Deciphering the Pagan Stones

beansidhe
reply to post by Logarock

 

So, for me, it is no stretch to see our Welsh-ish speaking Picts as at the very least allies of the Cymry.
In terms of the stones, then I am convinced that they do commemorate very, very important events of a Royal line arriving. I'm just not sure I can get my head round which line he's referring to just yet!

I heard once where Cradog, the captured Brit general/prince, when taken to Rome was spared.....and had relatives in Rome. This didn't make any sense until we consider why Rome was getting tribute from Britain before they even evaded the Island and the Alba/Rome connection.

As far as Wilson....He should give more background on the claims he makes. I mean if you are going to tell me that you can read ancient Ionian script using the Welsh language then produce a slide show or something. Understandably this sort of thing is what frustrates people about many diffusionists. Its ok to talk about his ideas but we haven't seen anything.

reply to post by Logarock


Yes, you did but I'm backing up my contension with refrences that happen to echo yours is a problem? was it a problem when referenced earlier?

That the royal line as written in Ireland where Menes/Minos the ruler of the biggest empire of the day died...
( why are there faroe islands, again?) is kind of self explanatory

im showing that what you call Etruscan is roman doodle art

or maybe it showed up here

VISIT THE REAL
TROJAN BATTLEFIELD

Troy and the Trojan War location has been found and the battlefield completely reconstructed from the scattered but very detailed information given in Homer's Iliad.

Troy in England, however unbelievable, is fully explained in this amazing work which provides in depth information and evidence of all kinds including geographic and linguistic evidence as well as countless archaeological finds.

The war was not waged by Greeks and not caused by the abduction of Helen. The real reason was access to tin in Britain, a precious metal which was essential for the production of bronze, a key war material of the time.

During the second millennium BC, it was the custom of illiterate Sea Peoples migrating from western Europe to verbally pass on history, that's how the tales of the greatest war of prehistory, the Trojan War was first recorded.

Previously, Hissarlik in Turkey was thought to be the location of Troy, but no traces of the Trojan war have been found near there.

You will discover this work clearly demonstrates that the Iliad, however poetic, is based on real historical events in Bronze Age Western Europe.

For the first time, readers of the Iliad and Trojan history can follow the action in the field.

The Story Behind Homer's Epics

The false assumption that Troy and the Trojan War was waged near Hissarlik in Asia Minor (Turkey), where no traces of the Trojan war are found, dates back to the eighth century BC when the first Greeks settled on Turkey's west coast.

The Greeks did not know that the Trojans who once lived in that area were migrants, as the collective memory of this fact was lost during the Dark Ages (1200-750 BC).


A small example of finds at
Cambridge University Museum
From 1180 to 1100 Hissarlik was indeed inhabited by a non-local people. They were the survivors of the greatest war of prehistory, when Troy on the Gog Magog Hills in Cambridgeshire, England, was destroyed. Here, countless bronze weapons and other remains of a major war in the late Bronze Age have been found.

The great migrations of the second millennium BC brought the Achaeans, Troy's enemies, from regions along the Atlantic coast of the Continent to the Mediterranean where they caused the collapse of many civilisations.

The name 'Achaeans' means 'Watermen' or 'Sea People' (the Gothic 'acha' for 'water' or 'stream' is cognate with Latin 'aqua'). The Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century BC) confirms that Pelasgians ('Sea Peoples') had settled in Greece long before his time. They founded Athens, renamed places, merged with the local population and adopted their language.


The Dictys Trojan War papyrus
confirmed the existence of an
earlier one in the Phoenician
alphabet, in use long before the
Greek alphabet existed.
With the Achaeans came their gods and their oral tradition, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were written down in Greek only around 750 BC. Meanwhile, the newcomers had engaged in the time-honoured practice of renaming towns, rivers and mountains after familiar places in their former homelands.

The transfer of place-names naturally led to the belief that the events described in the epics took place in Greece and the Mediterranean and that the Achaeans were Greeks.

www.troy-in-england.co.uk...

either way its still graffitti

or there would be etruscan stuff there
got any?

