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| The Significance of Monuments |
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megalith6
Joined:
28-10-2001
Messages: 154
from London UK
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|  New Message Posted!2013-06-19 01:46
Feanor posted 10-06-2013 at 14:06
"In different Cultures the Moon has shifted its allegiance back and forth between male & female several times. Many mythologies feature female lunar deities, such as the Greek goddesses Phoebe, Artemis, Selene and Hecate as well as the Chinese goddess Chang'e.
"Male lunar gods are also frequent, such as Sin of the Mesopotamians, Mani of the Germanic tribes, the Japanese god Tsukuyomi, and so on. "
Sin is indeed a male moon god - the Middle Eastern archetype was a bull, lunar bull, echoed in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This 'bull of heaven' had a mate of course, I conjecture a bovine sun goddess and I am reminded of the ancient Egyptian Hathor who was succeeded in some ways by the solar Isis with the red sun between her cow's horns. In late classical pagan antiquity Apuleius would depict Isis as a moon deity and you can see the drift to reverse polarity from here I feel. From archaic Greek religion goddesses such as Artemis come down to us with suggestions of an erstwhile solar identification: the Cerynitian Hind for example was a golden-horned (female) deer sacred to the goddess Artemis, and deer being fleet can be seen to have solar mythical associations, especially when the colour gold is included.
So yes, I agree absolutely that there is a healthy sprinkling of gender equality in sun and moon mythology but I will never rest easy until every single deity is traced to the earliest stages of cult so that we can clearly see who the moon deities were and who the sun deities were, before cultural change inevitably imposed its accretions over earlier traditions.
Bests,
Ric
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megalith6
Joined:
28-10-2001
Messages: 154
from London UK
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-19 01:10
Rune posted 09-06-2013 at 23:50 about Ric saying: Perhaps the recumbent circles symbolise the moon - the moon which fragments and reassembles itself once a month, perhaps that is also the significance of the recumbent stone, that the lunar circle is somehow interrupted? This is just pure speculation though
Rune commented: "Maybe.
"One school of thought is that the recumbent stone allows the moon to roll across its length at standstill. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/recumbentcircles.htm
Apologies if this has been said before, certainly it's been discussed on other threads, not sure about this one and 38 pages are a few too many to check! If this is old news, please ignore."
No, you are quite right - that would be an archeoastronomical function of that prone 'space' in the circle. I was thinking of the overall symbolism.
R
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megalith6
Joined:
28-10-2001
Messages: 154
from London UK
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-19 01:04
Sorry George, that earlier post was an awkward paraphrase and so I include your full comment here.
George posted 04-06-2013 at 18:19 commenting on Ric's question: " what of the stations of the moon? "
George had asked: What seasonal festivals are based around standstills?
................................................
Ric: I'd love to know - don't those recumbent stone circles record lunar standstills?
http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/archaeology/special/recumbent.asp "
George: If we assume the alignment is from the centre of circle over the the centre of the recumbent then RSC's tend to be aligned on the a part of the horizon where the low summer full moon (not always in the standstill period ) can be seen to skim along the recumbent , but there are no historical or contemporary festivals associated with it .
Burl had suggested that they were aligned on the standstill but had failed to take the height of the horizon into account ,skewing the figures . Some certainly are , others aren't, some can't be , and one is aligned on the solstice .
.......................................
And to repeat, George asked: "What seasonal festivals are based around standstills?"
My point is that it is reasonable to theorise that these recumbent stone circles (link) marked seasonal, lunar observances - in effect possibly 'stations of the moon' and we may by all means discuss such a theory. We don't have to have chapter and verse before us to make some cautious guesses about the lunar observances that the megalithic peoples may (or may not) have made. We can talk about it, we can speculate.
Personally I cannot conceive of solar worship without equal reference to the moon, and vice versa, because it seems absurd to me.
Ric
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guile
Joined:
22-03-2010
Messages: 10
from y fêl ynys
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-14 18:38
cerrig - that's a marvelous post! unlike much of the posts on here i was able to understand and enjoy what you had to say. thank you for sharing your observations, truly intriguing and informative.
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ledgehammer
Joined:
29-06-2011
Messages: 746
from Surrey
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-14 17:35
Ric ,
yep that Shap. It has been said to house a similar double serpent avenue like Avebury.
I am very sceptical about Avebury being solely an alignment feature although there must be some. Its a shame that there's little left of it to compare with Avebury as this would be very indicative (perhaps).
best
Tom
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ledgehammer
Joined:
29-06-2011
Messages: 746
from Surrey
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-14 17:30
Many thanks,Do you mean this Shap please?http://www.visitcumbria.com/evnp/gunnerkeld-stone-circle/Will look out the 1955 Thom Have visited Avebury on numerous occasions. Someone ought to write a book not just about Avebury but about the Avebury region and all the lost monuments whose ghosts people the Avebury horizons. Perhaps Julian Cope or someone like that, and all the anecdotes and folklore which surrounds these sites.Avebury will never be restored at the present level of popular awareness and that suits EH and the National Trust. They don't like Avebury because as a 'business venture' it is a nuisance, it is too vast to fence off and charge admission for, and more visitors mean more maintenance costs, so the tragically low profile of Avebury suits EH and NT well.A new book might begin to reverse this - a book which lists and even attempts to profile all the recently discovered buried standing stones at Avebury and on the Beckhampton Avenue, some of which were uncovered only to be hastily spaded under again.The sad reburying of Avebury's stones is highly symbolic, a perpetuation of past actions - in that sense it can be seen as a ritual action. It prints it loud and clear that the mindset which mostly wrecked Avebury and many other sites from the Middle Ages to the 18th century is still very much alive and with us. It calls itself secular and progressive in the 21st century but it is basically puritan to the core. This mindset has been unfortunately exported to Ireland which is now seeing the final demise of its language and the destruction of its megalithic heritage on a catastrophic scale.Am based in south London.The more Stonehenge is explored and it's landscape context, the more we will learn about the monument. A lot of folklore is of the tall story category, but bits and pieces can shed light on the past. I was amazed to discover recently that the curiously named Heel Stone at Stonehenge is phonetically similar to the modern Welsh word for the sun. That could be a red herring, or possibly not?http://en.es-static.us/upl/2011/12/Stonehenge_heel_stone.jpegRic
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tiompan
Joined:
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Messages: 2706
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 22:29
Cerrig , I don't agree that the full moon rise on 23 June will be on the same poistion on the horizon as the winter solstice sun rise .Depending on where you are in the UK the two points could differ by 6- 9 degrees .
George
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tiompan
Joined:
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Messages: 2706
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 20:57
Of course it's a detectable event , people have known about it for millenia .
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cropredy
Joined:
01-01-2006
Messages: 5598
from Oxon
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 20:24
"Not a striking visual event"
A striking none visual and detectable event.
cropredy
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cropredy
Joined:
01-01-2006
Messages: 5598
from Oxon
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| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 20:20
Cerrig,
Wonderfull post...for a Welsh man.
cropredy
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