Imbas Forasnai is a very mysterious process of enlightenment. The Irish hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill would enter this visionary state of Imbas (Inspiration), when he needed to foretell the future, after partaking of the first three drops of the Salmon of Wisdom, which told jhim all things past, present and future.
J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture 1997 p60, notes that ancient *hzeng(w), to anoint the salve or besmear, lead to the word awcanem in Armenian, to anoint. In Old Irish, imb means butter and Old High German, ancho means butter, from the same root as salve or ointment. In India, ghee is sacred butter which is used as an anointment.
The Smertae Tribe in N Scotland, is likely to be named from this smearing anointment word.
It would appear that imbas as inspiration and imb as butter and the process of anointment and smearing, are somehow connected. Perhaps it was the oily nature of a salmon, cooking in a cauldron, which provides this connection with the opening of the third eye to the divine light where time and space are all one, but this is a profound mystery, which requires much future research. It may be that the cow is relevant here for its milk and butter, because Fhionn partook of the three drops of the cooked salmon by the River Boyne or ancient Buvindia, meaning white cow. White Cow was another name for the Milky Way, hence milk and butter on the third eye allowed a vision of the cosmos, from underworld up to heaven. The spiralling galaxy of the Milky Way around us, would be a vast anointment in space, some 52,000 light years across, powered by a Black Hole, at its very centre; so time and space will do some very strange things within this vast cosmic scheme. The fact that the heavenly canopy was called the Dagda's Cauldron, can only add to the salmon's brew in the cauldron, for in Mesopotamia, fish is used to also mean star, just as the underworld, under water, reflects the stars in heaven, and the scales of a salmon do shine like stars.
Friday, 7 October 2016
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
The invention of augury from birds
Tatian's Address to the Greeks, Chapter 1, states that the Phrygians, who lived in NW Turkey and were said to be a very ancient people, as well as the Isaurians, invented augury from the flight of birds.
This claim is supported by the evidence from the Etruscans in N Italy, because recent evidence has shown that this mysterious people came from W and NW Turkey.
The Etruscans excelled at prognostication from the flight of birds. Irene Rosenzweig, Rituals and Cults of Pre-Roman Iguvine 1937, p26, states that in Tables VIa-VIb47 of the lustration of the sacred mount in Iguvium, the introductory auspices began with the observation of birds:-
1/ Parra or Oxifraga/Ossifraga or Avis Sanquali (Unknown Bird)
2/ Cornix (Ravens)
3/ Picus (Woodpeckers)
4/ Pica (Magpies)
We know the Parra is not the eagle, because it is noted elsewhere that a sign of the eagle would prevail over the woodpecker and the Oxifraga (Parra). British folklore features, to this day, prognostication by magpies and ravens.
The birds were observed by the augur from his seat in the Tabernaculum, whereupon he would pass this on to the Flamen or priest.
In Rome, Ex Avibus or divination from birds, was divided into the Oscines auspices from their singing, including ravens, crows, owls and hens, and the Alites from their flight, including eagles, vultures and Avis Sanqua or the Ossifrage and the Immusculus. However, some birds like Picus Martius, Ferones and the Parrha, could be either Oscines or Alites (Cic,De.Div. ii,34, i,39, Liv i,7,34 and Virg Aen 1,394.). Pliny, Nat Hist, 10, 7-8, has further information on the vulture and Ossifraga, which Festus said was sacred to the god of oaths trust and contracts, called Sancus, whose temple was on the Quirinal Hill. Sancus was probably a Sabine god and Titus Tatius was probably responsible for a shrine here to this god. Tacitus Vol. 2, relates that Titus Tatius was the founder of the Sodales Titii, who observed birds during ancient Sabine procedures of augury.
It was the Etruscans who founded Rome. Romulus built on the Palatine Hill, while his twin brother built on the Aventine Hill, as settled by auspices. Plutarch mentions that Remus saw 6 vultures, while Romulus saw 12 vultures.
Pliny the Younger gives an alternative version to Tatian above, that the invention of auspices was made by Tiresias, the Seer of Thebes. Auspicium from auspex in Latin, means 'one who looks at birds', that is bird flight.
However, already in the C14thBC Amarna Letters, the King of Alasia in Cyprus asked for an 'eagle diviner' to be sent from Egypt.
Calchas was bird diviner of Agamemnon, involved in the Trojan War about 1180BC (Homer Iliad 1.69).
Furthermore, the Druids were also adept at bird divination and we have no idea whether they invented this independently, or whether it stemmed from the common ancestry of Indo-European culture that they shared with the Etruscans and Romans.
This claim is supported by the evidence from the Etruscans in N Italy, because recent evidence has shown that this mysterious people came from W and NW Turkey.
The Etruscans excelled at prognostication from the flight of birds. Irene Rosenzweig, Rituals and Cults of Pre-Roman Iguvine 1937, p26, states that in Tables VIa-VIb47 of the lustration of the sacred mount in Iguvium, the introductory auspices began with the observation of birds:-
1/ Parra or Oxifraga/Ossifraga or Avis Sanquali (Unknown Bird)
2/ Cornix (Ravens)
3/ Picus (Woodpeckers)
4/ Pica (Magpies)
We know the Parra is not the eagle, because it is noted elsewhere that a sign of the eagle would prevail over the woodpecker and the Oxifraga (Parra). British folklore features, to this day, prognostication by magpies and ravens.
The birds were observed by the augur from his seat in the Tabernaculum, whereupon he would pass this on to the Flamen or priest.
In Rome, Ex Avibus or divination from birds, was divided into the Oscines auspices from their singing, including ravens, crows, owls and hens, and the Alites from their flight, including eagles, vultures and Avis Sanqua or the Ossifrage and the Immusculus. However, some birds like Picus Martius, Ferones and the Parrha, could be either Oscines or Alites (Cic,De.Div. ii,34, i,39, Liv i,7,34 and Virg Aen 1,394.). Pliny, Nat Hist, 10, 7-8, has further information on the vulture and Ossifraga, which Festus said was sacred to the god of oaths trust and contracts, called Sancus, whose temple was on the Quirinal Hill. Sancus was probably a Sabine god and Titus Tatius was probably responsible for a shrine here to this god. Tacitus Vol. 2, relates that Titus Tatius was the founder of the Sodales Titii, who observed birds during ancient Sabine procedures of augury.
It was the Etruscans who founded Rome. Romulus built on the Palatine Hill, while his twin brother built on the Aventine Hill, as settled by auspices. Plutarch mentions that Remus saw 6 vultures, while Romulus saw 12 vultures.