Danbones
reply to post by Logarock

 

The winged disk type is not of the Egyptian sort but is of the Assyrian/Babylonian sort, but the name icons look to be of the older Egyptian type before the classical cartouche was developed.

umm, the ARYANs /Phonecians that ruled the Picts ruled Sumeria before Egypt and Babylon, the Picts were in the area before the phonecians arrived but not before the phonecians existed..also the picts lived on for thousands of years after the arrival of the phonecians with their own culture.....

Yea that's not a stretch for me. Although these "picts", celts, ect, for me were not the same folks as this stone carving outsiders. They may had adopted some local style at some point, the knots, which would certainly make the whole thing a bit more palatable for the locals.

Yea and I caught what you said way back about the Aryans and didn't disagree with you. Why I focused on the Etruscans is because the Alban connection, their neighbors in Italy, and the well developed hippocampi on the Pictish stones which for me represents a newer style more greek/Etruscan than Phoenician. That is why I mentioned in an earlier post that the stones may represents a wider time frame with the oldest stones being those with the flying disk ect and the new stones are these very clean looking, well carved later productions. I mean just look at the quality carving in some of those stones as opposed to say the one in particular with the flying disk.

reply to post by Logarock

I heard once where Cradog, the captured Brit general/prince, when taken to Rome was spared.....and had relatives in Rome. This didn't make any sense until we consider why Rome was getting tribute from Britain before they even evaded the Island and the Alba/Rome connection.

As far as Wilson....He should give more background on the claims he makes. I mean if you are going to tell me that you can read ancient Ionian script using the Welsh language then produce a slide show or something. Understandably this sort of thing is what frustrates people about many diffusionists. Its ok to talk about his ideas but we haven't seen anything.

It does shine a different light on it, and makes sense of a number of otherwise curious relationships with Rome.

You sound like my husband - he kept shouting at the screen last night "Well, let's see it then!" when Wilson talked about his translations. This is the first time I've come across Wilson, and I've just sent for one of his books from Amazon because he claims he has made these translations etc from detailed sources. I would like to see these, and wonder if he has already provided a translation for the Newton stone. On the whole, I liked him a lot, and I think we should treat his version with as much authenticity as more familiar sources- in other words, we can hold him in mind and consider him without accepting him as gospel (which I think we've been pretty good at doing so far!).

His interpretation of the Cymry is of particular interest, however.

reply to post by Danbones

umm, the ARYANs /Phonecians that ruled the Picts ruled Sumeria before Egypt and Babylon, the Picts were in the area before the phonecians arrived but not before the phonecians existed..also the picts lived on for thousands of years after the arrival of the phonecians with their own culture.....

It's really important to also bear in mind that we have taken a fairly specific viewpoint about the Picts from the outset, and that is that of McHardy, when he considers that the 'Picts' were the indigenous people of Scotland - a misheard and misunderstood bastardisation of 'pecht', by the Romans and that they would have included:

See also: List of Celtic tribes
Caledones (along the Great Glen)
Carnonacae (western Highlands)
Caereni (far western Highlands)
Cornovii (Caithness)
Creones (Argyll)
Decantae or Ducantae (eastern Ross and Black Isle)
Epidii (Kintyre and neighboring islands)
Lugi (southern Sutherland)
Smertae (central Sutherland)
Taexali (Angus and Grampian)
Vacomagi (in and around the Cairngorms)
Venicones (Fife and south-west Tayside in Scotland)
Unknown named tribe in Orkney Islands (may have been picts)
Unknown named tribe in Shetland Islands (may have been picts)
Unknown named tribe in Faroe Islands (may have been picts)

Pictish Tribes

So any number of these peoples could have arrived at any point and had any number of relationships with any number of the other groups. Confused yet? The reason is that the Romans seemed to use the term Pict and Caledonii interchangeably, which lends credence to the idea that they may have been using it as we might say 'European' or 'African' to cover a broad range of similar, yet distinct peoples.

