There’s Posh… All Sorts At The Cairns…
by Bernie Bell - 07:32 on 06 July 2023
Swandro Dig Dairy…….
There’s posh….
https://www.swandro.co.uk/post/royal-day-out
I’m lost for words! Torn between being a dyed-in-the-wool Republican – and dead pleased that the Swandro folk received this recognition for their work – and the site.
I’ll go with being dead pleased – always go for the positive if possible.
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All Sorts At The Cairns…
Tuesday’s dig diary from Michele Maybee…..
https://archaeologyorkney.com/2023/07/04/the-cairns-dig-diary-day-seventeen/
And I quote….
“the skull near Structure E area belonged to a red deer with its antlers cut off below the coronet base.”
Deer - mattered…..mask/head-dress from a deer skull???
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=16373
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/06/07/you-can-never-have-too-many-links/
‘Oh – and it makes me wonder….’
PS
This got me thinking about antlers - not just as part of a shaman's mask or head-dress, but also how important they were for practical purposes - which might have been one of the reasons why they were incorporated in items which were worn as part of rituals.
Antlers were used to dig and to hack at hard substances. I'll quote from Jacquetta Hawkes' 'A Land' again - from the chapter entitled 'Land & People' where she writes about Grimes Graves in Suffolk….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grime%27s_Graves
..and also of the Great Goddess or Earth Mother. She then writes….
“At the bottom of one of the mine shafts in of Grimes Graves a figure of the goddess was discovered enthroned above a pile of antlers on which rested a chalk-carved phallus. This shrine had been set up in one of the few pits that by chance had failed to strike the flint bed, and Our Lady of the Flint Mines, it seems, was being asked to cure such sterility. It is worth meditating on this story, for it perfectly represents the unity of life these people enjoyed. They were confident that by carving the symbols of a woman and a phallus and rendering the appropriate ritual words, movements, and offerings, they could ensure an increase of flint just as readily as their fellows could multiply their calves and lambs..”
This shrine weaves the practical with the spiritual – a unity which produces harmony in life. Something we’re forgetting or losing track of in the modern world.
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And yesterday……the last day of digging…..for this year…from Eileen Connolly….
https://archaeologyorkney.com/2023/07/05/the-cairns-dig-diary-day-eighteen/
Thank you, thank you for the view looking up the stairway from the ‘well’ – picture it – walking up those steps, having just been joined, named your child, washed your dead…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2019/07/11/the-cairns-on-a-sunny-sunny-open-day/
And now The Cairns sleeps again…
The Cairns – Sleeps
Our Dancing Floor is covered
The Well of Wishes – sealed.
Our place, so long neglected
Is starting to be Healed.
We’ll sleep - in Dreamtime
The winter weather through.
Next year – Sometime -
They will return.
And then, we’ll wake
Our place will wake
To youth and light.
Red hair, dark hair
Gleam of light on bronze,
Beads, and benediction of burnished bowl.
We’ll dance again
Weave new life
For the land.
They are Us
And We are They.
Namaste
BB
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Here’s one I made earlier….. https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/02/28/on-giving-and-keeping-your-word/
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