I planned to have the first chapter of the nonfiction companion book written last week, but first, I had to sort what needed to go into the book and decide on the best format.
The fiction, Land of the Watchers, is based on observation and research that often does not follow the contemporary view of the pre-Indo-European people who lived in the area during the era in which the book is set. In the companion book, I will explain why.
I based the fiction on what I could glean from mythology, folklore, geology, archaeology, archaeoastromomy, listening to the locals, and the echoes of the land. The purpose of the companion book is to provide insight into how I arrived at my vision of the enigmatic people I write about.
I welcome constructive feedback.
The primary intention of the book is to discuss each chapter, sharing the assertion behind the fiction, how I chose character names, and anecdotes from my writing journey.
The other goal is to sort and decode some of the symbols found across Great Britain and Brittany. Were the ancients trying to tell us something? The display at the visitor centre at Newgrange shows some of the artwork found carved into stone at Newgrange.
The symbols are likely associated with archaeoastronomy, as the sites at Brú na Bóinne in Ireland appear to have been built to study the heavens.
Archaeoastronomy plays a large role in the interpretation of this culture’s worldview. It provides an insight into how and why the society built the stone monuments scattered all over Northwestern Europe. It could shed light on how the people understood, used and integrated cosmic events into their culturre.
Several people such as Martin Brennan and Marija Gimbutus have given us a place to start. No doubt there has been more progress along this line in the years since I visited the area. I hope this website will be a place to discuss and discover.
Martin Brennan’s sorting of symbols from his book, Stones of Time.
Notably, the monuments have been built in places of high energy on Earth and in alignment with the sun, moon, and stars. This underscores their strong connection to the Earth and the cosmos.
This is where I introduced some of Marija Gimbutas interpretations of the symbols found repeatedly on her “Old Europe” grooved ware pottery.
I especially wanted to talk about the letter O found on the groved ware pottery. Even today, the letter O is used to represent an egg — oocytes, hors d’oevre, etc.
I named my protagonist Oona, as she represents motherhood. She becomes pregnant before marriage and is carrying twins. To the culture in my book of fiction, marriage is not necessarily a prerequisite for pregnancy. Pregnancy is natural, whereas marriage is a convention of man. Indeed, to the people in my fiction, pregnancy before marriage was a good thing. Young maidens who gave birth to one or more children before taking a husband were revered. Their babies were raised in the temple and held in high esteem. That sentiment is echoed in our patriarchal religion by the vigin birth of Mary.
And I can’t tell you how odious the word “bastard” is to me. It is just so-o-o wrong to label an innocent, pure, newborn in such a way.
Merlin Stone, in her book When God Was a Woman, contends that the idea that marriage must come before pregnancy is a patriarchal edict. She says that the reason for this is that marriage establishes clear lines of paternity, inheritance, and social stability for offspring. To enforce this custom, shame is assigned to the woman who gets pregnant before or outside marriage, and to her baby.
It seems clear to me that this culture revered the life-giving properties of women and Mother Earth. Chevrons, V, W, M and U are found on this pottery as well. Still to this day, V is used in words such as vagina and vulva; W is found in the words womb and women; and U is found in the word uterus. The word Mother, has an M and the letter O.
Next Week — Chapter One
Chapter One is only one page and tells the devistating story from the earth people’s perspective. Their story is so catastrophic that it is retold for over 4000 years, and its unwavering accuracy is sacred.
We all know that the moon travels around the Earth, and Earth orbits the sun, but do we know that the sun drags its planets around a very large orbit in space? A journey that takes 26,000 years to complete and is called the Great Year. The ancients believed in the Great Year, and so do I. Could it be that 10,000 years ago, our solar system was traveling through a place in space were chunks from an exploding sun were streaking past, and that our solar system was bombarded by these bolides?
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