wheel knot necklace

Comment

Comment by Ricprimus on April 18, 2013 at 11:45am

Much of my art and crafts are based on my ancestor's style using a combination of geometrics and/or a distorsion (usually an exaggeration of features) of living things.  Every element is a specific symbol of meaning, knotwork was considered to be an overall symbol for eternity, and specifically the eternal masculine. The spiral was the equivalent symbol for the eternal feminine principle. Colors in the art also have specific meaning.  All the symbolism was not only used on religious objects, but also on ordinary daily items. "Celtic" like the people themselves arose from a fusion of eastern India/central Asian influences (archeologists/ethinologists/linguists hol the Russian Steppes specifically), elements from the middle-east/greek/roman sequence, and native aboriginal peoples of eastern to  western Europe and the Britain/Scot/Irish Isles. The Romans under Julius Caesar essentially destroyed the Celtic European culture in, um, 52b.c, with the remanants fleeing to the English Isles, especially Scotland and Ireland. With the Christianizing of Scotland by Columba and Ireland by Patrick in the 5th centuries, a series of monasteries were built on the islands between the 2 countries that dedicated themselves to producing Christian manuscripts, usually Gospel books and Psalters that took the ancient pagan symbolism and re-interpreted it in Christian meanings. (These books were then used by missionaries to "re-Christianize" much of Europe after the fall of Rome by the various barbarian tribes.) The flowering of Christian Celtic art was the 7th through 12th century, when it essentially vanished due to the repeated Viking invasions of Scotland & Ireland, where the monasteries were repeatedly  robbed, destroyed and all the monks and nuns  were slain during 800-1169.  Sorry for long babbling.