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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Any connection with gorgon I wonder. Snakes again. |
I didn't realise "they live in the ultimate west, near the ocean, and guard the entrance to the underworld."
(Don't forget the Dwarves I tentatively equate with the Celts, like Ireland's Tuatha Dé Danann, live underground, under-the-world. What's that thing about 'orrible women protecting Anglesey and/or the Druids?)
What does gorgeous have to do with Gorgons? They don't know what gorgeous means, but gorge means throat or whirlpool: an opening that sucks things down. Gorgeous might have the indirect sense of "jewellery/whatever adorning the throat/bosom", as they suggest, but it might also have the sense of "I could eat you up!"
As if a gorge isn't hell-mouth-like and scary enough (Gorgon means 'terrible'), of course, at one time St. George's Channel will have been a (dry) gorge (and subsequently the scene of terrible devastation).
St. George's Channel goes though the Giants' Causeway, posited as Pillars of Heracles. The pillars were left when Heracles scooped out the middle. Is that what let in the flood? Heracles as Earth-mover, Earth-worker?
I can't make out whether Pyrene/Pyrenaeus was Heracles lover, victim or daughter, but the Pyrenees where she died are named after her. I wonder how things fit if the mountains not far from the Pillars of Heracles are actually in Scotland or Norway, say. Anyway, "terrified at giving birth to a serpent, she fled to the mountains and was either buried or eaten by wild animals."
Terror and snakes again. Did she give birth to the Gorgons? Or was she frightened by one while pregnant?
Pyrene could mean fire and the serpent born of fire is specifically the salamander, innit? Wiki says that's Persian for "fire within", which in Greek is pyramid... Salamanders are said to be able to extinguish fire: as Pyrene was extinguished by having a serpent-child?
Salamanders exude nasty stuff (used medicinally/magically, I shouldn't wonder), but "the extent of these properties is greatly exaggerated, with a single salamander being regarded as so toxic that by twining around a tree it could poison the fruit and so kill any who ate them." Could you Adam-and-Eve it!?
Well, according to Etymonline, Pyrene is literally "fruit stone" -- and stones from fruits like peaches and apricots can have cyanide in them. (Didn't we discuss almonds? Can't remember why.) It also crosses my mind at this point that there are no clear etymologies for either evil (including general purpose badness) or eft/newt (Cf. salamander): Eve-al and Eve-ed, respectively?
Have I forgotten to mention (again) that the Angles might well be 'snake people'?
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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The wounded hero and the chaos monster.
The St George story has its origins deep in very ancient mythology. Both are archetypes that have been repeated from the earliest times. Carl Jung was the first to coin the word archetype as the distillation of a common shared memory; an irreducible first form. The same story retold and retold throughout ancient, medieval and modern history.
St Patrick and the snakes is just another rendition of the same ancient archetype.
There are some extraordinary facts about archetypes which challenge all prior theories of myth:
* All mythical themes point to events that do not happen in our time.
* Archetypes are inseparable connected to each other across wide geographic and cultural boundaries.
* All archetypes can be traced to the beginning of recorded history.
* No new archetypes have arisen since the flowering of ancient civilisation.
The Good King, Wounded Hero, Beautiful/Terrible Goddess, Chaos Monster, Earth Shaker, Thunderbolt Thrower and Serpent Monster all have their origins in the epoch that preceded the first civilised cultures. They go back as far as petroglyphic art.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Hmmm... Gorgon with her tongue out, surrounded by living snakes... Kali with her tongue out, surrounded by multiple limbs...
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Does anyone know the provenance of The Book of Armagh or the manuscript of the Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours? I can't find anything about this online.
If I've got it right, St.Patrick's Confessio is part of the Book of Armagh. And, the Confessio was apparently written in the same style of bad Latin as the Historia Francorum. (I had a link for this, and now I can't find it.) Could they be stories written by the same person/people?
When in history do the first verifiable mentions of these two works appear? Where were they written?
[On a sidenote, there is a scholar that believes the disastrous raid by Beowulf's uncle Hygelac in Beowulf is the same event as the disastrous raid led by a king named Chlochilaichus in the Historia Francorum because "Hygelac" and "Chlochilaichus" are the same name in two different languages. http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/dating-beowulf-part-i-or-smacking.html
It is interesting to think, even if it is very far-fetched, that the Confessio, Historia Francorum, and Beowulf are somehow connected in provenance.]
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Here is one person's opinion of St. Patrick:
http://www.reformation.org/saint-patrick.html
"The Roman Catholic St. Patrick is PURE FICTION. Papal Rome came to Britain with the Norman Conquest of 1066. A century later, the same Viking-Normans brought their cathedrals and crosses to Hibernia.
Saint Patrick's autobiographical confession was written in Latin, toward the end of his life. It is over 1500 years old and it is a real miracle that any of it has survived. It is missing a major section...at least 30 years of his life. It jumps from his dreams at home to an incident in Hibernia 30 years later. His greatest triumph on Tara Hill is not even mentioned. The Papal censors were very busy with this one!!"
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I actually read Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks many years ago as part of my background research for The History of Britain Revealed. Of course, at that time, I assumed it was what it purported to be, a contemporaneous sixth century account of recent events.
But even so I was amazed, amidst my naivety, that such a detailed account of Dark Age doings had not merely been written but had so magically survived, when pretty much nothing else had. The question now (probably, it might still be genuine) is to discover when it was in fact written. And by this I mean, as a start, which general era had a pressing need for this particular gap to be 'filled in': eleventh century Papal supremacists, Capetians, Richelieu, Louis XIV?...but presumably before the Encyclopaedists. God grant that it was before the Encyclopaedists.
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