Thaleia and The Palikoi.

Before Persephone-  in Ovid's retelling her name is Proserpine- other girls accidentally or purposefully, found their way into The Underworld. Some are goddesses such as cool and clever Inanna, who 'turned her ear to The Great Below' and followed the road that leads one way to offer comfort to her sister the Queen of the dead/ or to try and claim the throne of the Underworld for her self.

And selfless Geshtinanna (Lady of the grape vine) who chooses to spend half the year in hell so that her brother may not spend all his time down there.

Some who take the path of no-return are human, such as Alcestis, who out of either love or despair of her husband, chose to die in his place. Latter she was restored to life, but what she made of the other-place is not recorded. In the Tibetan tradition, someone who dies and then 'comes back' is called a delog and their stories are told as warnings to the living about the importance of a good life, whilst Alcestis's story is more about this life than the next, how a man who lets someone die in his place suffers more than if he had faced death himself.

And then there is the tale of Thaleia.

In Ovid's story we are given something of a travel guide to Sicily. The story begins in the center of the island, at lake Pergusa, site of a necropolis and temples to Demeter.

It ends in Syrakousa (SE Sicily).

On their journey, Pluto and Persepina pass over the deep lakes and sulphurous pools of Palici and it is here that I find another story of one more lost girl, called Thália. Her story preserved in Aeschylus' lost tragedy the Women of Aetna or Aetnaeae.

Her name Thaleia is in meaning similar to Proserpine: "proserpere" to emerge, in respect to the growing of grain. Thaleia means spring-time - "the Joyous, the Flourishing", from  thállein , to flourish, to be green, or from thalo- to bloom, so it is reasonable to guess that both Proserpine and Thaleia are the invisible,  underground force that makes plants grow.

Thaleia is the child of a god, of Hephaestus (god of black smiths), her mother isn't mentioned. She was by the banks of the river Symethe (The Simeto: Sicilian: Simetu, Latin: Symaethus) which flows around the volcano Etna when she was spotted by Zeus who 'made love' to her in the form of an eagle...

In another story it is the god Andanus (of a thousand dogs) solar fire who gives her sons...other say it was her father,  Hephaestus.

Thaleia was so terrified of Hera, the wife of Zeus she begged  the ground to open up and swallow her.

She got her wish, but nine months latter, as she gave birth, the earth once more opened and twin boys emerged:  The Palikoi.

Some call them demons, the Greeks called them The Dioscori, another name is the Kabiri (of Samothrace).

Nothing else is said of poor Thaleia, but all volcanic soils are enriched by her...Her story stops there whilst her sons are another subject all together.

Thaleia's children lived under a lake that reeks of naphtha described by Aeschylus as 'the boiling lake'. The lake may well have dried up, but about seventy years ago there were, at its center, twin Geysers. The naturalist Francesco Ferrara described there being right in the middle of the lake two big jets, which blow the water more than two feet in height. Birds did not come close to Lake Palici ¸even the animals refuse to drink its water. But some animals too thirsty to ignore the water are found dead on the shores of the lake.

Rather like Lake Avernus once described by Virgil in The Aeneid as the entrance to the underworld. Birds were said to avoid it for fear of its noxious fumes, hence its name.

Strabo, Geography 6. 2. 9 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) wrote :

"The territory of the Palikoi (Palici) [in Sicily] has craters that spout up water in a dome-like jet and receive it back again into the same recess."

It is shame if it is no longer there, but I think it has gone.

The sanctuary of The Palikoi is at the Rocchicella Hill, in the Caltagirone River valley south of the Plain of Catania in Sicily, close by is another temple to The Dioscuri.

I'm always going to be stuck with this quote from Eusebius  about a connection between Samothrace and Britain...I truly doubt that I'll ever work it out!


Worse Strabo says that in an island near Britain, Ceres and Proserpina were worshipped with the same rites as at Samothrace.

Naptu.

The curious thing is that naptha isn't sulphurous- most web sites and articles miss the fact that this lake (this long gone lake...). was linked to a different, non-volcanic fire.

