moss
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Re: Ballachulish figurine
Mar 06, 2010, 14:22
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Gwass wrote: Think I read the Sweet Track figure was possibly a hermaphrodite! There was a hollow in the genital area which someone suggested could have been for a removable phallus!
Also read something in Miranda Green's book The Quest For The Shaman that transgendered people or animals were linked to some ritual beliefs being able to change from one thing to another or humans taking on spirits of animals and transforming into them.
Also beleive that the carving of wooden figures lasted well into the iron age
Well thanks to Branwen, been deep in thought about hermaphrodites, basically Scandinavian ones, does such a thing exist considering the roman/british gods being very male and female. It looks like the Ballachulish figure (just under 5 foot) maybe Scandinavian, given its similarities to the wooden god figures in Glob's Bog people, and googling turned up these gods that are linked...Freyja/Freyr, Njoror/Nerthus, Njordr/Skaoi, brothers and sisters I think... so given that the figure was found near or in a field with the name Friddai's field (friedag), and a 19th century antiquarian is to be believed it could be Scandinavian..
So why a removable phallus - ritual maybe, the wooden goddess Nerthus was brought out in May to celebrate the arrival of spring, wheeled round in a cart by a pair of sacrifical males, who were then drowned I believe ;).
The 'god-dolly' Bell Track not Sweet according to the info below, is Neolithic, so the dates between are large.... also been reading about the shape-shifting of people into animals mostly at the much later age of Odin - trouble with linking from site to site you lose the thread of what one was thinking about in the first place ;)
http://webapp1.somerset.gov.uk/her/details.asp?prn=23037
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Branwen
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Edited Mar 06, 2010, 15:29
Re: Ballachulish figurine
Mar 06, 2010, 15:08
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People still carve wooden figures. These were found in 1836 on Arthur's Seat, and I've carved these things myself many times from childhood to recent times. It was only recently when they featured in a Rebus episode they went back on display, I think. I knew what they were immediately, even though the ones I've made never had the coffins.
http://www.nms.ac.uk/our_collections/collection_highlights/arthurs_seat_coffins.aspx
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Branwen
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Edited Mar 06, 2010, 16:22
Re: Ballachulish figurine
Mar 06, 2010, 15:28
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Divine twins might be just two sides of male and female aspects. The romans recorded Alauna/Alaunus as male or female, and sometimes both as part of a divine couple. The morning star and evening star; Merlin and Ganieda his twin, are both the same - Venus (not a star at all, obviously).
As well as what GWASS said, I also read that any person that embodied male and female in one person was considered touched by god in the shamanistic view of the world, and if you were one or the other you embraced your opposite gender and brought it into balance. Part of that would be to dress and live as both genders. It seems a logical extension of the idea that any "inbetween" place is magical. As well, it confuses the denizens of other realms you travel in as a shaman, meaning harm to your physical body back in the mundane realm of daily life is less likely. Right into modern times the customs of beltuinn and samhuinn included cross dressing to confuse the faeries who would be around as the veil between the worlds was thin at that time. Children would be dressed as their opposite gender to stop faeries stealing them too.
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StoneGloves
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Re: Ballachulish figurine
Mar 06, 2010, 20:12
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Those coffin-enclosed little figures are strange. But people still make them. I've found a picture of one of the makers here ( http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue16/imageword.htm ). There'll be many more. Or Moore. Giacometti just set a record for the price of one of his figurines - how many million was it? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Photograph_of_Alberto_Giacometti_by_Cartier_Bresson.jpg ).
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wideford
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Re: Time Team R.I.P. ? too Gleeful
Mar 24, 2010, 20:17
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as its usual timeslot is taken up by a series only up to episode twelve out of twent-two this weekend I make that at least May 9th before it can be fitted in
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