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\title{The Milky Way in Archaeoastronomy and Myth (Seminar)}
\date{January 31, 2023}
\author{John Grigsby}
\subtitle{River of Milk: Road of Ashes}






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The circular ceremonial structures of Late Neoilthic and Bronze Age Britain, known as henges, have always been linked in popular imagination to the motions of the sun, but Indigenous Celtic myths offer other clues that suggest an alternative origin. John Grigsby will look at the possible orientation of these and other linked sites to the Milky Way, which, when compared to certain African myths point to older, occluded, traditions revolving around the role of the feminine and Dark Moon practises.


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Welcome. Thank you so much to John for coming for this talk and it's just a very very sad for us that we can't be there myself and Chris. We both got struck down with covid and but thank you to everybody who's helped us so much John has been a colleague and joined in the commemoration for Lionel Sims are late College Lionel Sims and he was part of the book that Fabio silver and Liz Henty edited for Lionel and that was coming from John's PhD work on the River of milk Road of Ashes the Milky Way in astronomy and myth. And of course the Milky Way has a lot of resonance for us in rag. Well, it does for Denise Arnold I know from her work and but it has for us and rag because of its connections to Dark Moon, but I'm Gonna Leave John to develop the whole thesis.


Thank you Camilla. Thank you. Right I was going to do like a little introductory Spiel, but I tend to waffle on with those and I then find that I've only got half an hour to do the slides. So I'm going to start straight on with the slides and say that I the idea behind the PHD actually came from I'm always loathed to say this and I had I had a dream with the image in the main image in the dream of the river of milk actually 33 years ago tonight. So I'm waiting to see what happened tonight and so I've been it's been yeah, 30 33 years researching this topic.


But it was only when I wrote the chapter.


Of for the book in memory of Lionel that I really was made aware of you lots rag and suddenly I realized that I mean I thought I was going back a long way when I was interpreting medieval myth as possibly Neolithic that's, 5,000 years old.


For you that's modern.


I've suddenly realized that there's that this myth is a palimpsest that there's a level underneath.


the myths that I've I was researching that betray an earlier lunar culture the lunar key the Camilla talks about we will see that my my work has concentrated on the Milky Way mainly within a I kind of solar mindset. This is the third late Neolithic and Bronze Age.


Solarized version of an earlier myth so the first half of the talk will be my research.


What the Milky Way meant to our nearly thick ancestors how it was portrayed within the ceremonial features the hinges and the tombs that I will mention.


How it was recorded in myth how this myth has changed and then we will look at we'll jump into a coyson myth.


Of the production of the Milky Way, which suddenly sheds a completely different light.


On the origin of the of the Neolithic myths that I was talking about and it suggestive that an old system has been changed has been a revolution.


to decrease the power of women and the Moon so having said I wasn't going to do an instruction. I've just talked for five minutes.


I've stopped myself short, so we'll start start with the story.


The story that I dreamed about 33 years ago and left me on waking wandering one what the Smith meant? It's an Irish myth. It was it's recorded in a few versions in the medieval period And it deals with a hero called kahulin.


Cajolin he to name that means the Hound of Cullen and he is the Achilles.


of Irish myth he is a young.


Precocious violent misogynistic. It's a pretty horrible person really, but Iron Age cultures. He was he was the bee's knees.


If he was living today, he would.


Already have an asbo or would be in prison for the Justice violence and his attitude.


but anyway the story involves a the stealing of a woman and the tale begins with the men of Ulster who are attacking an island of off the coast of Ireland and they are helped in this Quest by a mysterious man in a great cloak.


Now when it comes to dividing the spoils that they have achieved for their Victory, they they divide them amongst themselves, but they ignore the man in the great cloak who was helped them and it turns out that he's actually a God and he takes great Umbridge at the fact that he's been ignored and so he steals the best of the treasure.


from The Raid one of which is lawn at a woman who's her name is means flowers and he also steals a cauldron and three magical cows and the Magical cows have this amazing property that they can produce the milk of 30 cows and he steals them away from this kahulin who like Achilles in The Iliad has has kind of chosen this woman as as his possession, but Kauai the the man in Gray still was it from him and goes to the West Coast of Island taking the woman and The Cauldron and three cows in tow and kahulin sets out across Island to rescue the woman The Cauldron and the cows from cooroi.


Now Karai is a very strange character and we'll see that he has a lot of Supernatural characteristics which put us in mind of a certain Heavenly Body and that will be the next slide some session.


This is titians. I think the rape of Persephone. Yeah and The Story Goes that coal in the Achilles figure pursues this couple to the West Coast of Ireland where he koi the man in Gray has built a fortress on the Dingle Peninsula, which is I think County Kerry right down the bottom bottom west southwest of Ireland and he imprisoned the woman but she manages somehow to get in contact with Cullen and they come up with a plan how she might be rescued.


She says that her husband the the abductor coup Roy and he he has a number of magical abilities. He the fort that he lives in revolves at night like a mill wheel.


So it's already putting us if you think of the night and the revolving it's this is a sky image to do with the night sky. He also travels across the world from the East to the West and he hardly ever comes back to his home, but sort of every now and again, he will be there on Earth and at that time to Hollywood will be able to attack the fort and rescue the woman and the signs she will give that her husband has cut has stopped his travels and has come into the fort could always in the fort is that there's a river that runs through the fort now. This fort has been built by pillar stones.


That have been brought together by all the men in Ireland.


However runs through it and when her husband decide when kharoi is home, she will be delousing his hair.


From the side of his bed. He's his bed is by the river in the fort for some strange unknown reason, but she will tie his hair to the bed and then she will pour water milk into the river as a sign to Colin who was waiting outside.


That Kuai is in the Ford and he is trapped.


So he's come from his travels his captured in the fort and she will pour milk into the river. So the river of milk is a sign.


To Colin who is outside that he can come and attack the fort? so this is at the actual Fort sleeve Mist, but the the tail is really about Standing Stones about Stone circles when we think of the the fort that evolves at night. You can't find the entrance Apparently after dark and it revolves like a mill wheel and it is made up of every pillow Stone standing or line in Ireland. It's so it's an origin story about Stone circles.


So there was agreement between blown out and namely it's for the milk of yourcona's cows down the river in the direction of the ultimate so that the river might be White when she was bathing Croy.


So it was done. It was poured down to them and the river then became thin glass white flecked she then began lousing his head in front of the stronghold.


Therefore I went inside and the woman bathed him and she bound his hair to the bedpost and rails and took his sword out of his Scabbard and threw open the stronghold he heard an order into the ultimate had filled the house and had fallen upon him. He rose up straight away against him and still 100 of them with kicks and blows to his fists and the tendon who was with within rose up against him and slew 30 of them.


Then it was that the clandy dad. This is Chloe's Clan cast from them every pillow Stone which was standing or lying in Ireland when they had the shouting and came up on the floor around the Fortress.


When they were saying one another by The Fortress and cajolin had cut off kuoy said the Fortress was a flame.


so Colin the young hero kills the old the old Supernatural entity kuroy and rescues the maiden.


All well and good. What does it mean? something which hadn't occurred to me until I was in touch with the the people here at rag was to interpret things looking at the moon. I'd always avoided the Moon.


Because as an Osteo astronomer, the Moon is so complex. It's so much easier looking at where the sun is rising and setting because it's it's pretty much like clockwork and yearly the moon was too complicated for for me and so I avoided it like the play but recently I've had to start looking at.


At Luna symbolism, which has been interesting.


So looking at this myth when I looking at the figure of cooroi.


The man in Gray certain elements of his character suggest that he has lunar characteristics.


His name means The Hound of the plane or the wolf of the steps and the ideas that he's someone who travels travels widely.


He's also a master of animals his associated with a figure in Celtic myth that we call the backlac which is a kind of herdsman tends to be a one-eyed figure.


associated with wild animals and the hunt the one eye obviously is interesting in light of solar and lunar analogies the disc of the sun being the the Eye of divinity in many cultures.