I doubt that it even smelled of sulphur.

Naft. Old Persian.

There is no trace of Old Persian or Akkadian in the name of the lake or area as far as I can see, but the qualities of Naphtha- like a mixture of petrol and gas- were well known to the 'Persians' .

Mysterious water that could burst into flame.
Sacred fire to purify.

The boat building Phoenicians had more than a little in common with the Persians, and the Phoenicians it is said, believed the Kabiri to be present in St Elmo's fire. Sicily has more than a passing connection to the Carthaginians.

In this story of Thaleia, the The Palikoi/ Dioscori are earth born fire-spirits. Diodorus Siculus believed that the water thrown up by the twins under the lake was boiling hot:

"Now the water that is thrown up gives the impression of being boiling hot, but this is not known for certain because of the fact that no man dares touch it"

But, other than being sorry that the geysers have gone, this story leaves me with many questions...at the moment my mind keeps returning to the odd tale about Nergal and Erra- how they are one and the same person- twins? and the connection between Nergal and Mars and Nergal and Apollo. Apollo's connection with noxious gasses and oracles...

To be continued..

Internal structure of Woodhenge.

Woodhenge may well be based on the lozenge pattern not just a cross-shaped solar pattern.

 Found at Bush Barrow.

My first attempt to work out a structure was based on the solar pattern alone.

I'm pretty sure that there is more going on.

Playing 'join the dots' with Woodhenge is bound to be deceptive though.
There are so many post holes.

Possibly two post-holes represent just one post in some places, same with The Sanctuary. Both sites were used for a long time, with old posts being replaced and new holes close to the older ones, may have been dug.

I started by drawing lines, hoping to find a pattern.

Woodhenge 'pathways' based on lozenge. and 'solar cross'  design.

The four solar paths are still there, and as at The Sanctuary something happens at the edges to make the structure more complex. At The Sanctuary it only seems to happen in the SW quadrant. The pattern becomes more complex, it branches out, one post between two.

Found at South Lowestoft, Suffolk.

What else, other than sun and moon?
The Pleiades are just one of the favorite contenders for an alignment within timber-circles..as is Deneb (the north pole of 3000 BC?) and a part of Cygnus...but I don't have a sky map for 3000 BC.

So how would this 'lozenge' pattern work?
Some people think that the Bush Barrow artifact may have been used as a sky-map, a logical extension of the cross (based on solar and lunar positions).

I don't recall much of a sense of circular paths when standing at Woodhenge. Is it not possible that the posts were linked by screens woven between the posts to make corridors, entrances and exits?

There is evidence for 'exclusion' at The Sanctuary and Avebury, for hiding the monuments from view until the last moment ( a bend in the avenue, or the use of hills). Hiding and making secret are as likely themes as the lozenge and solar-paths.

Having spent quite a few hours looking at Maud Cunnington's plan of Woodhenge I am now permanently cross eyed!

But in the end I found a pattern.

Making The Sanctuary.

Well as I said a few weeks ago, lunacy has nothing to do with the moon shine, or its gravity. It has everything to do with the sheer weirdness of the moon; basically that 18.something year cycle.

Its solstices!
Kinda drove me mad.
Made me realise that no one would use just the moon...

I'm tempted to tell you the whole thing, like how it it is obvious that a full moon must be opposite the sun and that a crescent moon chases the sun, either above or below it depending on whether the moon is waxing or waning...but how do you know what time the moon is where, unless you look at every single moon over a period of at least a year -19 years is better! unfortunately you have to do it yourself to understand it.

But hey, I learnt how to make labyrinths and they looked complicated, so I can learn why The Sanctuary is the shape it is -its underlying structure she says, firing up Steam and Gmod.

After a day of recreating a virtual Sanctuary....

I even think I know why midwinter mattered in terms of the construction of these places, and how to use the sun and moon in one day to work out the alignments in The Sanctuary. I think it would work for Stonehenge too.

I'm feeling pleased with myself.
I want a gold star!

