Iberian - Blog Posts
Height of beauty
Espiritus de Invierno
The representations of the oldest masks are masks of animals, like those found in the paintings in the Lascaux cave in France. Some of these masks are still visible in contemporary rites around the world.
The correlation between the masks worn during these rituals and the anthropomorphic figurations of the Upper Paleolithic are striking. In many parts of Europe and especially in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal and the Basque Country), archaic and mysterious figures regularly haunt carnival rites since the Middle Ages (but referring according to some specialists, like A.Darpeix, member of the historical and archaeological society of Perigord, to a distant shamanic and Neolithic antiquity).
They are masks adorned with skins of animals, vegetables and straw, surrounded by bells and bones,often crowned with horns and woods.
Thus arises the wild man within modern paganism as to symbolize the rebirth of nature emerging from winter. The figures are essentially ambiguous, as at the crossroads of nature and culture. Masks always speak of the mysteries of existence: in traditional societies, they were or still are the figure of ancestors and spirits of the dead, that of protective or evil spirits.
Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani,
Proud Citizen of the Zirid Dynasty: Part 2
Ok, so now we can confidently say that the Zirid Dynasty makes sense as the homeland of Yusuf. I was going to get straight into the history of the Zirid Dynasty but honestly, there's nothing straight about this blog. I wrote one line about the city of Kairouan being founded by the Umayyad's on the site of a former Byzantine outpost and came to the conclusion that some more context couldn't hurt. Let's zoom back out for a minute and get a feel for some of the regions historic context, it's relationship with "Italy", and also get some context for "the Franks" feeling of entitlement towards the Levant.
Keep your eye on the city of Carthage as we go, that's modern day Tunis. Phoenicians founded the city in 814 BC and it became the centre of the Carthaginian Empire. Carthage was the trading hub of the Ancient Mediterranean and was an incredibly rich city.
This is probably where a textbook would start, ignoring the Amazigh peoples that inhabited the region for at least 9,000 years before the Phoenicians sailed up the coast. We'll come back to that another day. For now, have a look at Phoenicia itself on the map. Doesn't that region look familiar? People sailing around the Mediterranean and claiming other parts of it was nothing new in 1096 AD.
The rise of the Carthaginian Empire and the rise of the Roman Empire brought them into conflict. This lead to the Maghrebi region of the Carthaginian Empire becoming the Roman province, Africa Proconsularis.*
*This link is not objective and contains blatant historical bias but it was the most accurate, least biased one I could find.
In the 4th century Christianity began to spread throughout the Roman Empire after Constantine I co-signed the Edict of Milan. He was the first Christian Roman Emperor, and he founded the new Roman capital city, Constantinople (now Istanbul not Constantinople).
Christianisation was messy and complicated. There was a rich diversity of indigenous religious beliefs throughout the regions beforehand, despite the uniform picture painted by the term "pagan", and the early adoption of Christianity was varied in its sincerity. But that's a whole other story. It seemed relevant to note that it's rarely ever as simple as "us" and "them".
After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Africa Proconsularis became the Kingdom of the Vandals. Note that the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire) was still going strong. The fall marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, also known as the "the Dark Ages".
The Kingdom of the Vandals was conquered by the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century, when it became the Exarchate of Africa. The Byzantines held it until the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century. (Why yes indeed, those are both just links to Wikipedia. The other articles I could find were all a mess. The wiki entries at least acknowledge the existence of the regions indigenous peoples and both entries have referenced sources.)
As the Byzantine Empire expands and contracts during the Middle Ages you can see that it extends as far west as Carthage and southern Spain in the 6th century, that it includes Anatolia and the Levant in the 5th and 6th centuries, and that it recovered a portion of Anatolia and the Levant in the 12th century following the First Crusade.
In the 7th century Islam spread throughout the Arab peninsula, (the prophet Muhammad lived from 571-632 AD). Over the course of the next few hundred years Islam spread from the Arabian peninsula as far west as the Iberian peninsula and as far east as northern India.
By the late 7th century "Tunisia" was part of the Umayyad Caliphate. The caliphate mostly kept existing governments and cultures intact and administered through governors and financial officers in order to collect taxes. Arabic became the main administrative language. Non-Muslim subjects paid a special tax. Although many Christians migrated out of the region following the Muslim conquest there was a sizeable Christian community up until possibly as late as the 14th century.
And here we are, we've reached the 10 image per post limit so we'll finish working our way up to the 11th century next time!
