Arcadia Discussion Zone

glad we agree... could we go back to this point then..

You'll have to take the lead on that one, I don't know where you're going with it.

TCP

nor do i yet i'll have to catch up with myself, i'm still down in the fosses sarrassines.

Or Wyverns - dragon-like creatures from English folklore, derived from the old French word wivre, for serpent, which is very similar to woevre, and as seen here on the flag of Wessex (south-west England). There is a River Wyle in Wessex.

...

Dontcha just hate those nylon combs?

Or Lung Mei

even funnier than the rancid butter i thought might have something to do with the phenomena...courtesy of St Martin via Gregory of T...back in my spontaneous combustion days.

In the tale of Merlin
he tells the king that the White dragon and Red Dragon are fighting
throughout time

the question is who is the red dragon and who is the white dragon

and Roscoe I think Blanche knew exactly what she was talking about

The Cathars were the Pure Ones...they would be the White Dragon
but then there was a Red dragon named Montfort

Merlin predicted they would battle through all of time

Ah yes Martin of Tours. The greatest ethnic cleanser in history a tradition continued by the Merovingians by way of Clovis and later by Dagobert I helped in particular by St Eligius.


The Life of St. Eligius, 588-660

It just went hidden or to use it's other description - Occult.

there is the Pope's private army

Swiss Guards

Gaul



Gaul after Clovis I



It just needed his men of the cloth to tidy up after he went.

Of course these new conquerers then began fighting amongst themselves within a century.

3000 years of inter tribe trading and peace, then the Romans then the Franks. They are still there.

Who's the Godless people here?

Is Baptism enough?


Clovis I getting baptised into the Christian faith.

As for England? Well they've been an occupied country since 1066.

Sorry, I'm a couple of pages behind on this thread, but that's very interesting indeed. If one considers that stone circles and other such megalithic constructions were built on sites deemed to be sacred, and this status may well be conferred upon areas containing strong "earth energies", for wont of a better expression, where long ago shamans and others were able to detect - whether because of iron in the earth, or subterranean water courses, or for some other reason - currents beneath the earth, then it would make sense, that snakes of all creatures, with their ability to sense faint tremors in the ground, might react in such a way close to a standing stone. Interesting.

Also, this is a miniscule point, but given the ancient stones that dot the landscape around RLC, it's possibly worth noting that there are a lot of snakes, particularly vipers, in the countryside around there. I know, it's a rocky Meditteranean environment, so that's hardly a suprise, but a preponderance of reddish-brown serpents can sometimes lead one's mind in a certain direction, just as the red-watered streams that come from the iron soil can.

I'm pretty sure you get these around that area - Montpellier Snakes (Malpolon Monspessulanus - Malpolon derives from Greek, and means "strong" and "many") - I came within less than an inch of treading on one by the medieval bridge at Serres a couple of years ago, and when I described it to someone from the region, they thought that's what it probably was, and it's the closest match I've found on an excellent French reptile website I found (see below).

Montpellier Snake:

http://www.herpfrance.com/reptile/montp ... ulanus.php

Anyway, that's a brief distraction from the interesting notion of animals, and particularly snakes behaving in curious ways in the vicinity of standing stones, but thought it was worth mentioning that when hiking the trails around RLC, and taking in all that magnificent scenery around you, it's worth casting your eyes down at the ground occasionally.

Resting on the ground, a snake's jaw can detect vibrations as small as an angstrom in amplitude (a motion roughly as large the diameter of a single atom), which act like sound waves to the inner ear....and they hear in stereo.

Granite standing stones have quartz crystals in them...pietzo electrics...put two & two together & no wonder the snakes give them a wide berth.

Yes, rather satisfyingly( ), you may see a large number of these beasties squashed on the roads around Rennes in the summer, though I don't think I've ever actually killed one myself.

Did know a man who nearly peed on a snake at Galamus though.

....always walk with a sure heavy tread in snake country...given the choice they'd rather not see you and they'll only attack if cornered.

quartz and mica and feldspar...piezo electrics...form a circle with specially searched for granite..and they brought the stones from afar sometimes...centered on a spot above underground springs and yeeha!

Yes indeed, their behaviour sounds similar to the adders we get in England - much more frightened of us (although whether they're more frightened than me is another matter).

On the plus side, there are no recorded incidents of the bite of a Montpellier Snake causing anything more than minor illness. On the minus side, they are apparently capable of lifting their bodies up and standing like cobras.

Maybe I'll start going there in the winter .....

The bastards!

We have European whip snakes here in the Limousin...most of them well over a meter long and will, like you say, stand up and challenge like a cobra, giving lot's of hisses...and when some people run, there's no point as they can beat you hands down. My little sister down in the 47 has them in her orchard as well, they hang out in the trees but she's not scared of them.
We are always more wary of the tiny vipers that live in the stone piles and don't like to be disturbed. In 20 years here i've only heard of one man who died from a viper bite...but he was a Parisian

I've learnt to be noisy

anyway..... piezoelectricity makes quartz the perfect crystal for oscillators in watches....because of the vibrations at a specific frquency i assume....therefore snakes keep away.

Only if you put a voltage across it or strike it physically.

Louis Charpentier carried out researches in antiquity for the Public Works Department of the International Administration of Tangiers. It was whilst there he was discussing the behaviour of animals and some plants around megaliths and Cromlechs that he decided to study the curiousities of Chartres Cathedral.

I've seen a few snakes around Rennes le Chateau itself, but the Grand Camp is the best place to see them.

The snakes don't keep away, quite the opposite.

St Patrick banished snakes from Ireland. How or why we're not told.

ah, they've found that even the sun's actions on granite is enough to squeeze the quartz.

it would be interesting to know what kind of stones our priest collected and whether he was just collecting them to build his grotto or was he using them for something else.....i dont suppose we will ever know for sure and it could be just another one of those fables that surround him

...and did they come from the ruisseau de couleurs?