He's beheaded and beheads cyclically, there's a number of tales where he undergoes what is called the beheading test and he tests a young hero by having the hero cut his head off. He then picks his head back and puts it on his shoulders and his reborn this image of the of the beheading and the severed head flying through the air is something that we find in a lot of Indo-European myth associated with the Sun and the Moon.


So the wounding of a God and the the head flying off is the image of the of the Moon losing strength then being reborn. This is something that is really a pound in the myth. But which I kind of chosen to ignore.


These other features the journeys across the world.


from east to west He's the king of the upper world and his fault revolves like a mill wheel.


I either place he lives the sky.


is forever turning so it seems that this Supernatural figure.


Has a lunar origin and then we look at other elements in the tail.


Look what he steals from the men of Ulster and Cajon. He steals the woman.


the cows and The Cauldron And the images I've put at the bottom the the silver cauldrons that we find in Celtic tradition. This is a good District cauldron from from Denmark.


Then they are very lunar in their aspect and imagine filling this thing with milk. It's like the moon going from dark to fall and again, the cows the magic cows who produce the milk the the horns of the cows also suggest lunar symbolism but I'm getting ahead of myself because as I said at the start I didn't consider lunar symbolism at all.


what I was really interested in was the image of the Milky Way I mean the Milky Way so Castle Ray.


Yeah looking see there at night strangely dying. Yeah castle egg. If you ever get the chance to go in the late District. It's probably the the most amazingly set stone circle anywhere in the world. Stonehenge is the most famous, but it's It's the most.


Boring landscape. I mean, it's it's on a flat play. It's not interesting at all. Don't quote me on that. I'll be kicked out of Academia.


So yeah, what interests me was the was the Milky Way this image of the of the woman pouring? milk into the stream was one that occurred in this dream I had And because I dreamed it I thought what does it mean? And it started me.


on this this journey really to to seek out what the myth might might mean it obviously has a connection to the Turning of the sky and with a fortress or a site made of pillar Stones. So my immediate intuition was the Milky Way is connected to Stone circles.


In this myth it does it does it? continue to be linked in analysis if I look at.


The sites archaeologically and with the archeo astronomy. Can we see a link between these sites and the Milky Way? Now the science I was looking at and some of them were.


Passage Graves. These are great tombs with passages in them those it's quite easy to see where those are aligned whether there is a astronomical alignment and the other sites I were looking at what's looking at we're hinges.


hinge is a Is a kind of misnomer? It's a modern word. Well, it's not modern word.


But it's a word that archaeologists have coined in recent times.


All hinges are named after Stonehenge and Stonehenge is a medieval word.


for the site and it means to Hanging Stones probably as in a jibid as in a place to execute criminals, so it's the place of hanging hanging Stones. So that's what hinge means.


So because that's one of the few that has a name when archaeologists then found a wooden example close by that became wood Edge and every other site subsequently a circular site ceremonial site and has been named a hinge. Although it doesn't actually mean anything and if you would go back to the Bronze Age and Neolithic and ask people what a hinge was it's a they would have no idea.


An archeologist really have no idea what these sites were for.


They were ritual sites.


ritual as you probably know is an archaeological term meaning we don't know.


If the hinges are weird, they they are ceremonial.


They are unlike other sites. They they have this distinction that they the bank is outside the ditch.


Now this may most sites you see are defensive sites and on a defensive site.


The ditch is always outside the bank.


Because you don't want to give someone attacking you The High Ground.


You want them to fall down the ditch? Well, you're standing on the top filling them with arrows.


So the hinges the opposite of this the hinge is not defending anything if anything, it's defending the outside and what is in the inside? Is there something in here that they want to protect? the rest of the world from this is a place of danger possibly something that needs isolating. This is like an airlock.


You're keeping whatever is going on here away from us a society and most hinges that there are a number of Different types of engines I'm not going to turn this into an archaeological nature.


but the majority have two entrances opposed to each other you do get the odd example with four entrances so-called super-hens like gay free in wheelchair, which is just massive, which is really a hinge.


With two Stone circles inside it. Well, it's actually got three stone circles.


That's just give you an idea of what what these what these sites are like so my question with them with my PhD was what are the engines looking at? now if you ask the man on the street What our Henry is oriented on they will say? mid summer solstice something like that.


Most people who go to Stonehenge will go down to Stonehenge at midsummer.


Mainly because it's a lot nicer than going down at Midwinter and you're more likely to see the sun although.


Not that likely I mean, this is the UK.


But archaeologists now think that the majority of these sites which is thought to be aligned on Midsummer. I actually mid-winter sites and in a way, it makes more sense as an ancient culture to kind of celebrate.


That turn in the year from when everything's got dark you want to suddenly you want to think of spring? I mean, it's like this time of year. It's just it's just boring and dark and wet and, you need some chieving along to get through the winter months.


You don't really want to be celebrating midsummer.


Because that's when everything goes pear-shaped. That's when the night start drawing in.


You know the rituals of midwinter are more important.


But how important were they in Neolithic times.


This is very much a modern.


Conception from the time of William stucley in the 1700s that these sites are all aligned with with the solstices.


In my studies, I looked at the alignments of I think it was 40.


40 henges, I'll show you a diagram of the ones I chose engine and other ritual structures like past Graves and I found that only a quarter of them have any relevance to The Mid Winter sunrise and sunset and only 12\% have Any relevance to the midsummer sunrise and sunset? So what are they looking at? What are the alignments on if there are indeed alignments and it doesn't have to be alignments? so, um One of the ideas put forward by my colleague Lionel.


Who's book here the soilizing of the Moon? Which was brought out in his honor.


last October He was one of the the first people to.


to look at the alignments the solar alignments and to suggest that actually they were covering an earlier lunar and they were an attempt by a culture to subvert the earlier man matrophocal.


rights And I'm not really going to talk about what Lionel said because I mean you can go on YouTube and find so many of his lectures and they they are.


Very interesting and very entertaining and unfortunately, very ignored by most of archeology.


Which is a shame because I think that he is he is spot-on.


My own research though was not looking at the moon. It was it was trying to avoid the Sun and to look at.


Other aspects of the site. What are the aligned on and I started with Stonehenge the most boring of all Sites which actually isn't a hinge because at Stonehenge the bank is on the inside of the ditch.


So technically according to archaeologists Stonehenge isn't a hinge. Okay, go figure.


But that's kind of irrelevant. It's just a very early site. It's a circular site. That's all we need to be interested in.


What was interesting when I looked at Stonehenge is that North is up that way? So you have this Main? Alignment across here towards the solstices. So this is if you were standing in the circle looking out that way you would see the midsummer Sunrise. But if you were outside looking in you would see them in summer Sunset. So that's the main access but there's also a entrance to the South and also which most archeologists ignore this strange little entrance to the South Southwest and because everyone had ignored that I thought well, that's that's my kind of Avenue into this. I will have a look at that what's going on? and I started to look at the the material culture that had been found in the in the ditches of Stonehenge.


This takes about 3,100 BC the that's the first structure there.


This is before any of the stones Owens in place. It's just that circular structure and we find a number of objects being placed in the ditches.


They tend to be these chalk balls.


Which no one really knows what they're for. I mean they're a kind of fertility.


Aspect has been suggested are they do they represent testicles? Other people have said to they represent the Sun.


Very few people have said is this white chalk ball representative of the Moon.


Go figure the other thing you find are cattle bones mainly cattle skulls sometimes each side of an ancient way as if you're walking into the the body of of this cow and they tend to be where we can identify the sex and they tend to be female.


So like the tail of lawn out that I mentioned at the start where we had this the three cows which is stolen along with the with the lunar cauldron by this lunar figure and placed in a revolving Temple made up of pillow stones.


We have the cows present.