Pliny the Younger gives an alternative version to Tatian above, that the invention of auspices was made by Tiresias, the Seer of Thebes. Auspicium from auspex in Latin, means 'one who looks at birds', that is bird flight.
However, already in the C14thBC Amarna Letters, the King of Alasia in Cyprus asked for an 'eagle diviner' to be sent from Egypt.
Calchas was bird diviner of Agamemnon, involved in the Trojan War about 1180BC (Homer Iliad 1.69).
Furthermore, the Druids were also adept at bird divination and we have no idea whether they invented this independently, or whether it stemmed from the common ancestry of Indo-European culture that they shared with the Etruscans and Romans.
Saturday, 24 September 2016
A possible secret 40 day calendar of an esoteric nature
Daithi O'Hogain, p19 of Fionn Mac Cumhal: Images of the Celtic Hero, quotes from the Munster Genealogies in LL 1373. Noine, is said to be lying in the womb, 'Nine years, that is nine months by nine.'
This implies that Druids counted one calendar as 9 X 40 days, which would give a year of 360 days, plus 5 extra days, identical to the ancient Egyptians.
The Bible has some mentions of 40 as a period of particular time, such as the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert in Exodus. Jewish sources relate that their month of Elul, begins the 40 days of prayer that Moses made to God during a time of tribulation.
The Christian calendar may betray evidence of the same 40 day months. Lent is 40 days before Easter, while the Ascension of Christ is 40 days after Easter.
Perhaps the 40 days of rain from if it rains on St Swithun's Day, July 15th, is some memory of the same.
The esoteric nature of the 40 day Lenten fast preceding the 40 days from Crucifixion to Christ's Ascension, can only be marvelled at. Doubtless there was far more to it than this.........
This implies that Druids counted one calendar as 9 X 40 days, which would give a year of 360 days, plus 5 extra days, identical to the ancient Egyptians.
The Bible has some mentions of 40 as a period of particular time, such as the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert in Exodus. Jewish sources relate that their month of Elul, begins the 40 days of prayer that Moses made to God during a time of tribulation.
The Christian calendar may betray evidence of the same 40 day months. Lent is 40 days before Easter, while the Ascension of Christ is 40 days after Easter.
Perhaps the 40 days of rain from if it rains on St Swithun's Day, July 15th, is some memory of the same.
The esoteric nature of the 40 day Lenten fast preceding the 40 days from Crucifixion to Christ's Ascension, can only be marvelled at. Doubtless there was far more to it than this.........
Wednesday, 21 September 2016
The British robin is uniquely friemdly as the druid bird
Today, i was chatting to a robin, as many gardeners do. This delightful friendly little bird, sat in the branches of an apple tree, wanting my attention. Unlike other gardeners, I do not feed my robin and our relationship is more one of mutual understanding and friendship. We communicate, not with words, although I do talk to him, but through the sense of meaning; an intuitive understanding between us.
Just why the British robin is so friendly, when apparently, he is not in other countries, is one of those ancient Druid mysteries handed down by tradition over the centuries. For sure, my grandmother, long since departed, had a similar close relationship with her robins, which I witnessed first hand.
In folklore, there is an ancient rhyme (LegendaryDartmoor.co.uk/wren) which goes 'Robin redbreast and the wren, God almighty's cock and hen, him that harries their nest, never shall his soul have rest, kill a robin or a wren, never prosper boy or man.'
The reason for this, was that a wren or a robin, on discovering a human corpse, will cover it over with leaves and moss as a mark of their love for the human race.
Certainly, my robin shows incredible love for me, similar to the gushing love which a dog will often display towards humans.
However, we also know that in folklore, the wren was the Druid bird. There is extensive lore on these two mysterious birds which reveals just how important they were to our ancestors. The name Jenny wren is comparable to the frequent use of Jenny for fairy or the goddess herself, whereas Cock robin can be either Welsh coch meaning red, for his redbreast, or be an oblique reference to cock as in the phallic nature of the Horned God, Cernunnos himself. This red nature of the god, is precisely what we find in Irish myth, where the Dagda is the red god, whose sexual propensity with the Morrigna or mother goddess, brought fertility to the River Unius, upon which they had a massive sexual liaison, and all the land around.
One only has to think of the importance of the 'Who killed Cock Robin ?' rhyme, to know that this conceals a great mystery which the Druids bequeathed to us and indeed, oral tradition insisted that this rhyme was of vital consequence. 'I said the fly, with my little eye' is in direct comparison with the curious reference in Culhwch and Olwen to Drem, whose vision could encompass the entire country while a fly......... It is therefore a rhyme which corresponds with our most ancient British myth.
So I love my little robin and I know that he is a representative of the almighty god himself and if one wants a classic example of the power of the red god, then one could do no better than to study the frenetic nature of the Irish tale, Da Derga's Hostel.
The mysteries of the 'red' are quite something, to overwhelm the Irish high king, but then for the Druids, all this made perfect sense when red is the highest colour in alchemy.
Just why the British robin is so friendly, when apparently, he is not in other countries, is one of those ancient Druid mysteries handed down by tradition over the centuries. For sure, my grandmother, long since departed, had a similar close relationship with her robins, which I witnessed first hand.
In folklore, there is an ancient rhyme (LegendaryDartmoor.co.uk/wren) which goes 'Robin redbreast and the wren, God almighty's cock and hen, him that harries their nest, never shall his soul have rest, kill a robin or a wren, never prosper boy or man.'
The reason for this, was that a wren or a robin, on discovering a human corpse, will cover it over with leaves and moss as a mark of their love for the human race.
Certainly, my robin shows incredible love for me, similar to the gushing love which a dog will often display towards humans.
However, we also know that in folklore, the wren was the Druid bird. There is extensive lore on these two mysterious birds which reveals just how important they were to our ancestors. The name Jenny wren is comparable to the frequent use of Jenny for fairy or the goddess herself, whereas Cock robin can be either Welsh coch meaning red, for his redbreast, or be an oblique reference to cock as in the phallic nature of the Horned God, Cernunnos himself. This red nature of the god, is precisely what we find in Irish myth, where the Dagda is the red god, whose sexual propensity with the Morrigna or mother goddess, brought fertility to the River Unius, upon which they had a massive sexual liaison, and all the land around.
One only has to think of the importance of the 'Who killed Cock Robin ?' rhyme, to know that this conceals a great mystery which the Druids bequeathed to us and indeed, oral tradition insisted that this rhyme was of vital consequence. 'I said the fly, with my little eye' is in direct comparison with the curious reference in Culhwch and Olwen to Drem, whose vision could encompass the entire country while a fly......... It is therefore a rhyme which corresponds with our most ancient British myth.
