Mokosh

Mokosh - goddess of spinning and weaving is linked to the Fates.  I found this when I looked her up in Wikipedia and then translated the Russian wikipedia page about her.  Mokosh is quite similar to Saint Paraskeva (also known as Saint Friday) according to Russian wikipedia.  It looks like Mokosh was the reason that women were allowed to have a day off from work in ancient times.

I've looked and looked but I still can't find anything to link Mokosh to the poppy plant.  I think Mokosh is the poppy, or maybe poppies are her flower.  Her name sounds like the word, "poppy," in eight languages.  And they are languages from different language families, which is odd...

I've been searching non-stop for days and days.  I'm getting tired.  I wish somebody would help me prove my idea.  I've had some wonderful help from my husband, and a friend who is into history.  But I need to find more evidence.  Maybe I can improve my Google-fu along the way.

Nepenthe

I found a thing.  It's called "nepenthe" and it's a brew mentioned in the Odyssey that gives drugged sleep or removes sorrows.  Maybe it was real, and maybe it could have been poppy pods in wine, possibly with added nightshade plants.  That would make a brew that could give ancient world midwives the ability to give pain relief.

I also found 8 different languages that used a similar word for poppy.  I started with Hungarian, and put all the neighboring languages into Google Translate.  But Hungarian is not related to the neighbors.  These are languages from very different language families.

Arabic was interesting.  I got three words for poppy.  One word turned out to be "anesthetic" - part of the Arabic words for poppy.  And it was the part most similar to everybody else / the part that sounds like the name of the goddess Mokosh.

So if Mokosh is the poppy, and Demeter is the corn/grain, who is the third goddess?  I expect to find 3 big name goddesses linked to the 3 Fates.  Maybe.

3 Fates, 3 Plants

Each of the 3 Fates has a plant.  Here are the plants (I am making a guess not a fact!):
Belladonna (or another nightshade plant)
Opium poppies (still just guessing)
and Ephedra.

The combination of these 3 plants as a drug mixture can give twilight sleep.  I think the 3 Fates were 3 midwives who could give pain relief during child birth.  I think that the ancient Romans used this drug mixture.... maybe.

Here is something that I found on Wikipedia page = Scopolamine, under the heading, history:

"Scopolamine mixed with oxycodone (Eukodal) and ephedrine was marketed by Merck as SEE (from the German initials of the ingredients) and Scophedal starting in 1928, and the mixture is sometimes mixed on site on rare occasions in the area of its greatest historical usage, namely Germany and Central Europe."

There's a thing about the 3 Fates, they were from Rhineland.  Lots of ancient 3 Fates stuff was found in Rhineland.  Then this medicine called SEE was made in Germany...  Looks like a bit of historical detective work is needed.  Too bad I can't do German.  Maybe Google Translate can help.

Edit:  this could be wrong.  What if the 3 Fates represent 3 categories, not 3 specific plants?

...

Veronica

Veronica plant from New Zealand:  the bamboozle plant

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10608278

I find this article interesting.  It reminds me of the Wollemi Pine...  I'm not going to write much now.  But mayb I can add some material in a few days.  I was looking for Veronica teucrium but Wikipedia did not have anything.  One day, I'd love to be able to contribute to Wikipedia...

Anyway, I found Veronica teucrium in Wikipedia under another name:

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

I noticed some peculiar things about this plant.  Maybe it's just my imagination, but I wondered if this plant was special to women before Christianity.  Before the inquisition...  Somebody should write a novel about life in 5000 BCE...  That's where I keep going in my imagination, but I don't have much yet.  Not enough material for a story yet.

So, large Veronica was called Herb Marion... Why?

*** This is probably not related but I wondered if Veronica had some pagan traditional uses, kind of like Elecampagne.  So, I found pictures of Saint Margaret right next to the herb (could be totally random coincidence). When I looked up St. Margaret, I found lots of pagan roots.  Margaret seems to be linked to the Three Fates.  Here is the page that places Margaret as one of the Fates:

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

Ok, now I am copying the key part of the Wikipedia page about the 14 Holy Helpers:

"At the heart of the fourteen were three virgin martyrs:

Sankt Margaretha mit dem Wurm, Sankt Barbara mit dem Turm, Sankt Catharina mit dem Radl, das sind die heiligen drei Madl.[2]

Saint Margaret with the dragon Saint Barbara with the tower Saint Catherine with the wheel those are the three holy maids."

Pagan roots of Arbor Day (?)

Just a link about Arbor Day.  I think Arbor Day is related to (but not the same as) Oak Apple Day.  And Oak Apple Day seems to have a pagan history.

All I know is that I saw it on Wikipedia.  I don't have strong evidence, yet.

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

The Wikipedia page about Arbor Day also hints at a history of pagan and Christian blended spring festivities.

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

What I would like to find is something about actual arbors, festive arches, shelters decorated with flowers.  Imagine if the ancient world had other festivals similar to the Jewish festival of booths?  Springtime booths?


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Yogurt for long life

I was a child when Americans started eating yogurt.  People used to get their yogurt at the health food store, I think.  I remember an advertisement on TV sometime around 1979 -1981, an ad about yogurt and how the oldest people in the world eat yogurt.  So, yogurt gives long life.  I want a long life; I'll eat a lot of yogurt.  One day recently, I was daydreaming and I had this idea, What If It Wasn't Just the Yogurt?

What if their longevity had to do with living at high elevation?  Less oxygen, less decay, unchanging...  So how tall are those mountains where the oldest people live?  Soviet Georgia in 1980 - maybe it was a very quiet place?  I don't know what held that country together, nor why they had a war recently.  I am thinking about medical mysteries a lot these days.  I am sure the yogurt helped with longevity, anyway.

Maybe the yogurt helped them keep a healthy appendix.  I read a new theory that the appendix  has an important job.  Everybody used to think that the appendix was an unnecessary body part.  Now, the new idea is that the appendix stores healthy gut flora, and helps the good flora repopulate whenever you lose them to illness (right, I did not want to say, lose them to diarrhea.). It is so cool to learn new things about anatomy.  I thought there wasn't anything new to learn about the human body.

I thought that subject was pretty much entirely known.  But this summer there was news of the discovery of lymph nodes/ lymph somethings in the brain.  Ok, I don't know anything about it.  But when I read about the discovery, I went straight away to Wikipedia.  I checked, there was a picture of the lymph system, and it only went up to the neck, not the brain.  All the anatomy textbooks must be revised, how often does that happen?

So, I spent months thinking about lymph nodes (lymph passages?) in the brain.  We know the human brain needs a lot of food, lots of glucose.  But, there has to be waste products from all that food.  How does the waste get cleaned out?  Wish that I knew this subject better.  Anyway, I started checking regularly for news relating to the brain.  Because I Want To Be Okay.  I want to be healthy not crazy.  I can accept that I may have to take antidepressant medication for the rest of my life.  But, I still feel crazed often.  And, I am worried about the children, how to prevent craziness in the next generation?

Elecampane

Inula helenium, Elecampane just may have a really amazing history.  I am not going to write it all now, after midnight.

But here are a few thoughts:  it was named elf wort or elf weed for a good reason.  I suspect it is something to do with absinthe.

Why the name of the plant is associated with Helen of Troy...?  Could Helen of Troy have a connection to ancient religious ideas?  I noticed a story where they used elecampane to bring the Wild Man back to life in a mummer's Christmas play.  It is from the book, Santa Claus - Last of the Wild Men...