**Please note: The Sanctuary is at 51 degrees latitude. The times and directions for sun and moon rise were worked out for a latitude of 52 degrees because that's where I am.**

The Sanctuary begins with 6 stones -small ones, ones you can move easily.
These are just guide stones.

All you need to know at this point is which side of the circle the sun rises on.
Put two stones down on that side.

Then the other 4 in this pattern
.

OK from here on this is just a theory, I will test it out BUT it only works at the solstices. Though it can be tested at the full moon closest to the summer solstice, the best day to do it is full moon at midwinter.

As you can see from the diagram at the winter solstice the moon sets in the north west at 7:55 in the morning.

Rings 1-4.
One stone (red in the picture) marks the position of moon set.

About 45 minuets latter the sun is rising in the south east.
This is marked.

You then have a chance to move those 6 original stones around a bit until they seem more correct, and to go for a long walk returning at 10 to 4 to see the sun set.
2 red posts mark this position.

As the midwinter sun sinks, so the midwinter moon begins to rise.

Two more red posts mark this direction.

Single red posts are added between the gaps between the stones.

The 'solar avenues' lead out from the red posts.

Posts representing north, south and east, west are added (blue).

Next, one post blocks the solar avenue (marked yellow) and three (red) posts are added between each blocking post.

And that's as much as I'm saying for now.
It needs checking.

Here is the film.
It is full of mistakes...

Rings 6-7.
Are difficult.
The secret with this kind of puzzle is to recognise a pattern; I haven't found one yet.

I extend the lines radiating out from the center.
The O represents a gap that probably isn't really a gap at all.

I didn't try very hard in regions where something else was obviously going on. The SW region is the most obvious anomaly. Perhaps the extra posts holes were simply a mistake? I don't suppose they were a mistake..but then, when you are on the ground trying to make a circle it is pretty easy to go wrong.

Here is the next image.

But....I hear you say...but when you are actually there...it is really confusing. There are too many posts in some places and also not enough in others. This solar-passageway theory is all well and good on paper, but does it work in reality?

Good question.
Walking in from East, this is what you will see.

From the air, it looks like this:

There are not enough posts in the central ring and too many in the cardinal points. The posts on the ground are not exactly as the Cunnington's plan described them. Yet the 'solar passageways are still there.

First, find the dots.

I'm sticking with the inner triangles!

Next, add passageways at NE, SE, SW and NW...and a cardinal point:

Just remains now for me to do this in 'real life' using rope instead of Flash MX!

My third attempt to write something today.

There comes a point when I have to let go of the text books and just write it as it seems to me...fortunately I have left myself a note to remind me what I'm meant to be doing, otherwise when I vow not to return to a text book my mind goes blank and it would stay that way until I had to cook something or go to bed!

I have to keep reminding myself that no one needs me to rewrite what someone else has already written, this is supposed to be my account. But I keep forgetting why I was even there- The Sanctuary and Woodhenge..I mean.

A part of the problem is that I was wrong.
I set out sure that the central *female* burials at both sites proved (as much as anything could prove, from a culture and time that didn't leave written records) something of the idea supposed to be at the heart of the Persephone myth.

I now know that there is nothing at The Sanctuary or Woodhenge that does in fact prove anything of the sort!

The theory I'm working from is that the personal, human, feeling experience of life and death and all that happens in-between is externalised and preserved in ritual and monument, just as much as in the written word. This theory explains why  the stories and ideas woven together to form mythology are seen as almost proto-science, stories that describe real events in terms of people's beliefs; for instance, the hunter communities telling stories of the animals being under the protection of the Wild *Mistress of Animals* such as Artemis or Ninhursag. From this theory we read the ancient cave paintings of bison as eternal bison, always reborn from the earth no matter how many are killed. Unfortunately this theory is low on feedback No one can know how those bison were regarded, we will never know how right or wrong we are.

The theory was originally proposed by Jung. His explained the dream language of schizophrenic and religious visions in terms of archetypes of the (collective) unconscious representing our common, biological experience; and the personal unconscious as a set of learned symbols.

