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And a Happy New Year to you too! And everyone else!
I might mention them yet, they were new to me and it is an interesting tidbit. To answer your question, I don’t recall seeing any mention of the amputees in Herodotus or Homer. Instead there are scattered references in Homer to a place called Maeonia and its people (the Maeonians), and Herodotus reports that it was the Lydians who were once called Maeonians until they named themselves after Lydus son of Atys (see Histories 7.74 for example).
I have read somewhere that Pliny the Elder also wrote about the Maeonians, specifically about a city called Maeonia on the Hermus river in Turkey. However, my resources have so far been unable to confirm this. If anyone can shed light on this it would be useful.
Inspired by my own earlier post (that’s sad isn’t it) I did a little more digging about Robert Southwell and have come up with some interesting connections. I’ll be putting it into my article – no E.T.A. on it, but it’s been mostly written for a while and just needs serious editing.
Michael
Ah, I missed the link – I was in a hurry at the time (Christmas Eve an’ all that). Yup, I think that counts as pretty nasty stuff. But I think it’s important to note that the unfortunate Maeoniae temple prostitutes were named after the ancient name of Lydia – Maeonia. So if a group chose to use the name Meonia it probably wasn’t in reference to the prostitutes – it may not have been referring to ancient Lydia either.
Michael
My apologies ObYsnat, I think you’ve lost me -easily done, I know. What are the barbaric practices of the Lydian’s that you’re referring to?
Michael
When I finish my article I’ll be touching on the Lydian Maeonians. They are mentioned in Herodotus and Homer’s Illiad.
Just to pick up on the Catholic movement, I can’t confirm Simon’s statement but there was an English Jesuit priest called Robert Southwell who was executed at Tyburn in England 1595. While in prison he wrote a number of collections of spiritual poetry (published after his death), one of which was entitled Maeoniae, dealing with the nativity and life on earth of Christ.
Interestingly he was a habitual visitor at the home of Richard Bellamy, who was himself under suspicion because of his connection to Jeremy Bellamy, an accomplice in the Babbington Plot involving Mary Queen of Scots. When Richard’s daughter Anne was arrested, she revealed Southwell’s movements and he was arrested, tortured and eventually executed. Maybe significant given the associations of Meonia with the Catholic Gunpowder Plot, and possibly earlier with Mary Queen of Scots.
Perhaps that should be filed under Loose Ends, if anyone wants to look into it – can’t recall if its mentioned in the Meonia literature.
Michael
Hello there,
Don’t be put off by the slowness of people’s response, as people are likely busy with the business of the season. I know I am. I’m not likely to post again this side of the new year.
I’ll be writing an article on Meonia myself at some point next year, when the rest of life is less busy. Anything in particular that interests you about the Meonia ‘mythos’?
Other than that, please share a little about yourself.
Michael
That reminds me of my dream back in May, which I think I posted something about. I was trying to dream up something following my Stave of Egretes dream, and dreamed the date August 2007, possibly the 28th. Wait and see I guess!
Michael
…and it’s Happy Christmas from me. Hope the rotund fellow in red brings you all something nice.
Michael
You might be able to see if there is anything in the backgarden using something like Google Earth. Speaking of which, you can access the Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask and NASA views from:
[url:29x3ay5n]http://www.flashearth.com/[/url]
Different providers have different strengths, the Microsoft ones seem to be pretty good.
My local area has a number of sites relating to St Anne. The manor on the old lakeside at Hooe had a St Anne’s Chapel. This is sometimes believed to have been St Lawrence’s chapel, but I think the St Anne designation is more accurate as the name of the nearby village of Turnchapel is derived from St Anne’s Chapel. The parish church in Hooe would have been dedicated to St Anne back in 1855, in honour of the ancient connection with the area, but the bishop changed it to St John because St Anne isn’t in the Bible. A few miles due east, in the South Hams area of Devon, there is another St Anne’s Chapel, which appears to be a single building in the middle of some fields.
