Beginning: "Tartary watches - the first Russian watches".
Many people know about the very first clock on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin.
But the mechanism is still incomprehensible, the performer is dubious, and the available sources contradict themselves.
And nowhere is it openly and explicitly mentioned that such watches were not in one copy in Moscow.
D. Prozorovsky. Day, in ancient Russia // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb., 1890-1907:
Let's imagine that today a clock will be installed on the Kremlin tower, which will spin completely chaotically, without arrows, instead of numbers - say, Chinese characters. Well, who will benefit from such a watch? Of course, this was a generally accepted and widely used system of measures of time. And even more so. The basis of life and more on that below.
So, the point is not that it was primitive, as it is believed, practically controlled by hand, not that, behold, some strange foreign monk made and installed them.
The fact is that only if people understand the system and the need for the information provided by such a device, such a clock could exist.
In the singular, it's not a watch, it's a joke. Wealth and options could change, but the principle was the same.
Call the hour
We read on the website History of Russia:
I affirm that not only in Moscow there were such clocks, but also in other cities, throughout Russia, everywhere! This system of calculating time was used everywhere. I even expressed such a seditious thought that, perhaps ALL bell towers of "churches" and "temples" had such a clock.
Take a closer look, almost all bell towers have some niches and technological holes ideal for installing clocks there.
Now these niches are occupied by icons or walled up or empty, but in some places there are clocks, though modern, there.
Here are some photos from humus magazine.
View of the upper part of the bell tower of the Church of Kosma and Damian in Sadovniki.
There are some "decorative elements" on all four sides, on one side there is even a hole. So it asks to insert the clock there.
View of the upper part of the bell tower of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Pyzhi.
Such a funny window, isn't it? For an icon? For light access? Wait, don't rush.
Do you think I'm delusional? Well, here's a watch.
The clock on top of the bell towers? Too high and too shallow? Well, here's a modern clock on the bell tower. Moreover, on all four sides.
More hours please.
Clock.
Nobody hid the fact that there was a large clock on the Borovitsky Gate. And the technical holes in the wall for them remained and even a trace on the wall. As well as on the Kutafya tower.
Place for icons? Well yes!
You say - Hey, wait, you are talking about 1722, and here is the 19th century, no less! Yes, quite right, these are echoes, it is so accepted, but why, it is no longer clear. Where are the richer parishes - they set the clock - they themselves are asking for these niches!
Do you think it's just for beauty?
To light the window of the stairs? I can give examples for a long time. There are hundreds of them. Thousands.
And this is my favorite example. Of course, there is a place for the icon! (irony)
Have you noticed that these niches and watches are almost all strangely located on the bell towers? More precisely, everything, with the exception of the Kremlin towers, which, it seems, are not temples, and here I will leave you a hint, think about it.
So, here are the belfries, bell towers - because they ring and bells are installed on them. Everything is clear here and there are no questions.
And the chapels?
It is clear that the word "chapel" comes from the word "hour", but where does the word "hour" come from? It is believed to come from services in temples.
Don't you think this statement is very dubious and far-fetched?
I will assume that chapels, bell towers and belfries are one and the same, and their task was to notify the time. And only then, the service time is tied to the hour, to the services there, etc., and not vice versa.
Of course, it is important for a believer to know the start time of the service, but it is just as important to know just what time it is! When to start and when to end the service, trade, is it worth rushing to the appointment or there is still time, and so on.
And what comes first, a clock or a temple? And if we take into account the version that initially the temples were not religious buildings, but were something like, as they say now, “temples of science”, combined the functions of some technical structures, energy generators or served as means of communication between cities and with higher powers - there are many theories … The clock fits perfectly into them. Here are the Kremlin towers with clocks, but they are not temples! For the Kremlin is a single complex of structures and it would be very superficial to think that all this is for beauty or for protection from guns.
And pay attention - "call the hour" - the name speaks for itself. And this is not a service, call, do not call a prayer, do not call God, do not call. Nothing like this.
What evidence is there that most of the clock chimes had Russian clocks on their walls?
Well, firstly, that there was a clock on not a single Spasskaya tower and not only in Moscow, Witsen writes.
Witsen about watches
There is such a wonderful book:
By the way, what is interesting, it was thanks to Anatoly Nikolaevich that the lost prints of Witsen were found and published. I already wrote about this book in the article Strange Tower in Pskov by Nicholass Witsen.
And what do we read in this book?
“They have few watches, but those who have” and we are not talking about modern watches, but about the first, old Russian watches.
And about an opinion that no one is even going to dispute - Christian churches are not Christian churches! These are, at least, not only places of worship and not places of common faith!
And yes, everywhere they write about the primitiveness of the mechanism and the system itself. The primitiveness of primitiveness is different!
Not everywhere you need an atomic reactor or hundreds of gears, but the fact that our ancestors had a different time reckoning system is a fact. And the fact that this system is closer to a person and is not based on the generated electromagnetic oscillations of piezoelectric modes of a quartz crystal does not mean that it is primitive. We are people, not machines. And the regime - day / night - is our regime and nothing can be done about it. And the whole animal world lives like this - according to the law of the sun, according to the law of nature, which were our ancient Russian clocks.
From the comments to the first part from Yuri Shatokhin.
Why 17 hours? Where does this number come from? It's hard to say now. I think the solution is still ahead. There are versions that it is 16 with zero hour, and 16 is like a sacred Russian number, which is extremely ambiguous if you start digging in this direction. But the fact that everything is not accidental, but important and makes sense is absolutely certain. The article Old Russian Vsemere is very detailed and interesting about this.
The reasons why it is the entire system that moves, and the arrow remains stationary, are also due to the idea of our ancestors about the world:
Yuri Stepanov: Constants. Dictionary of Russian culture. Research experience.
The WORLD rotates, time is CYCLING, the symbol of the cycle of life is realized in the old system. And here we run into the idea of immortality, which I will write about later.
conclusions
On the face of a clear degradation, loss of meaning and the cult of cargo.
Service openings and niches for Russian clocks in old churches, chapels, bell towers, chimes are converted into a kind of dormer windows, covered with icons, and tightly walled up. Perhaps this happened after the decision of the synod in 1722. Maybe later. In the new ones, there are strange plugs, places for stained-glass windows, or still, albeit modern, but clocks.
What's next?
I will not delve into the reasons, but a person's life has turned upside down with the replacement of the clock system.
Just imagine that incredible, gigantic abyss in the worldview, during life! When at first you are one with the world, with nature, and
your actions, the rhythm of life and everything - depends on this world around, and not on the movement of soulless gears.
Suddenly, we all found ourselves in some kind of prison, where our life began to be measured by an instrument in which "natural oscillations associated with processes occurring at the level of atoms or molecules are used as a periodic process."
What incomprehensible depth is hidden behind all this, what knowledge we have lost, even scary to imagine.
All these signs of the zodiac are just pathetic echoes of the once harmonious and complex system. Remember, in the drawing of the clock of the Spasskaya Tower from above, where the chimes are now, there was a second, "zodiac clock".
Can we ever even come close to solving the lost knowledge? It is not enough to believe … Everything I wrote about is not just guesswork, it is fragments, shreds, echoes of the once whole. Let the puzzle not be completely assembled, but all these moments, nuances, all lead to a single conclusion.
Let's at least remember, realize, understand that the Russian clock is not a curiosity, not an isolated case, not a shameful and primitive device manually operated by eternally drunk monks.
This link is the basis of our ancestors' worldview along with the counting system. There were clocks, there were many of them, they were everywhere. It is exactly like this, and perhaps they appeared, oh, as long before the appearance of the Serbian monk Lazar.
Author: Sil2