar markers for Jul/Aug, invokes his father...

This kind of makes you wonder about what Gnostics knew when they rejected Christian god as Demiurg...And why Cathars and Bogumils rejected cross... 

But then again, this could all be just me reeding too much into things...

Or, maybe, the greatest trick The Devil ever pulled was not convincing the world he didn't exist, but convincing the world he was The God...

For the end, wisdom based on centuries of suffering...

Ethnographer interviewing an old peasant woman, Serbia first half of 20th century.

Gran, do you believe in god?

Of course I do my son. Who wouldn't believe in god?

And are you afraid of god, gran?

Of course I am my son. Who wouldn't be afraid of an evil force? 

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...