This is the next phase which is only sort of couple of hundred years later. And again we have female.


orwalks Skulls actually, that's a boss Premier genius and the massive.


cow skulls and then phase two a again we have this the skulls and the Shall we call them Luna? lunar balls So I was interested in this this South Southwest entrance and The trouble is it was it was there in the first phase of Stonehenge and then after a few hundred years.


They close it up and I thought well.


What's changed? And about the time they close it up and they I don't know how easy it is quite Whited out they build.


A corridor within the south of the site pointing through the southern entrance.


Or more or less the same angle as the old entrance, but not quite. There's been a change.


So my idea was that something that they're aligned the sentence on something, which should then change it then moved? making that entrance redundant and the only thing it could be with stars.


Stars shift slightly due to the phenomena of procession.


normally about one degree every 72 years It's not going to be aligned on a mountain because mountains don't move.


that much of so what I did was to build and look at astronomy programs and try and see what these sites were looking at. What had moved.


What was the entrances aligned on? Why did they build this Avenue within the circle? Which you can't really see on that you can see on my slide here. But for some reason the contrast is a bit rubbish on that.


the more I look the more I found that other sites had this strange orientation to just kind of east and west of north or south and if you if you read the archaeological literature I mean basically there's a load of circles here with lines coming off them. Okay, there's a different sites, but they all have this this orientation. If you read the archaeological reports and the archaeologists say that they are aligned roughly North and South I mean the bottom ones are fine these that's thought these are.


some of the ones near thornborough in Yorkshire and you can see very slight.


They're not north-south. They're skewed.


I don't know what archaeologists think of the people of the past but it's quite easy to work out when North is.


If you if you want to put the effort in.


To make to align a structure to the north. It's pretty easy to do.


You just need the stars or you need the Sun? So for them to say that these are roughly a line north south is to it's to think that our ancestors had no, they just couldn't be asked . Yes. Yeah, it's like well, too. It's kind of North No One's Gonna notice.


It's not as if we've got drones people aren't going to be able to see it from the sky. Are they? That just annoyed me, .


Obviously they were aligned on something there and this slide here we have.


the orientation possible orientations 360 degrees and most of these sites I looked at initially were falling outside any Luna or solar rising or setting positions because the sun and moon will never rise directly south or set directly north soil.


It's an East and West thing.


So if anything these were they were trying to avoid? the solar and lunar Rising setting points and they were also look.


Directly avoiding North and South this wasn't to do with North and South.


If they were trying to do you thought they would get it by accident.


even if they were and they were trying to hit North and South but they were So what were they looking at? This was my sample.


Of sites. I try to get as many across the UK as I could and this was the distribution pattern of the entrances.


So we're looking at someone standing in the center of the hinge looking through the entrances now, they have a bank as I said a bank and a ditch. So you have this.


sort of entrance in the bank for which stars or everybody could be seen Rising on setting and so this is this was a pattern.


Completely different from what I'd expected. I had expected everything to be aligned on the Sun and the Moon.


But hardly anything was it all this area between the two it was aligned on something else. There were these exceptions which I will mention later.


This is actually towards.


the rising of the sun on May Day In the constellation of Orion again, I want to get want to get ahead of myself.


So it's to the North and South? But it's not directly north and south. They don't want to.


it's not like the Great Pyramid where they want to say we have aligned this to Magnetic North or astronomic North They're aligned to something that.


has variation so what I did was to sit down with an astronomy program.


This one is called stellarium and it is it's free. It's on the internet and it's free and it's probably the best archae astronomy program that you can get.


It's written by archeo astronomers. You can use it to look at how the sky is today, but then you can choose any date in history and see what the stars were doing. So obviously first thing you do is look at your birthday or Or what have you but then after that you can then go back to 3,000 BC and see what the stars were doing at Stonehenge and what was happening through that South Southwest entrance at Stonehenge in 3,100, BC.


Which then wasn't happening 300 years later, so they cut it off and what it was.


Was the setting of Crux this is a Southern Cross.


It doesn't look much here.


but the Southern Cross is one of the most astonishing sites in the night sky Except we can't see it in the northern hemisphere anymore. Due to this possession that that slight shift.


In the heavens that I was talking about now, it will return in time probably in about 20,000 years,  one stick around and see it.


All go to the southern hemisphere.


Where it's such a amazing consolation that, it's on the New Zealand flag and what also makes it stand out is that it was slap bang in the middle of the Milky Way.


So Crux at this time 3,100 BC was it wasn't I mean, this is South here. It wasn't.


That far never grows that far above the horizon.


But it was setting here and this seems to be what that entrance.


was concentrated on so there's a 3,100 BC setting.


A thousand years later it moved.


A good well almost 20 degrees.


To the South and by the time we get to the middle of the Bronze Age, you couldn't see it anymore from Brittany.


So it had disappeared. So even at this stage when Stone Age was built it was starting to decline and it was moved in.


to the South So could this be why they then? Blocked that entrance because it was no longer aligned and instead.


It was visible through the southern entrance and they built that corridor.


just posts 2,600 BC. So this is 500 years later. They they're directing their gaze at this same star.


Am I just randomly choosing this? this constellation well No, it's it's one of the brightest and most amazing views in the in sky and if you sit there with this computer program like I have for hours and hours.


Going through to see what is.


Rising and setting at certain point you see which certain Stars.


Jump out in you and there's nothing else really rising or setting in this location at this time and Crux.


So this is it? now we call it the Southern Cross, but that is a a modern take on the on the shape if I was to give your pencil and ask you to join the dots. You wouldn't necessarily make a cross. You would perhaps more likely make a kite Or a diamond shape and lozenge.


now as compared to the Midwinter alignments which was 25\% 60\% of the sites. I looked at.


Had an entrance aligning on either the rising or setting of crows.


So automatically this is three times as likely an explanation for the sites than the solstices.


but of course, this is just one way the as I say the entrance is tend to be on opposite side. What is in the North? Of the sky if you carry that line through if you're not just looking out the scent ones if you turn to the north out of the entrance.


What do you see there? Cassiopeia Cassie Pierre is one of the most striking constellations in the northern sky because of the W. It's very easy to see it's one of the few that people can pick out and it's also in the Milky Way. You wouldn't know it actually if you live in England.


You have to go somewhere without any light pollution to really see the Milky Way. I think this is one of the reasons why archaeologists have ignored it for so long.


Because they don't realize the if the view the effect the view of the Milky Way has when it's seen in a unpolluted sky.


I mean, it's just mind blowing to see to see it and to see when you're in a place with so little light pollution that you can see the dust clouds in front of the Milky Way.


It I saw that in Yosemite in the 90s and it just blew me away and a lot of ancient cultures, especially the South American cultures how a lot of myths tied in with the with the dust clouds the shape of the dust clouds in the Milky Way. Anyway, the Milky Way Caspia is in the Milky Way.


But there is another kind of.


piece to the To the pattern. This is milky the Milky. This is custody Pia skimming The Horizon from the hinge at Martin.


You have all these kind of.


neat tricks Seen from the sites.


But the important thing is casapir has the same kind of percentage of alignments.


as as Crocs But it's on the complete opposite side of the sky and there's a kind of seesaw mechanism between the two as Crocs Rises cassipier says or skims Horizon and as Katy Perry Rises Crux says and in some places in some of these changes we talking.


At the same time we're talking,  or within minutes.


So you can imagine a ritual going on whether they see Crux rising and at the same time the whole of the sky is joined by this band and if you turn around you'll see Cassius setting. So what are the chances that these two amazing constellations both at opposite sides of the Milky Way.


Should be highlighted by the entrances and exits of this hedge at the same time.


Now the hinges are also in most cases had white Banks and if they didn't have white material a lot of these were built in chalk downland but places all up in Yorkshire at thornborough where they were covered in Gypsum.


