Tag: Circle
Life as a gher: nomadism in Mongolia
Of the three million people currently living in Mongolia, as many as half reside in the capital Ulan Bator. Of the remaining one and a half million inhabitants, about a third live sedentary in the othersโฆ
Cernunno, Odin, Dionysus and other deities of the 'Winter Sun'
It would seem, indeed, that all these numinous powers, as well as a certain chthonic-telluric and chaotic-wild aspect of nature, are also symbolically connected to the Winter Sun, or rather to the "Dying Sun" in the coinciding final days of the Year. with the "solstitial crisis", during which the heliacal star reaches its annual nadir.
di Marco Maculotti
cover: Hermann Hendrich, "Wotan", 1913
[follows from: Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'].
In the previous publication we had the opportunity to analyze the ritual complex, recognizable everywhere among the ancient Indo-European populations, centered on theimmolation (real or symbolic) of the "King of the Old Year" (eg. Roman Saturnalia), as a symbolic representation of the "Dying Year" that must be sacrificed to ensure that the Cosmos (= the order of things), reinvigorated by this ceremonial action, grants the regeneration of Time and of the 'World' (in the Pythagorean meaning of Kosmos like interconnected unit) in the new year to come; year which, in this sense, becomes a micro-representation of the Aeon and, therefore, of the entire cyclical nature of the Cosmos. Let's now proceed toanalysis of some divinities intimately connected with the "solstitial crisis", to the point of rising to mythical representatives of the "Winter Sun" and, in full, of the "King of the Waning Year": Cernunno, the 'horned god' par excellence, as far as the Celtic area is concerned; Odin and the 'wild hunt' for the Scandinavian one and Dionysus for the Mediterranean area.
The Sacred Circle of the Cosmos in the holistic-biocentric vision of Native Americans
โThe circle was sacred to the Amerindians because it indicated a Way of Understanding. It provided a means of understanding the Cosmos, the mysteries of life and death, the mind and the individuality of the ego. With the circle, the Amerindian shaman could show how the Cosmos worked, how the laws of Nature and the Cosmos governed all living beings, how to discover the relationship between man and other life forms on the Planet and how to get in harmony with the Nature, with the Great Spirit and with one's own Spirit. "
[Extract from the graduation thesis Recognition of the rights of the Native Peoples of Canada2015]
For millennia, American Indians have regarded the earth as a church, the bullion tables as altars, all of creation as pervaded by sacred vital forces, in a universal circle of equals, one related to the other in a vital balance.ย 200 The habitat represents the stage on which the realm of spirits and the physical world perform. Plants, forces of nature, celestial stars, human beings, herbs that heal and allow visions, are all part of a "family-run system",ย 201 in which all are relatives, "all equally children of the Great Mother Earth". The circle of the native universe contains in an inseparable whole the entire existing world, physical and spiritual. Thanks to what we said previously on the importance of the cd reciprocity law in native traditional philosophy, it is not difficult to understand that it is precisely this principle that forms the basis of this particular holistic vision of the cosmos as a single organism composed of a multitude of interconnected and interdependent parts.
