Pays d'Auge

Some notes on what I'm thinking about now.

Who or what was Auge?  I found a city named Augsburg,Germany.  It was the starting place of German Rococco.  Plus, Augsburg has an interesting location where two rivers meet.  And I found a region of France that was once called Pays d'Auge.  Probably got my spelling wrong here.

Can we link Auge to gold?  And then link gold to the sun & sun worship?

I found a book in the library with the amazing title, The Survival of the Pagan Gods.  Originally it was in French with an even better title.  But this copy is in English.  It dates from 1940, and was reprinted several times.  I'm kind of surprised because  it seems to me that nobody today thinks about theses things except me.  Yes, it's lonely and maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.  I still don't have colleagues.  I want a circle of people willing to talk about this stuff.

I looked up the Wikipedia page for Rococco.  There's no mention of pagan themes in the whole page.  I want to rewrite it.  Also no mention of why => why the heck are there pagan symbols in 1700's art?  I thought that Europe was mostly Christian during that time?  Was it something to do with the Reformation?

I've got two ways to describe my research right now:  1) I'm studying European pagans to e plain the roots of our environmental crisis.  I thought pagans were better forthe earth than Christians.  But I find there's a problem with pagans:  too much fertility.  2). I'm studying why the Rococco art period happened.  And I'm uncovering symbolism hiding in plain sight everywhere.  Every flower and leaf in art says something about wishes for abundance and good fortune.  Plus I'm trying to draw a connection between European heraldry and pagans.  I'm curious about all the flourishes around the outside of the heraldry - more leaves and flowers.

Sea-horses in Assisi Embroidery

I found something, but it's just weird.  I was looking at Assisi Embroidery on Pinterest.  I noticed that several examples of this embroidery have sea-horses.  And they look a little like Russian Goddess Embroideries.

While I was looking for something else (I wanted the meaning of the Auskelis / Morning Star symbol from Norweigian sweaters)...  I found a fairytale from Lithuania that might explain those sea-horses.  But Lithuania is not the same country as Assisi, Italy.  I'm getting too careless by sweeping material from one end of Europe to the other.  I've found clues that sweep Norweigian sweaters together with ancient artifacts from Kazakhstan.  If I'm not careful, people will dismiss me with the words, "confirmation bias."  That means finding exactly what you want to find.  Isn't that how people discredited Maria Gimbutas?  And she was educated, while I am not.

On the other hand, I might be correct.  Maybe the symbols I'm studying pop up in distant countries because they are very ancient.  So, they had plenty of time to spread all over Europe and Asia.  Some fairytales could be 10,000 years old.

I'm just going to give a link to the fairytale from Lithuania here:

Wikipedia page for Ausrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aušrinė

In the tale, there is a beautiful maiden, the daughter of the sun.  She has 3 appearances:  she can be a girl, a star - the morning star - Venus, and a sea-horse...

In mythology, I'm noticing some gender confusion.  Who drives the sun across the sky?  Is it a male or a female?  Russians have a female figure on the sun shallop.  But Greeks have Apollo driving the sun chariot (I should check on this later.)  Maybe it did not matter much?  You could see your own life reflected in the tales no matter what your gender.  Or maybe men and women had separate but related beliefs?  One set of tales told around the women's fire, and another set of tales for the men's camp fire?

Sea-horses in Rococco Art puzzle me.  It's exciting to think that I may have found an explanation in that fairytale.  Yay!  Another bit of evidence to tie Rococco Art to pagan mythology.  Now why were they using pagan themes in Rococco Art?  There was a 400 page book of art history in the library (name of book?) --- everything you could possibly want to know about why Greek gods and goddesses turn up in this art...  But the author left out the possibility that people may have really believed that pagan stuff.  I will have to try again to read that book.  I'm not being very clear about what I want to say here.

So, that symbol from the sweaters, the Morning Star.  I'm still not sure if it represents the sun or Venus.  But it was fun trying to figure it out.  Along the way, I looked at the flags of Mordovia and Udmurta.  Ha!  Wouldn't it be funny to try to get my friends to say those place names?  (Sometimes as a practical joke, I try to get people to say Ouagadougou.)

But these flag will turn up in this story again.  I hope to use them to explain some other stuff...  I like weird place names.  So what.  I'm a geek.

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This page is just some notes.

This page is just some notes.  I'm getting ready to write about sea-horses in Assisi Embroidery in my next page...

Bunch of questions-

About the Goddess Embroideries, I want to know whether the Berehynia is the same as the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Did people often see them as the same?  I think so.  But I would like to find some proof.

I'm wondering if pagans sometimes have disagreements about gender?  One tribe might believe that water is female, and another tribe might believe the spirit of the ocean is male...  bit of a problem with their neighbors...

