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The Serpent's Tale (History)
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aurelius



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Preface

Greetings if you have followed me here from my Dark Age Obscured postings on the British annals (12) and 'Dragon' musings, of which so far there have been 42. Unfortunately for me I may not even be half way yet. The trouble with this serpent thingy is just when I think I have cornered it the damn thing slips into a crevice where it is hard to get at. And even if seem to be able to lay my hands on a firmness of body the creature sloughs off its skin and legs it (well, that's not technically correct - only if it has morphed into a dragon).

This chase has led me down a number of byways, including trees of various kinds which comprise my most recent postings. If you want to recap, back on the Dark Age Obscured the last eight are:

Metaphors and flora
The Veneration of Trees of Life
Trees of Life, 1: the Apple
Tree of Life? 2: the Oak
The State of Play in Genesis Ch. 2 v. 5 – Ch. 3 v. 24 : The Trees
The State of Play in Genesis: The Serpent
Tree of Life? 3: the Rowan
Tree of Life? 4: the Linden and Beech

Many books and websites are there to inform us about this motif, so it is hard to develop an original take on the subject. But that is my self-imposed torment, and I'm not giving up yet. You can help me along the way by chipping in (or, if you've lost patience with the AE-lite thread, put me out of my misery by telling me to stop. NOW.

OK, if no-one does this within a few hours I'll continue with post number 55. (Only kidding about the misery, by the way...)
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Hatty
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Funny you should mention legs as it reminded me of Hubert's slippers. Hubert Walter, who was King John's first Archbishop of Canterbury, had lain unmolested in his tomb since 1205 until 1890 when the coffin was opened. Among the regalia was his pair of ceremonial slippers with dragons, or griffins, stitched just below the ankle.

There was a discussion some time ago about hobbling, ankles and Hermes in the Comments on the Megalithic thread. Something to bear in mind perhaps?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Looking forward to it. Sorry, I forgot to clap the half century......
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aurelius



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Hatty wrote:
Funny you should mention legs as it reminded me of Hubert's slippers. Hubert Walter, who was King John's first Archbishop of Canterbury, had lain unmolested in his tomb since 1205 until 1890 when the coffin was opened. Among the regalia was his pair of ceremonial slippers with dragons, or griffins, stitched just below the ankle.

There was a discussion some time ago about hobbling, ankles and Hermes in the Comments on the Megalithic thread. Something to bear in mind perhaps?


Yes, I should be able to find it via a keyword search, thanks. Regards the tomb, when we were at the Margam stone cross museum I took a picture of a C14th Century slab with the image of a crusader on it. A very small dragon was carved to be nibbling at the pointed end of his shield. The C13th - 14th was the peak time for this kind of ornamentation.

Try as I might I can't find a way of reproducing it here from the images saved on my computer.
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aurelius



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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Looking forward to it. Sorry, I forgot to clap the half century......


Thank you for your support, as always. I intend to occupy the crease for some time yet though you may find my balls may tend to go round in circles first before eventually finding a boundary.

(Stop tittering.)
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aurelius



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World Trees

We are told that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated, in pulses, northwards and eastwards. Pivotal, as far as Europe is concerned, were the polytheistic Semite peoples who, at the land junction between Africa, Asia and Europe, set up their altars beside a tree (sometimes translated as ‘grove’ in the Old Testament), or planted them beside ‘Asherah poles’ – representations in dead, or living wood, of the goddess of the same name. This is condemned several times in the Bible, as the monotheists after their exile strove to replace paganism – Asherah had been associated not only with the Sumerian god Anu, but also Yahweh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah

Nevertheless we can still see how the practice of tree-altars has parallels with the ‘world tree’ motif in many other mythologies, the ripples of human migration into Europe from the hub of the Middle East having brought us the flotsam and jetsam of even more ancient myths, as argued by James George Frazer and latterly, Stephen Oppenheimer. These older myths Oppenheimer has argued entered the hub not from the south, but from the east.

Perhaps the most familiar parallel or relic of the Asherah pole is the Irminsul, beloved in Germanic mythology. (Irmin is both an Old Saxon adjective meaning ‘great’ or ‘strong’ and the name of an early Germanic deity; as Irmin-sul it becomes ‘mighty pillar’.) The Norse cast their world-tree Yggdrasil as an Irminsul on which, Christ-like, Odin pierced his side with a spear and hung until he understood the runic wisdom chiselled into the trunk.