And so this is just one more piece of the puzzle to bear in mind when we think about 'Picts' as an entity.

Hi,

I did not read all the thread so sorry if it has already been said.

But I think all these codes may be related to paramagnetic agriculture because of the towers associated with the stones. I may be wrong though.

Philippe Callahan did some patents about it.

Here's of some of the patents.

www.rexresearch.com...

reply to post by atomik22


That's definitely a good theory, although our stones are in Scotland and without towers.

This idea that the round towers were erected and used primarily as watch towers and places of protection is strongly debated by an American scientist, Philip Callahan.Writing in his book, Ancient Mysteries, Modern Visions, Callahan discusses research which indicates that the round towers may have been designed, constructed and utilized as huge resonant systems for collecting and storing meter-long wavelengths of magnetic and electromagnetic energy coming from the earth and skies. Based on fascinating studies of the forms of insect antenna and their capacity to resonate to micrometer-long electromagnetic waves, Professor Callahan suggests that the Irish round towers (and similarly shaped religious structures throughout the ancient world) were human-made antenna which collected subtle magnetic radiation from the sun and passed it on to monks meditating in the tower and plants growing around the tower's base.

That does tie in quite nicely with ley lines and such like though - thanks, Atomik22!

Here's something of note:

So it may be that the Scots who influenced the carving of the late Pictish Maiden Stone had to bow to the strength of a prevailing worship of nature spirits in order to get their message across. It is now accepted that the Picts had their own water cult and that the salmon, dolphin and other great fish (Gk. ketos) were central to that worship. Roman historians were aghast when discovering that Picts ate no salmon, though the rivers were teeming with them. Flesh of the goose, too, (Roseisle Class I stone in Edinburgh) was never eaten, though they roamed wild in profusion. The dolphin (or Pictish "beast" carved on 24 Class I stones in east Scotland) was believed to be sacred because it could live both in air and water and shared knowledge of the world beyond the sunset. The salmon was sacred; it also lived in two media - saltwater and fresh - sharing its knowledge of the seven springs of wisdom. References to sacred salmon kept in wells occur as late as the 16th century, usually by the priest or the minister, who by then was supposed to be as learned as they.

'A well . . . at which are the hazels of inspiration and wisdom, the hazels of the science of poetry and, in the same hour their fruit and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the sacred salmon chew the fruit and the juice of the nuts shows on their red bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth.' Stokes trans. 1887 Old Celtic Legend.

Electric Scotland

On the Gartnach hill outside the village of Clatt, an earlier pre-Christian sacred well was used until the Reformation as a place of blessing and called the 'Holy' or 'salmon' well. The carved outline of a Pictish salmon along with an overhead arch [or horseshoe or rainbow] was embedded next to the well until the early years of the 20th century. It was moved to Percylieu (between Clatt & Druminnor) and trimmed for use as a door lintel to the threshing mill. It was then rescued and has become a feature of the National Trust property of Leith Hall near Kennethmont, where it stands in a garden shelter beside another Pictish stone, the 'Tod' (wolf) stone from Newbiggin in Leslie parish near Insch.

Does 7 streams of wisdom sound familiar? (Not to me - oh, the irony).
But also here is an example of meaning.



Marking a blessed place, at a holy well. The salmon, a sacred animal. Could we hazard a guess that the horseshoe has some connotation with good luck - as it does today - or heaven/Goddess?