I was fascinated to read that in the 1800's, Christian missionaries used to go around Africa saying, "the dead do not speak."  This was to oppose tribal beliefs.  It seems to illustrate the power of culture, because there are still people in Africa who believe that the ancestors do not go away but stay and guide their descendants.  I'm not into the occult at all, but I sat and read about the African origins of Voodon, Santeria, and Candomblé.  I asked myself, " do my ancestors speak?"  Which is a tough question since I'm married to a scientist, and I see myself as a practical person.  I don't go for things that can not be proven, and although I love a good fairy tale, I find it difficult to believe in anything.

But yes, sometimes my ancestors try to guide me.  They aren't noisy.  I make lots of mistakes, and they don't talk.  I imagine they are sometimes discouraged about me.  It's just that I sometimes try to think they still care for me.

It's like I'm attempting to believe that they could send me a sign if they needed to.  Right now I'm a Unitarian Universalist, which means 1) attend fellowship meetings on Sundays ("church") and 2) figure out what you believe regarding God, and 3) practice your religion.  I'm not attending church these days as I'm doing a radio show (that's another story).  I got tired of UU fellowship meetings because I'm not very good at being social nor friendly.  People exhaust me; I'd rather have books.  I'm sort of low energy - often tired because I don't sleep well.

What I believe about the God has everything to do with the Unitarian 7th principle:

7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

In other words, I'm an environmentalist.  For me, that's the first principle, the most important one...  that's the whole point of this blog: to change the culture where I live.  I want to see deep change in people's hearts.  I want to live where people don't have a throw-away culture.  I want it to be understood that there is no other planet we can go to.  I'm being too serious, I suppose.

Last night was Halloween.  So we watched the movie, The War of the Worlds. It was the one from the 1960's, so in the movie they tried to use a nuclear bomb against the invading Martians.  Not funny at all.  I was so horrified by the bomb, that's why I'm being serious.  My kid decided to be a bomb for Halloween.  Aargh!

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Red and white martenitzas

Red and white - why are most of the Goddess Embroideries red on a white background?  Is it simply dyed versus undyed fabrics?  But I met someone who went to Transylvania; she said the churches there are filled with red and white embroidery.  That suggests a tradition that sees red and white as sacred...

Remember the story of Snow White and Rose Red?  It's not like the well-known Disney fairy tale.  I'm thinking of the tale about the two girls who entertained a bear at their cottage all winter.  When spring came, the bear left them, but just before he left, they discover that he is a prince.  The whole story is packed with symbols - it's a key to a pagan religion that we don't know much about.  I wonder if there were once many more adventures of Snow White and Rose Red?

Could they represent us, the living?  How similar they seem to Pizho and Penda, the little red & white man and woman from Bulgarian springtime traditions.  You can see thousands of them if you search the word, martinitsa.  I wish that I could just ask a person in Bulgaria!  I would love to travel there.  I see people who know the answers on the internet, but I don't know how to speak to them.

Or-- what if those islands, Lero and Lena, could be another version of Pizho and Penda? They are two little islands near Cannes, France now renamed for saints.  A monastery was built there long ago, probably on an ancient site of pagan ritual.  Now that would be an awesome travel destination, very sweet if I could go.  But unless I do a lot more research, they are just a bunch of rocks in the water.  I want information about pre-Christian cultures.  Maybe I'm just a romantic, hoping to find some noble savages hidden in Europe.

The point is to find the cultures we had before the Agricultural Revolution.

Hidden Berehynia

I've been thinking about leaves and flowers in art.  I started collecting pictures that I call, The Hidden Berehynia.  It's on Pinterest.com, if you want to see.

I'm finding a lot of them.  They are traditional artwork from Slavic countries that resemble the Goddess Embroideries.  By the way, one day I wanted to buy a copy of one of the Goddess Embroidery books by Mary B. Kelly.  All her books were out of print, and old copies were selling for between $600 and 800 USD.  That's terrible.

Well, it seems to me that I'm sitting on a big important thought, like a thought-bomb.

Lots of people would want this thought if they knew about it.  I don't know how to share it.  Not sure how to tell this story.  Maybe it should be a book?   If I were a writer, I'd try to make a living at it.

Idea:  all those leaves and flowers in European art are not just decoration, they represent fertility, abundance, & a happy future.  They are everywhere - in calico fabrics, in wall paper patterns, in architecture, in graphic arts...  These decorations represent the part of European cultures that existed before Christianity - they are pagan, and they connect back to art of the Stone Age.

The Hidden Berehynia pictures prove the connection between the Goddess Embroideries and the decorative flourishes in European art.  So now I'm really curious about Baroque and Rococco art:  what was going on in that time period?  Why did people start using so many flowery designs?  It seems to me that more flowers equals more pagan.  Were they rebelling against the authority of the Church?  Were they trying to show that nature was on their side?

There's more.  If I'm correct, then it explains why we have 7 billion people on earth now.  It's not just because we made a lot of food.  It's also because European thought became dominant, and Europeans are all about fertility.  It might also explain why Catholics do not have women priests.  It might explain a lot of things...