In places where there wasn't white material they had white material.


bought in and placed like quartz placed over the the hinge Banks So what we have is the entrances.


mirroring The position of the Milky Way at a certain point other rising of cracks all the setting of God and so you can imagine the Milky Way joining.


Two sides of the henge like sort of the handles of a basket.


So linking the the earth below to the to the heavens above and then at a certain point.


The especially in the Neolithic period the Milky Way actually tilted on its side and wind the whole Horizon.


Who don't get that this day because the protection we only get one it's a bit sort of asked about face. We just get one bit sticking up but in the nearly thick period the whole thing set on the rising so you can see the Milky Way ringing the whole of the Earth and I wonder whether the white circle of the hinges are supposed to sort of mirror. This is like heaven.


Heaven coming down to earth and meeting some kind of divine cosmogamy some sort of coming together of Earth and Sky and it's more examples of the orientation of of hinges with the Milky Way another coincidence that that we find actually image I've gone to computer you've got the bank and digital Stonehenge around here with the engines here and here.


So the Milky Way in the sky also.


mirrors the position of local rivers in this case the Avon.


So there's a connection between the river in the sky and the river down on Earth.


In places where the river is running sort of in this direction, then the Heritage tends to be aligned on the rising of Crux and the setting of catapier, but in this case, it's on the setting of crooks and the rising cash appear the position of local Rivers dictates, which aspect of the of the Milky Way is is focused on And again, it's that question of As Above So Below.


You know, what is going on in the heavens is reflected on Earth.


So then Having identified these these two constellations Crux and Cassie Pierre.


I then and that see soaring.


connection between them I asked whether there was a a symbolic reason why these Stars might have been chosen.


Which took me into art? these are in striped stones at four knocks in county meath in Ireland here the Chamber of this passage to we call them tombs because we don't really know what else to call them. They had they have bodies in them, but Then again churches have bodies in them, but they're not tombs.


The the passage of this tomb aligns on the rising of Cassiopeia and the setting of Crux and certainly in striped stones.


pointing towards these parts of the Milky Way are also inscribed in a fashion indicative.


of the constellations within the Milky Way According to my analysis. Anyway people may disagree.


This is very real chamber by the other Gallery is on Anglesey.


It means the apron full of the giant test and in the the passage of the tomb which is aligned to the setting of Cassiopeia in the Southwest passage over here is this Stone which has been carved into the the shape of it's roughly anthropomorphic.


But we see at the center of it two of these lozenges and then the W's and calcium here above that.


So it's as if this figure is representing that that Milky Way now W it's this representative of the shape of breasts.


As a female figure now in Welsh.


Tradition the cassipate is called Schlitz Dawn.


Which means the court of dawn or danu Daniel is a is a Celtic goddess and Dan who comes from the Indo-European word.


Meaning she who gives milk.


So you could see that there's a breast connection there.


whether the the Diamond the laws in shape of the bottom is a female symbol.


is a question I then looked into these are other female symbols from other Welsh and tombs, but you find similar.


Happening. These are my Iberia. These are goddess figures buried with Neolithic.


people in in graves in in Spain and Portugal and we can actually Trace these symbols and Associated them Associated them with female figures.


in neolithic art spreading all the way from down at Chapel Holyoke going all the way to in about 10 or 7,000 BC all the way up to Britain in about 3,500 BC.


but in a lot of early farming cultures, especially from the Balkans we find these female figurines and they have the the lozenge Associated normally on the belly and a lot of times with four dots sometimes have been impressed with seeds.


As if to to highlight the fact that this is a this is productive this is to do with fertility. And then we see another piece of figures with the end what sort of this shape associated with the breasts.


so my reasoning is that if we look at the figure these are these are some more of them.


some of these as I said from the what Maria Cambridge high schools are Old Europe sort of 6,500 beasts say could Tony tropellier culture. This is the lodge from Wessex bondage Wessex. These are the faults and drums found in a grave in Yorkshire which have the lozenge pan, and then the sort of Breast Image on top So if this is a universal.


Symbol throughout the Neolithic of of the goddess of the female.


Image with the symbol of reproduction. It's the womb of the goddess and you don't have to go far to find other Neolithic cultures.


that anthropomorphize the Milky Way and see it as a female image.


the Egyptian tradition it does this with the their goddess of the night sky nut.


Now nuts there is some argument over it but most people would agree that the curving of nut.


Across the sky is the Milky Way.


Now notice responsible for the death and Rebirth of the stun. She swallows the the sun each evening and instead of the sun go the sun doesn't go according to Egyptian tradition doesn't go under the Earth.


Through the night to appear in the East doesn't sit in the west and go under the Earth. It goes back into the sky through the body of the goddess and then his reborn in the east from her womb so it travels through the Milky Way at night, but we don't see it because it's inside a Now she's also associated with the cow with a white cow.


So this image is also associated with hath or goddess half or who gives birth to the Sun? In in the form of her that has some auras and here we can see the sky as the cow with the Stars along its belly. So the sun will be will enter and then be born again the next morning and we can see the same image from this is from Temple at tenderer and she's also associated with death and rebirth So just as she's a fertility figure associated with the fertility in life in death, the the soul of the of the deceased will go into the starry.


Other world called Duet through the body of the goddess and be reborn as a star and so we find note God has not depicted on coffin Lids there on the left so you can see the the Sun.


Being eaten by her and then being born from her and there we see as The Milky Way stretched over the Earth. God Geb.


so this for shortened image of the Milky Way gives you an idea of the link between between nuts and the heavens and it might seem a long shot.


associating this this mythology with northern European cultures such as the handiest but I think we see a similar thing here in Bronze Age Denmark now this is the burial of the eggs fed girls. She was a girl who died probably about 15 16 years old and she was buried in his strange corded skirt.


Which wouldn't have left anything to the imagination if she was cavorting around and we think that's what she was doing because it we see the same skirt on one's figurines doing somersaults and we think it was the kind of spring or fertility dance and I think what she's doing is she's acting out the the curve of the Milky Way the same that notes did in Egypt and just as notes has the Sun.


on her in a belly so the eggs fed girl was buried with a solar disc over her over her womb So I think the same sort of thing is going on in Northern Europe.


I think there's a shared Neolithic tradition.


I can imagine that this girl.


Is dancing in the spring aping the the dance of the Milky Way in the heavens and the rebook Rebirth of the Sun? and this goddess of the Milky Way and a cows is also associated with with tombs and is a capitalist and ahead whereas.


depicted of Thieves guarding a tomb on the on the West Bank And exactly the same thing occurs in neolithic.


tombs in in Europe where we see a lot of female figurines female imagery and ukrainia the cow imagery now that the most obvious connection between the cow and the Milky Way and the mirrors those we find in Egypt is an Irish goddess called called Bowen or Boyne.


now she lives at maybe she dwells at new Grange, which is great Neolithic passage grave dates for about 3,000 BC I'm a river Boyne and in the myth that she she is responsible for the foundation of the riverboine. Her name means comes from both senior, which means white cow. So she is the white cow and she creates the river Boeing.


But she also is responsible for the creation of the Milky Way.


Now new Grange the the passage grave where where she lives The Irish effort is Bruno.


Which means the womb of the white cow? So there if you're buried in there, then you've gone back to the mother.


in order to be reborn the facade too. It's white quartz. It's very much. If you see it from above mirrors that curve of the Milky Way.


the central passage of two aligns on midwinter sunrise Then you can go in there and get and see this at midwinter, but it's bit of a lottery other. You need to get a ticket, I think.


The weights about 20 years and it's bound to be raining the daily you go buddy. They have set up a light system where they recreate it.


So if you go there and do a tour you can actually see the sun creep up the passage and it's a sort of phallic array of the sun creeps up the passage and it's It's the principal and passage of the back.


So this is made winter morning and it's like The Rebirth of the Sun.


So you can see yeah, this is the chining through an aperture above the door.