So I love my little robin and I know that he is a representative of the almighty god himself and if one wants a classic example of the power of the red god, then one could do no better than to study the frenetic nature of the Irish tale, Da Derga's Hostel.
The mysteries of the 'red' are quite something, to overwhelm the Irish high king, but then for the Druids, all this made perfect sense when red is the highest colour in alchemy.
Monday, 19 September 2016
The lapwing, guardian of the mysteries
The lapwing or plover, is a very mysterious bird. Sadly much rarer these days, its haunting cry is still firmly etched in my mind, when one could often hear it on the moors.
It was the lapwing that was the bird which was involved with the bringing together of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, whose entrance was made even more famous by Handel's stirring 'Entrance of the Queen of Sheba'. She was the ultimate lady of magic and mystery and the source of the Shekinah, which we now call the Holy Grail.
In Britain, the lapwing was a prophetic bird. Donald Mackay, in This Was My Glen, wrote about Broubster, SW of Thurso in Caithness. He tells us that old James Macrory was a prophet who foretold the coming of the Macdonalds to the Sandridge Estate, because lapwings calling in Gaelic between Broubster and Reay on the hillside, sung to him "Willock-a wease se Innes tha bhain ach 'se Domhnullach bhios.' This translates as 'Its Innes that's in, but its Macdonald that's coming.'
In one of the Welsh Triads, Trioedd Ynys Prydein number 84, the mysterious Battle of Cad Godeu or Battle of the Tree Tops, was brought about by a bitch, roebuck and plover (lapwing). This battle was partly about the secret knowledge of the power of the letters and the trees, but it is far more than that. The bitch, was as Robert Graves observed, the Goddess herself as we discover in the various Neolithic burial chambers named after the bitch, whereas the roebuck is the source of the chase through the tangled forest of those tree tops which emerge as combatants in the conflict with an unnamed enemy. Yet it is fairly obvious that the enemy of the trees just happens to be a rather overpopulated species who develops land, which should be left to nature. So the lapwing may be reduced in numbers, but her time will come again......
It was the lapwing that was the bird which was involved with the bringing together of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, whose entrance was made even more famous by Handel's stirring 'Entrance of the Queen of Sheba'. She was the ultimate lady of magic and mystery and the source of the Shekinah, which we now call the Holy Grail.
In Britain, the lapwing was a prophetic bird. Donald Mackay, in This Was My Glen, wrote about Broubster, SW of Thurso in Caithness. He tells us that old James Macrory was a prophet who foretold the coming of the Macdonalds to the Sandridge Estate, because lapwings calling in Gaelic between Broubster and Reay on the hillside, sung to him "Willock-a wease se Innes tha bhain ach 'se Domhnullach bhios.' This translates as 'Its Innes that's in, but its Macdonald that's coming.'
In one of the Welsh Triads, Trioedd Ynys Prydein number 84, the mysterious Battle of Cad Godeu or Battle of the Tree Tops, was brought about by a bitch, roebuck and plover (lapwing). This battle was partly about the secret knowledge of the power of the letters and the trees, but it is far more than that. The bitch, was as Robert Graves observed, the Goddess herself as we discover in the various Neolithic burial chambers named after the bitch, whereas the roebuck is the source of the chase through the tangled forest of those tree tops which emerge as combatants in the conflict with an unnamed enemy. Yet it is fairly obvious that the enemy of the trees just happens to be a rather overpopulated species who develops land, which should be left to nature. So the lapwing may be reduced in numbers, but her time will come again......
Friday, 2 September 2016
The Tale of Branwen contains the oldest tradition in the world
The tale of Branwen, in the Mabinogion, has so many esoteric episodes, that it is a veritable cornucopia for any aspiring alchemist. The key component to understanding this myth, upon which the entire Holy Grail corpus is based, lies in the very names of Bran and Branwen; brother and sister, god and goddess, black and white/black. Bran in Welsh, means crow or raven; black being the focus of the myth, while wen means white, so that Branwen means white raven, or effectively the whitening of the black.
In Hindu myth, it is Varuna who is god of water and the darkness. In Welsh, -v mutates as -f and -b, so that Bran is often spelt as Fran. This is effectively Vran as an Indo-European common ancestry shared with Varuna. Bran is son of the water god Llyr, so the water and darkness components of these Indo-European gods are inherent in their ancestry and common identity.
These days, most people view the darkness and watery cold as being the antithesis of congeniality and comfort, as indeed they frequently are, but to the alchemist or spiritual practitioner, they are the the ultimate source of the very light which those that seek enlightenment, must discover for themselves. The name Branwen as white darkness, reveals the truth of this concept, which is confirmed by the opening lines in the Book of Genesis, where God incarnates light from the darkness as the prime motif of the act of creation.
This is an eternal truth, just as in Handel's Messiah, those who live in the shadow of great darkness will, within a short period of time from now, witness a great light of the glory of the lord and a renewed Golden Age will spring from the darkness of an old corrupt Iron Age.
Bran, the god of darkness, must seek out his light in the darkness sister in Ireland. To do this, he must traverse the Irish Sea from Wales, but the text contains a mysterious time slip which covers several thousand years in time. The English translation of G and T Jones, is rendered '....and in those days the deep water was not wide. He went by wading. There were but two rivers, the Lli and the Archan were they called, but thereafter the deep water grew wide when the deep overflowed the kingdoms.'
There has only been one period in historical time when the Irish Sea could have been two rivers and that was in about 10,000BC, during the last Ice Age, when sea levels were sufficiently low enough to have made most of the Irish Sea dry land, with evidence, from Admiralty charts that, indeed, two rivers would have dominated this wide landscape. Indeed, the proposed drop in sea levels suggested by scientists, would agree with this proposition that most of the Irish Sea was dry land.
This ancient tradition, would have been passed down the generations for over 10,000 years, which would completely overturn the notion upheld by proponents, such as Ronald Hutton, who felt that such long term transmission of myth and history was not possible. In fact, there is a considerable body of evidence to support how reliable such long term transmission of tradition can be, and in this case, the naming of these two rivers, where Lli means flood, suggests that the importance of this history, never left the powerful memory of the Welsh consciousness. The number of coastal flood legends in Cardigan Bay and elsewhere, also support this case.
