Mythological Question 

Not many legend about these standing white stones were preserve by the local folk and the one that survived the test of time died out with the last keepers of the tradition but we do have some stories and details that are worth researching, those stories will probably  make no sense to our modern eyes and will be overlooked as mare children tales made by a bunch of superstitious people.

It is no coincidence that these tombstones were shaped as houses (as I showed you in the previous post they were also called Kuća or Vijećna kuća that literally means eternal house), since the Neolithic and even earlier Europeans connected the symbol of the house with the underworld, so you will often find funeral urns shaped like houses all over Europe which clearly resemble that symbology. The symbol of the house was also connected to the „cult“of the earth mother, we can see this relation for example in some early Neolithic sculpture where a woman figure  (probably a goddess ) has its lower body shaped like a house. For those that already know the key the ultimate symbology of the house is clear, the house is a metaphor for the womb, so the house shaped tombstones allude to some kind of rebirth.

The origin of these standing white stones was always matters of controversy among the local folk, so the only sources available were legends and myths, one legend tell us that once a race of giants lived in these regions and they were the creators of these stones, it is said that these “giants” could live 900 years. The translation of giant in the local language is Div the word is directly derived from the PIE *dyeu (shine, bright) from which we get the name of the sky-father in the European tradition (Zeus, Dievas,…), during the Christianization process our tales were corrupted and we were no more eable to recognize the mythological symbolism in them, so by looking at the etymology of the word giant in the local language it is clear that those giants in reality represent the gods themselves that are the mythological representation of the collective ancestral energy or the accumulated honor, so those white stones were built by our ancestors…us!

We can now analyze why they lived 900 years, the number 900 can be a symbolical number, so the only number that is really showed is the number 9 which is over present in our European tradition since is connected to the pregnancy period and thus rebirth itself, to reinforce this thesis there is an other legend that talks about a female giants (we already established those are not giants) that carried the tombstones on her head, it was said she could live 900 years: 300 years as virgins, 300 married and 300 as a widow. I want you to think about the practice of carrying a chest on the head in pre-industrial rural Europe, this technic aloud you to carry great weights with little effort and it was almost exclusively practiced by women, in this legend the image of a women carrying a weight on her head was used as a metaphor for the pregnancy. I’ve already shown you the symbolical equivalence of the tombstones as a symbol for the womb, this image can also be connected to the myth of atlas that carries the world, so in conclusion we can say that the female giant was carrying us all.

Throughout history the tombstones were often moved from their original spot and the dirt beneath them has been digged up, this happened because there were rumors about a big treasure that was buried under those white stones, this treasure is both symbolical end physical, indeed under the tombstones that were not robbed often were found  golden and silver objects, we can connect this practice with the common European tradition of burying someone with his objects ( often made of gold since gold can be preserved for a long period of time) that he possessed during his life time, these objects will be later collected by the initiate (the one that want to be reborn ) during the Halloween ritual. The symbology of the treasure can be found in a lot of our tales, where the hero will need to fight and kill the horrendous creature to get the treasure that can also be symbolized by a maiden that need to be saved. These two views symbolical and physical are obviously directly connected with each other.

We too will have to defeat the horrendous creature in the cave and reclaim the treasure and finally regain our lost memory.

 

 

Loss of memory

 Loss of memory

Stećak is derived from the old word stojećak, which is derived from the South Slavic verb stajati (engl. To stand) so It literally means the "standing thing", this is the modern name that the locals in Bosnia use to call those white standing tombstones spread all over the region and beyond, however there are many other names that the common people used, for example hram (shrine), kuća (house), kami/kamen (stone), mramorovi (marble),… The area covered by this tombstones was also called in a very special way like  tursko groblje (Turkish cemetery), Grčko groblje (greeks cemetery), kaursko groblje (infidel cemetery) and my favourite starovirsko groblje (old faith cemetery).

