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The Modern Antiquarian Forum » Yggdrasil & the Bull, Mithraic survival |
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Annexus Quam 926 posts |
Mar 17, 2003, 11:53
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For years I have seen the bull mentioned in countless pieces of research on ancient Iberian religions, including those that built the megaliths. Most XIXth century studies suggested an adoption, by a Western Atlantic Megalithic Civilization, of an Eastern Religious Cult around 2,000 BC (quite possibly, in my opinion, from somewhere in Asia Minor / the Caucasus). After seeing the many stone bulls all over the Western Iberian countryside and the gorgeous snake engraved on a huge menhir near Talavera, I was myself surprised by the accepted notions of the Cretan and Egyptian Cults of the Bronze Age in which both bull and snake appeared hand in hand in religious compositions. Surely the Western Iberian menhirs predate the Mediterranean Cults by at least 1,000 years. And the Bull as seminal character in the history of human spirituality evolved much earlier, with the adoption of Farming. Perhaps an earlier substratum lies underneath the Cretan and Egyptian myths or more possibly they themselves took it from more ancient Neolithic tribes or earlier. Even in Hal Tarxien, Malta, representations of bulls abound dating from the Maltese Megalithic (3,500 BC). Even in Paleolithic art, too, the Bull reigns supreme. The Bull as the penetrating force, as the Power of the Sun and the rash masculine Mortality of the Heavens was represented by a phallic standing stone near an early Christian shrine near the tiny village of Buenamadre (literally ‘Good Mother’), where a small circular arena still stands next to it. Early bullrings were always circular, as the cosmic dance that the bull performs at the beginning of a bullfight reminds one of a planet circling the Sun (or more likely, of the Sun circling the Planet). These early bullrings were clearly *altars*. The relationship between the early shrines (those that are still devoted to the Virgin Mary, or the Mother) and bullrings is old, and it is evident that the siting of these ‘sacrificial centres’ was not chosen in an irrelevant way. It was based, as most early megalithic monuments were, on the confluence or affluence of rivers, underground currents, migratory birds, pilgrimage routes or one geological area bordering another*. Many dolmens were sited on purpose beside the most ancient pilgrimage routes in Western Iberia. Take the Via de la Plata or ‘silver route’, so-called by the Romans who adopted it for use as trade of metal, and being an ancient cattle trade route from north to south. Or the serpentine Neolithic cattle way adopted by the Romans for crossing the Iberian mountains on their way from the South to the North and that I walked myself last year. Many of these backbones crisscross the land, and they are teeming with dolmens. But to go back to the Cosmic Dance inside the bullring, I was amazed to read recently that in the very centre of ancient bullrings there used to stand a proud tree. The meaning of this Tree is evidently ceremonial, it wasn’t placed there for purposes of shelter. It represented Regeneration, the spiritual link between the Heavens and the Earth. In some places of the western regions there are still festivals (Day of San Marcos, April 25th) where bulls are adorned by tree branches and flowers and dragged into the shrines. Or even trees crowned by bull horns. In Euskadi, the independentist region between France and Spain, the Tree of Gernika is famous for being the seat of power, evidence of that ancient Neolithic custom of the pre-Roman Basques, where all agreements used to be made in the hills next to trees (or standing stones). A Tree standing in the middle of a ring is a very powerful image. The sacrificial game can only be completed by the shedding of the Bull’s blood on the ground, the communion between the male force of the Sun and the receiving fertilized Mother Earth. Some festivals with bulls carrying torches of fire on their horns may date back to these spiritual ideas. (---)
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Annexus Quam 926 posts |
Mar 17, 2003, 11:54
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Not being at all keen on the current travesties of the modern bullfight, where an illiterate man-in-drag steps on the arena surrounded by cohorts sticking things on a bull that’s been previously been artificially bred as ‘brave’, I am not going to go on to expound the ‘virtues’ of modern empty celebrations which have a vacuum for significance. But I was amazed once more to discover that the Maidens for which the Bullfights today are dedicated are still there, sitting in the seats of honour, as a testimony of a Neolithic ritual in which a spiritual pilgrimage was performed towards an ‘altar’ where the Virgin stood, and the Priest, spiritually pure and after careful spiritual preparation in a shrine, sacrificed a Bull as an early form of fertility ritual. Even until recently virile bulls were taken inside the bedrooms of young maidens so they would be touched by them and impregnated with the power of future Life. But I am sceptical on this one, as I can’t help but imagine the mayhem created. * the line of menhirs in Western Iberia from Marvao (Portugal) across to the dolmen-infested Valencia de Alcantara (Spain) seem to deliniate very clearly the line of separation between the granite areas (where the 200 bigger dolmens where built) and the slate areas (where another 200 smaller dolmens lie). * examples of dolmens placed by rivers or streams is a constant, and suggests both a practical and spiritual use of these. The former, the use by the community who lived nearby, the latter, perhaps as a carrier of the spirits of the dead. At Merrivale the stream is so interlinked with the stone rows that it reminds me of the ancient Dutch and German Dead Spirit Ways so common in pre-Christian tradition.