We are then left with some very strange conundrums in this passage of Bran across to Ireland. The text states that he 'sailed', but at the same time there is no sea to cross with ships, so that Ireland and Wales were only separated by a large river or two. This appears to suggest, that two separate traditions were incorporated into the text, or more to the point, that there was a conscious updating of the tradition which meant that both ways of crossing were true, both wading a river, as this giant god was able to do later in Ireland as he stretched to form a bridge over the River Liffey, and crossing the sea by boat.
I would stress here, that time and space bend and bend, to the point that what was true millenia in the past, is also true now.
But then only those who study Fulcanelli, Ripley and the ancient cosmologists, could possibly get there heads round that.
In Hindu myth, it is Varuna who is god of water and the darkness. In Welsh, -v mutates as -f and -b, so that Bran is often spelt as Fran. This is effectively Vran as an Indo-European common ancestry shared with Varuna. Bran is son of the water god Llyr, so the water and darkness components of these Indo-European gods are inherent in their ancestry and common identity.
These days, most people view the darkness and watery cold as being the antithesis of congeniality and comfort, as indeed they frequently are, but to the alchemist or spiritual practitioner, they are the the ultimate source of the very light which those that seek enlightenment, must discover for themselves. The name Branwen as white darkness, reveals the truth of this concept, which is confirmed by the opening lines in the Book of Genesis, where God incarnates light from the darkness as the prime motif of the act of creation.
This is an eternal truth, just as in Handel's Messiah, those who live in the shadow of great darkness will, within a short period of time from now, witness a great light of the glory of the lord and a renewed Golden Age will spring from the darkness of an old corrupt Iron Age.
Bran, the god of darkness, must seek out his light in the darkness sister in Ireland. To do this, he must traverse the Irish Sea from Wales, but the text contains a mysterious time slip which covers several thousand years in time. The English translation of G and T Jones, is rendered '....and in those days the deep water was not wide. He went by wading. There were but two rivers, the Lli and the Archan were they called, but thereafter the deep water grew wide when the deep overflowed the kingdoms.'
There has only been one period in historical time when the Irish Sea could have been two rivers and that was in about 10,000BC, during the last Ice Age, when sea levels were sufficiently low enough to have made most of the Irish Sea dry land, with evidence, from Admiralty charts that, indeed, two rivers would have dominated this wide landscape. Indeed, the proposed drop in sea levels suggested by scientists, would agree with this proposition that most of the Irish Sea was dry land.
This ancient tradition, would have been passed down the generations for over 10,000 years, which would completely overturn the notion upheld by proponents, such as Ronald Hutton, who felt that such long term transmission of myth and history was not possible. In fact, there is a considerable body of evidence to support how reliable such long term transmission of tradition can be, and in this case, the naming of these two rivers, where Lli means flood, suggests that the importance of this history, never left the powerful memory of the Welsh consciousness. The number of coastal flood legends in Cardigan Bay and elsewhere, also support this case.
We are then left with some very strange conundrums in this passage of Bran across to Ireland. The text states that he 'sailed', but at the same time there is no sea to cross with ships, so that Ireland and Wales were only separated by a large river or two. This appears to suggest, that two separate traditions were incorporated into the text, or more to the point, that there was a conscious updating of the tradition which meant that both ways of crossing were true, both wading a river, as this giant god was able to do later in Ireland as he stretched to form a bridge over the River Liffey, and crossing the sea by boat.
I would stress here, that time and space bend and bend, to the point that what was true millenia in the past, is also true now.
But then only those who study Fulcanelli, Ripley and the ancient cosmologists, could possibly get there heads round that.
Saturday, 30 July 2016
King Arthur's sacred marriage at Morvah Cornwall
In issues 88, 2015 and 89, 2016 of Meyn Mamvro, a journal devoted to Cornish Earth Mysteries, I wrote two articles concerning the Hieros Gamos, or sacred marriage of King Arthur and Guinevere at Morvah in the far west of Cornwall.
This occurred at the god Lleu or Lugh's feast day on August 1st each year, which in Ireland was known as Lughnasad. This date, which has moved over time to about August 15th, due to the Procession of the Equinoxes, was considered a very important time of celebration and ancient rites in Ireland. more especially with the complex mythology of the Mother Goddess Aine of Cnoc Aine south of Limerick, the harvest first fruits and bent or crooked dark god known as Crom Ddu, who is a dark version of Lugh the Light Bringer himself. Lugh, otherwise known as Lucifer, was the Morning Star of Venus and Venus was a goddess born from the ocean.
Morvah faces the Atlantic Ocean on the far west of Cornwall and the two aforementioned articles revealed how the mythology of this place involved Arthur's twin sister, Morgana as a crow, Arthur himself as a crow or raven as the dark side death preceding the light of birth of this sacred marriage.
The fact that it occurred at Morvah, raises several questions. Sunset is the key visible time at this western facing viewpoint, the realm of death preceding the sunrise of rebirth. Arthur and Guinevere here are given alternative names; Jack the Hammer and Genevra, which evidently reminds one of Arthur's Norse counterpart, Thor and his cosmological thunder hammer, who in one adventure attempts to drain the worlds ocean while drinking from a vessel.
Although the myth has only survived in partial form, it would appear that it involved some ancient rites concerning the ocean. The word Mor in Morvah, means ocean or sea and Morgana herself was a goddess of Morgans, who are mermaids. The fact that some kind of marriage between a man and a mermaid occurs a little up the same western facing coastal village of Zennor, speaks volumes. This is similar to the western facing tribal origin myths in Southern California, which are explored in my articles.
So what strange power is invoked at Morvah first fruits ? It is evidently linked to the Goddess of Sovereignty because the ocean is the source of the origins of life itself. Recent work has shown that life first emerged on Mother Earth in deep volcanic vents in the guise of single cell creatures which lived on hydrogen or carbon. This is replicated in the womb, where the darkness of the crow is the cradle for the single cell egg, before it meets the sperm.
This makes this place very special as the first incarnation of life on the land and therefore with birthing.
This occurred at the god Lleu or Lugh's feast day on August 1st each year, which in Ireland was known as Lughnasad. This date, which has moved over time to about August 15th, due to the Procession of the Equinoxes, was considered a very important time of celebration and ancient rites in Ireland. more especially with the complex mythology of the Mother Goddess Aine of Cnoc Aine south of Limerick, the harvest first fruits and bent or crooked dark god known as Crom Ddu, who is a dark version of Lugh the Light Bringer himself. Lugh, otherwise known as Lucifer, was the Morning Star of Venus and Venus was a goddess born from the ocean.
