Secrets of the ancient Aries. Digest of articles

Да вЯзать, да вязАть.

И в сарай буду возИть,

Да вОзить, да возИть.

Да на раЮ буду садИть,

Да сАдить, да садИть.

Да сАдить, да садИть.

И цепами буду молотИть,

МолОтить, молотИть.

У печи буду сушИть,

Да сУшить, да сушИть.

В квашне буду творИть,

Да твОрить, да творИть.

И рабочих всех кормить,

Всех кОрмить, всех кормИть».

Note that the Pskov dialect word «ray, paradise» is a barn (riga, threshing floor). In Sanskrit, «rai, paradise» is abundance. But in ancient times, the idea of abundance was most likely associated with grain, and therefore with its storage – the barn. After all, it is no coincidence that we still say that «bread is the head of everything», we call a generous person «hospitable» and greet guests with «bread and salt»».

It must be thought that in the Paleolithic of the Russian plain, grain collected by women in meadow grass steppes, consisting of wild sowing rye (found in the 19th century in the Kanin tundra), wild sowing wheat (a wild type of sowing spelled found in the Middle Urals), wild sowing oats, wild sowing barley, wild peas (found in the 18th century by academician I.

Lepyokhin in the Kanin tundra) and wild flax (found in the 18th century by academician I. Lepyokhin in the Kanin tundra, in the 19th century – on Timan), had to be dried and stored.

The ears were dried in sheaves, most likely in that archaic type of barn, which survived in the Russian North until the beginning of the 20th century and was called «shish». Indeed, even in the «stubble» song, recorded in the Pskov region in 1964, it is said that the sheaves should be «plant in rai», that is, placed on top of the barn’s poles, in the buried hole of which a fire was burning at that time.

It is worth paying attention to the fact that they bring the rune «Ir», which looks like a schematic representation of an ancient barn (shisha), and emphasize that the rune «Ir» is a sign of the feminine, and «in one ritual spell, the rune» Ir «is understood as» Comprehensive.»

So, after the «rai» – the barn, the grain had to be saved. Let us once again recall the long ground dwellings «of the Paleolithic inhabitants of the Russian Plain. These were very impressive structures. So in the 30s of the 20th century P. P. Efimenko, the remains of a large ground dwelling, 31 meters long and 8 meters wide, with eight hearths along the central axis and a complex heating system were uncovered in layer I of the Kostenki 1 site. Near the dwelling there were small dugouts and pits – storerooms. Let us remind you that back in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, such pits were arranged in the barn (in the barn, in the barn). They were coated with clay, then burned with straw, and covered with straw or sheaves from above.

Probably, the structure of communal grain pits came from the depths of thousands of years of Paleolithic antiquity without any significant changes.

But where there is a lot of grain, as noted earlier, mice always appears, the number of which grows exponentially over time. And in order to preserve the grain for themselves, our ancestors had to make every effort. They attracted the natural enemies of mice – owls – to the barn. How this was done, we do not know. Most likely, the owls flew in on their own. After all, mice are their natural food. And people, in gratitude for the saved harvest, began to worship owls. And women – grain collectors and housewives – gradually merged with the image of an owl – the keeper of the barn, and hence the harvest. And since it was women who were responsible for the fertility of the fields, burning straw, drying grain on fire and cooking food on fire, the duet woman – owl naturally turned into a trio: woman – owl – fire. And all this was connected with the barn. But even at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in barns: they washed like in baths, gave birth, they brought the deceased there and put straw (corn or pea) under his head.

Therefore, the image of a woman – an Owl, already in ancient times, united not only with fire, but also with water, straw, ash and ash, life and death. Already in the cultural layer of the Upper Paleolithic Mezen site in the Chernihiv region, there are figurines made of mammoth bones, which «some researchers call «birds», and others – «emale figurines». Neolithic images of women with the head of an owl found in the Russian North (6—4 thousand BC) were mentioned earlier. In Tripoli (Eneolithic 4—3 thousand BC), female figurines with owl heads were sculpted by adding grain and flour to soft clay, and such images of goddesses were found at every grain mill in the «sanctuary of bread» found by archaeologists. And here it makes sense to cite one of the mysteries that existed in the Totemsky district of the Vologda province at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (materials of the Ethnographic Bureau of Prince V. N. Tenishev):

«The owl flew out

From the red window

Sela Owl

Four pillars».

Here, the owl symbolized the «rug of bread taken out of the oven».