The existence of this tombstones is documented since the early midle ages however scholars have started  reseaching the history and especially the ”mysterious” symbols which are carved on them only in the late 17^th century, of course they came up with all kinds of theories and interpretations often influenced by their nationalistic and religious convictions but strangely they all agreed on one thing that those stones didn’t seem coming from the middle ages in fact they looked more ancient. Today the “official version” of the history tell us that those tombstones were created in the middle ages in a period between the 11^th and 15^th century but beneath them incredibly we can find traces of past burials going back at least to the pre-roman times so even if the stones are not ancient they were reutilized for centuries by the local population.

With the final Christianization and later Islamization of Bosnia and the death of the last keepers of this ancient tradition a real crime and systematical destruction of our heritage happened with those tombstones that were used as building material for churches or because of ignorance were moved from their place of origin, in the centuries that followed a thick fog fell on those standing white stones and they became like mystical ruins without a past or future. Today they are mostly abandoned, the local government have tried to protect the larger sites but because of the still actual “nationalistic” tensions in the political scene of Bosnia a lot of this stones are forgotten and were reclaimed by nature or even worst are used like attraction for tourists or as simple rocks in someone’s garden.

“stećak is for me what it is not for others, things that are on them or in them, others did not inscribe or knew to see. It is stone, but also a word, it is earth, but also sky, it is matter, but also spirit, it is a cry, but also a song, it is death, but also life, it is the past, but also the future.”

~Mak Dizdar

Historical Context

 

Historical Context and legacy

Bosnia for those that didn’t know is a relatively small region in south/east part of Europe that today is called “The Balkans” although this name is not the native name for the region but it is derived from the days of the Ottoman Turkish occupation, in anticity all the way through the middle ages the most common name for this mountainous place was Haemus that according the classical Greek legend it was the name of a Thracian king (it is derived from the Greek root word αίμα-aima that means literally blood).

The Balkan region was always home to many tribes thought out all its history which were considered barbaric by their more civilized neighbors, they were regarded as unpredictable and warlike by both Greeks and Romans, their temperament but also the not favorable environment in which they lived made them stay relatively isolated from that advancing plague that we today call civilization even today some areas are still completely untouched,  for example Bosnia is still today heavily covered by forests ( 53% for a total  25,599km² of forest area).

Because of this natural isolation the new Christian faith spread relatively late in  Bosnia, when the neighboring kingdoms accepted very fast the “gospel”, Bosnia was still a question mark for many so it became quickly a refuge for all kind of “heretics” like cathars, Manichaeism, bogumils, Arianists,…. Who were running away from the persecutions all over Europe.

With the independence of the Bosnian Kingdom in the year 1377 (but it started before that)  from the Hungarian hegemony a religious hierarchy was beginning to form, this new formed religious organization was traditionally called “the Bosnian Church” ( Crkva Bosanska in the local language ), we don’t have many sources about this new formed church but we can suppose that it was an admixture of various Christian “heresies” that was also heavily influenced by our European traditional religion, an example of this influence might be the name of chief priest that was called Djed that means literally grandfather or elder, it was a figure much similar to a pagan druid then a Christian bishop.

We need to take in mind that this religious organization didn’t have any church buildings (most of the ceremonies were celebrated in nature ) or dogmatical influence on the local population so we can say that the majority of the people were still practicing their native European traditions which can be seen on the motifs and symbols depicted on their tombstones (I will explain this in detail in a future post) , the figure of the Djed was only a support figure and only assisted in social events like marriages or funerals.

Eventually also this new formed religious organization will be destroyed and the Bosnian people will fall under more dogmatical religious contexts but even then the local folk will never stop practicing their native traditions but unfortunately they will not succeed in conserving the meaning and mediocre scholars will trough out our history create all kinds of theories and lies about our heritage but I can feel the fog that surround those white stones is slowly disappearing and  the sound of people singing and dancing can be heard in the distance.