Follow in suite Age of Rituals

Following the Goddess, new moon goddess, ritual law, time law, work order, law seasons, Lokasenna, in the ban, tales of Homer, Val Camonica the Alps, Lappland, Leirfall Norway, Aesir and Vanir, passage grave, Saros, Irminsul

When analysing a certain phenomenon one need as big choice as possible to decide if the phenomenon is special or general occurrence. The best choice is if from different places. To make conclusions from single occurrence may result in jumps to conclusions and pure speculation.

I have pictures from 60% of the rock carvings in Scandinavia and many from other places. Some of them are of good quality others give only the idea of what it is about. However that is the overall stage of science, still, it is sufficient basis to make at least some conclusions about some circumstances in the life of our ancestors.

In the following chapters some common outlines are compared with what we know and available explanations are added. The tradition of ritual law and time law on rocks cover several thousands of years. It is of the same family as for an example the laws of Hammurabi and others who made the law eternal by cutting it in stone. We cannot expect static answers over such a long period. People are different, customs varies in places and ritual changes a little due to precession.

Indeed much of the carvings are of Bronze Age but the carrying ideas are as old as agriculture and civilisation. They are solutions to the problems of assembly and depending on the climate, geography of nature, population, technologies and all changed in time. The Suite as principle and icon is the first step in creating a ritual.

The Suite pictures a work order and of course also a hierarchy. When paralleled to time it became ritual and law of seasons. Let us began with symbolic suites of a simple kind. They are usually picturing a season or a year. We have to know the myths behind to understand what it is all about.

It starts from left at the marked cupmark to the twelfth and the over draft of eleven days. Then we see that the time flow continues. Four of the moons are bigger, that is perhaps the season when the earth is open and grow. The other cupmarks are difficult to interpret. The cupmarks of diameter 4 - 7 centimetres are normally units if they are part of the story. It may sometimes be read IS and ER understood as now-flow in Danish. It is the root in German erde that is English earth.

Free small cupmarks could be for an offer. Thicker lines than normal and bigger cupmarks 8 - 12 centimetres in diameter shows that the surface is broken. They are to be understood below the surface or in the underworld alternatively to give out GE UR or GYR. Normally breaking the surface means one of three things: to sow or plant ... search for metals ... or the last journey.

The logic is almost crystal clear. If we break the surface as a ritual it is to forego the real doings. It would need a separate book to explain the language on the rocks. That is in child shoes as book number eight. This is only an introduction. However most of the carvings seem without plan and often in many layers in age. To get a coherent story we need to have strings of symbols in an order to interpret. Mostly we have to be content with readable symbols or icons and short strings that we may at least understand what it is all about. We cannot immediately get much better interpretations than this.

From the right we have an additional new season boat. The second figure is female with a plait. On the sixth and seventh is another season boat. The figures could be taken for human but they have no arms, as the gods/idols/ideas need no arms because people are supposed to be the legs. The leg was also a symbol for "tool" or " work". In many languages the root of the word moon is man or Sumerian lu as in Latin. At least one Sumerian city build a temple for Nergal the Moon Man.

In Anglia and on Rûgen the moon man probably Roman Manus was in use during Roman age. The figures are slightly different and some of them seem to be eunuchs. In Sumerian symbolic the eunuch was used on neuter or sexless matters. For an example fertiliser and water was symbolised with two eunuchs. Somehow they came around that corn seems sexless. Not a great matter as long as the methods worked.

The warlike figures are not as serious as they look. One is pointing a spear at the biggest figure, but it may as well be the big cupmark he is pointing at. It is probably the twelfth sign the Mother Earth connected with the Snake below. I was surprised when the figures fit into the world of Edda known about two thousand years later than this carving. Not all of them and that are natural because oral myth always live and change a little in time.