Hopefully, dear reader, this gives you a slightly richer sense of the First Crusades historic context, some sense of "Tunisia's" historic cultural influences, and a sense of "Tunisia's" significance within the wider Mediterranean world.
maps: 1, 2, 3, 4
Proud Citizen of the Zirid Dynasty: Part 1
could you tell us of your religious journey? i've never had any real religious beliefs, but i've been trying to explore and it's hard to know where to start, so i was wondering if you had anything you could share that could help. maybe even some blogs you could point me to?
hey anon! i just got back from work so sorry if my thoughts are jumbled, but this is a great question!!
so like a lot of folks around here, i was raised catholic before i became pagan. i considered myself agnostic for a while after getting confirmed, but after about a year and a half, i had to reckon with that because of apollo reaching out to me! it was a crazy feeling, i jokingly say he was "tugging on my sleeve" for a while till i got the picture haha.
after that i just kinda ambled through religion for a while, cuz i was like 15 and didn't really know what i was doing, and just kept tacking gods onto the list of gods i wanted to worship, though i didn't really do anything for them. see, when i'm not in my dorm, i've got to practice in secret (still do), so i was sort of limited in what i (thought) i could do (until i started learning more about devotional activities and whatnot).
i'm not sure what made me stick specifically with the hellenic pantheon, but that's what i did for about 4 years. it took nearly 3 of those 4 years before i actually started researching the gods, the ancient cult they received, and ancient practices, so that's when my religious practice really started to finally take shape. i saw what others were doing and tried to work it into my practice in a way that worked for me, so i began doing morning prayers and weekly libations. it's important to make sure that you do these in a way that works for you instead of just parroting someone else! there are tons of academic books you can read about ancient greek life and religion, which a lot of blogs on here have links for. if you can't find any by just scrolling through the hellenic polytheism tag, i have a google drive of my own that i can hook you up with.
then, last july-ish, i became interested in learning more about the ancient gods of the place where most of my family came from, so i began researching the pre-roman gods of the iberian peninsula (specifically the area that later became portugal). from there, learning about them turned into wanting to connect to them, and after a year of on-and-off learning i'm finally beginning to do that! it's been a much more delicate process, because there's little surviving information on these gods, so it's been a big puzzle game of piecing together what information i have with practices from other areas and faiths to fill the gaps.
for as long as i've been a pagan, i've always been sort of an ominist, though i didn't know there was a word for it for a while. so it's really been a matter of putting out feelers about what i want to do, and what gods i want to include in my practice, and seeing what works (and being okay with something not working!). so my biggest advice is really just to stay open minded, and see what interests you instead of feeling a need to do things like everybody else.
this turned into quite the ramble lol but i hope this answered your question!! if you have any other questions, feel free to reach out again!
Celtiberian Roots
I thought for my first personal post, going back my ancient historical roots would be apropriate, so hereby I present you:
Celtiberian deities
The Celtiberian were one of the many barbarian people and cultures that lived in the Iberian peninsula (aka. Spain and Portugal today) before the Romans conquered them.
As the name may suggest, they were a mix between the Celts that inhabited the North-West and the Iberians, on the Eastern part of the peninsula. They lived in the middle area, and had their own settlements, culture, societies and religion.
Today I did a little bit of research on their known deities, since, being from that area, I thought it would interesting to explore the ancient gods of my land, get to know them and… who knows? Maybe bring them back to memory from the depths of Roman erasure, and give them live again.
Here are the more detailed ones:
• Ariconā - goddess of tribal protection and dogs
• Banda (Bandis) - goddess of the entrance to the Otherworld, water protection
• Besenclā (Besenclae) - a community and house protector
• Cernunnos - horned God or God of fertility, life, animals, wealth and the underworld
• Corvā - war and defense goddess
• Dēvās Nemucelaecās - celestial goddesses
• Epona - godess of horses and passing/ride through the afterlife
• Erbina - a goddess of wild animals, hunting, and domestic security
• Harācos - agricultural and prosperity god
• Icconā - healing and medicine goddess
• Laneana (Laneanis) - a goddess of springs and floods
• Lidā - land and fertility goddess
• Limia - goddess of the Lima river
• Matres Termegiste - a triad of mother goddesses
• Moricilos - a god of winds, sky, and battle
• Nabia (Navia) - versatile goddess
• Neton - a war god
• Nimedos - a military protection god
• Reva (Reua) - personification of water flows
• Senaecos - a primordial god
• Sūliās - goddesses associated with medicine and springs
• Tarbucelis - war god
• Togotis - a god of community protection, war, and oaths
• Turculā - a boar goddess
• Vaelicos - a god of wolves and wild animals
Here I leave some useful links to some websites (some in English, some in Spanish) with the little information that is available about Celts, Celtiberians and their cultures and deities
https://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/iberian.html
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/la-religin-cltica-en-la-pennsula-ibrica-0/html/001186c0-82b2-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celtic_deities
https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celta
https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celt%C3%ADberos
~ Enthrelle 🧙🏻♀️