Human experience is mediated ( brought to consciousness) by a personal  library of symbols. From these, people evolve taboos and rituals to make sense of their experiences. For instance the experience of the hunt ending in the joy-horror of killing. Such a powerful experience needs to be constrained and made sense of. The killed animal's spirit returns to the Great Mother and if she is pleased with the hunter she will send more of 'her' children is supposed to be the common 'myth' of hunter cultures...

This theory predicts that it is possible to some extent anyway, to read a culture's beliefs from their artifacts.

In the other camp, some people look to myth and legend to tell them of actual events and to uncover deep truths about the past.

When Freud used the story of Oedipus to illustrate what he saw as the inevitable resentment by a son of his father, and when Nietzsche wrote about Dionysos and Apollo, both were using Greek myth as metaphor to illustrate what they saw as eternal truths about the human psyche. They also used myth because they regarded Greek myth as a more true metaphor, as if the ancients were closer to the *prime* truth of the human condition.

I really haven't the courage to *do* Ancient Wisdom, but those who can, tell a good tale and add to the landscape, often creating new rituals and belief systems as a result of their writing. Micheal Dames and William Stukeley though both of them so wrong about somethings, enhance the way the past is seen; whilst the more reasonable and logical Ronald Hutton and John Aubrey (of the holes) temper their imaginings a little too much with the facts (!)

Aubrey Burl and Crania Brittanica are somewhere in between, enlivening the past with a sense of horror and the reek of the dead.

And Freud evolved a new ritual, psychoanalysis.

But the question remains, is it possible to read the belief system that shaped an artifact back from the function and shape of that artifact?

The Neolithic Sanctuary and Woodhenge are harder to understand than the Bronze Age reconfigurations: the addition of an avenue and stones and a burial.

From The Bronze Age, The Sanctuary is approached in such a way as to make it secret until right at the last moment. The sensation of walking along such a route is a sense of timelessness, or being without a reference point, even a sense of bewilderment. Then suddenly the structure appears. The avenue from Avebury to The Sanctuary -or was it the other way- is clearly marked with stones from only the Avebury end now, giving an idea of how wide a procession would have been. Some of the stones, at least four of them were *given* a body, each one was male, one stone had a man and a young boy.

Quite possibly they were 'corpse bundles' -that is mummified, sacred ancestors as at The Sanctuary.

And yet I get a sense of unease in this latter development of Woodhenge and The Sanctuary, a desire to enclose and shut off, to keep people out or to keep ghost in.

Perhaps the corpse bundles were very old, belonging to the time of the long barrows?
The re-configuring, or rather the addition of boundaries was maybe an attempt to lay the past to rest.

The ground feels ghost strewn both at Woodhenege and The Sanctuary and especially at Stonehenge. At Stonehenge I put that down to the acoustics, the stones seem to absorb sound. But there is something about a ditch and bank at Woodhenge and Stonehenge that speaks of segregation, a need to stay out unless given permission.

But what did people see when they reached the end of the avenue?

The theory of a roof at The Sanctuary and Woodhenge goes back to Stuart Piggot who had excavated at an Iron Age village and found the remains of a large, roofed structure with numerous post holes. It was originally suggested by Ben Cunnington, but Maud Cunnington saw parallels between Woodhenge and Stonehenge- a resolutely open and un-roofed structure- both had a central burial and both have an alignment with midsummer sunrise.

When I've attempted to make a timber-circle using computer graphics, the numbers of posts make a confusing structure.

I'm sticking with posts for now, no roof.

It is possible that the posts were joined together by woven fencing (the find of certain snails that had previously been explained as proving a roof!) so perhaps the structures of The Sanctuary and Woodhenge were even more confusing, more labyrinthine. The fencing would make what is happening inside the structure impossible to see from the outside, also it would create a path. The way certain kinds of finds are found in certain areas leads me to imagine that there were set activities in set locations of the circles...

Anyway, The Sanctuary and Woodhenge both got into my dreams, and so I turned them into films.

I set the post on fire in honour of the evidence of charcoal and the implication that posts were removed by burning them out.