As far as I can see the Biblical figures mostly carved are:

1) Samson - from the tribe of Dan

2) Daniel in the lion's den -

Critical scholars speculate the dating of the authorship of chapter 6. Paul L. Redditt postulates, "the only issues here are when people in the Diaspora began to tell the story and when its hero became Daniel."[3] Louis F. Hartman and Alexander Di Lella place the story more broadly within the Persian period, basing it on Persian loanwords.[4]

3) David playing the harp / David and Goliath - from the tribe of Judah

David (/ˈdeɪvɪd/; Hebrew: דָּוִד, דָּוִיד, Modern David Tiberian Dāwîḏ; ISO 259-3 Dawid; Arabic: داود‎ Dāwūd; Syriac: ܕܘܝܕ Dawid) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah, and according to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus. His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040–970 BC, his reign over Judah c. 1010–1002 BC, and his reign over the United Kingdom c. 1002–970 BC.[1]

4) Abraham sacrificing Isaac- another Persian

The patriarchal stories most likely had a substantial oral prehistory.[8] Abraham's name is apparently very ancient, as the tradition found in Genesis no longer understands its original meaning, probably "Father is exalted" - the meaning offered in Genesis 17:5, "Father of a multitude", is a popular etymology.[9] At some stage in Israel's history the oral traditions became part of the written tradition of the Pentateuch; a majority of scholars believes this stage belongs to the Persian period, roughly 520–320 BCE.[10] The mechanisms by which this came about remain unknown,[11] but there are currently two important hypotheses.[12] The first is Persian Imperial authorisation, the idea that the post-Exilic community needed a legal basis on which to function within the Persian Imperial system; the second relates to the community of citizens organised around the Temple, with the Pentateuch providing the criteria for who would belong to it (the narratives and genealogies in Genesis) and establishing the power structures and relative positions of its various groups.[12]

5) Jesus with his mother, Mary-

According to St. Luke, Mary was a cousin of Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zechariah of the priestly division of Abijah, who was herself part of the lineage of Aaron and so of the tribe of Levi.[Luke 1:5;1:36] Some of those who consider that the relationship with Elizabeth was on the maternal side, consider that Mary, like Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, was of the House of David and so of the tribe of Judah, ...

But if we stop thinking of these characters as Christian, and think of them historically, there are some interesting connections.
The Sea people, Persia/Babylon, a royal line, and displaced tribes.

reply to post by beansidhe


the ring looks like the degreed ring of a celtic cross ( see the little square on the ring? ) the salmon could be pisces

The Age of Pisces, an artifact of the Precession of the Equinoxes, is the time span extending from about 200 B.C.E. (or up to 600 years even earlier) until the current day.

www.halexandria.org...

well, looks like you were right earlier B when you mentioned the z looked like a compass
i miss took that for a magnetic compass you ment a circle drawing compass i bet

well here is the compass and moon
its known as Pythagorean math...a result of trying to square a circle
its for measuring area with a ruler or strait edge and a compass or rope
its the area you get from a circle that is equal to a right triangle that fits in the circle
the shape is a quarter moon

reply to post by Danbones


I think the V rod is a compass - like this one (top pic):





Yes, for drawing a circle, like this:



and this:



I think we spoke about it on page 2-3 or so.

yes well you did and now on page 23 Im tying it to the moon its connected to


the start of the age of pisces is also the start of the iron age in Britain

Celtic Britain (The Iron Age - 600 BC - 50 AD)


BY DAVID ROSS, EDITOR
Who were they?
The Iron Age is the age of the "Celt" in Britain. Over the 500 or so years leading up to the first Roman invasion a Celtic culture established itself throughout the British Isles. Who were these Celts?

For a start, the concept of a "Celtic" people is a modern and somewhat romantic reinterpretation of history. The “Celts” were warring tribes who certainly wouldn’t have seen themselves as one people at the time.

The "Celts" as we traditionaly regard them exist largely in the magnificence of their art and the words of the Romans who fought them. The trouble with the reports of the Romans is that they were a mix of reportage and political propaganda. It was politically expedient for the Celtic peoples to be coloured as barbarians and the Romans as a great civilizing force. And history written by the winners is always suspect.

Where did they come from?
What we do know is that the people we call Celts gradually infiltrated Britain over the course of the centuries between about 500 and 100 B.C. There was probably never an organized Celtic invasion; for one thing the Celts were so fragmented and given to fighting among themselves that the idea of a concerted invasion would have been ludicrous.

