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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