Category: History

Before Wyoming

Before Wyoming

by Justin Durand

Very interesting article about pre-settler Wyoming. I wonder, briefly, whether the author might be related to the Justin Nickerson who went to school with my mother in Farson, Wyoming.

I found this one because I was searching for information about American Indian place names in Wyoming. Specifically, I was wandering off on a tangent after reading that there has been no progress on the Oglala request to rename Devil’s Tower, Wyoming to Bear Lodge (Mahto Teepee). This site says “The proposal was blocked by Wyoming’s congressional delegation until 2021.” I hadn’t heard that, but it’s easy to believe.

There’s a map here I found very helpful for other reasons. Searches like this are fun because they uncover new and interesting information you wouldn’t think to look for.

Here’s the perennial reminder that my mother’s family is from an area known as the Red Desert (Ay ga Vahsah Soegoep, Red Desert Dirt, in Shoshoni).

And a reminder that my father’s Lakota name, Wind River Eagle, might not capture the Lakota name of that place (Beeyah Ohgway, Big River, in Shoshoni; Huchaashe, Wind River, in Crow; Hote’niicie, Sheep River, in Arapahoe).

Another map on the same page shows a good and detailed overview of the many pioneer trails that criss-crossed Wyoming.

Go. Look. You’ll find something to like here.

Extinct Romans

Extinct Romans

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This is a piece from Masaman about different ethnic groups in the old Roman Empire. Toward the end there is a brief bit about the Etruscans and Rhaetians in the Alps.

Of interest to the Hauri DNA project because our G-L42 haplogroup seems to be concentrated in this region and probably originated there.

  • Masaman, Extinct Romans (July 19, 2019), at YouTube.com, beginning at 10:18, visited July 27, 2019.
Origins of Freemasonry

Origins of Freemasonry

by Justin Durand

Like no one has ever written on this topic before. But, as it happens, I’m re-reading Freemasonry and Its Ancient Mystic Rites, by C. W. Leadbeater (1986, 1998). The Old Perv. So now I’m thinking about a familiar subject.

Freemasonry has its colorful origin myths. Those are fun, but the modern sensibility is pretty tame. The Illinois Grand Lodge is typical:

“Since the middle of the 19th century, Masonic historians have sought the origins of the movement in a series of similar documents known as the Old Charges, dating from the Regius Poem in about 1425 to the beginning of the 18th century. Alluding to the membership of a lodge of operative masons, they relate a mythologized history of the craft, the duties of its grades, and the manner in which oaths of fidelity are to be taken on joining. The 15th century also sees the first evidence of ceremonial regalia.

“There is no clear mechanism by which these local trade organizations became today’s Masonic Lodges, but the earliest rituals and passwords known, from operative lodges around the turn of the 17th–18th centuries, show continuity with the rituals developed in the later 18th century by accepted or speculative Masons, as those members who did not practice the physical craft came to be known. The minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary’s Chapel) No. 1 in Scotland show a continuity from an operative lodge in 1598 to a modern speculative Lodge. It is reputed to be the oldest Masonic Lodge in the world.” (Freemasonry Origins, The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of A.F & A.M of the State of Illinois, visited Feb. 11, 2019. One of the reasons I chose this one is because my dad was a Freemason from Illinois.)

Somewhere in the froth, everyone seems to forget that medieval craft guilds were like this. The guilds were organized in a typically medieval way around corporate identity. They had patron saints, feast days, processions, craft myths and secrets, and of course elected officers and elaborate ceremonial.

With very little effort, you could sit in a modern Masonic lodge and picture what it would look like if Western esotericism had been poured into a guild of, say candlemakers.

The patron would be St. Ambrose. The major feast would be on December 7. There would be a story about Adam making the first candle, no doubt shown by bees. And another about King Solomon and candles as a metaphor for his wisdom. And no doubt some others built around various Bible verses with themes of light and enlightenment. Scholars would find intriguing parallels to authentic medieval usages, and it would all seem very mysterious.

Certainly, as they say, “There is no clear mechanism by which these local trade organizations became today’s Masonic Lodges”, but I think that misses the larger mystery—How did we end up in a modern world where masons were the only craft guild to make the transition from “operative” to “speculative”? There should be dozens.

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Doggerland

Doggerland

by Justin Durand

There’s an area of land under the North Sea that was above water thousands of years ago, connecting what is now Great Britain and Denmark. The sea is relatively shallow in this area. Fishermen have dragged up remains of land animals and prehistoric tools. It’s been called the British Atlantis, but its formal name is Doggerland, after the Dogger Bank.

Now switch gears. Mitochondrial haplogroup V2, relatively rare in Europe, is a British group. And there’s a theory it originated in Doggerland. Pretty cool. This is my group, so also my mother’s, my maternal grandmother’s, my sisters’, my sisters’ children, and so on throughout my whole female line.

This is all old news. What has my attention today is that I was leafing through a book by Diana Paxson, and noticed she has a brief bit about Doggerland even though she doesn’t call it that.

“An interesting, if much debated, theory holds that during the earlier part of the Bronze Age a ‘northern Atlantis’ developed on islands off the west coast of Jutland that were known as the Electrides, or Amber Isles (Spanuth 1979), dominating the lands around the North Sea until it was swamped by a tsunami somewhere between 1500 and 1220 B.C.E. Some speculate that its people were the Haunebu, who traded amber to the Egyptians. After the disaster, the fleeing inhabitants may have displaced the Sea Peoples, whose attacks are described in Mediterranean records of the later Bronze Age.” (Diana Paxson, Essential Ásatrú (2006), 15-16.)

Paxon is citing Spanuth who believed Doggerland was not just the “British Atlantis” but also the original for Plato’s Atlantis. Probably not likely. A better candidate for Atlantis (in my opinion) is Santorini. And Paxson’s dating is quite a bit later than the current idea that Doggerland sank between about 6500 and 5000 BCE.

Nevertheless, there is probably more material to be mined here. The Greeks, or some of them, believed Hyperborean Apollo came from a land beyond the lands of the Celts, behind the North Wind. The traditional identification is Britain, but some writers now suggest the legend is old enough for it to have been Doggerland.

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Revised July 16, 2019, Oct. 22, 2019, and July 13, 2020 to add additional sources.