Myths & Legends of the Celtic RaceRolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race
Rolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Celts -- Religion; Mythology, Celtic
The significance of this marking, as we shall see, is possibly very great.
It has been discovered that on certain stones in the tumulus of
Locmariaker, in Brittany,(47) there occur a number of very similar
figures, one of them showing the circle in much the same relative position
as at New Grange. The axe, an Egyptian hieroglyph for godhead and a
well-known magical emblem, is also represented on this stone. Again, in a
brochure by Dr. Oscar Montelius on the rock-sculptures of Sweden(48) we
find a reproduction (also given in Du Chaillu’s “Viking Age”) of a rude
rock-carving showing a number of ships with men on board, and the circle
quartered by a cross—unmistakably a solar emblem—just above one of them.
That these ships (which, like the Irish example, are often so summarily
represented as to be mere symbols which no one could identifiy as a ship
were the clue not given by other and more elaborate representations) were
drawn so frequently in conjunction with the solar disk merely for
amusement or for a purely decorative object seems to me most improbable.
In the days of the megalithic folk a sepulchral monument, the very focus
of religious ideas, would hardly have been covered with idle and
meaningless scrawls. “Man,” as Sir J. Simpson has well said, “has ever
conjoined together things sacred and things sepulchral.” Nor do these
scrawls, in the majority of instances, show any glimmering of a decorative
intention. But if they had a symbolic intention, what is it that they
symbolise?
[Solar Ship from Loc mariaker, Brittany]
Solar Ship from Loc mariaker, Brittany
(_After Ferguson_)
[Solar Ship from Hallande, Sweden]
Solar Ship from Hallande, Sweden
(_After Montelius_)
*The Ship Symbol in Egypt*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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