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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Re: Ballachulish figurine
Mar 06, 2010, 14:22
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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