The Celts were a group of peoples loosely tied by similar language, religion, and cultural expression. They were not centrally governed, and quite as happy to fight each other as any non-Celt. They were warriors, living for the glories of battle and plunder. They were also the people who brought iron working to the British Isles.

www.britainexpress.com...

reply to post by Danbones

The Celts were a group of peoples loosely tied by similar language, religion, and cultural expression. They were not centrally governed, and quite as happy to fight each other as any non-Celt. They were warriors, living for the glories of battle and plunder. They were also the people who brought iron working to the British Isles.

But this simply isn't true. Cattle raiding, which I believe this very, very English writer is referring to as 'plunder' in a superior and snobbish way is to completely misunderstand the clan system.
Plus we now know that they brought steel working to the British isles, in the supposedly pre-bronze age era.

Geometry, though is likely, I agree, particularly after the finds at Portmahomack

beansidhe
reply to post by Danbones

 

umm, the ARYANs /Phonecians that ruled the Picts ruled Sumeria before Egypt and Babylon, the Picts were in the area before the phonecians arrived but not before the phonecians existed..also the picts lived on for thousands of years after the arrival of the phonecians with their own culture.....

It's really important to also bear in mind that we have taken a fairly specific viewpoint about the Picts from the outset, and that is that of McHardy, when he considers that the 'Picts' were the indigenous people of Scotland - a misheard and misunderstood bastardisation of 'pecht', by the Romans and that they would have included:

See also: List of Celtic tribes
Caledones (along the Great Glen)
Carnonacae (western Highlands)
Caereni (far western Highlands)
Cornovii (Caithness)
Creones (Argyll)
Decantae or Ducantae (eastern Ross and Black Isle)
Epidii (Kintyre and neighboring islands)
Lugi (southern Sutherland)
Smertae (central Sutherland)
Taexali (Angus and Grampian)
Vacomagi (in and around the Cairngorms)
Venicones (Fife and south-west Tayside in Scotland)
Unknown named tribe in Orkney Islands (may have been picts)
Unknown named tribe in Shetland Islands (may have been picts)
Unknown named tribe in Faroe Islands (may have been picts)

Pictish Tribes

So any number of these peoples could have arrived at any point and had any number of relationships with any number of the other groups. Confused yet? The reason is that the Romans seemed to use the term Pict and Caledonii interchangeably, which lends credence to the idea that they may have been using it as we might say 'European' or 'African' to cover a broad range of similar, yet distinct peoples.

And so this is just one more piece of the puzzle to bear in mind when we think about 'Picts' as an entity.

That's a pretty short list hehe, a decent one though. Selgovae are pretty big at the same time as the Venicones, Votadini etc.. I think ultimately we have to accept throughout the British Isles around the same time scale there is obvious Etruscan, Phoenician (Wales / Southern England) Scythian 'Stones' In the north of Scotland. Brigante and Romanov (Northern) and anyone else that fancied joining in tbh.. They were all obviously here at some point not necessarily to take over or rule the land but they were here, they left their mark.

reply to post by Ramcheck

That's a pretty short list hehe, a decent one though. Selgovae are pretty big at the same time as the Venicones, Votadini etc.. I think ultimately we have to accept throughout the British Isles around the same time scale there is obvious Etruscan, Phoenician (Wales / Southern England) Scythian 'Stones' In the north of Scotland. Brigante and Romanov (Northern) and anyone else that fancied joining in tbh.. They were all obviously here at some point not necessarily to take over or rule the land but they were here, they left their mark.

That's what I'm leaning towards too - that they did not rule as we would see it, but were either illustrious visitors or leaders of an outpost who slowly became incorporated into the indigenous population, through intermarriage etc. Good point, let's see what we know about the main ones.