Your post in Celtic/Christian connections (which have sparked this post) indicates that St Anne is the Celtic goddess Ana, and that Brittany has strong connections. So, as South Devon is just across the Channel I wonder if I have some local sites going back to the goddess Ana. I’ve wondered about St Anne before, thinking I’ll have to take a look into it. Maybe I will soon.
Sorry, this doesn’t help your quest. But I thought you’d be interested in hearing of someone else’s St Anne sites.
Michael
Funnily enough I had that Bowie song playing on my CD alarm all last week!
Thanks for confirming Yeats’s membership of the Golden Dawn. I’ve got a book somewhere in the cellar (“Modern Ritual Magic” by Francis King, a good book but ages since I’ve read it) with a good history of the Golden Dawn, its successors and influences. If I recall correctly, by the time Israel Regardie joined the Stella Matutina people seemed more concerned with gaining impressive sounding ranks and titles than they did with actually working the grades, influencing his decision to break the secrecy and publish all the material.
All the in-fighting and back-biting was such a shame, there is something quite beautiful about the Golden Dawn. It seems to be a problem that afflicts any form of organisation, but really the members of the GD should have been above that sort of thing. You could say the same thing about similar problems in mainstream religions.
“Inheritor of a Dying World, we call Thee to the Living Beauty.
Wanderer in the Wild Darkness, we call Thee to the Gentle Light.
Long hast Thou dwelt in Darkness. Quit the Night and seek the Day.”
-Golden Dawn Neophyte Ritual.Cheers Simon, you’ve given me plenty to chew on.
The article on Parzifal’s Blog (which looks like a serious breech of Dr John Turner’s copyright, so I’ll print it before it gets taken down) is fascinating so far, haven’t been able to read it all yet.
I like your parallel between Brigid’s water and fire connections, and Barbelo’s water and light connections. It reminds me that I read in the online Jewish Encyclopedia that the Milky Way was known in Hebrew as the “Fire-Stream”.
This makes me think of baptism by the Holy Spirit and by fire (as in Matthew 3:11). I think it might be significant that John baptized in the Jordan, wondering whether the Jordan might have been seen as Palestine’s terrestrial counterpart to the Milky Way.
Christian divine-light or pagan divine-light? I don’t know, do they have to be different? The Gnostic texts are a heady mix of pagan, Jewish and Christian, philosophy and mythology. You could go mad getting your head around them; I’m already starting to froth at the mouth – perhaps it’s the onset of enlightenment?
I’ll have to read some more Yeats, I liked the annunciation poem. By the way, was Yeats in the Golden Dawn?
Cheers,
Michael
I used to know that poem by heart; it’s the only Yeats I know, I just loved it when I first read it, so thanks for that. I had no idea that it might be referencing Celtic mythology, which I still know precious little about so I wont attempt to comment on it.
Celtic-Gnostic connections, hmm. It is thought that the early Celtic church had stronger links to the Egyptian church than to the western Latin church, and Gnosticism was apparently strong in Egypt (it’s where almost all of our surviving Gnostic texts come from, though they were originally written in Greek rather than Coptic). I believe that Gnosticism was deeply influenced by Egyptian ideas, as was hermeticism. We also know that the Apocryphon of John and other texts were known in Celtic Gaul, as Irenaus of Lyons wrote about them around 180 C.E.
I went to the Cygnus Day event in Glastonbury yesterday, and together with your posts it has sparked a few thoughts about Brigid:
a) I was wondering whether Brigid’s patronage of smithcraft links her with meteoritic iron, which would help to confirm her own stellar connection, and perhaps connect her with Egypt where meteoritic iron (bja) is known to have been important.
b) My understanding is that smiths are regarded as ‘magical’, smithcraft having an almost alchemical importance, which may relate to your comment that the swan is a symbol of the whitening process in alchemy.