So it's the same sort of image as the cow goddess of the Milky Way.


in Egyptian myth Now she's not only responsible for the production of the river the river Boeing which is named after which means the river of the white cow the Milky Way.


Is called the path of the white cow Bob fin.


so here in Ireland as in Egypt The Milky Way is associated with white cow and if we go back to the start of the lecture with the with the girl born out who is stolen along with the three cows and The Cauldron and who pours milk into the river as a signal.


We're seeing that this is this is part of an ancient symbology, which is being recorded in these myths.


but the the alignment that we saw a new Grange with the mid-winter sun with the midwinter sunrise and as I've come to discover through watching.


a lot of the lectures here it is a later.


Revamping of the myth I will talk about the Smith first and then we'll see what was behind it.


so in essence You might ask what has the Milky Way? And Crux to do with the rebirth of the Sun at Midwinter and the best example I can find to explain it.


It's a Japanese myth.


Of amateur assu the sun goddess who hides away at the winter solstice in a cave and this causes the world to go into kind of it's remembering Greek myth when Persephone is abducted into the Underworld the world with us.


This is Winter the fertility is taking away from the landscape and everything is dying and the gods are worried. The rest of the gods are worried. They're thinking, how can we get the Sun? To come out of the cave. She's sort of gone in there in a fit Peak it and refuses to come out and the way they decide to get her to come out.


Is that a a Divine figure called? I may know Azumi.


decides to do a lewd dance outside of the cave so she's dancing around and she's she's revealing herself. She's lifting her skirts and revealing itself and all the gods are laughing and amateur assu hidden in her cave thinks what the hell are they laughing at? And so she pops her head out to see what's going on and at that moment they grab her and then they close the door behind us. So they can't so she can't get back here and it's such a strange myth. I mean what what does it mean? Why what is this display of this woman? This erotic display that causes the sun to escape from the underworld.


Well a zoom a name means whirling Heavenly woman and for this this dance, she is rewarded for saving the the universe really saving the world by allowing the sun to escape. She's rewarded by being given the Milky Way and I think really she is the Milky Way to begin with.


This is the Heavenly whirling woman.


That we that her name means and it the Milky Way even to buy the case at one point like a pair of legs. It is like a female form moving in the heavens.


so what about her lifting her skirts, well We've looked at the the imagery of krugs as the lozenge.


When you go back to the Advent of farming in about 7,000 BC.


As seen from the near East.


the stars of Crocs Rows at exactly the same point as the midwinter Sun.


So it's almost as if you were looking.


To see when the when the year would turn when the sun would be reborn he would look and then you would you would see on the southern Horizon the rising of Crux.


at the point Where the sun would then be reborn? the dancing of the Heavenly woman revealing herself for sages The Rebirth of the Sun.


I think that's where this myth comes from and we can date it back to by this to about 7,000 BC.


in the Fertile Crescent another thing that allows us to date it is the appearance of The Rescuer.


In them if the man the the figure who rescues the Sun.


after the woman dances And a lot of Indo-European myths a hero like Colin in the first instance.


Defeats the monster who is protecting the Sun the sort of even the monster represents winter the dark clutches of winter and the underworld and the hero goes into the underworld and rescues the Sun from this monster now the monster in a lot of India European Traditions as three heads and this is from a drinking horn from Galley horse in Denmark. Thanks for about the third Century ad.


But here's the hero.


the hero coming to say the monster.


I mean notice he's got a bow and arrow and there were three stars above him.


Now looking through the astronomy program. So I was using to reconstruct the ancient Sky we find that in this early period in about 7,000 BC onwards to about 3,500 BC.


the midwinter Sun Is preceded out of the underworld by? the constellation of Orion so Orion is this figure striding across? sky Who is rescuing and pulling the the Sun out? Of the underworld in the earliest myths because of precession. He's carrying the sun on his shoulder. Now. This is something we find in Greek myth in the myth of a Ryan and we also carries on into Christian tradition in the figure of Saint Christopher who is crossing a river and he's got the Christ child on his shoulder and the Christ child grows heavy and that's it. You know the solar image.


It's a Ryan carrying the sun. I haven't got time to go into this too much. It's in my thesis, but there's in a lot of traditions, but we can date this.


This tradition back to the near East at the same time as Crooks is rising at the winter solstice. So A Ryan is acting as this as the sun rescuer and just to say show that things never get old.


Because we have a tradition where? the the female is rescued from the underworld by.


The figure walking through the sky the Skywalker rescued by from her dark father as we will see sometimes kin the father that's keeping her in prison. That's what Darth Vader means and Darth dark father. It's it's an old myth.


But it still has it forms the basis of most hero myths today the rescue of the maiden by the hero and is we put such a nice spin on it? Until we realize what it replaced.


There's a Another Irish version which in which the god the dagger which means the good God means he's good at everything. He rescues his this female figure.


from her father's camp her father who is associated with a blazing-eyed demon called Balor very sort of lunar characteristics. Anyway, the the myth.


Says how the dagger carries this woman that he rescues on his back and he put three stones in his belt. I've not seen any explanation of what these three stones might be and it has been said that they will hit his testicles which fell from it as these.


These Stones Fall and he becomes lovers with them with a woman.


But it seems to me quite obvious that we again we're looking at the rescue of the Sun.


By Orion and there we have the three stones in his belt and it has been said they were his testicles which fell from it.


They I think the connection between Orion and these mythical figures is he's quite clear, especially in some of the Celtic myths and looking at the orientation of the hinges. I found that 38\% of the sites had some kind of orientation to the constellation of Orion.


The best one was yavoring in northumbria. Now, the hinge was built in the shadow of the hill now, it's a massive Hill. There's a great Anglo-Saxon site on top of the Avery.


but the hinge is built to the north of there and it was so built that if you were to sit in the hinge On a Winter's Night.


You could watch Ryan.


Walking across the hill like literally walking with his dog serious following him.


Like the Grand Old Duke of York walking up to the top of the hill and down again.


So this is this was what passed for entertainment back in the near I think before before television, this was your this was your Star Wars watching Orion rescuing the Sun? So that's as far as I'd got with my PhD, I'd finish the PhD and I've come to the conclusion that the hinges.


Were aligned with the rising.


Or the setting of Crux and Cassie Pierre linked with the womb of the goddess in the Dark Knights proceeding the solstice when the sun Maiden was rescued from the forces of winter by the hero or Ryan after the sign of the Milky Way appeared in the sky. So this is the first myth we talked about the woman who's trapped within the henge releases the milk into the water the Milky Way appears in the sky as it does in the Japanese myth and this allows the rescue of the sun made and I was kind of happy with that because I spent 30 plus years and then I then I was asked to write a chapter in lionels.


Lionel's book and I wrote about how the solar Cults had overtaken lunar cults and then I was like God there's a whole new level to this that I'm not looked at and so that that was that was what I tend to next.


So the question I then asked was was the original myth of the appearance of the Milky Way.


Not a yearly event mixed with links with the rebirth of the Moon.


with the Sun but at midwinter but a monthly.


event linked with the Dark Moon This is saying that Lionel Sims talked about the Dark Moon how the winter solstice.


Was a was an event where the the new solar cult had hijacked the old Dark Moon Cult and turned it into a yearly.


Yearly event rather than a monthly event taking away the power of the moon and the sort of equality of the feminine.


So yeah, this was this was the next.


question and so I was I was quite surprised to find that.


There was a fairly similar Milky Way myth to the first one I mentioned.


amongst the Bushmen in Africa And there's koison myths that talks about the creation of the Milky Way.


By a girl and she's undergoing her first menstruation, and she has been isolated in the women's camp and she's been given roots to eat and she's a bit bored.


as The Limited diet and probably the lack of company and it said that she threw the ashes from a fire into the air.