In Tripoli, the belly of the owl-headed goddess of bread is sometimes guarded by two snakes. Goddesses with snakes will also go through millennia, reaching the beginning of the 20th century in North Russian embroidery. Summing up the above, we can say after Robert von Ranke Graves: «Ancient Europe did not know any gods, there was only one Great Goddess, and only she was revered as immortal and unchanging.» The only addition to this text will be – Eastern Europe, since Western Europe until the turn of 4—3 thousand BC the Indo-Europeans with their Great Goddess Mother Sova did not know, and they, in turn, did not live in Western Europe.

Over time, the ancient deity of earth, abundance, fire and water, life and death Owl-Mother-in-law received many different names: Gaia, Aditi, Rhea, Cybele, Astarta, Ishtar, Lilith, Ma, Divia, Rato, Lato.

Academician B. A. Rybakov wrote: «The area of ethnographic veneration of mother Lada is very wide: it completely includes the entire land of the Balts – Hyperboreans (both in the Latvian-Lithuanian and Slavicized Great Russian part), the entire territory of the Proto-Slavs and all areas of later Slavic settlement. In the Bronze Age, the cult of Lato reached Greek Crete, where it met with the local cult of Demeter and Persephone. It is possible that the primitives knew the cult of Lato (Latona) – Lada.»

It was already noted earlier that the two daughters of the titan Kay, whom ancient Greek mythology placed on the shores of the Kronian (Arctic) Ocean and whose city the Vologda ritual song calls «our homeland», Leto and Asteria were embodied in the images of quails. It was in the images of a quail and a quail that Zeus and Leto were married – the parents of Artemis and Apollo of Hyperborean.

But here we have a Russian Christmas song recorded in the middle of the 20th century in the Kirov region:

Dil-dil, quail,

Yes Lada, young!

Yes there, yes I flew here,

Yes dil-dil, quail,

Lada, young!

Yes, yes, yes, I gave wings to this,

Yes dil-dil, quail,

Lada, young!

Lada-quail, probably at a later stage of plow farming, became another image of the bird goddess associated with the Earth and the live.

But she still could not replace the Owl-Mother-in-law until the end. The owl Mother Goddess, in the process of migration of the peoples who worshiped her, had new names: the Sumerian-Akkadian Ereshkigal, depicted with an owl in his hand; Lilith – Ishtar – Astarte with owl quills and paws, standing between two owls; Egyptian Neith with her later hypostasis – Nephthys, whose most ancient name sounds like Lun (that is, Owl); The Great Mother of the Gods Rhea – Cybele, on the armrests of the throne of which were placed two owls; «Owl-eyed» Tethys-Tefida, wife of the Ocean; Hera – «Mother-in-law», according to one of the versions of the myth – the granddaughter of «owl» Tethys; and, of course, «owl-eyed» Athena, about which they write the following: «Athena is one of the most important figures not only in Olympic mythology, she is equal in importance to Zeus and sometimes surpasses him, rooted in the most ancient period in the development of Greek mythology – matriarchy. In power and wisdom, she is equal to Zeus… her place is closest to Zeus… The ancient zoomorphic past of the goddess is indicated by her attributes – a snake and an owl. Homer calls Athena „owl“, the Orphic hymn – „motley snake“ … Athena goes back to the image of the goddess with snakes of the Cretan-Mycenaean period. An owl and a snake guarded the palace of the goddess with the shield of the Mycenaean time – the prototype of the Olympic Athena… Athena herself was thought of as fate and the Great Goddess – the mother, who is known in archaic mythology as the parent and destroyer of all living things.»

Recall that in the tradition of Russian Christmas-time fortune-telling about the fate of the Owl heralds both death and the birth of a child.

Speaking of ancient Greek Athena, the Encyclopedia of Myths notes the following: «The powerful, terrible, owl-eyed goddess of the archaic… she demands sacred reverence for herself, no mortal can see her.»

Note that the most ancient Egyptian goddess of the first dynasties (beginning of 3 thousand BC) – Nate (Neath) was an analogue of Athena. Recall that it was her image in the temple of Sais that was always covered with a veil. The name of Nate’s late hypostasis, Nephthys, sounded like «Lun.» Nate herself was the patroness of the city of Lunit, which the ancient Greeks also called Latopolis – the city of Lato (Lunit).