Morvah faces the Atlantic Ocean on the far west of Cornwall and the two aforementioned articles revealed how the mythology of this place involved Arthur's twin sister, Morgana as a crow, Arthur himself as a crow or raven as the dark side death preceding the light of birth of this sacred marriage.
The fact that it occurred at Morvah, raises several questions. Sunset is the key visible time at this western facing viewpoint, the realm of death preceding the sunrise of rebirth. Arthur and Guinevere here are given alternative names; Jack the Hammer and Genevra, which evidently reminds one of Arthur's Norse counterpart, Thor and his cosmological thunder hammer, who in one adventure attempts to drain the worlds ocean while drinking from a vessel.
Although the myth has only survived in partial form, it would appear that it involved some ancient rites concerning the ocean. The word Mor in Morvah, means ocean or sea and Morgana herself was a goddess of Morgans, who are mermaids. The fact that some kind of marriage between a man and a mermaid occurs a little up the same western facing coastal village of Zennor, speaks volumes. This is similar to the western facing tribal origin myths in Southern California, which are explored in my articles.
So what strange power is invoked at Morvah first fruits ? It is evidently linked to the Goddess of Sovereignty because the ocean is the source of the origins of life itself. Recent work has shown that life first emerged on Mother Earth in deep volcanic vents in the guise of single cell creatures which lived on hydrogen or carbon. This is replicated in the womb, where the darkness of the crow is the cradle for the single cell egg, before it meets the sperm.
This makes this place very special as the first incarnation of life on the land and therefore with birthing.
Monday, 2 May 2016
Brittania, Brigantia and Albina of Albion
Irish texts provide us with three ancient names of Ireland, called after the names of three goddesses; Erin, Fotla and Banba. Erin gave her name to Eriu or Erin, while Fotla and Banba were named in texts as poetic names of Ireland.
The ancient name of Britain was Albion, but Britannia was also used as well. It would be logical to assume that at one time, there were three names for Britain, based on the names of three goddesses.
We lack the text which might reveal this third name, but there are plenty of goddesses to choose from. There are many manuscripts which relate the tale of Lady Albina arriving on these shores, as the leader of 33 sisters. Classical myth also tell of the giant Albion, the son of Poseidon, who fought Hercules in Provence and who was clearly a male version of Lady Albina, so common as a pairing in myth.
Britannia, mentioned in classical sources, is depicted on our coinage as a goddess. Nennius about 800AD and Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1135AD, both tell of Brutus landing on these shores and giving his name to Britain; a myth which suggests both a male and female version of the same name.
The furthest north point in Ireland, on Malin Head, was called Banba's Crown. This is directly comparable with the furthest north point on mainland Britain, next to Dunnet Head, being called Briga Head. Briga appears to be none other than Brigantia who was the goddess of the Brigantes as the largest tribe in Britain, named after the maiden goddess Bride. In Scotland, the crone or Cailleach, ruled the winter, but had to yield to Bride as the spring came in; hence St Brides Day is February Ist, looking forward to the spring. Banba too was a maiden goddess as her name can be taken as young deer.
It is hard to say whether Britannia and Brigantia were intended as the same goddess. However, as Albion was an ancient name of Britain, it is perhaps Lady Albina who equates to Eriu, who is possibly the mother of their respective realms.
That leaves the crone, who in Britain was Ceridwen or the 'Fair Loved One'. In Welsh, cariad still means love, and Ceridwen was sometimes called Cariadwen. In the Tale of Taliesin, Ceridwen is an old witch, who has little Gwion stir her magic cauldron, but three drops spill out onto his finger, and he puts it into his mouth to cool it down, and from then on he can see all things, past, present and future. She is furious that he has taken the essence of the brew intended for her son, shape shifts and pursues him in various guises, until he becomes a grain of corn, which she, as a chicken consumes. She becomes pregnant with him, and giving birth to him he is renamed Taliesin, or radiant brow because his third eye is fully opened.
In some older books, Ceridwen is associated with her pig. This is not actually found in older texts such as medieval Welsh poems, but this concept seems to have derived from some lost tradition. It would be reasonable to assume, that as pigs were underworld offerings at the Eleusis Mysteries in Greece, then their habit of burrowing was associated with the darkness and mortality of the underworld; hence an appropriate symbol for a crone goddess.
Of course, I can only suggest Ceridwen as the counterpart to Irish Fotla, as the third name for Britain, but though it is uncertain, it is a credible proposition.
The ancient name of Britain was Albion, but Britannia was also used as well. It would be logical to assume that at one time, there were three names for Britain, based on the names of three goddesses.
We lack the text which might reveal this third name, but there are plenty of goddesses to choose from. There are many manuscripts which relate the tale of Lady Albina arriving on these shores, as the leader of 33 sisters. Classical myth also tell of the giant Albion, the son of Poseidon, who fought Hercules in Provence and who was clearly a male version of Lady Albina, so common as a pairing in myth.
Britannia, mentioned in classical sources, is depicted on our coinage as a goddess. Nennius about 800AD and Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1135AD, both tell of Brutus landing on these shores and giving his name to Britain; a myth which suggests both a male and female version of the same name.
The furthest north point in Ireland, on Malin Head, was called Banba's Crown. This is directly comparable with the furthest north point on mainland Britain, next to Dunnet Head, being called Briga Head. Briga appears to be none other than Brigantia who was the goddess of the Brigantes as the largest tribe in Britain, named after the maiden goddess Bride. In Scotland, the crone or Cailleach, ruled the winter, but had to yield to Bride as the spring came in; hence St Brides Day is February Ist, looking forward to the spring. Banba too was a maiden goddess as her name can be taken as young deer.
It is hard to say whether Britannia and Brigantia were intended as the same goddess. However, as Albion was an ancient name of Britain, it is perhaps Lady Albina who equates to Eriu, who is possibly the mother of their respective realms.
That leaves the crone, who in Britain was Ceridwen or the 'Fair Loved One'. In Welsh, cariad still means love, and Ceridwen was sometimes called Cariadwen. In the Tale of Taliesin, Ceridwen is an old witch, who has little Gwion stir her magic cauldron, but three drops spill out onto his finger, and he puts it into his mouth to cool it down, and from then on he can see all things, past, present and future. She is furious that he has taken the essence of the brew intended for her son, shape shifts and pursues him in various guises, until he becomes a grain of corn, which she, as a chicken consumes. She becomes pregnant with him, and giving birth to him he is renamed Taliesin, or radiant brow because his third eye is fully opened.