I also considered timber-circles as symbolic forests.
I imagined people sitting around the 'forest circle' as a single hunter went in to pit himself against the beast. The only evidence is that numerous arrow heads were found at both sites.

The hidden beast within the wood is such an archetypal tale, but I don't think that there is much real evidence to support this idea.

Still I almost enjoyed trying it out!

The similarity of Woodhenge to a labyrinth and the account of one Dr Toope of the ground around The Sanctuary being 'full of skulls' led to this film:

A labyrinth of skulls.

I have not as yet made anything like an accurate reconstruction because I'm not a mapper (I don't know how to use Source). Gmod is brilliant but limited and difficult to use on an old PC that doesn't have enough RAM (and can't be upgraded, its that old).

I will keep trying though, I want to make a more accurate representation of The Sanctuary today.

Really...I hadn't a clue where I was going with this!

In my notes I have written:

After Eleusis the Rharian field was a place or orgy and eating beef. The ephibes would lift up a bull for sacrifice and a solumn libation.

It is a quote from Walter Burkert- Homo Necans, page 293

On the page before that I took another quote:

The collective experience that life and nourishment result from terror, the encounter with death and destruction, binds the Mystai together and adds a new dimension to their lives

It is depressing but true that eating always involves killing, the breaking down of one life form to create into another. Joseph Campbell stresses this as the essential point and meaning of the original Mother Goddess religions. Her double axe so like a butterfly; the blood of the sacrifice promoting growth on that land, the flesh giving birth to maggots and flies...

death as transformation, the butterfly a symbol of the soul.

Homo Necans- man the killer- deals primarily with how humans get over killing, using myth and ritual to make safe something that is both physically and psychologically dangerous. The psychological dangers of killing are more than sorrow arising from empathy with one's victim, people learn to enjoy the hunt and over coming one's abhorrence at killing an animal hints at darker possibilities.

Every animal has a mother, clearly. And the Goddess who gives birth to all gives name and form to the knowledge that something has been taken and someone must be placated. The Mistress of the Animals, either as the Pure Artemis or the not so pure Wild Woman (such as Nin Hursag).

Herakles is said to be a mythological figure from this time in his lion skin and carrying a club; a seeker of immortality in the Underworld. And Dionysos Zagreus, Dionysos who ensnares, the god who possesses seems to be pure intoxication, a god one drinks in.

Homer sort of around 800 BC (and is to my mind as much Babylonian as Greek) says that a priest may only draw close to the Divine if he has "burnt many thigh pieces of bulls" -Il.1.40, 22.170; Od. 1.66- the god is present where offerings have been burnt over a long period of time.

This implies that it is use that creates a Holy place.
Or does it mean that it is the blood of sacrifice that causes the god to draw near?

If this is the case then as Berkert says, it is the intensity of the human reaction to seeing blood flow and watching death that feels like an encounter with the sacred. The connection between the feelings of Holy and horror and the desire for the Divine, become one experience..

The preparation for sacrifice shown on Greek vases includes bathing and dressing in clean clothes, putting on ornaments and wreaths. Sexual abstinence is most likely a part of the ritual. A procession begins as the celebrants start to leave the mundane, ordinary world. They sing and dance and the sacrificial animal goes with them, likewise decorated and slowly transformed. Legends tell of animals willingly offering themselves to be sacrificed.

After the killing and dismemberment the long bones and the pelvis is placed on the alter with flesh to be burnt. The skulls are preserved in the sacred place.

Latter the Pythagoreans and the Orphics (say around 600 BC) would demand that the lives of all creatures with souls should be preserved. Empedokles in particular described animal sacrifice as cannibalistic madness.

With the Neolithic age came the knowledge that the food crops came from earth and seed. Asherah of Canaanite religion like her Akkadian counter part, Ishtar represented the full store house, the fertility of the land; of fertility and plenty. Warfare was also very much a part of farming; it couldn't be otherwise. Inanna the Lioness of battle: "My lady, lioness in the battle, who butts the foreign lands, Enlil has entrusted me with bringing back the kingship to Sumer. May you be my help!"