Let us specially repeat that Herodotus identified Neith with Athena, and that the Hittite-Hurite goddess «Shavushka» (Owl) is close to Neith. In connection with the city of Lunit, we present the text of a Russian ritual song, which became by the beginning of the 20th century children’s nursery rhyme»:

Owl is an owl, big head,

Sits on an oak tree, turns his head.

Little owl, little owl – a big head,

Where have you been, who have you seen?

I flew, owl, a big head

To a feast, to a gazebo.

They saw me as a little owl – a big little head,

Two white moon, two lovely friends.

Loonies are also owls, one of their varieties. Apparently, their name directly unites these birds with the Moon, with lunar cults.

In this context, it is interesting that the image of the Sumerian Ishtar (Lilith) with owl’s wings and paws, standing between two owls (beginning of the 2nd millennium BC), is perceived as a direct illustration of the above «nursery rhyme».

Perhaps it was this structural scheme, born in deep Paleolithic antiquity, then, with the development of cattle breeding and the domestication of the horse, was replaced by the one we know well – the Mother Goddess with two horses or two riders on the sides.

Note that Athena was called: Pandros (All-Moist), Aglavra (Light-Air), Agravla (Poleborozdnaya).

Agricultural holidays were dedicated to Athena: Procharistoria (sprouting of grain), Plinteria (the beginning of the harvest), Arrephoria (giving dew for crops), Scriphoria (aversion to drought).

Summarizing the above, we can conclude that Athena as a whole retained the main features of the ancient Mother Goddess, the Owl-Mother-in-law.

Interestingly, Athena’s name is not derived from Greek. Its pre-Greek origin is suggested.

Let us assume that this name originated from the term «Owina».

There is good reason to believe that in a patriarchal society, many of the sacred terms of matriarchy have been recoded into a masculine version. So the name of the barn «Shish» clearly replaced a completely different term meaning the female genital organ (the symbol of which in Polish riddles was the Owl).

Here it makes sense to recall again that in the Russian folk tradition, the «name day of the barn» was celebrated on the days of Thekla Zarevnitsa (September 24) and the Most Holy Theotokos (October 1), and the Ir rune, which looks like a schematic representation of an ancient barn, was a sign of the feminine principle and was understood as «Comprehensive». Then Ovina or Avina will be the same as Ovinnitsa, that is, «The Mistress of Ovin.»

Another argument in favor of such an assumption is the fact that Athena (as the Great Goddess – Mother) gives and takes life. But in Sanskrit, the term «avi» means «pain, suffering, and labor pains». Recall that in the Old Russian folk tradition it was customary to give birth in a barn.

Since Sanskrit is extremely close to the Russian language, we use its terms to clarify this situation.

Av (avati, ava, avit) —

1) contribute

2) saturate

3) protect

4) desire, love.

Ava – to rush, descend, favor.

Avata – pit, burrow.

Avati – earth, soil, base.

Avi – pain, suffering, labor pains.

Avinacin – eternal, everlasting.

Of no less interest is the word «Sova».

We look close to him Sanskrit phonemes:

Sava —

1) revitalization, excitement

2) sacrificial rite

Sava – squeezing soma.

Savana – 1) revitalization, excitement

2) a sacrificial rite.

And here it is appropriate to recall the wedding ceremony, preserved in the Russian tradition, where beer was prepared and drunk in the barn.

Savana – wooded

Savana —

1) fire

2) hell.

Savitri —

1) producer

2) mother.

Sva – his, her, them, to have.

Saviman —

1) setting in motion,

2) awakening,

3) an indication,

4) direction.

Savidya is endowed with knowledge.

Savicesana – endowed with special properties

Apparently, Mother-Sva of the Vlesova book is the Mother-Owl of deep Paleolithic antiquity, the Goddess of life and death, the Owl-Mother-in-law of the Vologda and Vladimir ritual songs.

But there is also:

Sauva – heavenly (about sound),

Suvari – giving birth to someone

Savega – fast, impetuous,

Savisa – poisonous, poisoned.

It makes sense here to remember that in the zoomorphic incarnation Athena, Neith, Lilith is not only owls, but also snakes that the palace of the Minotaur in Crete was guarded by an owl and a snake. That the plot of the goddess with snakes in her hands was preserved in the North Russian embroidery until the 20th century. And that snakes eat mice too, and owls hunt snakes.

And an owl carrying a snake in its claws is a common sight, so it’s okay to call an owl a poisonous one.

In the North Russian dialects there is such a name for an owl as «Guha», supposedly repeating the cry of this bird. But if we again turn to Sanskrit, it turns out that: Guh – shelter, cave.