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RiotGibbon 1527 posts |
Mar 17, 2003, 13:46
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here they are: http://www.guilfin.net/gallery/?id=pxINET577 http://www.guilfin.net/gallery/?id=pxINET576 how come we don't get TeenQueen's dropping in over here then? RG
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Mar 18, 2003, 09:47
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I have speculated for a long time on the relationship of tombs to streams and that most tombs in Ireland occur 'near' to streams & rivers and more particularly the coastal areas. It is often commented upon that there is very little in the way of remains in the tombs and so they must have been for the important people only. Bullshit! It is in the tombs that are away from rivers that large quantities of burial deposits are found (see Fourknocks & Mound Of The Hostages). The other have little because ( I think) that when a person died the ceremony had two or three stages. 1) cremation or de-fleshing 2) being put in th etomb 3) being removed from the tomb and placed in the water to return to the sea from whence it came. All three stages could have been at specific times of year. All the dead were saved up either being cremated or defleshed over the course of the year. Then in one ceremony last years dead were removed from the tomb and returned to Nature (or even used in the fields as fertilizer!) and the next batch were enclosed for a year within the tomb to await being removed next year. Of course this is all personal speculation and probably, like most other such speculation, complete bollocks :-)
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BlueGloves 858 posts |
Mar 18, 2003, 11:42
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Thanks ! There is a source - I can't remember which - that suggested that cupmarked rocks were where people sat, or stood, waiting for visions before running downhill and jumping into the stream. Nothing I've seen contradicts this view. We've forgotten about water now it comes out of taps. Spend a couple of weeks on the hilltops, in the summer, as the springs dry up, and you'll come to another view. It's rivers of information now !
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Annexus Quam 926 posts |
Mar 18, 2003, 14:05
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This is true everywhere. The real numbers of people interred in tombs and those FOUND in them is not the same, least of all the numbers of people alive at the time. In a huge passage grave they only found 9 people in all? Hard to believe. I believe dolmenic constructions were used as flexible 'mortuary houses', places which were opened at various stages, emptied and refilled as part of regeneration ceremonies once a year. Many isolated or group burials do even date from later Bronze Age rituals. I agree on the de-fleshing business. It may even have been done by buzzards, as in other cultures where the spirit was transported to the skies after being left to rot in the open. "3) being removed from the tomb and placed in the water to return to the sea from whence it came." That is interesting, maybe it was not only a spiritual link but a physical one too. For Eire-land and other Sea Cultures it is certainly possible, but I doubt that places like the moors had sufficient water, (even dry up, as BlueGloves says). Or maybe, as you say, it was done once a year, in winter. I tend to believe the streams were nearby for ritual (in terms of cleansing) and practical purposes. It is also interesting to note that many graves are at the affluence of streams, right up there, as if watching them come together down below. But I am with you on this one. During my time round the Iberian megalithic zones, I have almost reached the conclusion that each one of them can be termed according to their river areas, more than anything else. Not to say that there were other geological aspects to take into account, like mountains, but the rivers were one of the strong spiritual centres (pragmatic and spiritual went hand-in-hand in the past) around which the different tribes lived and built their dolmens. Dry areas in the East of Iberia with no rivers are almost totally empty of megalithic evidence. Strangely enough, these are the places where the tourists flock nowadays in their rush for an intoxicating booze-up. Just as well.
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Chris Collyer 849 posts |
Mar 18, 2003, 20:01
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The de-fleshing, then being placed in a tomb, then removed for important festivals or whatever seems to be a fairly accepted theory and your placed in the water theory sounds pretty feasible to me too, and would help to explain were most of the bodies ended up. Anne Woodward makes a point about the relationship between barrows and streams and springs and several of the Lincolnshire long barrows are sited either above streams or at the heads of dry valleys. BlueGloves is right about the value of clean water though, so whether the position of the barrows close to sources was somehow ritual or purely practical (or both), I dunno. -Chris
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FourWinds 10943 posts |
Mar 19, 2003, 07:13
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i said a while back on here somewhere that I thought that holy wells and springs came about because water was so precious. A sacredness was given to them to stop people pissing in the water source.
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BlueGloves 858 posts |
Mar 19, 2003, 07:14
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There's some useful information on 'sky burial' here. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/india/1870-monier-parsees.html)
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fitzcoraldo 2709 posts |
Mar 22, 2003, 11:15
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A summarised article on the Cult of Mithras. Tauroctony - the sacrifice of a bull by Mithras. The primeval bull, a personification of brute force and vitality, dies by the shedding of it's blood. Mithras releases its concentrated power for the benefit of mankind. " You have saved men by the spilling of the eternal blood" is the only surviving line of Mithraic liturgy. From the dying beast spring new forms of life: from its body plants and herbs (its tail is shown tipped with corn ears) and from its blood the vine. Mithras's allies, the dog and the snake, leap to drink the life giving blood but the scorpion represents the forces of evil , attempts to contaminate the event by attacking the bulls genitals. Also present are two divine torch-bearing supporters of Mithras, Cautes with a up lifted torch, and Cautopates with a down-turned torch, symbolising the rising and setting of the sun, hope and sorrow. In attition the sun and the moon are normally shown to emphasise the cosmic nature of the event. Blagged from an old copy of Archaeology Today.
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