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Cloak-not-Dagger (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Was it the Chinese or North American Indians who saw a rabbit on the moon?
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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I can sort of see what Hats is saying about the similarities of the flag to the 3 hares.

With the addition of three lines I can make three triangles (The hares). If I then. put a circle round the edge, and a small circle in the middle I am pretty close. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Paderborner_Dom_Dreihasenfenster.jpg

But is it close enough.........?

Were hares indigenous...?
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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nemesis8 wrote:
Hatty wrote:
The Scottish version of the Cinderella story, Rashin-Coatie, in which the heroine wears a rush-coat rather a cloak, revolves around a sacrificial calf which suggests autumn, the season of culling.
=hunting

I think the story isn't about hunting but transformation. The calf that's killed in Rushen-Coatie is red. This resonates with the red heifer in Judaism, an animal at the heart of a mystical sacrifice whose ashes purify anyone contaminated by contact with a corpse. Cinderella (Aschenputtel in German) has to 'die' in order to resurrect as a bride rather than the usual Jewish princess. Rushes are associated with St. Bridget whose feast day is celebrated with rush-crosses.

Ashes (cinders) are a sign of repentance, part of a person's spiritual regeneration or metanoia, literally a change of mind leading to new understanding/greater knowledge.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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In the Rushen Coatie story after the killing of the red calf its bones are buried except for the shank bone which has gone missing. The Egyptian Book of the Dead also shows a three-legged calf, with its mother close behind, which is about to be sacrificed. The missing leg is being offered to the gods. Both cow and calf are are red-dish, hard to tell how faded the papyrus is. The point about the Book of the Dead is to instruct people how to pay their way (and say the right words) to allow the soul to proceed on its journey, not so different from real life..

A rabbit's foot may be lucky because it's proof of payment, the 'receipt' to show the toll-keeper.
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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Hatty wrote:

Ashes (cinders) are a sign of repentance, part of a person's spiritual regeneration or metanoia, literally a change of mind leading to new understanding/greater knowledge.



Are you sure? Ashes/Cinders is surely simply hearth.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Yep, was just pulling your leg.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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So you made up the phrase "sackloth and ashes"? Interesting.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Sackcloth or rather hair-shirts is something I've been interested in lately, in theory not in practice. Monks wear an animal skin as, ostensibly, an act of penance, presumably for remaining attached to worldly pleasures, but it could have a pre-Biblical, perhaps shamanic, origin like most Christian observances.

Hairiness seems to invariably have pagan resonances and according to Wiki hair-shirts were made of goatskin which is distinctly satyr-like though that may be a step too far.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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In mythology the sacrifice (human or divine) is eaten as part of the end of the year ritual, but not the leg- or shank-bone.

It's not an anatomical leg of course. The food of the gods or sacrifice is amanita muscaria, the sacred mushroom. Only the top was eaten, never the stalk.

In the Rushen Coatie story after the killing of the red calf its bones are buried except for the shank bone which has gone missing. The Egyptian Book of the Dead also shows a three-legged calf, with its mother close behind, which is about to be sacrificed. The missing leg is being offered to the gods.

If memory serves, the Dendera Zodia shows The Plough as a cow/bull/calf's foreleg. And among the rare Iron Age burials in Britain (Yorkshire?) are cattle that are missing their forelimbs. Still wondering what that's all about.

What does calf as in cow have to do with calf as in leg? Are calves, forelimbs and icebergs all calfed/calved/carved from their mothers?

The gods are especially keen on the fat for sacrifices, aren't they? Everything a foreleg isn't.


The Welsh have a patron saint of hares, St. Melangell (mil, i.e. a thousand, angels?).

My money is on it being a representation of some mathematical properties of the equilateral triangle.

Melangell = honey/sweet angel? or Angle? "Honey Angle" suggests hexagonal/triangular honeycomb geometry. We touched on bee mythology somewhere, dinwe?

Or "a thousand angles" is either a circle or a labyrinth? "A thousand corners" is a thicket, a circle of thorns? A deliberate multi-entendre?

Isle of Man is Ellen Vannin, ellen meaning 'angle' (elbow).

Wiki says it's Ellan, meaning island. The Sicilian triskelion is the trinacria, three points/peaks/corners. Angles, elbows, extremities of the land equated with islands: reminds me of the case made by some that "island" in the texts on Atlantis can or does mean penninsula rather than island-proper. Something to keep behind one's ear.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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The gods are especially keen on the fat for sacrifices, aren't they? Everything a foreleg isn't.

In Hansel & Gretel the sacrifice is postponed till the children are fattened, so they offer their forefingers. It's all about trickery to survive and get out of prison, which sounds quite as pragmatic as the Book of the Dead.

Sacrifice is a form of payment, we still talk about being charged 'an arm and a leg'. Hermes' most famous exploit, stealing Apollo's cattle, led to the first sacrifice in Greek mythology (despite him being a new-born babe but babyhood also seems to have been a feature of some Christian miracle-performing saints). The important thing is he only ate the due, i.e. a modest, portion, the rest being for the gods. It could be that 'due portion' refers to the foreleg. I vaguely recall that at feasts a portion is set aside for the gods. Lameness as we discussed vis-a-vis smiths is the price you pay for knowledge? [The NT seems to have substituted withered hand/arm for lameness, presumably because a club foot is, according to Robert Graves, the defining sacred characteristic of Dionysus.]

Melangell = honey/sweet angel? or Angle?

Sweet angel is apt, though mel in Welsh means dark. 'Dark angel' is more like Hecate, the dark side of the moon.
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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This is really just telling me that there is an association between a lame (symbol..3 legged, rabbit foot, animal buried with out legbone) animal and good luck. This is well known in hunting cultures these animals are easy to capture kill or drive.

The other symbolism follows.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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You've hit the nail. Lameness goes with tameness or at least harnessing power.
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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Just learnt that, Aborigines place embers in the footprints of the prey they are tracking.....so that they have good luck with the hunt.
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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Hatty wrote:
[I think the story isn't about hunting but transformation.

Hatty wrote:
[Yep, was just pulling your leg.

Many a true word.....could there be a link between limping, knowledge and transformation...really got me thinking...
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Melangell = honey/sweet angel?

Fermented honey, used to sweeten beer (and wine), is known to have been an intoxicant, used as an entheogen before wine was drunk according to Wiki. There are clues in mythology e.g. Dionysus was fed on honey as a new-born and ash-tree nymphs were called the Meliae after the honey-dew produced by ash trees, the ash being the 'world tree' in Norse mythology and associated with fire (lightning).

St. Melangell probably refers to a Spring Festival or the spring equinox which was almost certainly associated with fermented something and March madness.
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