Knitting short row lace

I made some photos of my knitting short row lace.  It isn't blocked, and definitely isn't perfect.

Saint Cucuphas is Harlequin (part 2)

So, the part that I left out is that Harlequin has already been linked to a pagan god in the book,  Santa Claus - Last of the Wild Men. By Phyllis Siefker, in paperback 2006, ISBN-13:  978-0786429585

In fact, there's King Herla - a folk tale from Germany, and maybe now there's this Cucuphas from Spain.  So Harlequin could be a compound of Herla + Quin, the northern and southern versions of the trickster god.  It's pretty cool if it's true.

What if there is a close link in the folklore between Saint Cucuphas and the Cucafera?  I believe that the Cucafera represents the spirits:  all the ancestors, and possibly the spirits of all the animals too.  I mean if people were cooking meat regularly, maybe Cucafera was part of a tradition of honoring the food animals.  I'm remembering that the word, "tragedy" originally meant, "goat song."  While I wish that I were a vegetarian, I know that goat is very delicious.  I helped get a goat for the feast of Eid last year.

And what I learned about Eid, the feast of sacrifice, is that people say, Thanks God it is not my day to die.  I'm talking about the feast that remembers the story of how Abraham was tested by God, how his son Issac was spared and they sacrificed a ram.

Well, my mind was drifting.  All we now know is that Cucufera is similar to other stories about a boogie man called Coco.  I do have another story, a second small discovery.  But it involves human sacrifice (maybe that's where my daydream about Eid was going.). I found something just too horrible about the Spanish Inquisition.

I will just briefly sketch the story.  I found a specific event at the beginning of the Inquisition where some victims were dragged through the streets and then killed.  But this horror took place just at the beginning of the agricultural year.  It had the hallmarks of a pagan sacrifice, which is terrible because in the Inquisition, Christians cruelly destroyed pagans.  Or that's what we thought.  Seems it was much more complicated.

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Cucuphas is Harlequin

I write about history of pagans, mostly I'm just curious.  I think that I just found another one!  Hooray, another Saint who may have been a pre-Christian god.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuphas

Saint Cucuphas is patron of hunchbacks and of petty theft.  He sure sounds like Harlequin to me.  I wish that I could turn to an expert and ask about this.  Right now, I don't have anyone that I can turn to.  Please leave a comment if you know something about this.

The Wikipedia page about Saint Cucphas has locations all over Europe that were associated with him, mainly in France and Spain.  There is a forest with a small lake called, 'Bois de Saint Cucafa' which I think would be interesting to visit, it's located near Rueil-Malmaison, France.  I will have to look it up.  (It's 8 miles west of the center of Paris.  Wish I could travel!!!)

Here's the exciting thing:  this could explain stuff...  If Cucuphas is Harlequin, it could actually explain two things.  1) Maybe those medieval pilgrims badges with sexual images were for pilgrims to the shrines of St. Cucuphas... pagans were all about fertility.  And, 2). Remember that story about how Rasputin could not be killed?  What if the Rasputin story was some kind of revival of an old pagan tale?  Because the story of the death of Saint Cucuphas is similar to the story of the death of Rasputin.

Is it just a coincidence that this Saint has a name similar to the name of the dragon, Cucafera ?  Or maybe Cucafera represents the spirits of the ancestors or the dead, and likewise Harlequin is king of the underworld?  I can't be certain of this, I need other people's opinions.

I'm collecting medieval names that sound weird to me.  I found Saint Cucuphas when I was looking up the name Mihiel.  Here's the list of odd names that I found today:

Mihiel
Smaragdus
Bobolinus
Fulrad
Gausbert
Waldrade
Pepin the Short (also spelled Pippin the Short)
Wulfoald
and,
Cucuphas, of these, any one would do for an elegant name for a cat or dog, why not?

Then there are also weird place names:  Lièpvre, Guinelat, Conat, Coplian, Rueil-Malmaison - these are just the French ones.  I did not collect the Spanish place names associated with Saint Cucuphas, it's all too much for me right now.  There's more research needs to be done, and I'm happy about that.

Need an etho-botanist on my team

Hello, may I speak to an ethno-botanist?  I need an ethno-botanist, linguist, bio-chemist, and a folklorist for research on the Taraskon dragon.  I need a team.  I'm stuck - can't go much further without help.

I'm hoping to make a list of locations in Europe associated with dragons.  I think there is a pattern.  Actually I have to make several lists.  A list of holy islands, a list of sacred caves, and especially a list of hills located at the mouth of rivers - So, locations similar to Tarasque, France.

I hope that I will be able to show locations of European shamanism.

I'm going with the idea that a dragon is not a reptile, nor a mythical beast, not exactly.  A dragon is a hallucinogenic drug mixture from ancient shamanism.  I start with the idea that a dragon can slither, walk, and fly.  That tells me that the dragon can take you to the 3 realms: past, presen, and future.  Or the land of the dead, land of the living, and land of the spirits/gods...