To create with dust clouds of the Milky Way and then through the roots of the of the plant that she'd been given to eat into the fire which which forms stars of the Milky Way and so in she does this in a kind of fit of Anger and frustration really I suppose so isolation and her limited diet.


but the way the tail has been interpreted or the different versions of it suggest that there's there are more connections to it than to the Celtic than you would think.


Michael wessels had written a piece on this in folklore on the story of the girl of the early race who made stars and I just quote a bit of this. This is the creation the girl who she put her hands into the wood. Ash.


Is she throughout the wood ashes into the sky. She said to the wood as she's the wood ashes which are here. They should all together become the Milky Way.


The girl was the one who said that the Milky Way must glow for the people that the people might return home by night in the middle of the night for the Earth would not have glowed had the Milky Way not been there that and the Stars.


So although she does this out of a fit of anger. There's a sense that she's doing it.


There is a kind of beneficial.


Reason for the rest of the tribe and this is so that people may return home at night. It's a sign it's a signal. It's a way marker and whistles goes on two major versions of the story of the girl of the early race occur in the collection two accounts together generate and significantly wider range of meetings in a single version would in one version the girls actions follow directly from anger her mother and then by extension the social order.


As Belinda yes and emphasizes. It's a ritual restrictions on a movements and diet at the time of maniki that enforced by her mother and other closely related older women which elicits the girls are and these sort of fair ashes and routes into the sky.


The longer version her actions are driven not only by anger, but by calculated intent that contains benevolent elements.


The girl makes a star spray throwing Roots into the sky. Her motives are presented as Humane. She wishes to provide life for people at night specifically for the young men out hunting.


First reading the Angus you displays towards her mother and the other women appears as an adjunct to the central narrative.


One possible and explanation but not one the story wishes to offer directly is that her lighting up the night definitely links her with the social group from whom she is richly most excluded the young men.


Is there nocturnal hunting excursions and especially require this light? Whatever, it's precise motivation and however beneficial it's results. It is the rebellious nature of her act that leads to the narrator's condemnation of her.


So looking at the two examples the Irish and the African we find that.


There's similarities but differences the African version.


It's dark moon. Whereas in the Celtic version. It's dark of the year. It has a A different emphasis. It's been widened onto a solar.


solar framework in the African version the Moon As with all women menstruating the Moon is her husband as if you hear listen to any of drones talk she will.


Pick up on this just as in the Irish version the figure of cooroy.


Who I mentioned the beginning had so many lunar aspects that it seems that she was captured or was was courting a supernatural Heavenly figure. So cooroi is a lunar a lunar figure.


in both cases the man who wait hunting but in the African version the woman who remains chased and whereas in the Irish she decides to take a lover and betray her husband the Moon.


There's there's a hint of this in the African version where she's she is rebellious and in one version she is I think killed by by her husband after this event.


but are they are they related I came up with a question whether there was an original schema, whereby a Dark Moon the maiden have first menstruation goes into the women's house the place of her kid and she moves away from her non-kin men Folk and potential husbands and becomes the wife of the Moon.


Now her segregation ensures the hunting prowess of the men. This is why it's important that she is she is kept separate so that this is not diluted.


She then makes the Milky Way as a signal away marker for the men.


From the food that she's been given and this eventually allows the men with to return safely and I wonder whether there's something cyclical about this.


She goes.


into the menstrual heart she is with the moon. She creates the Milky Way.


the moon leaves the men come back. This is the monthly and ongoing cycle So there's that division the moving from the light to the dark. It's never resolved.


It's always there's always that equality and safe with nature and now the Celtic Tales don't have that.


I I say that with a caveat that there is one I say Celtic is in English. Tell them does preserve some of this and that's the story of Gwen and the Green Knight and what I don't want to go too much in this because I could talk for hours, and I probably want to Keep this for another time. But in the territory in the green night, the Green Knight arrives at Camelot to weigh in chops his head off and he lifts his head back onto his body and demands that Gawain come back to the chapel green in a year and a day's time to receive a return return strike. So the green night is a it's a supernatural figure the beheading and the rebirth is very much a lunar characteristic.


Gawain goes to the castle of a lord called lord bertilak and his seduced by Lord bertolax wife while bertilak is out hunting, but he stays He stays chased he does not.


give in to her advances now, there is a bit of flirting between them and the bertilak is our hunting during the day and each time when he comes home that the things he has hunted are getting more and more poultry start off with a ball and then idea and at the end, it's just a Mankey old fox skin. It's as if the hunting element his luck at hunting is decreasing as Gawain and the wife are getting more intimate.


So there's a connection there but but Gawain stays Chase he doesn't sleep with her and as a result, he is given a girdle by her which allows him to survive the beheading test when the Green Knight will then try and behead him just as Gawain beheaded him to begin with I mean I butchered that tail and I'm sorry, but maybe I'll come and give a give a talk about it in the future.


But in this story The conclusions I came to with this.


The green night if one continues to look behind the usual view of him as a seasonal vegetable figure and instead it is lunar Origins becomes as a husband of the sequestered lady the moon. He is also associated with hunting kind of Guardian of the wild his beheading and rebirth makes sense in such light he can survive death as he's lunar constantly waxing and waning The Moon is a severed head in many worldwide cultures.


It is Yule originally Dark Moon and we have the confined woman chaperone by an old woman whose husband is out hunting this corresponds to women isolating during menstruation.


That's going in the lady growed closer vertical X hunting luck grows weaker in short it suggests.


Messing about with the women will affect your hunting prowess. That's a killer. Yeah, if keep chased at Dark Moon and you'll survive is the is the implication especially the green night husband is somehow connected to the spirit of the forest and the hunt.


Although not betraying the Green Knight go away nevertheless receives a wound on the neck and returns to society. This is menstrual imagery bearing the Hallmarks of some kind of male initiation aping the bleeding of the females in this tale grain survives your deal because of his chest see and the woman's magic the girdle he respects so menstruation and bleeds along with her not diluting its power.


So that's the Celtic version where we have the old the old version kept intact but other Celtic versions like the Irish when I started off with have a different outcome.


One of the most obvious is the Welsh tale of Kellogg and all one.


All when is the daughter of a one-eyed? giant called whisper that and which means giant Hawthorn and She has been told that if if she marries her husband, her father will be killed.


So it's in the interests of her father to keep her.


a virgin but the hero she look his name means Pig run or he goes and asks all spatharden whether he can have the daughter and US bethan says well, I will send you set you a number of challenges and if you can complete these challenges, then you're worthy of her and these mostly to do with farming and hunting actually and he has to hunt a magical book or talk through with and he is aided on the quest by the woman and the woman all went her name means white track. It's because a track of white flowers Springs up wherever she walks.


This is clearly the same image as the river of milk. It's the Milky Way. So the Milky Way daughter.


The signal of the Milky Way presage is the the release of the fertility.


Here we see.


osaphatharden as a kind of ogre and he's he's a he's a massive figure but it said that when when killed walks into the the castle to see him. He asks his men to lift his eyes up with a with his eye up with a fork with a wooden like pitchfork.


Because he's always so heavy.


The the idea that he's gone there at Dark Moon and he is seeing the opening of the eye of the of this lunar figure is it's hard to escape.


Anyway, he does hunt.


Ke look is able to kill the the magical boar and using the tusks of the bore. He shaves was pathan and cuts his head off and wins the daughter.


in this version The lunar figure is defeated and the daughter is one for the hero.


the the lunar figure is is a demon.


Is a monster to be defeated? There's no sharing. It's not go with the moon for a few days come back to your husband that equality and that that cyclical nature is ended so that original lunar version which I mentioned before has been turning to a solar one this farming seasonal variant. So instead of it being dark moon. It's now winter. It's a dark of the year the Maze and is abducted by a demonic figure.


Always already imprisoned by her father as in the Welsh tale. Osbadan, who is her kin. So this is the equivalent of her being in the menstrual heart with her kin But this is now seen as a negative thing from which she needs rescuing.


