Boreades wrote:Belinus - that sounds so close to Belenus (the Celtic god of light and fire, "The Shining One") - maybe they are the same?

Belenus sounds rather too Biblical. The early-modern Celtic Revival may have messed up the whole business of course and it could be that Belenus is the British Apollo. But Belenus sounds like bull, appropriately pagan. Bull seems to be a way of saying 'male' across the board and is one of those animals that were emblems or totems, and indeed deities as with the Golden Bull (aka Baal).

From which we get Beltaine as well.

Beltane, 1st May, comes under Taurus!

Stuart wrote: it could be that Belenus is the British Apollo.

The Michael Line is thought to be aligned with Beltane sunrise. {There's also a Michael-Apollo Line which intersects with the Michael Line somewhere in the vicinity of Cornwall}.

One of the stranger May Day customs (in Scotland at least) was to pass cattle through the smoke of a bonfire.

Royston wrote:One of the stranger May Day customs (in Scotland at least) was to pass cattle through the smoke of a bonfire.

I thought that was just good Animal Husbandry, to help fumigate them and get rid of tiny passengers?

Royston wrote:

Stuart wrote: it could be that Belenus is the British Apollo.

The Michael Line is thought to be aligned with Beltane sunrise. {There's also a Michael-Apollo Line which intersects with the Michael Line somewhere in the vicinity of Cornwall}.

Belenus has a limited scope compared to Apollo but the important link is beacon fire. In Christian terms Apollo's equivalent could be Paul, formerly Saul (Sol?).

The role of Saint Apollonia as patron saint of tooth-ache sufferers is perplexing but bearing in mind that bonfire = bone-fire this extract, from The Dictionary of Folklore, is revealing:

bones.
A belief reported in England and Scotland from the mid-19th century onwards was that it is unwise to burn bones, usually with the reason that your own bones will ache if you do so, and a much earlier notion links burnt bones with toothache (1507), part 2, p. xiii, quoted in Opie andTatem, 1989: 15). Aubrey (1686: 165) reported that women wear a tooth taken from a skull to prevent toothache, and that ‘cunning ale wives putt the ashes of ... bones in their Ale to make it intoxicating.

[Academic folklorists date most customs and beliefs from the earliest written record which often happens to be in the nineteenth century; presumably a side-effect of the Industrial Revolution not unlike current concern that some wildlife species will die out due to farming on an industrial scale.]

Just a word about the Glastonbury Megalithomania Conference. This was, so far as I could judge, a great success though of course, as is unavoidable with such congregations of the like-minded, the bar was set fairly low. Certainly the headline speakers were content with a Greatest Hits approach.

The lesser speakers were more original but were dealing with lesser subjects. I of course was dealing with a huge subject that was wholly original but I don’t think anybody noticed. I got entirely dutiful applause, ie I was just a lesser speaker dealing with a lesser subject. However just enough individuals sought out either me or Hatty with unsolicited praise to indicate that minor but significant chords might have been struck.

Mick Harper wrote:Just a word about the Glastonbury Megalithomania Conference. This was, so far as I could judge, a great success though of course, as is unavoidable with such congregations of the like-minded, the bar was set fairly low. Certainly the headline speakers were content with a Greatest Hits approach.

The lesser speakers were more original but were dealing with lesser subjects. I of course was dealing with a huge subject that was wholly original but I don’t think anybody noticed. I got entirely dutiful applause, ie I was just a lesser speaker dealing with a lesser subject. However just enough individuals sought out either me or Hatty with unsolicited praise to indicate that minor but significant chords might have been struck.

Well done Mick and Hatty!

They have both been too modest to mention they also passed a forensic examination by a young inquisitor, Mademoiselle Boreades (i.e. my 14 year-old daughter) who can detect bullshit from a mile-off. After they'd gone, she said she liked them both. Which is High Praise indeed!

Mlle Boreades is clearly a very discerning young lady. She may even turn into an Applied Epistemologist.

My fame spreads effortlessly. Two leading critics discuss the importance of my work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acuRDm0jfCM

It is interesting to learn that I am on the opposite side from the Illuminati.

Actually this deserves a fuller treatment. While monitoring reactions to the Megalithomania Conference generally I came across these You Tubes which (1 through 12) discussed every speaker except me. How I railed (to Hatty) about Careful Ignoral and the fact that "your typical megalithomane is only interested in crop circles and whatnot. Everything's so old hat with these people etc etc."

So anyway, having thoroughly eaten my words, I now have to compliment these two dudes on
a) a remarkable gift for retaining information (I can hardly remember the briefest highlights of the talks I sat through)
b) an excellent capacity for synthesising the whole theory (though some of this must be down to me as a speaker which is a relief) and
c) the general nous to appreciate that this could be important -- though in a quite different way from the extreme revisionism that some of the other speakers proposed.

I have to say I am enormously heartened.

Well done Mike... you certainly made an impression on those two.