In some older books, Ceridwen is associated with her pig. This is not actually found in older texts such as medieval Welsh poems, but this concept seems to have derived from some lost tradition. It would be reasonable to assume, that as pigs were underworld offerings at the Eleusis Mysteries in Greece, then their habit of burrowing was associated with the darkness and mortality of the underworld; hence an appropriate symbol for a crone goddess.
Of course, I can only suggest Ceridwen as the counterpart to Irish Fotla, as the third name for Britain, but though it is uncertain, it is a credible proposition.
Monday, 18 April 2016
The alphabet as related to months of the year
The White Goddess by Robert Graves, is one of those books which shifts from inspired genius to utter garbage in equal measure. Its not that his speculation about a tree calendar is totally out of order, such a concept is credible given the following evidence presented below, but his ordering of the relevant months is based on little more than guesswork and has been rightly been dismissed by subsequent scholarship; although so called pagan calendars purport to convey his tree months as somehow based on tradition, which it is not.
There is a good deal of scholarly debate concerning Ogam (pronounced owham) as to whether it is totally based on tree names at all, but as there were clearly lost names for trees in Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees, which is a masterpiece of ancient magical lore, the evidence for this is only partial and incomplete, given the meanings of the letters may be glyphs which refer indirectly to the meaning of trees. When Nostradamus made a study of the meaning of the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, it was perhaps not because the meanings of the Egyptian hieroglyphs he gave were always the translation we now give, but more that his was the tripartite levels of meaning of hieroglyphs that Egyptian esoteric tradition bestowed on it. Having said that, scholars do acknowledge that this possible 11th century composition does contain the correct meaning for some of the hieroglyphs, even if they don't fully understand the rest, whether garbled or real.
The study of the exact or probable translation of Cad Goddeu by Marged Haycock into modern Welsh and parts of it in English, reveals some precise wording which reflects some complex cosmology which takes a great deal of effort to work out its precise meaning. 'The head of the column, the head was a woman' made no sense to me at first, until the penny dropped one day that the column is in fact the cosmic axis which is the spine in the human frame and in Fulcanelli's alchemical excursions we are informed that long after he disappeared, he was seen in the Pyrenees in the guise of one of three young ladies. His yang had become yin and a triple goddess to boot, but only those versed in metaphysics could possibly comprehend how this reversal in both age and sex could conceivably have occurred.
But then those who can't conceive the extraordinary mystery which is our Mother Earth, would never attain the eternal youth of the Philosopher's Stone !
So if Robert Graves was working from inadequate translations and even a brilliant scholar such as Marged Haycock cannot translate every single tree name, then we cannot expect his work to be anything other than a partial interpretation with some interesting speculation. Equally, the C14th Auraceipt na n-Eces Irish text attempted to equate each Ogam letter with a tree, but the meanings of the names had already been lost, so we have no idea how accurate these ascriptions were.
Graves suggests that each of the 13 consonants relates to a month of the year. He excludes two consonants which he says are late additions, for which he gives no evidence. He puts beth (birch) first at winter solstice; Dec 24 -Jan 20, then Luis (rowan) Jan 21-Feb 17, nion (ash) Feb 18-Mar17 and so on. Whether ash should be third is debatable because he follows Roderick O'Flaherty's Ogygia of the 17th century, whereas earlier texts have willow as third; perhaps reflecting an ancient variant tradition if Ogygia is correct. Ogam was known as the Beth Luis Nin, where nin mean forked branch, so possibly letters. So he may have either followed this in error, or it was an alternative ordering of the letters.
We know that Ogam is based on the Latin alphabet but it is much more complex than that. The Phoenicians compiled the alphabet and passed it on to the Greeks and thence to Rome, but they colonised Carthage and recent evidence is revealing that a Carthaginian port was set up in Poole harbour with a similarity to Motya and other Mediterranean ports (Caitlin Green's blogs including one entitled A Mediterranean Anchor Stock). This would suggest that it was a direct Punic influence of German, Welsh and Irish, which would neatly explain the fact that beth or birch in Gaelic is identical to beth in Hebrew in a virtually identical alphabet to Phoenicia, where both are the first letter of there respective alphabets. Both Mount Batten in Plymouth Sound and Thanet in Kent reveal distinct signs of Carthaginian trade and even of burials on Thanet.
If this is correct, then the Roman influence came long after the Greek and Punic impact on our native alphabet and on Ogam. Turning to Babylonia,there appears to be possible signs that the months of the year were connected with the alphabet but it demands a good deal more research to ascertain how or why this emerged and its influence on Phoenicia. We know that the earliest alphabet was inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics as well as Canaanite, so a Babylonian input should not surprise us, as there was constant interchange between the three cultures.
In Hebrew, aleph meaning bull, is the letter A and Arah Aru in Babylonia, was the month of the bull or Taurus, where Aru as bull, was like aleph, a word beginning with A The letter B is denoted by beth meaning a booth or tent and a temple building. In Irish Ogam, beth is the birch tree which had in prehistory long served as an important building material for tents and Asiatic yurts. If one assumes that the letter A as the bull, relates to Taurus in the spring, then B as a tent would relate to the following month of Gemini because in Babylonia this month Simanu means brick making or in other words building. The Assyrian calendar calls this expressly, the month of building. Gimel the camel is the third Hebrew letter and G is replaced by C in British. It seems remarkable that this reflected in the gimel to camel translation, from G to C. In Ogam this would be the rowan or Irish luis, but in old Welsh rowan is Caerthenn, more appropriate to the letter C. This is the month of Cancer, motherly and caring. In Babylonia it was the month of Dumuzi, known as Tammuz in the Book of Ezekiel.
Camels carry burdens, whether human or baggage and the month of Tammuz was so called, from the fact that it was at this time after the summer solstice, that Tammuz/Dumuzi descended down to the underworld in death, as the Sun descends does in winter, when women would weep for the loss of Tammuz. The month of Cancer at this time, is the sign of the mother who worries for her daughter, as we find in the Greek version where Persephone descends down to the underworld to marry Hades, leaving her mother Demeter, weeping and distraught in search for her. Daleth in Hebrew and Phoenician, means door. In Ogam, D is duir the oak and in Cad Goddeu, the Battle of the Trees, oak is the 'valiant doorkeeper'. Doors were often made from oak and studded in iron to prevent a battering an attack, indeed I once lived in an old Shropshire cottage with such a massive studded door taken from a former Norman chapel. Our word door appears to be directly related to Irish duir for oak, as the Battle of the Trees indicates.