Recipe for a dragon

Recipe for a dragon.
Mostly based on the description of the Taraskon dragon of Provence, France and Spain
-- plus some guess work...  Please Do Not Try This Recipe, it might kill a person, or cause cancer, or cause a severe mental health episode.

I do not yet know how these ingredients were used.  But I'm guessing that in the right amount, this mixture might work something like ayahuasca.

Ingredients for a Taraskon:
  Dandelion latex, Taraxacum officinales - works like opium
  Bumble Bee sting, Apitoxin
  European yellow-tailed scorpion venom, works like Viagra
  essential oil of tarragon, Artemesia dracunculus
  Saint John's Wort, Hypericum perforatum
  (and maybe ergot?  maybe with or without alcohol?)

Edit:  I had the wrong scorpion in the recipe.  I believe it may have been a species of Buthus not Escorpious.  Other ingredients may have included snake venom and dragonflies but I can't do the bio-chemistry to sort them out.  Also curious about Gum Tragacanth which was once used in dragon water...

Taraskon Ayahuasca

here is a list of things I'm thinking about that relate to the Taraskon dragon of Spain and Provence.
some are true, some are guesses

1.  I think the Taraskon is a recipe for a drug mixture.
  So, when I look at a picture of a Taraskon, I see the head of a lion or old man: shaman and dandelion  opium...  body of a bull - future scrying by inspecting the insides of an animal cooked for a feast...  shell of a turtle suggests a cave mouth where the scorpion lives...  pointed spikes on the shell suggest an arrow poison...  six furry legs - what has 6 furry legs other than the bumble bee, so maybe bee sting is an ingredient?  And the Taraskon has the tail of a scorpion, so I ask, What would happen if I combined opium and scorpion sting?  Please don't try this at home!  It may be possible to find out without getting stung nor poisoned.

2.  I think that dragon fire is the same thing as shaman barf.
I recall that when a shaman uses ayahuasca, it's necessary for the shaman to throw up.  I wonder if the barf could be collected and dried, with the powerful chemicals still intact?  Horrible or bio-active?

3.  Taraskon might be a flood dragon.  I ask, what did the Taraskon do in the years before Saint Martha came to town?  Maybe sometimes the dragon would make terrible floods, while other times there would be years of abundant crops.  I notice that in some versions, the dragon has breasts (milk) and carries grain (bread.)

4.  Two cities are named for this dragon, Tarasque in France and Teragona in Spain.  The Ancient Romans named a large region of Spain, Taragona.  I believe these are places where dandelions grow especially well, and the dandelion opium was easiest to obtain.  For comparison, there is a city in Turkiye named Afyon - literally "opium."

5.  If I am correct about the dragon, these ideas may explain other things.  Here are some other things:  *. dandelion opium maybe a part of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
*. chicory opium may be the Blue Flower of German literature
*. chicory opium might explain some of the designs found in Isnik tiles.  There's a tile with poppies and chicory in a Berehynia design.  I'll get you a picture sometime later.
*. Saint George and the dragon might actually be Jarillo, the god of wine fighting opium.
*. It's my guess that an explanation for the Tarantella dance may come into this also, but I don't have anything yet.  I think dancing and drumming keep your shaman alive when poisoned.  The dance was named after a spider but I think it was really about scorpion stings.  And I have no proof.

Henequen

This is the part that I left out of the last post.  The word, henequen - it means string, twine made from the henequen agave in Mexico.  In the process of making leaves of this plant into fiber for twine, you can collect the juice to make alcohol.  Henequen is nearly the same as sisal, once an important crop because the twine was used for harvesting grain.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henequen_industry_in_Yucatán   about the twine, with lots of history

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agave_fourcroydes   about the henequen plant

But nobody said that henequen is Harlequin.  I made that up - it's an extrapolation.  Maybe I will find proof later.  This is only a blog.  I'm researching something interesting, and sharing my notes.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions without any proof.

Here is a quote from the Wikipedia page about sotol, an alcohol similar to tequila.

"A humanoid figure with a spray of spiky leaves for a head and a black stripe down the middle of its body may represent the magical spirit of sotol. Sometimes it appears in connection with hunting scenes, at others it appears surrounded by orange ochre flames and black smoke."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotol   So, you can see why I think that Henequen is Harlequin.

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Tell me about Heineken and Harlequin

I'm collecting words that relate to Harlequin for my blog.  I'm trying to write a page about how Native American cave paintings match up well with Spanish folk beliefs.  It's like this: when the Conquistadors met the Mexicans, they both carried really ancient beliefs in Harlequin as the wild man, giver of fire and leader of the hunt.