c) Andew Collins argues that Brigid was a cosmic mother associated with the Milky Way and with Cygnus, and I argue that the Gnostic cosmic-mother Barbelo was also linked to the MilkyWay. As Barbelo is the cosmic mother of Christ in the Pleroma, this might help make sense of the odd Gaelic legend that AC mentions in which Brigid is the mother of Christ.
d) In connection with (c), the nativity panel of the Franks Casket shows the three Magi approaching the madonna and child. Between the figures of the Magi and the child, facing the child, is a bird. From its similarity to the birds in the Weyland scene I would guess that it is a swan.
e) In the meditation that closed Cygnus Day we voyaged up the Milky Way to Cygnus X-3, where we asked Brigid for ‘something’. She gave me a three-armed St. Brigid’s cross and a tablet with the three-hares on. OK, so they are symbols already in my head (and AC had earlier talked about the three-armed cross being related to the ‘bird’s-foot’ mark of Brigid), but I think I ought to take this seriously. Apart from the triple-ness of Brigid, it made me wonder if the three-hares are related to the triple-spiral pattern in Newgrange, which someone had suggested was also related to the primordial sound of AUM which traditionally has three elements (which resonate in three different parts of the body when you chant it, starting from the diaphram, then into the chest, and finally vibrating in the head; there is a fourth element, which is the silence after the sound. I can recommend giving it a try). We now know that there is a link between Newgrange and Cygnus, and between the swan/Sawaswati and AUM. And some think AUM became Amen in Hebrew, and perhaps Amun in Egypt.
I think that’s my lunch hour nearly gone, I’d better eat now.
Michael
Thanks for your kind comments Simon. Having had the privilige of reading several of your own articles I don’t think you have anything to be envious about though.
Dream seems a little Twin-Peaks like, Brid with a short man…this wasn’t set in a room with red curtains around the walls and a black-and-white zig-zag pattern on the floor was it? Second time I’ve been reminded on Twin Peaks in the last few weeks…perhaps Bob is gunning for me.
I shall persue your Brigid connection in the other thread you’ve started.
Do you have any references to Jung’s idea of swan’s representing light-on-water? I only know a few basics of Jungian psychology, and I’d be interested to know what significance Jung thought this had. This light-water imagery is what first made me think Barbelo is a Milky-Way cosmic mother (as opposed to just any ol’ mother). I didn’t mention it in my article, but the light-water theme occurs quite a lot in another Nag Hammadi text called the “Trimorphic Protenoia” (believed to have been influenced by the Apocryphon of John); I didn’t mention it because I wasn’t sure where to slip it in, and I didn’t want to spend too much time trying to put everything into the article that I could think of. I’ll revise it at some point, or maybe write a follow-up.
Michael
Although I am sure that I’ve written things here that I’m going to be embarrassed by later, opening the forums to public view is probably a quick ‘n dirty way to raise the profile not just of this site, but perhaps of psychic-questing thanks to the breadth of subjects we might cover. I voted to allow anyone to view, but only members to post. And at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work out you can presumably reverse the operation.
Michael
Hello June. A few of us here were at Questcon06, personally I had a grand time. I was being good and trying not to buy anything much, but I hope your stall did well, which one was it? Also, what is your book? Perhaps you would like to say something about it; even if it isn’t questing related I’m sure no-one would mind if you want to give it a ‘plug’. As well as that, are there any questing activities/projects that you’re into at the moment?
Michael
I went to this on Friday and think Yuri deserves a hearty slap on the back. I’ve no idea how involved Yuri was in organising the event at Strode Theatre, but his talk after the film was very good and done entirely without the aid of notes or powerpoint! I wont attempt to give a summary, but even my misses enjoyed it! A good event, and I believe that it will inspire (or re-inspire) those who were there, and that something more will come out from it.
More personally, further thanks are in order for guiding me back to the right car-park in Glastonbury afterwards and for a very pleasant evening in the G&P. It was also good to meet Perceval – thanks for the drink, and I’m looking forward to seeing your own material which sounds like it should be interesting – and others who I don’t believe to be denizens of these forums.
An excellent night all-round. Cheers!
Michael