As the 4th letter of the alphabet, D as the oak would be the month of Leo the strong lion; which no one could argue is not an adjective similarly applied to the oak. The Babylonian month Abu here means lion. In the nursery rhyme, the Lion and the Unicorn, we have perhaps, an indirect reference to the strength of the summer heat at its strongest in Leo, with the unicorn being Capricorn in winter, when the Sun is at its weakest. The old British tradition of a combat between winter and summer, the holly boys of winter and the oak boys of summer, reinforces this image.
After the letter D, there are problems when comparing our Roman based alphabet with the original Hebrew/Phoenician, which demands further research, but it is evident that there is a logical comparison with the letters of the alphabet and the ancient naming of the months of the zodiac.
If the letter E relates to Virgo as the goddess Ishtar in Babylonia, then this might explain why the mysterious letter E was inscribed over the Temple of Delphi, originally sacred to Mother Earth and the pythia or python, according to Plutarch. It signified the 5th letter of the Greek alphabet and was similar to the original Phoenician version of this letter. Ishtar, as the amorous queen of heaven, was the lover of Tammuz who as the letter C descended to the underworld. like Osiris and the goddess Isis of Egypt.Unfortunately, the meaning of E as eadhadh in Ogam is unknown, although the C14th Auraceipt na n-Eces suggests the tree aspen, which may or may not be correct.
The excellent blog www.maysaloon.org/2012/07/syrian-calendar-treasure-trove.html reveals how the Hebrew calendar is based on the Babylonian calendar from the period when the Hebrews were captive in Babylonia. It gives the meanings of each month. It seems likely that the alphabet was already based on this ordering of the months and later incorporated into Ogam. Of course, the climate in Babylonia, was different to that in the British Isles, so sowing and planting times in these ancient months do not equate to our present latitude.
It should be noted that the Babylonian zodiac began with the month of Nisanu, Hebrew Nisan or Aries, so why do the letters begin with the second month Arah Aru or Taurus ?
Well the obvious explanation for this was that the beginning of the year worldwide was originally marked by the setting and rising of the Pleiades above the bull of Taurus. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, every zodiac sign determines our current age, which for the Babylonians was Aries, for Christianity was Pisces, hence the fish as symbol of Christianity and now has become Aquarius, the sign of science and technology, the flooding of the water pourer as we have witnessed so much recently. The age of Taurus was around 4000-3000BC, a period when the Sumerian script and Egyptian hieroglyphs were becoming used. The alphabet was first being used about 1000BC, but had its origins far earlier, linked to Egyptian hieroglyphs first used about 3500BC, in the age of Taurus. It should be noted that animal symbols for the signs of the zodiac are incredibly archaic. Gallo-Roman and Old Irish references to the Taurean Bull with 3 cranes on its back, evidently the Pleiades, are identical to the crane above the bull as depicted at the 9600BC temple of Gobleki Tepe in S. Turkey.
For the original formation of language as associated with the parts of the body, see Conceptual Transfer and the Emergence of the Sign, Dennis Philps, Cognitextes Vol. 2 2009, available online. It is suggested by scholars in this article, that phonemes as the basic sounds in language, developed from the shapes formed by the making of sound in the mouth and linked to the shape of the tools such as prehistoric flints. The word queen as kun relates to genu as knee and jawbone, linked to sexual procreation and childbirth. Thus kun and cunny/cunt for the vagina, is linked to knowing and knowledge. As Taurus rules the neck and jaw and bulls are renowned for their sexual prowess,it becomes evident that there is a common link to the formation of language and the choice of animals for the signs of the zodiac with the incredible fertility and growth of nature in the Taurean spring after the depths of winter. In Britain, the month of Taurus is the most rapid period for growth in flowers and leaves on trees. Taurus was thus fertility and food, while the following month of Gemini construction, was the second most basic human need, which was shelter.
There is a good deal of scholarly debate concerning Ogam (pronounced owham) as to whether it is totally based on tree names at all, but as there were clearly lost names for trees in Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees, which is a masterpiece of ancient magical lore, the evidence for this is only partial and incomplete, given the meanings of the letters may be glyphs which refer indirectly to the meaning of trees. When Nostradamus made a study of the meaning of the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, it was perhaps not because the meanings of the Egyptian hieroglyphs he gave were always the translation we now give, but more that his was the tripartite levels of meaning of hieroglyphs that Egyptian esoteric tradition bestowed on it. Having said that, scholars do acknowledge that this possible 11th century composition does contain the correct meaning for some of the hieroglyphs, even if they don't fully understand the rest, whether garbled or real.
The study of the exact or probable translation of Cad Goddeu by Marged Haycock into modern Welsh and parts of it in English, reveals some precise wording which reflects some complex cosmology which takes a great deal of effort to work out its precise meaning. 'The head of the column, the head was a woman' made no sense to me at first, until the penny dropped one day that the column is in fact the cosmic axis which is the spine in the human frame and in Fulcanelli's alchemical excursions we are informed that long after he disappeared, he was seen in the Pyrenees in the guise of one of three young ladies. His yang had become yin and a triple goddess to boot, but only those versed in metaphysics could possibly comprehend how this reversal in both age and sex could conceivably have occurred.
But then those who can't conceive the extraordinary mystery which is our Mother Earth, would never attain the eternal youth of the Philosopher's Stone !
So if Robert Graves was working from inadequate translations and even a brilliant scholar such as Marged Haycock cannot translate every single tree name, then we cannot expect his work to be anything other than a partial interpretation with some interesting speculation. Equally, the C14th Auraceipt na n-Eces Irish text attempted to equate each Ogam letter with a tree, but the meanings of the names had already been lost, so we have no idea how accurate these ascriptions were.
Graves suggests that each of the 13 consonants relates to a month of the year. He excludes two consonants which he says are late additions, for which he gives no evidence. He puts beth (birch) first at winter solstice; Dec 24 -Jan 20, then Luis (rowan) Jan 21-Feb 17, nion (ash) Feb 18-Mar17 and so on. Whether ash should be third is debatable because he follows Roderick O'Flaherty's Ogygia of the 17th century, whereas earlier texts have willow as third; perhaps reflecting an ancient variant tradition if Ogygia is correct. Ogam was known as the Beth Luis Nin, where nin mean forked branch, so possibly letters. So he may have either followed this in error, or it was an alternative ordering of the letters.
