Turning Points….. Sea-Urchin-Sun-Symbols…. From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…. On Letting Go… The Clue Is In The Title…
by Bernie Bell - 08:28 on 05 July 2023
Turning Points…..
This morning, I was thinking…..we’ve turned the mid-year point – I was thinking of the mid-winter turning point into the next year. I was thinking of Maes Howe and how I’ve seen the light coming down the passageway there, twice – what might have been a once in a life-time experience for pilgrims in the past. Folk will have come to the Ness of Brodgar at all times, but probably more intensively for the turn from darkness to light. I mused about this, here……
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/12/24/21-12-21/
And then, I thought – it’s the first day of the dig at The Ness, today – and I wish ‘good hunting’ to the diggers.
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Sea-Urchin-Sun-Symbols….
I’m reading ‘A Land’ by Jacquetta Hawkes… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquetta_Hawkes . On page 52 I read the following…
“Midway in time between these contemporaries of our own and their earliest Ordovician ancestors, sea-urchins were abundant in the Cretaceous period and left the chalk full of their neat fossil cones with fine inscribed lines radiating from the apex. Because their shape and these rays made them natural sun symbols, the Bronze Age peoples of Britian had magical uses for them, sometimes burying them with the dead. On Dunstable Down in a grave cut into the chalk itself, a Bronze Age man was buried lying crouched within a ring of scores of fossil sea-urchins; for those who left him there, he lay underground warmed by as many suns.”
I hadn’t come across the tale of the Bronze Age burial before. I hadn’t come across sea-urchins – fossil or otherwise – as sun-symbols before. We have one - one of each - I’ll see them in a different light from now on…
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From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….
An Emergence Magazine Production
“Two centuries ago, as many as ninety languages and three hundred dialects were spoken in California; today, only half of these languages remain. In this six-part multimedia series, we meet and learn from speakers of Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wukchumni, and Kawaiisu: dedicated families and communities across the state who are working to revitalize their Native languages and cultures in order to pass them on to the next generation.”
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On Letting Go…
Recently, I’ve recognized a need in myself to un-learn some learnt behaviours…..
Sparklers don't spark
forever — by design
their brief beauty dazzles
like shooting stars
or a comet plunging
into daylight
They run down their lives
measured in inches and seconds
traveling one direction
throwing glowing embers
which light the way
for some but for those
who don't let go
badly burnt fingers
https://bartbarkerpoet.com/2023/07/03/just-like-youth/
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The Clue Is In The Title…
A report by Dorottya Gupsci….
https://archaeologyorkney.com/2023/07/03/the-cairns-dig-diary-day-sixteen/
Stepping stones to the past?
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Here’s one I made earlier…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2022/06/11/theres-more-to-brochs-than-choost-an-owld-pile-of-ston-to-quote-from-the-title-of-ken-mcelroys-dissertation/
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