The oldest chronicle mentioning an Irminsul describes it as ‘a tree trunk erected in the open air’. Roman sources tell us that the “Germanic peoples worshipped their gods in forest clearings”. We are told this altar, the focus of Saxon religion, was symbolically destroyed by Charlemagne in his reputed drive to convert pagans forcibly into Catholicism.

Some think the Sutton Hoo helmet carries a stylised Irminsul, represented by a swan (from the ‘moustache’ to the point just above the eyes), its beak meeting the snout of a serpent whose tail is here out of sight in the nape of the neck:

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Wile E. Coyote


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aurelius wrote:
Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Looking forward to it. Sorry, I forgot to clap the half century......


Thank you for your support, as always. I intend to occupy the crease for some time yet though you may find my balls may tend to go round in circles first before eventually finding a boundary.

(Stop tittering.)


Go for it, Wiley is more a spinner, a few googlies the odd chinaman, most get tonked over the boundary.....

You have to experiment to take the odd wicket.
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aurelius



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Tree of Life? 5, the Ash

Though in Western Europe it is the apple, Malus, that has been associated (unfairly) with the mythical ‘Tree of Good & Evil’, it has no status as a ‘tree of life’ or ‘world tree’. No single species - oak, rowan, beech or linden included –fulfils all three disparate concepts. But two out of three ain’t bad, and ash is a strong contender for a dual role.

Ash - Fraxinus excelsior - is widely distributed throughout Europe, northern Turkey and the Caucasus but is not indigenous to the Middle East. It symbolises the third consonant, N, of the Ogham tree alphabet.

The Greek goddess Nemesis carried an ash branch, symbolising her right to dispense justice/fortune from the gods. Another role from her portfolio gave her the epithet ‘Nemesis of the rain-making ash tree’. Ash has had a healing association in Britain A twig was customarily given to a newborn child to protect it from harm; those who were suffering from some malady or other were ritually passed through a split in the trunk of a young ash tree. Tree of health?

The wood was probably used for the throne-like pillars in Odin’s temples. Thor is best known for his hammer, but he was also believed to carry an ashen spear. Most suited for this kind of weapon, not for nothing does the wood carry the nickname of ‘the widow-maker’.

Vikings gained their title Aescling, ‘men of ash’ because of their use and veneration of the wood. In the Viking culture of Ireland, ash was one of the five magical trees protecting the land so it is not surprising that Christianity turned these notions upside down by claiming the ash was the only tree in the Garden of Eden that the Serpent dared not approach, and had St Patrick allegedly drive away the snakes with the aid of an ash-stick.
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Wile E. Coyote


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aurelius wrote:

Vikings gained their title Aescling, ‘men of ash’ because of their use and veneration of the wood.


There stands an ash called Yggdrasil,
A mighty tree showered in white hail.
From there come the dews that fall in the valleys.
It stands evergreen above Urd’s Well.


Yggdrasil is the ash that holds the nine worlds amongst its branches. Beneath is the well of Urd.

It's the hydrologic cycle. This then serves as a model of time. Arguably the ash is male, the well basin is female.
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Hatty
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Associating Vikings with the World Tree is to be expected. They get everywhere.

According to our public historians e.g. Neil Oliver, some Vikings transmogrified into 'the Rus' and therefore Russia "owes its name to the Vikings". Let us hope Putin isn't a fan of BBC4.
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aurelius



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The Timewatch preceding it was actually a 'new' programme, quite a rarity on weekday BBC4 these days!

I don't think Oliver mentioned it but there is the 'classic' Arab account of a Viking funeral showing those Rus got around:

Ibn Fadlan account

A 10th-century Arab Muslim writer named Ahmad ibn Fadlan produced a description of a funeral of a Scandinavian,[8] probably Swedish,[9] chieftain who was on an expedition on the eastern route.[9] The account is a unique source on the ceremonies surrounding the Viking funeral[9][10] of a chieftain.[10] Regardless of ethnic attribution (Norse, Slavic or else) the source says "Rus" (RÅ«siyyah),[11] and the attribution is still disputed.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Hatty wrote:

According to our public historians e.g. Neil Oliver, some Vikings transmogrified into 'the Rus' and therefore Russia "owes its name to the Vikings".





wiki wrote:
According to the most prominent theory, the name Rus', like the Finnish name for Sweden (Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (the rowing crews) or Roden, as it was known in earlier times.[8][9] The name Rus' would then have the same origin as the Finnish, Estonian, Võro and Northern Sami names for Sweden: Ruotsi, Rootsi, Roodsi and Ruoŧŧa.




wiki wrote:
The earliest written mention of the word Rus' or Rus'ian/Russian appears in the Primary Chronicle under the year 912. When describing a peace treaty signed by the Varangian Oleg of Novgorod during his campaign on Constantinople, it contains the following passage, "Oleg sent his men to make peace and sign a treaty between the Greeks and the Rus', saying thus: [...] "We are the Rus': Karl, Inegeld, Farlaf, Veremud, Rulav, Gudi, Ruald, Karn, Frelav, Ruar, Aktevu, Truan, Lidul, Vost, Stemid, sent by Oleg, the great prince of Rus', and all those under him[.]"[citation needed]

It can be noted that none of the Rus' names listed are Slavic and few are likely to be Finnic; most or all are Germanic.