So she's kept away from non-kin men folk and potential husbands, but this is seen as bad. She makes the Milky Way as a signal way marker a white track Springs up where she trades this allows her Suitor to find her. She hated potential suit between hunting and her husband capture father is beheaded. So we see an end of the old Luna cults.


So now it's husband demon to husband.


As we saw before where it was husband to move to husband to Moon.


But now it's once yearly event. It's a rescuing of the Sun at winter and it's the the whole lunar side is seen as as negative.


The lunar myth has been solarized and the moon has been demonized.


mmm We're nearly there.


You can stop soon. Yeah, okay why I've got about three more sides.


I think so hinges another monuments for aligned with the Milky Way. Most notably the rising setting points of cat appear and cracks and related to a myth where the sun made in his rescued. I mean Midway to from the clutches of the demons in the Underworld by a hero Ryan it was being given a tip off on the right time to rescue her the son the cows a cauldron by her creating the Milky Way as a sign. The Demon's daughter Motif is prevalent in India European myth and her betrayal of a kin allows the hero to win her and the price from the demons for good.


But arguably give the lunar Cults behind the later solar ones as Sims and others have argued. This may have originally stemmed from a lunar myth where the monthly appearance of the Milky Way signal Dark Moon.


In the original myth rebellious choice and girl who fed up with a poor diet and seclusion amongst the menstruating women burns the roots to create the Milky Way, which arguably acts as a guide Illuminating the Dark Skies for the hunters.


With the Advent of farming and the move to more Northerly latitudes society change becoming more seasonal interest in the Solar year due to its relevance to the farming cycle likewise the status of women change with the Advent of cattle ownership and bright price.


The original myth was rehashed and we used to subvert the power of women and the lunar Cults the original safe called back and forth of the women between husband and moon family at menstruation ended the one slightly rebellious woman now betrays her King who was ceases Boutique and her lunar father husband is beheaded for good all these for that solar year this Motif becomes integral to India European Dominator society as the cattle theft and they use it to justify taking other people's property land women and cows Bruce Lincoln calls it the imperialist myth power exelance.


Here's a just a just a a table showing the change. I'm going to skip past that in my thesis. I was arguing that the Milky Way was the kind of Road of souls,  to enter a hinge was to enter the body of the mother perhaps for rebirth.


but I'm going to skip that because however in light of the original Dark Moon importance of the Milky Way the female symbolism of a flowing Milky Way containing a Heavenly womb Crux and press Cassie Pierre. There is another Avenue.


To explore the hinge as originating in a Sacred Space for monthly observances.


Although subverted in time to become associated with the solar cycle as seem suggested an original lunar feminine mythology lies hidden behind the new rights, perhaps original use of hinges and other ritual structures was as a woman's house a place of power where alone girl seated at night in the circle through routes into a fire or poured milk into a stream a right later alter to become more solar oriented after the defeat of the moon and the rescue of the woman from her kin and what this makes us? Do is to look at the hinge? with its internal internal ditch and actually external Bank and ask what the power is in there that people outside want protecting from? Is this to with some sort of? female power or even fear of that female power And we've done.


Wow.


Thank you so much John that's like covered. You've gone all over Europe and to Egypt and to Southern Africa with an extraordinary thesis and transforming your own PhD thesis to see if it could pick up all of our stuff as well and quite actually give me about another 10 years of extra work now. So think yeah, that might be right there might be right. There's an enormous amount of food for thought in that and okay, that did just somebody is somebody in the room able to facilitate questions there and can you Tell the zoom people wherever the questions are there, and then we'll see actually, can you stop share screens so I can see? Yeah, and come out of share screen and we can see the that's good.


I don't know if there's anyone in the room. What's question I'm but Bernie on soon, but is there somebody in the room first? And I think go to zoom first and then people right but Bernie, I think you've got lots to say.


Well, thank you. John. That was absolutely brilliant. And I say that from Americans perspective that it's right really brilliant.


Okay, you're you said a few things that I thought you were right on one of them is that the the terrestrial Realm of the Hampshire Avon is represented within Stonehenge and that's a that's a much older tradition.


It goes back to the upper Paleolithic and I'll send you a email on that. So if you don't get my email tag me through somehow find me if it gets bounced you Hotmail. So that is very old tradition. And the second thing is that it might be possible that the hinge or the What's called the ditch, right the American perspective if the ditch what had water in it, it would possibly reflect the stars that would then have a connection to your Milky Way on the horizon. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.


There was Especially places I have three where the water table is quite High the question of whether the the hinge ditch was filled with water is is a kind of moot point amongst archaeologists and I see no reason why it shouldn't have been or whether they could have Clay lined the ditches to keep the water in there. There's there's a least one hinge of modern where a river literally runs through that through the hinge itself. And there we would have been easy to divert the water through the through their head and to have seen yeah to use it for for observations or to see the stars in the water.


Yeah, I'm totally up for that. That's a good idea. It was Clay lining you find this ideologically and quite you don't need the clay because well, you don't need to have it full. You just need to have some water in it.


Yeah, so many of these places around Chalk in the UK. Yeah.


No, no train slight.


So, thank you.


person John go for it.


You need to unmute can't hear.


One thing that I've been thinking it is, I mean just the Stars rise and set.


so also portions of the Milky Way rise and set hmm so have you thought about? the bit of Milky Way you're looking at and whether it's rising or whether it's setting or whether it's as it were dipping into the underworld, I mean yeah, so I was looking at the Crux as as rising and setting and then Cassie appear as definitely Definitely setting but the weird thing. Is that the further north you go.


The the less sites like Cassiopeia to the north actually set when you get to orkney.


You can't see Crocs at all, but you can see castipia and Cassie appear their grazes The Horizon and that's where we think the hinge building tradition started and I do wonder whether there was an awareness.


that the fact that it from the southern of Britain you can see stars in the South which you can't see in the North and also Stars which are setting At Stonehenge don't set in orkney in what what kind of effect that had on? Your concept of the universe do you then have an idea? That you're living on a globe.


How else do you explain? So I think there are other implications as well about sort of getting to.


Hmm making sign,  scientific observation.


Okay, the Ass but I was thinking of is is it looks like a way? s shows up with it yeah as if the monkey weighs as it were setting then it takes Souls down with it to the extent that the Milky Way and is seen as a ladder of Souls, which may just be a North American idea, but Yeah, yeah, that was the one that I originally in. My thesis went with that. It was that it was a kind of Jacob's Ladder and it was it was a play. So a hinge was a place where where the the dead perhaps you would although there were very few burials.


Associated with hinges early on in stone age they were burials, but in in most cases, we don't know where the people of the late nearly thick or the early Bronze Age were buried and we and the idea is perhaps that they were put in water.


My my thought is that perhaps the hinges were used for x-carnation and that this was a place where the souls of the Dead would rise to the Milky Way and then after the Bones have been stripped they were then placed in a river and equivalent of a sort of the Earthly equivalent of the Milky Way.


So I think yeah that rising and setting aspect is something that I think is.


Is really important in the use of the hinges and have you got anyone in the room with questions Jerome? I think it seems to me there's a lot more about cows in this story that we like to admit. I don't know how much there is. I'm just wondering whether any wasn't any work on the neurotic tribes and one shops.


Are these huge? Cows to his incredible aggressive shape laws and even altering the way they grow but not necessarily an aggressively pregnant to be an incredible shape. I just it just came into right? No, that was something that I was I started to look at the trying to think of the name of the Dinka tribe.


Yeah, income thinking yeah. Yeah that that is very you can almost see roots of some of the later.


Egyptian traditions in in those and I think that yeah the the cow is so Central.


To those cultures. I mean even going back.


as as was mentioned the short short while ago about to the paliolithic the Stone Age landscape was important because there was a a warm spring there and it was all so on the migration trail of your rocks and So we've got this cow connection going all the way back. I think that yeah that the centrality of the cow in these cultures is is massive and the only way to really understand Bronze Age Britain is to look at it in the terms of those cattle breeding cultures. Even the problem is we tend to look back on.