Guhya – to be hidden, hidden, mysterious.

Guha-caya – living in a secluded place, in a cave, kept in secret, intimate.

Guha – heart (remember that it is the heart of an owl that is considered to be what can make a sleeping person talk about his innermost dreams and secrets).

And finally, guha is an epithet of God Shiva – the Creator and Destroyer of the Universe.

In addition, Sanskrit has its own name for the Owl – Kaucika (literally «having clawed paws»). Based on the terms of Sanskrit, we can assume the following semantic series: the sacrificial rite (sava or savanna) associated with fire (savana) consisted of squeezing out soma (sava) and reviving, arousing (sava). Soma (beer) is strained through a straw grate (kauca), standing on a bed of straw (kusa) in a barn, warehouse, granary (kucala). This drink made from grains (barley, rye, wheat) and hops gave health, dexterity, intelligence, experience, happiness and goodness (kaukala). And all this was possible thanks to the Owl (kaucika), which protected the grain from mice.

Speaking of beer in connection with the barn and Sova, we should turn to the second half of the ancient Paleolithic matriarchal society – men who, of course, played an important role in this society. Beer was prepared for them, and it was men who drank it. This is also evidenced by the North Russian tradition, which survived until the first third of the 20th century.

In the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, old people told folklorists that the general drunkenness, which today is attributed by some to the Russian people as their specific «genetic» quality, was completely absent in the North Russian villages back in the 30s of the 20th century.

On holidays (Shrovetide, in particular), men drank no more than 3 glasses (the size of a thimble) of vodka, but they were not limited in beer. However, this beer, prepared according to ancient technologies, has nothing to do with the so-called «beer» that our «breweries» produce today. As for the women and children, they never drank beer, let alone vodka. They drank pivtso, a weak, almost non-alcoholic beverage. As for men, consuming beer brewed according to tradition, they could hardly sleep. And they did not have free time for constant drinking in the ancient matriarchal society. The men built houses, prepared firewood for the winter, hunted and fished.

And they also did very important work – they mined salt, the deposits of which are quite widespread in the North of Eastern Europe.

Note that even today, paying tribute to the ancient tradition, we meet guests with bread and salt, where the loaf is a female symbol, and salt, apparently, is male.

Turning again to Sanskrit, we find in it such terms as:

Lavana – salted, salted, plus:

Lavana – salt (sea)

Lavanya – salinity, salt, beauty, beauty

Lavanata – salinity

Lavanita – salty

Lavana-Jala – containing salt water, sea

Lavanoda (Lavana-Uda) – sea (salt – water).

But there is also in Sanskrit:

Lavana – cutting, mowing

Lavaka – reaper

Lava – cutting, plucking (fruits, berries)

Lava – the harvest

Lava is the cut, shearing, piece, piece, drop and name of the son of Rama and Sita.

In the Vologda and Arkhangelsk dialects there is the word «lavina», which means «mowing, cutting». In the Kostroma and Nizhny Novgorod regions, the word «rama» is «border, border, and end of arable land near the forest.» And in the Cherepovets district of the Vologda region, «ramenye» is «meadow grasslands among the forest. As for the term «Sita», in Sanskrit it is a furrow, a wrinkle, a fold and the name of Rama’s wife, but also – white, light. In Russian, there is such a concept as sieve (white) flour and sieve (white) bread, as well as the name of the device for sifting flour – a sieve. Thus, already at the linguistic level, a complex of connections is being built, where «rama» (one of the names of a wooden harrow) and «furrow» in the field give an opportunity for subsequent harvest, as a result of which «flour» will appear, in combination with salt, giving birth to bread.

This complex of concepts will arise later, after millennia, when the harvesting of wild cereals will be replaced by slash-and-burn agriculture. At the early stage of proto-agriculture, we can assume the participation of men in some important harvest rites, possibly related to the salt they mine.

Here it makes sense to refer to another Sanskrit term Lu (Lunati, Lunite, Lulava / Lu, Ulava / Lu Luve, Lavitum, Luna), which means:

Cut, separate,

Divide, divide,

Tear off, tear off,

Harvest, harvest.

And now we recall the city of Lunit, whose patroness was the ancient Egyptian goddess of the first dynasties of the kings (beginning from the 3rd millennium BC) – Nate. Herodotus considered her an analogue of the ancient Greek Athena. And the fact that the Greeks called this city Latopolis Laton, that is, the city of the goddess Lato (Leto-Summer, Lada). And here we mention a term such as Lavitum, associated with Lavana – mowing, harvesting, harvesting and with Lavana – salted, salted, and salt.