Later, the Primary Chronicle tells us, they conquered Kiev and created Kievan Rus'. The territory they conquered was named after them as were, eventually, the local people (cf. Normans).


Lets take a look.

Men that Row. Eh?


online wrote:
River: early 13c., from Anglo-French rivere, Old French riviere "river, riverside, river bank" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *riparia "riverbank, seashore, river" (source also of Spanish ribera, Italian riviera), noun use of fem. of Latin riparius "of a riverbank" (see riparian). Generalized sense of "a copious flow" of anything is from late 14c. The Old English word was ea "river," cognate with Gothic ahwa, Latin aqua (see aqua-). Romanic cognate words tend to retain the sense "river bank" as the main one, or else the secondary Latin sense "coast of the sea" (compare Riviera).


This gives the sense of balmy days on the river bank.....a very Row..mantic (sic) view......

Hang on river=rower v=w=b=p these were transportation systems.

IT also =Robber
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Ishmael


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BTW...

Rus...

Rose....

The War of the Roses = The War of the Russes/Russians?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Not sure according to Auro

Tree of Life? 5, the Ash


Ashes. Ash Wednesday.Cremation? Ashes=dried out parched.

In The Roman Catholic Faith ashes are marked on the forehead as a cross "Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris."

Maybe a mirror to the tree of life, based on the water cycle.

If you repent the cycle will continue? Birth is marked by bapitism Water. The need to repent before death is marked by Ashes.

Even today tree stumps are killed by salt. Does that explain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth You stop the cycle?
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aurelius



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Yggdrasil

Irminsuls were representations of a faith that was widely held in north European culture up to ‘the High Middle Ages’, analogous with the wine and wafer being representative of Christ’s blood and body in the Anglican Communion. As a pole or tree they may have even been worshipped, but this wasn’t necessarily intended. Yggdrasil was a religious explanation of the world people found themselves living in. As we have seen, it was considered a ‘world tree’. Below are the elements of the world-tree in Norse Mythology: the knowledgeable eagle (male energy or sky-god?) at the top, the deer grazing on the foliage and serpents (female earth-energies?) gnawing away at the roots.



In this most simple form the totem has much in common with mythologies east of Europe, even including Christianity, for the tree is not only the route to Heaven or Hell but it is suffering in body.

In its more developed form, one of the nine worlds associated with the Tree is the Midgard, or world of living humans. This is encircled by the Jormungand, a sea serpent, which really does symbolise “here be dragons”, unlike the modern misapprehension that this was common in cartographic circles a few hundred years ago. Jormungand (“huge monster” or “wolf-serpent”), is distinct from the Nidhogg dragon/serpent which, seemingly tied to one of the tree roots, was supposed to torment the dead who had led immoral lives.

We assume most mythological serpents, unlike Nidhogg, had a certain visible form, but in the Persian myth of the Gaokerena Tree its guardian serpent, Simarghu, is in-visible.

Yggdrasil is lacking the pendulous fruits which a literal reading of Genesis conjures up, but it nourishes and withstands the living forms that take from it. It is a ‘world tree’ in every sense, like a stake driven from the heavens through the very axis of the (flat) Earth: axis mundi. It is less a ‘tree of life’ than a world, or ‘warden’ tree, but it does have a world-wide symbol of immortality - at least one serpent - as a companion.

Etymologically, scholars do not agree on the name Yggdrasil, uncertain whether that sufficiently denotes the name of the tree or if only the full Askr Yggdrasil refers (askr is said to be Old Norse for ash, hence Yggdrasil has long been assumed to be an ash tree). Yggr is a name for Odin; drasil(l),’horse’. ‘Odin’s horse’ is assumed to be a euphemism for his gallows, based on the story of his voluntary hanging. If the common interpretation is correct, Askr Yggdrasil literally means – well, you’ve worked it out. A related interpretation considers yggr as ‘terror’ (Odin was certainly more of a terrorist than Thor, whose cult eventually replaced him).
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