We know that Ogam is based on the Latin alphabet but it is much more complex than that. The Phoenicians compiled the alphabet and passed it on to the Greeks and thence to Rome, but they colonised Carthage and recent evidence is revealing that a Carthaginian port was set up in Poole harbour with a similarity to Motya and other Mediterranean ports (Caitlin Green's blogs including one entitled A Mediterranean Anchor Stock). This would suggest that it was a direct Punic influence of German, Welsh and Irish, which would neatly explain the fact that beth or birch in Gaelic is identical to beth in Hebrew in a virtually identical alphabet to Phoenicia, where both are the first letter of there respective alphabets. Both Mount Batten in Plymouth Sound and Thanet in Kent reveal distinct signs of Carthaginian trade and even of burials on Thanet.
If this is correct, then the Roman influence came long after the Greek and Punic impact on our native alphabet and on Ogam. Turning to Babylonia,there appears to be possible signs that the months of the year were connected with the alphabet but it demands a good deal more research to ascertain how or why this emerged and its influence on Phoenicia. We know that the earliest alphabet was inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics as well as Canaanite, so a Babylonian input should not surprise us, as there was constant interchange between the three cultures.
In Hebrew, aleph meaning bull, is the letter A and Arah Aru in Babylonia, was the month of the bull or Taurus, where Aru as bull, was like aleph, a word beginning with A The letter B is denoted by beth meaning a booth or tent and a temple building. In Irish Ogam, beth is the birch tree which had in prehistory long served as an important building material for tents and Asiatic yurts. If one assumes that the letter A as the bull, relates to Taurus in the spring, then B as a tent would relate to the following month of Gemini because in Babylonia this month Simanu means brick making or in other words building. The Assyrian calendar calls this expressly, the month of building. Gimel the camel is the third Hebrew letter and G is replaced by C in British. It seems remarkable that this reflected in the gimel to camel translation, from G to C. In Ogam this would be the rowan or Irish luis, but in old Welsh rowan is Caerthenn, more appropriate to the letter C. This is the month of Cancer, motherly and caring. In Babylonia it was the month of Dumuzi, known as Tammuz in the Book of Ezekiel.
Camels carry burdens, whether human or baggage and the month of Tammuz was so called, from the fact that it was at this time after the summer solstice, that Tammuz/Dumuzi descended down to the underworld in death, as the Sun descends does in winter, when women would weep for the loss of Tammuz. The month of Cancer at this time, is the sign of the mother who worries for her daughter, as we find in the Greek version where Persephone descends down to the underworld to marry Hades, leaving her mother Demeter, weeping and distraught in search for her. Daleth in Hebrew and Phoenician, means door. In Ogam, D is duir the oak and in Cad Goddeu, the Battle of the Trees, oak is the 'valiant doorkeeper'. Doors were often made from oak and studded in iron to prevent a battering an attack, indeed I once lived in an old Shropshire cottage with such a massive studded door taken from a former Norman chapel. Our word door appears to be directly related to Irish duir for oak, as the Battle of the Trees indicates.
As the 4th letter of the alphabet, D as the oak would be the month of Leo the strong lion; which no one could argue is not an adjective similarly applied to the oak. The Babylonian month Abu here means lion. In the nursery rhyme, the Lion and the Unicorn, we have perhaps, an indirect reference to the strength of the summer heat at its strongest in Leo, with the unicorn being Capricorn in winter, when the Sun is at its weakest. The old British tradition of a combat between winter and summer, the holly boys of winter and the oak boys of summer, reinforces this image.
After the letter D, there are problems when comparing our Roman based alphabet with the original Hebrew/Phoenician, which demands further research, but it is evident that there is a logical comparison with the letters of the alphabet and the ancient naming of the months of the zodiac.
If the letter E relates to Virgo as the goddess Ishtar in Babylonia, then this might explain why the mysterious letter E was inscribed over the Temple of Delphi, originally sacred to Mother Earth and the pythia or python, according to Plutarch. It signified the 5th letter of the Greek alphabet and was similar to the original Phoenician version of this letter. Ishtar, as the amorous queen of heaven, was the lover of Tammuz who as the letter C descended to the underworld. like Osiris and the goddess Isis of Egypt.Unfortunately, the meaning of E as eadhadh in Ogam is unknown, although the C14th Auraceipt na n-Eces suggests the tree aspen, which may or may not be correct.
The excellent blog www.maysaloon.org/2012/07/syrian-calendar-treasure-trove.html reveals how the Hebrew calendar is based on the Babylonian calendar from the period when the Hebrews were captive in Babylonia. It gives the meanings of each month. It seems likely that the alphabet was already based on this ordering of the months and later incorporated into Ogam. Of course, the climate in Babylonia, was different to that in the British Isles, so sowing and planting times in these ancient months do not equate to our present latitude.
It should be noted that the Babylonian zodiac began with the month of Nisanu, Hebrew Nisan or Aries, so why do the letters begin with the second month Arah Aru or Taurus ?
Well the obvious explanation for this was that the beginning of the year worldwide was originally marked by the setting and rising of the Pleiades above the bull of Taurus. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, every zodiac sign determines our current age, which for the Babylonians was Aries, for Christianity was Pisces, hence the fish as symbol of Christianity and now has become Aquarius, the sign of science and technology, the flooding of the water pourer as we have witnessed so much recently. The age of Taurus was around 4000-3000BC, a period when the Sumerian script and Egyptian hieroglyphs were becoming used. The alphabet was first being used about 1000BC, but had its origins far earlier, linked to Egyptian hieroglyphs first used about 3500BC, in the age of Taurus. It should be noted that animal symbols for the signs of the zodiac are incredibly archaic. Gallo-Roman and Old Irish references to the Taurean Bull with 3 cranes on its back, evidently the Pleiades, are identical to the crane above the bull as depicted at the 9600BC temple of Gobleki Tepe in S. Turkey.
For the original formation of language as associated with the parts of the body, see Conceptual Transfer and the Emergence of the Sign, Dennis Philps, Cognitextes Vol. 2 2009, available online. It is suggested by scholars in this article, that phonemes as the basic sounds in language, developed from the shapes formed by the making of sound in the mouth and linked to the shape of the tools such as prehistoric flints. The word queen as kun relates to genu as knee and jawbone, linked to sexual procreation and childbirth. Thus kun and cunny/cunt for the vagina, is linked to knowing and knowledge. As Taurus rules the neck and jaw and bulls are renowned for their sexual prowess,it becomes evident that there is a common link to the formation of language and the choice of animals for the signs of the zodiac with the incredible fertility and growth of nature in the Taurean spring after the depths of winter. In Britain, the month of Taurus is the most rapid period for growth in flowers and leaves on trees. Taurus was thus fertility and food, while the following month of Gemini construction, was the second most basic human need, which was shelter.
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