Can you tell me anything about it?  I know about Harlequin in the Comedie dell Arte, but I'm looking for much older versions.  Can you tell me if the beer named Heineken goes back to Harlequin?  Or whether the French city, Arles is named for Harlequin?

I'm also looking for anything relating to dandelion, wild lettuce, and chicory.  They contain 2 sedative drugs.  Any linguistic clues would be great.  I'm trying to show links with 1) the Taraskon dragon, 2) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 3) the German romantic Blue Flower, and 4) poppies and chicory on Turkish Isnik tiles.

Overall, I'm trying to understand pagan Europe.  I think that I can link Slavic Goddess Embroideries to medieval dragons.  I working on a new explanation for dragons. 

--->>> Dragons are drugs used to enter the spirit world.

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Harlequin

I don't know if I can tell you how I felt when I found this.  I was awestruck.  It gave me shivers.

I found a plant named for Harlequin.  It's an agave that grows in Mexico, and it was used for making rope like sisal.  But this plant also gives juice that can be used to make an alcohol similar to tequila.

So, the name of this plant is Agave fourcroydes.  It's name is Henequen in Spanish.  I found it when I was looking for information about the book, The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castenada.  My guess is that if I want to discover something about medieval shamanism,  then I need to read this book.

I don't know why I am doing this.  Is it because my mother wanted to be a priest?  Is it because I grew up in the feminist 1970's?  Maybe it's pure curiosity.  But I think it's something more personal than just curiosity, because I did not quit when I found parts of this pagan research turning away from ideals that are very important to me.  My religion is environmentalism.  And the pagans, with their love of fertility, make no sense to me in an age of 7 billions humans on the planet.  I am looking for a religion that tells us that we are not the pinnacle of evolution.  I want a story that tells us how to live in balance with nature.

The exciting stuff is on the Wikipedia page about Sotol, an agave alcohol that Native Americans may have been making for about 9000 years.  I think that the Spanish named an agave plant Henequin because they recognized how similar it was to their folklore of Harlequin.  Agave plants provide tools for hunting and fire making, and many other useful things.  I read with goosebumps about the murals found on the rock walls of the Fate Bell Shelter.

What dragons symbolized in medieval Europe?

I'm building a new explanation for medieval dragons.  No idea if this is correct - I think dragons are really the drugs used in shamanism.

Poppy, dandelion, chicory, and wild lettuce: they all yield drugs like opium from the alkaloids in their latex.  I suspect that there were ancient peoples in Europe who knew plants as well as some rainforest shamen do now.

The difficult part will be figuring out what other plants might have combined with the latex bearing plants.

In another post, I'll make a list of clues to support my crazy assertion that dragons = drugs...

[This page is a stub.  More evidence is needed.]


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Dandelion Opium 2

I'm still trying to find evidence to tie the dandelion to the Taraskon - dragon of Provence and northern Spain.  I could be wrong, but I don't think so at this moment.

The scientific name of dandelion is Taraxacum officinale.  I gather that Latin name translates to Bitter Herb of the apothecary (officinales = of the pharmacy/apothecary.)  Also, the most ancient herbals, for example Avincenna's herbal, say that the dandelion is similar to chicory, used for insomnia.  That suggests a sedative to me...  Maybe, but I can't find any books that list dandelion used like opium.

But I did find a chemical analysis of the dandelion which listed the two chemicals found in wild lettuce.  We have trip reports from people who experimented with wild lettuce, ok so,  dandelion has 2 chemicals that might make a person stoned.  It seems that doctors used wild lettuce (in the 1800's?) when they could not get opium.

Some guy wrote that the Tarascon dragon is linked to a city named Taragon in Spain.  It was in French Wikipedia.  I'm keeping careful notes, which I can upload later if I find something worthwhile.  I searched a whole lot but found nothing directly connecting the dragon to the dandelion.  So, then I looked up the kitchen herb, tarragon, just in case I had the wrong plant or something. Trying to keep an open mind even if I'm wrong.

Looking at the list of chemicals found in tarragon, I'm impressed.  What if we gathered some dandelion latex and put it together with some essential oil of tarragon?  This combination reminds me of absinthe.  I remember reading that some crazy guys managed to make an ayahuasca (drug mixture) from 3 local plants in Italy.  Wondering what herbalism was known in ancient times?  They would have had access to plants that have gone extinct.  How did they ever learn which plants were safe to eat and which are poison?

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Dandelion & Sir Gawain ?

Ok, ok, I have no evidence.  But just suppose that I'm correct:  that the Taraskon is a dragon who represents the dandelion as a terribly strong drug plant.

Yesterday I had maybe 2 tiny bits of evidence.  1).  The scientific name of the dandelion sounds the same as the name of this dragon, Taraxacum.  And 2).  There is an old name for dandelion listed as "Witch's Gowan" - it suggests a possible drug plant.

