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FourWinds wrote:
These are exactly what I have been talking about, Fourwinds. People who won't accept them as a basis for constructing a druid sweat house ritual say it is because of the dating of such structures so far found place them as too modern to be pre-christian. There are descriptions in E Estyn Evans chapter "Kilns and Clochauns" in the book mentioned previously. It's the irish mythology I am not as familiar with. I've heard people that are into ancient Irish manuscript stuff (as opposed to Scottish living oral trad like me) who tell me there is a case to be made for these "too modern" structures to be the same as descriptions from early christian documents.
I was taken to one like this in Scotland when I was little, and was told it was merlin's oven. As an adult I haven't been able to find any mention of that particular one though. Same deal, hidden under the turf, corbelled to a hole in the ceiling. Google gave me Arthur's Oven (a roman artefact it seems) when I googled merlin's oven and scottish borders, though.
I always assumed the oven assosciation is from steam or smoke coming out of the hole making it look like an oven,(and maybe magician / shamanistic type inside meditating: hence the merlin connection). Anyway. I did come across some like these from this slideshow on other webpages Fourwinds. Googling terms like clochaun, irish sweat-house, allus bothan, fulacht fia/fiadh, tíghe alluis, taigh an fhallais, teach an allais, burnt mounds... etc
http://www.irishmegaliths.org.uk/sweathouses
http://www.irishmegaliths.org.uk/sweathouses2.htm This one tjj mentions is probably my favourite site, it has two pages though.
The second gives their possible uses. Nothing to say they were used for vision quests, nothing to say they weren't either, arguments can be made for either.
Which was my whole point, really. Aren't these a better basis for reconstructing what the druids might have used, if assuming they did use some kind of sweat house in the first place? Fever-Huts were a sweat house which was more temporary, and easier to build, if that is an issue, but they could just as easily be adapted to a spiritual use.
This site had at least begun a discussion on it, which includes the irish mythology side I mentioned, though the author isn't as convinced as when they began now:
http://paganachd.com/articles/fulachtfiadh1.html
Herodotus wrote: Book 3, Ch. 127
The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapour bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapour-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
Personally, all I'd want one for is for saining, not vision quests. As such I am perfectly happy to go to the turkish baths at any of the swimming pools around the city. If I won the lottery though, I'd build one at the bottom of the garden, maybe.
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