On prehistory as if it was People Like Us.


especially when you look at reconstructions of how they think the stone engineer if we landscape looked it just looks like a slot with dirty clothes You know, there's no there's I used to assume show my students pictures of quack utils.


So many some Northwest Canada and show them,  just the material culture and they and the sort of alieness of everything on the textiles that just haven't survived.


You know we can't.


we can't look back and think their relation to to cattle was the same as a medieval farmer,  that it's that there's a there's a sacred level there that we that we just Don't appreciate and you want to chip in? Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. It was really interesting and just wanted to mention the fact that cool Colin.


I'm cool as dog you probably know this.


But yeah, he was the Hound The Hound of Colin and also then Korea is the Hound of the planes. So I don't know whether he's taller and all about the question of the, the myth of the hound and the Irish wolfhound and these figure is being hounds and then the second question. I wanted to ask you was sometimes I kind of found it difficult to really understand the Global Connections and I just wanted to ask why you thought that there could be very similar myths going on at the same in the same historical periods during the same period internationally because presumably people wouldn't have been moving in the same way as obviously they would have many years later.


that's yeah the you're right about the the colon and Curry curoi connection that the Hound is the question is how much of that has been? influenced by later Indo-European traditions where the the Hound is seen as a as a kind of Martial creature and link to manner Bunda sort of the the men's groups Warrior groups and there's this seems to be this always this conflict between cocholin, and couroy in many stories in the in Brick reuse Feast for instance there or they're always matched against each other. Sometimes they're supporting each other and it's and it's a test for for Marshall prowess by the other two seem to be as if there's a hidden connection between the two. I think I think you're right in that.


the the far-flung connections my my original idea was to try and Trace.


back Celtic motifs in the Indo-European languages and to do that I was looking at Colin renfrew's thesis that the Endo European languages had spread with farming from Anatolia from about 7,000 BC perhaps earlier and although I didn't follow through with that I didn't In the end. I kind of dismissed some of that. I was I still found that there was cultural influences.


from Anatolia moving through the Mediterranean to Britain and that I think that these these shared mythical images, especially surrounding the cow and the heavens.


Spread with that farming. So when you look at the if you analyze the bones of the cows, which were found in nearly thick Britain. These are Anatolian cows. So they've been That they have come all the way from the near East and I see no reason why.


A myth didn't accompany them.


As part of the package the farming package included a stellar and otherwise myth So I think yeah, it was part of the package. So that's why I feel that I can look at Egypt and the near East and all through the Mediterranean because I'm following that pattern of farming and that's that's my excuse.


Got time for just a few more maybe Chris and no I want to give way to Denise. I really want to hear what okay, Denise but say something Chris or I will but Denise go on.


thank you very much John for the talk of this fascinating. I work in the Andes and it's very different because you've got a hurting Society there that with animals that don't produce milk.


So yeah, the story is about the Milky Way.


Are about urine and amniotic.


liquids and it's very much about stories of giving birth to humans on the one hand and giving birth to the baby animals in the December one, which is the summer. So we've got some winter back to front but, there's a time of Separation when the when the yamas up in the Milky Way the Dark Cloud constellations go down to the Horizon and May June. That's when the men go off to the valleys and their separated from the women and the women  get together and Have different kinds of relationships and tell stories, but in December it's when the little animals are born the yamas are born but that's not really a sun there and maybe it's just lost the sun since the Incas.


Diminished and so on there's very much as well the place for The Souls of the Dead.


Yeah, Milky Way. And also there are these like vegetation Warriors spirits that are said to come down from the Milky Way during the rainy season and then they go back to them every way at the end of the rain of season that then it's for UMass temptation of Christ. Um, so there are many many interesting things that they there is a kind of sense of white flowers and the white stars of the Milky Way and the cloud constellations are redness and blood women's blood so you have a kind of winter summer dark moonlight full moon and so on but it's a very different way that people have come to think it through. Hmm.


Yeah.


Hardship this weekend.


Although yeah, there are some weird connections between some of the South American myths there's a lot of twin symbolism and beheading and all this stuff not know.


Yeah that we find in in some of the European ones as well. So that's fine. That's intriguing. Yeah, and I do wish that you would look at sites like Tijuana.


In the undies because the back wall of that is white and there are lots of white stones there and they come from a quarry up lined on this wall up into the mountains. So You know, I wouldn't be a total surprised of the Milky Way because it plays a very big role in and it have we got anyone in the room would like to question. Otherwise, I'll ask Chris to wrap up and this is anybody in the room. I think we're done.


We're nearly Chris. Do you want to say a bit? Because I think we should say something about the well the relationship for the hunting and the cattle cultures.


Well, I would say a little bit as well.


I don't I don't really feel equipped to wrap up.


I mean, it's such a stupendously ambitious talk covering just about everything one could possibly think of in World mythology. So but I would just suggest before you go too far with so go away and the Green Knight. Could I ask you to make sure we have quite extensive discussions among our sales because Lyle himself every every sort of Christmas around Christmas.


He used to give us a fantastic talk on so go away and I think he's insights. I don't quite I'm not sure he ever record anything anything down and we didn't really record stuff try today really tragedy. But yeah, I think between us those of us who heard Lionel be able to piece together a lot of it and in any case, of course Lionel's ideas came in part from  our own About the moon and stuff and I have some ideas of my own about about so going sort of complementing Lionel stuff. So just just we need to sort of collaborate before we published too much on that particular subject does have incredibly simple obvious point which obviously you must be aware of what you clearly aware of. It's just that the the office point that the cow is the enemy of matalini. So the map to lineal belt in central Africa is the area where obviously you have the Barney have bright price and what happens is that if we're the sets a fly flourishes and the people who have the people who've given away their daughter in exchange for a whole bunch of cattle and okay the cattle died because of the fly and they want their daughter back and suddenly the superficially pattern in your system reverts to to matalini. So wherever you've got those cows that you're already on the way,  you on the way away from the Moon and towards the all that and all that stuff I don't want to take everything you say I just want to say a little bit about African.


Hunting ritual the last time I was really Under the Milky Way is the rituals of epime with the Hudson right on the equator in Tanzania. And there the Dark Moon ritual cycle really moves the whole community Through singing at the Dark Moon which has Association to the girls menstruation Etc and to success for the hunt which should occur at as the moon brightens.


So the the Milky Way is strongly Associated that to that Dark Moon.


You cannot do epime unless there is no moon in the sky. You won't you see the Milky Way when there's that that really dark moon and the other thing to to emphasize on the hum.


Story and the girl the first girl for the southern African Story the first girl making the Milky Way and of course the emphasis for the southern Africans.


So the East African is the Milky Way is about but is is about blood or amniotic fluid as as Denise Arnold saying, of course, it's not about cows even though there were pastoralist koi some people as well. But but as far as the hunting stories are concerned so so this solarization process is really substituting and the blood and associations with the womb fluids and amniotic fluids by overriding with with cattle who of course imply.


bright price and taking women right away from their kin all of that going on which doesn't apply to the hunting and so this solarization process is Are you you really made me so excited by the idea of going to some of these sites and trying to watch the sky as the the entertainment the night's entertainment.


Just just how much more entertainment than any kind of Netflix or Hulu that would be and it is that process of capturing the the magic the original magic and as you say The defenses are all pointing in like but defending outside from the huge power of what's inside the menstrual heart that that has such an emanating power and that's a fantastic way of conceiving of it. Yeah, just fantastic and we can only just say,  everybody I hope there is gonna give you proper Round of Applause. Well, we can all give you a proper out of laws.


Thank you so much John. That was an absolute tour de force.









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John Grigsby

The Milky Way in Archaeoastronomy and Myth (Seminar)

River of Milk: Road of Ashes

January 31, 2023


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