Category: Other Page 147 of 177

They are shapeshifters and there are a number of legends, and versions of the same legend, as a result of centuries of oral tradition. They appear as guardians of the pathways into the earth and of the “limit” frontiers where it was believed that the supernatural could manifest itself. Mouras encantadas are magical maidens who guard castles, caves, bridges, wells, rivers, and treasures. […]

Almost every Portuguese or Galician town has a tale of a Moura Encantada.[10] The lore of the mouros encantados is used to find prehistoric monuments and was for some time used in the 19th century as the main method to locate Lusitanian archaeological “monuments”, as Martins Sarmento viewed these as a kind of folk memory that was erased with Christianization.[11][12]

Like the Mairu of Basque mythology built dolmens or harrespil, the mouras are builders of ancient monuments.

Source: Enchanted Moura – Wikipedia

King Gradlon (Gralon in Breton), ruled on Ys, a city built on land reclaimed from the sea,[1] and some times described as rich in commerce and the arts, with Gradlon’s palace being made of marble, cedar and gold.[2] In some versions, Gradlon built the city upon the request of his daughter Dahut,[3] who loved the sea. To protect Ys from inundation, a dike was built with a gate that was opened for ships during low tide. The one key that opened the gate was held by the king.[2] […]

Dahut received the key from him and its misuse led to catastrophe.[2] […]

Other versions of the legend tell that Ys was founded more than 2,000 years before Gradlon’s reign in a then-dry location off the current coast of the Bay of Douarnenez, but the Breton coast had slowly given way to the sea so that Ys was under it at each high tide when Gradlon’s reign began.

Source: Ys – Wikipedia

Procopius relates that:

‘They imagine that the souls of the dead are transported to that island. On the coast of the continent there dwell under Frankish sovereignty, but hitherto exempt from all taxation, fishers and farmers, whose duty it is to ferry the souls over. This duty they take in turn. Those to whom it falls on any night, go to bed at dusk; at midnight they hear a knocking at their door, and muffled voices calling. Immediately they rise, go to the shore, and there see empty boats, not their own but strange ones, they go on board and seize the oars. When the boat is under way, they perceive that she is laden choke-full, with her gunwales hardly a finger’s breadth above water. Yet they see no one, and in an hour’s time they touch land, which one of their own craft would take a day and a night to do. Arrived at Brittia, the boat speedily unloads, and becomes so light that she only dips her keel in the wave. Neither on the voyage nor at landing do they see any one, but they hear a voice loudly asking each one his name and country. Women that have crossed give their husbands’ names.’

Source: Brittia – Wikipedia

Skræling (Old Norse and Icelandic: skrælingi, plural skrælingjar) is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America and Greenland.[1] In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-Inuit group with whom the Norse coexisted in Greenland after about the 13th century. In the sagas, it is also used for the peoples of the region known as Vinland whom the Norse encountered during their expeditions there in the early 11th century.

Source: Skræling – Wikipedia

In classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin “farthermost Thule”) acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world”.[5]

[…] The Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia (now Marseille, France) is the first to have written of Thule, after his travels between 330 and 320 BC. Pytheas mentioned going to Thule in his now lost work, Things about the Ocean Τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ (ta peri tou Okeanou). He supposedly was sent out by the Greek city of Massalia to see where their trade goods were coming from.[9] […]

The first century BC Greek astronomer Geminus of Rhodes claimed that the name Thule went back to an archaic word for the polar night phenomenon – “the place where the sun goes to rest”.[11]

[…] Another hypothesis, first proposed by Lennart Meri in 1976, holds that the island of Saaremaa (which is often known by the exonym Osel) in Estonia, could be Thule. That is, there is a phonological similarity between Thule and the root tule- “of fire” in Estonian (and other Finnic languages). A crater lake named Kaali on the island appears to be have been formed by a meteor strike in prehistory.[26][27][28] This meteor strike is often linked to Estonian folklore which has it that Saaremaa was a place where the sun at one point “went to rest”. […]

In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville wrote in his Etymologies that:

Ultima Thule (Thyle ultima) is an island of the Ocean in the northwestern region, beyond Britannia, taking its name from the sun, because there the sun makes its summer solstice, and there is no daylight beyond (ultra) this. Hence its sea is sluggish and frozen.[42]

Source: Thule – Wikipedia

The auguraculum (plural: auguracula), was a roofless temple oriented to the cardinal points, in which the priests of ancient Rome practiced augury and ornithomancy.[1] The priest observer was positioned at the center of the temple, in a tent or a hut, and watched portions of the sky from which came the birds, which were marked out by stones placed along the perimeter of the temple. From this observation, the priest was believed to be able to predict the future.[2]

The auguraculum was structurally a very simple device, a small thatched hut, which appears to have been regularly renewed.

Source: Auguraculum – Wikipedia

At Rome, sentries were traditionally posted on the Arx to watch for signals displayed on the Janiculum if an enemy approached.[1] A red flag would be raised[2] and a trumpet blown.[3] The Arx was not regularly garrisoned, however, and should not be regarded as a “fort.” However, in the Gallic siege of Rome (387 BC), the Arx was considered the point of last retreat, the capture of which was synonymous with the capture of the city. It thus held a symbolic power beyond its importance in military strategy, and was a central place in archaic Roman religion.

Source: Arx (Roman) – Wikipedia

…[A]ccording to the classical Greek poet Pindar,

‘neither by ship nor on foot would you find
the marvellous road to the assembly of the Hyperboreans.’

Pindar also described the otherworldly perfection of the Hyperboreans:

‘Never the Muse is absent
from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry
and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.
Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed
in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle they live.[1]’

Source: Hyperborea – Wikipedia

He is described in the Puranas as the avatar who rejuvenates existence by ending the darkest and destructive period to remove adharma and ushering in the Satya Yuga, while riding a white horse with a fiery sword.[7]

Source: Kalki – Wikipedia

‘I cannot heal you of this hurt from this great distance,’ said she. ‘My power here is weak and growing weaker, as my Children begin already to grow forgetful of all that I have taught them.’

“‘I cannot heal you,’ she said. ‘You must take this task upon yourself, and the way will not be easy, and the burden will not be light. All I can give you is knowledge. What I can do is to teach you, to open your eyes with mine. And in so doing, I lay upon you this task, to open those of others, to remind them of all that they’ve forgotten, that they are my beloved children.’

Source: Tob’s Tale, Part I. – Quatrian Folkways – Medium