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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