Apparently, the place and time of birth of such images as Owl – Mother-in-law and Lilith were the same. It is possible that the appearance of fair-haired (red-haired) and light-eyed Levites, the descendants of Jacob’s third son from Leah, named Levi, is also associated with the same «space-time» characteristics. Note that it is the third son (Ivan Tsarevich, Ivan the Fool) in Russian folk fairy tales, which are distinguished by the deep archaism of their plots, who possesses certain sacred abilities. He marries the Frog Princess, takes out rejuvenating apples, receives the magic horse Sivka-Burka the Prophetic Kaurka, etc.

But, the same thing happens with the descendants of Levi – the Levites. They were excluded from the 12 tribes of Israel and the only ones from all were not endowed with land.

That is, in fact, they led the lives of the Brahmins, not possessing property and receiving tithes from the people for their existence. But they also performed priestly functions, being singers, musicians and guards in the portable temple of the Tabernacle. It remains for us to conclude that the Levites (Lavites) in the deepest matriarchal antiquity in the north of Eastern Europe took part in the holy ceremonies of harvesting with salt, music, singing and ritual libations with beer. This is also evidenced by such an ancient text as «Mundaka Upanishad», one of the most authoritative Upanishads of Atharva Veda, the second chapter of which says:

«Whose agnihotra is not accompanied by the sacrifices of the new moon, full moon, four months’ offering of the first and is performed without guests, Deprived of libation, offerings to the visvadevas are not performed properly, destroys his worlds, up to the seventh.

Black, terrible, fast as a thought, very red, the color of thick smoke, The sparkling one and the goddess in all forms are the seven tongues playing.

Whoever, while these shine, performs and makes offerings on time, That they are the rays of the sun, lead, where is the abode of the one lord of the gods».

Of course, the texts of the Atharva Veda, and even more so the Mundaka Upanishad, were canonized thousands of years after the end of the era of matriarchy. But, nevertheless, here are preserved relics of that distant time when not God the Father, but the Great Goddess Mother was incarnated in seven tongues of flame and not solar, but lunar cults played a leading role.

It is also significant that the terms of classical Sanskrit «deva» – heavenly, divine, god, priest, lord and «devaka» – heavenly, in Russian, and especially in North Russian dialects, are used at the everyday level to this day (deva, devka, deuka) in relation to exclusively girls and women, but not men. Thus, the term that later became the basis of many words associated with the concept of «divine» in Sanskrit:

Deva rarman – sacred rite, worship,

Deva kula – temple, home of the gods,

Deva gana – doubt of the gods,

Deva-ja – of divine origin,

Devatva – divinity,

Deva-Deva – God or King of the gods, etc,

in the Russian language retained its most ancient meaning, where the concept of the divine is assigned precisely to the feminine.

We can state that the cult of the Goddess-Mother-Owl, protector of Grain and giver of Life, mistress of Fire and Water, formed in deep (still Paleolithic) antiquity, could arise only where for many tens of millennia there were meadow cereal steppes consisting of sown forms – wild rye, wild barley, wild oats and wild wheat. And such steppes existed for such a long time only on the territory of Eastern Europe – the Russian Plain. In the subsequent Mesolithic era (the Middle Stone Age, in 10—8 thousand BC, led to the disappearance of cereal steppes and the widespread distribution of deciduous forests (the real steppes remained only in a narrow strip of the Black Sea region), people were forced to burn these forests in order to restore the fields of cereals that now needed to be sown.

So, apparently, slash-and-burn agriculture appeared.Matriarchal-hoe farming, as B. A. Rybakov noted, survives to the Eneolithic (5—3 thousand BC). He writes: «All four dimensions entered the worldview of farmers: the surface of the earth, the height of the world plowed up and down, lost in the blue firmament of the sky, and the continuous movement of this world in time.

And all this was expressed in the ornament. The ornament has become a public phenomenon that allows, like later letters, to tell about your attitude to the world and to unite people to perform certain actions. ” Appearing back in the Paleolithic of the Russian Plain (Kostenki, Mezinskaya site), the ornament developed here to that complex system, which was then carried to the territory of future India, Ancient Greece, Ertruria, etc. And it was in Russia that these ornamental complexes have survived to the present day in the most complete and complete form.