Venicones:

The Venicones were one of the few groups in northern Britain at this time that buried their dead in stone lined graves, such graves and cremation burials are very rare in other parts of Britain before the Roman period.
Archaeologists suspect many Iron Age peoples often practised complex funeral rituals in which bodies were naturally allowed to decompose.
The Venicones and Taexali also made offerings of prestigious decorated locally made metal objects in bogs and lakes, including massive bronze armlets.
Only the Venicones and Taexali wore these unusual ornaments, which could weigh over 1.5 kg each and were worn one on each arm.

The Venicones (hunting hounds or hunters with hounds) lived around Dundee, along the Tay. Interesting that these two groups were quite close. The Taexali were around the Grampian area.

Selgovae:

A British tribe of Scotland, the name is thought to mean 'hunters'.

The Roman geographer Ptolemy places them in the Southern uplands of Scotland, although it is not clear from the little evidence we have as to exactly where this people lived. Some scholars place their location as the upper Tweed Basin, and it is unclear if they were part of the Votadini.

The Selgovae might have used Eildon Seat as their principal settlement, but this might have been a Votadinian site.

Like the Votandini, they were conquered in AD 79-80 by the Roman army.

Despite having little evidence, we know for sure that they were conquered by the Roman's. Ok.

Votadini

The Votadini were a very large tribe or people that lived in the south east of Scotland. In the north, their territory started at Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth and stretched as far south as Northumberland in northern England. It is not clear where the boundary between the Votadini and the other large tribe, the Brigantes, was, although it probably frequently shifted as a result of wars and as smaller tribes and communities changed allegiances.

The Votadini, like the Brigantes, were a group made up of smaller tribes, unfortunately the names of these smaller tribes and communities remain unknown.

Archaeologically, the territory of the Votadini was very different to that of either the Venicones or the Novantae. Large walls, banks and ditches surrounded most of their farms and the people made offerings of fine metal objects, but never wore massive armlets.

There are also at least three very large hillforts in their territory (Yeavering Bell, Eildon Seat and Traprain Law), each was located on the top of a prominent hill or mountain. The hillforts may have been used for over a thousand years by this time as places of refuge and as places for meetings for political and religious ceremonies.

Caledonii (people of the woods)

Caledones (Caledonii)

This is the name of peoples who lived in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The Romans used the word Caledones to describe both a single tribe who lived in the Great Glen between the modern towns of Inverness and Fort William. They also called all the tribes living in the north Caledonians. We know the names of some of these other tribes. They include the Cornovii and Smertae who probably lived in Caithness, the Caereni who lived in the far west of the Highlands, the Carnonacae and the Creones in the Western Highlands.

The Vacomagi lived in and around the Cairngorns. Other unknown tribes lived in Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides. Warriors from many of these tribes came together to resist the Romans under a leader called Calgacus at battle of Mons Graupius in AD 84. Although the Romans won this battle, they never successfully conquered the Highlands. The Romans admired the Caledonii for their ability to endure cold, hunger and hardship. Tacitus described them as red-haired and large-limbed.

All these tribes lived very different lifestyles than neighbouring peoples in other parts of Scotland. In many areas they lived in tall stone towers, called Brochs, or other fortified sites, called Duns. Unlike the Taexali and Venicones, the Caledones rarely made religious offerings of fine metal objects.

BBC history

I think, for us, the important ones to focus on at the moment are the Venicones, the Taexali and the Caldonii since they occupy the areas where the most stones are. That's not to say other stones weren't found elsewhere, but we need to start narrowing it down somewhere.

reply to post by Logarock


Whilst I'm thinking of biblical figures, I suppose it's also important to include this bit of well known folklore. The Hilton of Cadboll stone (Carthimandua) is from the north of Scotland. What if it's not Carthimandua?

Bible scholars have often asked: "What happened to Christ during his lost years?" Just where was he and what was he doing, because the Bible seems to have a big gap in its chronology? It has been suggested that he went to India where he is recorded as the Prophet Isa. And then there is the oral evidence that points to him visiting ... South Uist and the Isle of Skye. This is the theory put forward by Barry Dunford in his book The Holy Land of Scotland.