However let us look at the Bronze Age Lokasenna which was in beginning of August when all the asterism were visible except one. In the upper right corner is Tyr, the hero who put his arm in the mouth of the Fenriswolf. Then he was chosen as judge because he had learned what pain is. The big one is Thor with his hammer and below him the Snake and below that the fallen Balder and the Cock of Hell. The flying one left to that is Loke searching for the apples of Idun or fertility under the Crow moon. Two steps up is the one-legged Haener "the three sun-stepsī Meile".

There is a headless figure too. It is seen on some carvings in the late millennium BC. It is also found in the star room at Dendera Egypt and is surely Orion. There is no order and only a few symbols can for sure be connected to calendar. Tor was Gemini and Balder dead was in July or August. The Crow is March and the Snake is February. Loke was also the symbol of the store and Capricorn in August or September.

Nevertheless, even if we do not have a string we may say what it is about. A drawing reflects naturally the society and time. The Greek democracy was only for the nobility and it has to be equal in all aspects ... on paper. But in everyday life everyone will be free, so disorder is around the corner. The legs, ordinary people are in the ban, which is when the yearly rituals are an order and direct man to all doings. The rich nobility does always, as they like. The nobility everywhere was mainly traders like the Phoenicians.

The Romans tell us that the Scandinavians were traders and their main god was Mercurius Rex. If we may talk about some traders association it was founded in contact with the Phoenicians and feed by the demand for import of raw materials to bronze mainly. We can compare some facts with known finds elsewhere. Apollon Keraiates at Cyprus was horned. Some of the swords have a winged chape produced in Haltstatt and date the carving to the Halstatt period.

That was a parallel to the Phoenicians, which influenced the nobility of Southern Scandinavia as seen in the section about the Hand period. We see that the nobility of Scandinavia was up to date. They maybe lived in the Heroic Age like the Greeks. The myths we may imagine are not about agriculture or keeping animals. These are symbols of an upper class.

At the same time the Greeks listened to tales of Homer and heard about the hero Herakles and his twelve feats of valour. They are not too warlike all of them, but the cleaning of the Aigean stable were ingenious. However they are in fact a journey thorough the twelve signs of the zodiac told with other images. In old days many used the main thread of the zodiac as a rational model for long tales. In the adventures of Odysseus the same technique was used and Ariadne used another smart thread.

Mostly one of them is in another direction than the rest. The same is the case when they describe with female figures is one of them turned 90 degrees. It is likely to be the harvest or "the fallen". Normally we look at Egypt and this dagger model is on early tablets of the sed-festival, i.e. end of year. In the Alps they produced copper daggers and maybe traded with Egypt as we find more figures with Egyptian influence.

Observe that some tribes had leaders and other not. The Celtic culture is known for the thing assembly without permanent leaders. If a leader was needed, it was just for the occasion. In principle our democratic leaders are elected only for a period and a defined responsibility. The hook is sometimes the symbol of harvest. But is the upper figure telling about his last fish? This is one of few pictures where the figures lift their hands as worshippers.

In the suite two are connected as it is on several carvings. Above the males we have the Three Maidens known from the Edda. . There is not much in the Edda that could directly be identified as heritage from the early civilisation. And if, it is only some line or a word or two. But here verse eight from Voluspa:

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If it is understood that the three are the star configurations one understand how gigantic they are. The Aesir were the cattle-breeders and the Vanir were the cultivators. Originally they use an old word for the virgin but it is hardly understood in our days. Here maid means the different aspects in fertility. In night sky they are Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and in early calendar May, June and July which should be female names.

The ideas are from the fourth millennium when the older among Aesir sat at assembly and decided how to organize works as well as treaty between Aesir and Vanir.

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Those old men are dead since long ago. But they lived as Aesir and Vanir or the ideas of legislators ... thus they are also our family and roots. This is not history in the bibliographic way or with clear connections.

They are only fragments because a detailed history would fill the Universe. Here we can have a feeling of treaty between Aesir with a stake and Vanir without because of the seemingly sexless breeding. We may imagine the Inanna-myth behind the Three Maidens and that of Isis behind Heid. The sign of Inanna was the axe doubled or not. The dagger was the sign of Isis and she reached us in slab cists and in place-names in Denmark.