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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