Henry Jenner, a keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum in London wrote in 1933 of a journey he took to the Hebrides. Jenner found it very curious that "there are a whole set of legends of the wanderings of the Holy Mother and Son in those Islands." He also came across an island off Skye known as the Isle of Isa – or the Island of Jesus. And as everyone knows, place names were given in response to real events.

On the surface it looks like a slim possibility, but perhaps if you put it in a much wider and older context it reveals itself as a possibility. There is a body of thought that believes Jesus's ancestors may have been of Celto-Hebraic origin, the early roots of which belonged in Caledonia. This theory rather intruigingly has Druidic thinking impacting on Christian practice. Central to this theory is the Island of Iona, which had been known as the Island of the Druids and was to find fame as a centre of Christian spiritualism.

If, then, the theory concludes, Jesus's forebears came from Scotland, isn’t it quite within the bounds of possibility that he returned to see where his great-great-great-great uncle was born?

The Scotsman

I love the thought of Jesus having to endure a hideous Scottish summer holiday, too!
"Get in the sea."
"It's too cold!"
"Rubbish. Get in the sea."
"Aargh! It's pure freezin! Is that a lungfish...?"

reply to post by Ramcheck


I can't upload photos at the moment, I don't know why (blasphemous jokes, perhaps) but if you follow the link you'll see one of the bracelets in question. Look at the design:

Venicone jewellery

beansidhe
Here's something of note:

On the Gartnach hill outside the village of Clatt, an earlier pre-Christian sacred well was used until the Reformation as a place of blessing and called the 'Holy' or 'salmon' well. The carved outline of a Pictish salmon along with an overhead arch [or horseshoe or rainbow] was embedded next to the well until the early years of the 20th century. It was moved to Percylieu (between Clatt & Druminnor) and trimmed for use as a door lintel to the threshing mill. It was then rescued and has become a feature of the National Trust property of Leith Hall near Kennethmont, where it stands in a garden shelter beside another Pictish stone, the 'Tod' (wolf) stone from Newbiggin in Leslie parish near Insch.

Does 7 streams of wisdom sound familiar? (Not to me - oh, the irony).
But also here is an example of meaning.

Marking a blessed place, at a holy well. The salmon, a sacred animal. Could we hazard a guess that the horseshoe has some connotation with good luck - as it does today - or heaven/Goddess?

Which would give support to the idea that the beastie is also a sacred symbol.

reply to post by Logarock

Yea and I caught what you said way back about the Aryans and didn't disagree with you. Why I focused on the Etruscans is because the Alban connection, their neighbors in Italy, and the well developed hippocampi on the Pictish stones which for me represents a newer style more greek/Etruscan than Phoenician. That is why I mentioned in an earlier post that the stones may represents a wider time frame with the oldest stones being those with the flying disk ect and the new stones are these very clean looking, well carved later productions. I mean just look at the quality carving in some of those stones as opposed to say the one in particular with the flying disk.

The oldest stones are undated, essentially. The clean, sharp stones are from around the 6th and 7th centuries AD. But there is a problem that I can't quite reconcile yet.
The Romans recorded that the Druids were equal to the Persians in their knowledge of 'magic' - so astronomy, medicine, spirituality etc. We know that the 'henge' builders were there 2-3 thousand years before these words were written. A number of the Pictish stones were left where they were by locals (I've just read), up until quite recently -well relatively - because they were 'druid stones.'

So in a society, or number of societies, where the Druids would have had very high social standing for hundreds of years, how do we reconcile the fact that these incomers came in and took over? And carved their own stones, but kept the symbolism of the local people? Because some of the symbols are completely unique to the Picts. The symbols differ regionally in their execution, but they pretty much remain consistent over time and place.

This is just a guess, but it would only make sense (to me) if the original stones and symbols were carved by the same people. Which could shift the timescale waaay back, hundreds and hundreds of years earlier, than is thought.

Sorry if I'm just catching up with everyone else!