First thing that I thought of when I noticed that the dandelion is called the witch's gowan:  what is a gowan? And then, could that be the same word as Gawain?  Well, gowan seems to mean daisy or flower.  And, yes, Gawain seems to be the same word.  I'm not certain yet.

Ok, so if I'm correct then I have a new understanding of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is a work in progress so I might be wrong.  I think Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is about the dandelion as a source of drugs for shamanism.

It would be really exciting if it's true.  I have to do some more research.

Dandelion Opium

What if dandelions are like opium?  Dandelion means Lion's Tooth --> lion's bite, what if dandelion latex can rip you apart just like poppies?

What puts you back together again if you were mad enough to poison yourself with dandelion?  Maybe you wait until the poison clears out of your system naturally?  Could a shaman of the ancient world use this plant to try to see the future?  Imagine if this dandelion opium was so powerful that only young people could survive it.  Eventually there could develope the tradition of a young woman leading a terribly dangerous plant spirit into town during a spring fertility ritual.  Everyone must have been praying for a good year and plentiful food...

So, I think that the Taraskon dragon is actually the spirit of the dandelion.  It would be lovely if I'm correct.  I'd like to say, "This changes everything."  Quite vain of me - sorry.

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Cucafera

I forget how I found this one.  I must get my technology sorted - I need to track back and see how I found stuff.  Well, I found a new kind of dragon.  I'll ask my friend if he's ever heard of this one.  If it's new to my dragon expert, I'm going to feel so smug!

Cucafera - a fantastic beast from the parade on the Holy Days in Tarragona, Spain.  Cucafera is a much loved fat dragon who coughs up candies for children in the parade.  In this next link, in French, I learned that Catalan speaking children play a game just like "Simon says...". Except in their game, it's the dragon, Cucafera says...

https://seuils.hypotheses.org/tag/cucafera   a blog in French about translation and paratranslation
This page mentions two other cities where the cucafera visits:  Tortosa and Morella, Catalan, Spain.

It may not make sense now, but all my recent blog posts are going in one direction.  I'm researching fertility beliefs in European art and history.  I'm reading again my favorite book, The Dancing Goddesses by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.  I hope to discover something, or add to her work.  Sometimes it's easy - there's tons of evidence just everywhere.  Then there's puzzles that I can't figure out - maddening, because I can see people who know the answers online but I can't talk to them (mostly for lack of a good translator.)

Cucafera is similar to the Taraskon - I wonder if they are the same thing?  I was fascinated to find (somewhere in Wikipedia) that the ancient Romans named a large region of Spain after the Taraskon. If you want details, write me a message.  I kept finding lovely examples of pre-Christian fertility beliefs.  I have no idea what to do with all this history.  I have enough for several more of these messy blog posts.  I have the impression that no one reads this.  I'm keeping careful notes because it may clarify art history, and change the history of women.  It's a dectective work for me, plus I feel great, exhilarated by it all.

Next I'll write a bit about islands.  I was looking for some way to tie Saint Marina into the story.  I found some ancient history relating to the islands of St. Marguerit and St Honorat near Cannes, France.

Capo di Ponte, Alps, Italy

Found  this while looking for something else - a church in Italy that seems to blend pagan and Christian traditions.  I'm fascinated because maybe there's a hint as to the names of the two creatures on each side in the Goddess Embroideries.  Who are Saints Faustina and Liberada?

http://www.rockartscandinavia.com/images/articles/santea10.pdf  link to see the church of Saint Faustina and Saint Liberada, located at Capo di Ponte, BS, Lombardy, Italy.

I had a hunch that Baba Marta might have something to do with water.  I was hoping to find a new meaning to the song, The Waters of March.  I guess maybe I was just wrong about that.

What if there were another name for Capo di Ponte?  Capo di Ponte is "Head of the Bridge" in English.  I'm no good at Italian, but I thought up a homonym, Cavo di Putti, "Cave of Cherubs."  I just made that up, ok.  But it should be named that.  They have caves.  I like to imagine that women went there in the Middle Ages to pray for safety in pregnancy.

In this blog, I'll try to be clear about which are facts, and which are not.

Along the way, I read about Saint Wilgefortis, the strange bearded lady of the 14th century in Germany.  It's entertaining.  The best part - she was called, Sante Debarrasse, which is Holy Riddance in French.  I'm not sure if it will work but I could pray for help getting rid of my mess.  It seems she helped people get rid of abusive men in medieval times.  I don't need that, but maybe I need a little help cleaning my basement...


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Stork Costume

I saw a picture of a man wearing a stork costume in this book, The Folk Arts of Poland.  It was among a whole lot of carnival costumes, mummers, carolers, and kukeri.  See the chapter, Art in Rituals and Customs if you are interested in European shamanism.  The costumes looked like the ones in The Dancing Goddesses by E.W. Barber.

I never saw the stork costume before, so I looked it up.  Google translate says that stork costume is "bocian stroj" in Polish.  When I searched this, I discovered that Polish people have zillions of these stork costumes.  Sometimes, Polish children do school plays dressed as storks and frogs - maybe to celebrate the arrival of spring?

