Connection Power of Oak Trees

Sacred oak groves are not just Celtic. Lithuania was the last Druid region in Europe to be forcefully converted to Christianity meaning we have a good number of Christian texts about their Druid Pagan past. Additionally, many Druid Akkadian place names and traditions seem to have survived.

This photo shows one of the last sacred oaks having a place label of Alko or Gojus as seen from the west near Šventragiai village in Lithuania. More than 500 forests and former forest sites have the word gojus in their name. Beginning in the 1500's the number of locations called Gojas grew rapidly with the word gojus replacing alka. Photo by V. Vaitkevičius, 2008 (in Vaitkevičius 2016). 

Gojus is the Druid Akkadian phrase G'.G.UṢ meaning "Breaking-through with the energy of the Originator." The "Originator" in this case is an epithet for the source of the astrological fate powers which is the dark new moon god Su.

(June 7, 2023) The Willendorf Venus is unique in that it has an acorn crown “hat” which seems to be taken from the acorn of the European Sessile Oak. This Venus figurine was carved from oolitic limestone but it was covered with a thick layer of red ochre which represents the life power of blood. Also its hands are holding its breasts. These two characteristics identify it as the life manifestation goddess Asher.

The figurine was unearthed during the Wachau railway construction in 1908. It dates to between 28,000 - 25,000 BCE based on radiocarbon dating of items found in the same assemblage.

The oak tree was sacred because its broad crown most closely resembled the life network which distributed the divine fertility fluids to earth which was needed to manifest life.  The Willendorf Venus then is the earliest evidence for this network concept. (Photo: Don Hitchcock, 2008 online: https://donsmaps.com/venusindex.html)

(June 4, 2023) In the year 2049 BCE (based on tree ring data) two wooden henges were built on small islands located in a coastal salt marsh. One represents the day-time sky shell of the sun god Hu while the other represents the night-time sky shell of the crescent moon goddess Ayu.

They were built using bronze axes a few hundred years after the Indo-Europeans invaded Britain. Was this the last gasp of the Neolithic farmers who clung to their culture in the salt marshes of Britain?

One Seahenge (for the night powers) had an inverted central oak while the other (for day powers) had an upright oak. The inverted oak henge had a circular perimeter wall with its dark bark still on the posts and facing outward. In contrast the upright oak henges had a perimeter wall consisting of posts having their bark stripped off giving it a lighter color. This gave a contrast of night and day which was likely a contrast between life powers of the day and night.

Holme 1 consisted of an outer ring comprising fifty-five small split oak trunks forming a roughly circular enclosure around 7 by 6 meters (23 by 20 ft). Rather than being placed in individual holes, the timbers had been arranged around a circular construction trench. Their split sides faced inwards and their bark faced outwards (with one exception where the opposite is the case). One of the trunks on the south western side had a narrow Y fork in it, permitting access to the central area. Another post had been placed outside this entrance, which would have prevented anyone from seeing inside. The timbers were set in ground to a depth of 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) from the contemporary surface although how far they originally extended upwards is not known.

The presence of Middle and Late Bronze Age pottery at the site suggests that it became a focal point again several centuries after construction.  For Holme 1, 59 different bronze axes were used in its construction. This was discovered through 3‑D imaging which allowed archaeologists to measure the exact axe curvature and width of each blade that had made a cut in the timber.  

In early Spring 1998, John Lorimer, a special-needs worker, amateur archaeologist, and beach comber, was catching shrimps with his brother-in-law Gary on Holme beach. The pair found a Bronze Age axe head in the silt, but at first did not know what it was. Intrigued, Lorimer visited the area repeatedly, eventually finding a lone tree stump that had been unearthed on the beach – unusual in that it seemed to be upside down. A metal detectorist friend later recognized the site's importance, so they contacted the Castle Museum in Norwich. Archaeologists at the museum examined the axe head, the second one found on Holme Beach within only a few months. Lorimer continued to monitor the inverted tree stump. Wave erosion gradually exposed a surrounding ring of wooden posts, confirming that the site was an intentional human construction. Lorimer contacted Castle Museum again.

The museum contacted Edwin Rose, at the time Norfolk Landscape Archaeology's Development Control Officer, who then visited the site with Lorimer on 12 August 1998. At first, Rose suspected it was a fish trap from the Anglo-Saxon period, relatively commonplace for the area. But he began to suspect that it might be something else. So Rose inquired whether English Heritage would fund an excavation. They agreed

References

BBC News article about the site's discovery: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/388988.stm

Watson, Emma E. (2020) Hidden in plain sight  revealing the forgotten monuments of northern England - Ph.D. Thesis and an intensive survey of Monolithic monuments in Britain which puts everything into context. Online at: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13808/1/Emma_E_Watson_-_PhD.pdf?DDD6+

Norfolk's Historic Coast Website: https://www.visitnorfolk.co.uk/post/explore-the-deep-history-coast-in-norfolk

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahenge

(June 7, 2023)  In Willibald’s Life of Saint Boniface (written shortly after 768 BCE) he writes this about the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface who was killed in 754 BCE for cutting down a sacred oak in the modern town of Fritzlar (ancient Gaesmere) in the German province of Hess, Germany. It was called Thunar's (Donar’s) Oak. This account calls it “Jupiter’s Oak” while other translators call it “Thor’s Oak”:

Not only single trees, but at times entire groves or meadows would be sanctified in the name of Germanic gods, Thunor among them. Concerning such groves in Anglo-Saxon England, Gale R. Owen says in her 1997 volume, Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons:

This oak seems to have been named for boundary-crossing hermaphrodite deity Thu. The /r/ ending is Indo-European. Thunar would later become conflated with the classical gods of Zeus (Roman Jupiter) because they were also sky/wind gods. By then Thunar had been shortened to Thor.

References