This was a way of marking out and consecrating places believed to be subject to particular astronomical influences and probably used for rites of passage to adulthood as well as for initiation tests and celebrations in honour of the god Pan, or Silvanus, whose identity was closely bound up with his billhook.
![astrology glyphs astrology glyphs](https://www.nayhotzesmedicinemusings.com/resources/astro%20guide.png)
The itinerary begins with a visit to the so-called Pennati Rocks in the mountains of Versilia, where the ancient Ligurians carved dozens of billhooks, mallets and flowers of life onto large slabs of rock, and cosmic crosses around basins for collecting water. These are not mere apotropaic or devotional engravings but symbols rich in ritual meaning designed to inspire human beings on their journey towards the divine, which was felt to be a living presence in the lap of the earth. The Ligurian and Etruscan peoples left their mark on Tuscany in the shape of fascinating symbols on the rocks in both underground and mountainous places considered sacred. The journey continues in Tuscany with an exploration of the concept of renewal through ancient symbols carved into the rock. This itinerary allows us to explore some of the places most richly decorated with these symbols: the passage leading into the Sanctuary of St Michael in Monte Sant’Angelo, which might almost be considered a compendium of alchemist lore the mysterious Cantina Spagnola (Spanish Cellar) in Laterza, where biblical stories are mixed with apparently derisive, almost blasphemous images the engravings in the Sant’Angelo Crypt in Uggiano la Chiesa and the unusual symbolic architecture of the church of the Madonna del Gonfalone in Tricase and, finally, the astonishing number of painted stars, flowers, symbolic animals and shields with crosses in the extremely beautiful Crocifisso Crypt in Ugento, which may have been used as a venue for investitures by orders of knights devoted to the Virgin Mary, who is depicted on a throne holding the Christ Child with the goddess Isis’s ankh at his ear. Master painters and masons as well as pilgrims or the simply devout left an abundance of markings in rupestrian churches sometimes concealed, ignored or dismissed as superstitious or apotropaic, these are often in fact an important reminder of the wealth of sapiential knowledge in the fields of magic, alchemy and astrology in which mediaeval man was so profoundly steeped.Ĭhristian, pagan, eastern and western traditions merge freely in an amalgamation of cosmic glyphs, symbolic animals, transmutation markings and religious symbols.
![astrology glyphs astrology glyphs](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lsWUQ2rWIhc/TM-j9GqL8xI/AAAAAAAAAQk/U3nk0qm1KhE/s1600/zodiac-signs3.gif)
![astrology glyphs astrology glyphs](https://astrofix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/embroidered-patches-black-circular-3-in-front-6303f066ae003.jpg)
Workshop-masserie and agriculture museums.Museums, galleries, libraries and historic theatres.