What if our traditional pictures of storks bringing babies...  what if it's a hint at an old fertility religion, some trace of ancient European shamanism?  But then why storks in particular?  I remembered the story that passenger pigeons once darkened the skies in America.  Could it be that migrating birds were once so many that they could darken the skies over Europe?  That would be very far in the past.

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St. Martha & the month of March

This is just a blog.  I can write anything.  I don't have to be accurate, nor prove my facts.

I think I found another item of interest to pagans.  I'm still undecided about all this religion stuff.

My internet connection is about to turn off, so, quickly here is what I found:  March may be named for some goddess, not Mars originally.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martius_(month)

Suppose the Ides of March were a day of prayer and sacrifices for the beginning of the agricultural year.  Then when Caesar was warned to beware the Ides of March, maybe people dying on the Ides of March was a thing?  A very ancient thing?

So, I think Baba Marta and St. Martha are actually the same person.  I think she is a virgin who uses her potential fertility to overcome evil (such as crop failures) and tame the wild nature spirit (such as the Taraskon, or dragon, unicorn, etc).  This is a prayer for good outcomes in the spring before planting begins.

Now I've got to figure out why St Martha was sometimes called St Pelagius or St Marina.  I think that I can connect her with prayers for good fishing??
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Basilisk and Taraskon

Last week I found a real live Basilisk (on the internet).  I'm excited about this!  But I'm finding it difficult to say why I like it so much.  It seems so very ancient.  And I am really curious what people thought about deep in the past.

Link to see a real live Basilisk:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badalisc

Today, I found a real live Tarasque.  The Taraskon (alternate spelling) looks like a dragon in the picture.  There is text in Portuguese (or Spanish?) that describes a monster with a body like a turtle and a scorpion tail.  This monster was in a festival parade in the 1400's, possibly along with both Christian and Islamic festival displays.  According to the story, Saint Martha subdued the Taraskon, then the monster was killed.

I'm no expert on dragons but I think St. Martha had two dragons.  One was good, and one was bad.  It must be about foretelling the future - if you kill the bad dragon, then no harm (no crop failure, no diseases, etc.) will come in the new year.  Simple apotropaic magic for agriculture, very ancient in my opinion.

Link to see an actual Taraskon:
http://www.caminandogranada.com/feria-del-corpus-granada-2016/

And this Tarasque on Wikipedia, with links to other dragon & virgin stories:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasque

I still can not guess why the dragon has her cloak in his mouth.  But I found several more medieval images of St. Margaret and the dragon.  In some pictures he bites her cloak, and in others she is emerging from the belly of the dragon...

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Random notes on Berehynia

Just some notes on what I found...

I watched a video from Turkey about how they make those blue-eye beads used as good luck charms.  It was interesting how the glass worker's furnace resembled a dragon.  I swear that I am not raving mad.  Maybe I'm a little crazy, and maybe I see connections that are not really there.  I've been really curious about good luck charms - they fit into this story about apotropaic magic.

https://youtu.be/DR3fpBqnDG8 link to Nazar Koy, Village of the bead makers

I don't remember where I read some folklore that connected blacksmiths with the underworld... Is that right?  I wonder if the furnace had some kind of folklore...?

I found the right page in Russian Wikipedia for Berehynia.  Actually it is spelled, "Berginya" in English (there seems to be several ways to spell this.)  So, Berginya, as I understand it, is the goddess of barley.  But this Russian page associates her with Venus, and does not seem to say anything about being a goddess of grain.  I know that I'm on the right page because it mentions Dodola / Paparuda.

https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Берегиня  link to Berginya in Russian Wikipedia

I really need help with translating this page.  I tried Google Chrome but I could barely make out what it said.  There's a bit near the end of the article that I want to understand.  It says something about a ritual involving a beet.  Now, I recall a fairy tale about a giant beet that they couldn't pull out of the ground.  Hm, next I will reread that tale.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gigantic_Turnip  link to the tale of the Gigantic Turnip on Wikipedia

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Dragon Questions

I have another idea that I can't prove - about dragons.

All my focus, all my so called research this year has been about Slavic mythology.  I focused on the Berehynia, the central figure in goddess embroideries.  I tried to figure out what the embroidery patterns meant.  I got really interested in the Sun Shallop, one of the common designs in folk embroidery and other arts.

So, who pulls the Sun Shallop through the sky?  Could there be sun horses, or dragons pulling the sled?  I thought about the painting of St. Margaret - is the dragon her pet?  And why was it biting her cloak?  There are so many questions, and I don't have the technology to translate yet.  I'm struggling with a lack of time, or lack of ambition.

I imagined the dragon as St. Margaret's friend, a terrible creature who might represent the future...  Then her son, Jarilo (aka St. George) kills the dragon - everybody always knew the dragon was bad, right...  But what if he kills the bad things in our future?  That would line up well with the rest of the apotropaic folk traditions.  Plus, if you had 2 dragons, one could be good and the other bad...

So, I felt like saying that I have a new explanation for dragons.  I don't have the whole answer, so no point getting excited about it yet.  I have a feeling that we could uncover a connection between dragons, simargyls, and the Willies (sirens, alkonost and gamyun.)  But I'd like to do this work with somebody.  I'd like to share.  Can you please leave me a message if you are interested in helping find the answers?

Two headed eagles from heraldry come into this somewhere, also.  I think the 2-headed eagle is another way to represent the creature who pulls the Sun Shallop... maybe.

Some research questions

Research questions
-  Who are Pijo and Penda?

-  Who is Baba Marta?

-  Why did the opera Semele get written?  What history surrounds these operas and ballets that contain pagan themes?

-  Are Papageno and Papagena (in the Magic Flute) similar to Pijo and Penda?

-  What about Harlequin and Columbine, can we connect them to Pijo and Penda?

-  Looking for the origins of the days of the week in Turkish...  Could Cumartesi mean "harvest day"?  Is there a connection between the Latvian symbol, "Juma" and the Turkish word for Wednesday?  This seems far-out, maybe I'm totally wrong on this one.

-  Curious about Latvian traditional symbols...  why is the snake symbol so common?

-  Curious about pagans:  in the past, would nomadic people have had different religious beliefs than agricultural/settled people?

- Map questions - I need to map all the countries where the Auskelis sun symbol is found in traditional art...  Does this really stretch from Norway to Palestine?  Any further eastward into Persia, and the Stans?

-  Does the cross stitch from the Netherlands carry ancient pagan symbols?  Why am I finding pagans everywhere?  Certainly I'm an amateur, and I could be more careful in my research.  Maybe I'm just finding a lot of different ways people tried to protect themselves in the ages before modern medicine?
I'm not sure why I'm fascinated with old ideas about banishing misfortune.  As soon as I learned the word, "apotropaic" I went off on the quest to find out all about it.

For Republic, Not Empire

Pussy Hat for Barbie

Eglé the Queen of Serpents

I noticed a possible connection between folk tales from Lithuania and Turkiye.  I found these tales thanks to Pinterest.com

There seems to be a strong similarity between the Turkish story of the Shah Maran and the Lithuanian story, Eglé the Queen of Serpents.

Link to the Lithuanian story:  https://europeisnotdead.com/disco/books-of-europe/european-fairy-tales/lithuania-egle-the-queen-of-serpents/

Link to Wikipedia page about the Turkish story:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahmaran

I do not guarantee anything.  I may or may not research this further.  By the way, I am not afraid of snakes.  Well, not very much, maybe just a little.  Now that it is deepest winter, I can explore this subject without any worries.  I'm curious enough to go on with this because the other day I noticed that the Yazidi peoples may still know how to use snakes as medicine ???  It was just a brief mention on a Wikipedia page about Yazidis.

Again, I am not a pagan.  But I study pagan things (including Yazidi beliefs) because they are very ancient.  I want to know what our earliest ancestors thought about.

Fairy tale origins 1000's of years old... BBC

Found an article I like on the BBC:  'Fairy tale origins thousands of years old, researchers say.'

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487

I want to look into the past to a time when humans maybe lived sustainably.

Another page that I find very interesting:  'Unlocking the Voynich Manuscript: Spinning, Hulda, and the Voynich' by Claudette Cohen

http://voynichbirths.blogspot.nl/2015/09/spinning-hulda-and-voynich.html

Today, I do not have anything really new and exciting to offer.  Maybe I can just write about why I spent most of the past year exploring the Goddess Embroideries.  I decided that I am not a pagan.  But I research pagan stuff because I am an environmentalist.

Oh, I'm bogged down with all the things I want to say.  I'm likely to repeat myself because I can not remember what I wrote before.  If you think that I am excentric, weird, then you need this list of books to see where I am coming from:

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
The Dancing Goddesses by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Sacred and Healing Beers by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Pharmakopoeia by Dale Pendell
Ornamental Ironwork by Susan and Michael Southworth

But wait, there's more!  I just found something new.  I'm going to blurt it out before checking to see if it is correct.  Yay!  I found somebody on Pinterest who translated pagan symbols from Lithuanian to English (I should credit them by name here.). So, one of the symbols is called Juma and it translates as Harvest.  I remembered that in Turkiye, one of the days of the week is called Cumartesi.  So I looked up the days of the week in Turkish again.  I found that Friday is Cumar, and Saturday is Cumartesi.  The letter C sounds like J in Turkish.  So, Friday might translate as Harvest Day;  which would give us Saturday as Second Harvest Day.

But I do not have a dictionary that can give word origins in Turkish.  I could ask my Turkish friends, maybe on Facebook.