On the territory of Europe, there are a lot of so-called tracers - stones with prints of hands or feet. Rumor attributes these footprints on the stone to saints or deities. They are different both in size and in the ethnographic evidence associated with them, and even in the nature of the images themselves.
I wonder what these unusual stones really are? The famous Karelian ethnographer, vice-president of the "Raseya" society Alexey Popov told about this.
Stones of the Russian North
- Alexey, why did you choose Karelia for your research?
- The fact is that Karelia, which is located in the north-west of Russia, can be called a full-fledged megalithic region, since the cult of stones in these territories in ancient times not only had its own specific features, but has always been an important part of the cultural landscape as a whole. It bore the imprints of a living tradition of interaction between man and nature, coming from the depths of millennia.
- Official science confirms the unusual properties of these boulders?
- The modern attitude of official science to sacred stones sounds like a sentence: "Given the current state of the sources of the scientific base, a significant part of the so-called" sacred "boulders should be removed from scientific circulation due to the unverifiability of information about them and the impossibility of a comprehensive study of objects."
Promotional video:
Many sacred stones have already died: they were broken, buried, drowned. They are dying today. Enthusiasts save them like living creatures by creating gardens and stone museums. But the sacred stone torn from its place loses its "holiness", its surroundings, its legends …
Ancient teachings
- Where did the cult of stones come from?
- In the II century AD, the ancient Roman philosopher-encyclopedist Celsus wrote: “There is a primordial ancient teaching, which was occupied by the most ancient peoples, states and wise people - the Egyptians, Assyrians, Hyperboreans, Celtic Druids and Getae …” Very little of this “primordial teaching” has survived to the present day. One of the biggest mysteries of this kind of relics is the megalithic structures that once performed religious, astronomical and magical functions and served, as modern research shows, to work with the powerful and completely real hidden forces of nature.
- What megaliths are we talking about?
- The most widespread are, undoubtedly, the revered stones with images, which have received the name "investigators" in Russia. The images vary in a wide range: from clearly man-made, with a clear study of the contours, to low-expressive ones, almost certainly a play of nature. But their common feature always remains that in the popular perception, these images are precisely traces - "God", "demonic", "devilish", traces of the Mother of God, various saints, etc. - even in cases where the image itself only remotely resembles a trace in shape.
Indo-European footprint
- With whom do people most often associate the tracker stone: with demons or saints?
- Tracer stones are very diverse. The size of the footprints carved on them (from ordinary to huge), and their nature (known, in addition to human, bear, bird and other footprints), and their number on one stone, and the technique of performing images, also differ. The estimated age of the tracks also varies greatly. While there is a lot of evidence of the exceptional "vitality" of the tradition of carving footprints in stone, the very appearance of this tradition should probably be attributed to the Neolithic era. At least, the known connection of trace stones with archaeological sites of the Neolithic and Bronze Age leads researchers to this very dating.
Today no one can say for sure what purpose such stones had, especially since no written sources with an answer to this question were found. Although a number of serious researchers associate their appearance with the most ancient Aryan beliefs, in particular, with the legend of the three steps of Vishnu, symbolizing the movement of the Sun from sunrise to sunset through a point at the zenith. Tracer stones are mute witnesses of the ancient movement from north to south of archaic common Indo-European culture, beliefs and cults.
Witnesses of Ancient Knowledge
- What is the essence of these cults?
- Over the centuries, many of these monuments were accompanied by legends telling about the origin of stones or signs on them, as well as ritual practice - prayers; cult stones were attributed to miraculous healing properties. Most of these tracker stones lie near paths or roads. In ancient times, when great magicians and sorcerers lived on earth, people not only understood the language of animals and plants, but with the help of magic they could change the structure of the stone, making it soft, like raw clay. This is the legend that still exists in Karelia. The local population cherishes the legendary pages of the past. Of course, this has nothing to do with science, but, as the old people say, it has to do with life. There is a lot of evidence and healing properties of tracers. According to local residents, the liquid accumulating in the depressionscured many of various skin diseases. The rural population of Karelia firmly believes in the magic power of mysterious stones.
Shadows of the past on the rocks of the White Sea
- What investigators are the most famous in Karelia?
- We only have a lot of officially "registered" stones-tracers, but the most famous can, perhaps, be considered the famous petroglyphs (images on the rocks) of the White Sea. For example, on the rocks at the mouth of the Vyg River there are about three hundred interconnected images dating from the end of the 3rd - the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. These are the so-called "Demon Tracks". For the most part, these are drawings related to the theme of hunting (moose, seals, bears, fish). Against the background of this diversity, the chain of footprints leading to the image of a large humanoid figure, presumably the symbol of a certain deity, is especially interesting.
The figure depicts a man standing on one leg, with his left hand raised and one eye closed. This specific pose, despite the fact that it is well known in the history of European shamanism, has not received serious understanding among Soviet and Russian researchers. So, for example, among the Celtic peoples, this sacred pose was called "Luga pose" or "Cuchulainn pose". The symbolic "one-leggedness" of a person (shaman, magician) standing in this position is directly related to the archaic cults of the gods of death and magic (compare the one-eyed Odin in the Scandinavian tradition, the one-legged Baba Yaga in the Slavic, one-legged guardians of the other world in the Welsh epic, etc. etc.).
In ancient times, it was believed that a magician who takes the "Luga pose" is in both worlds at once (in this and the other) and, accordingly, sees the manifest world with an open eye, and another world (the world of spirits) with a closed one.
Thus, this image, in my opinion, is precisely the image of a shaman (magician) in a sacred pose and is directly related to traditional North Russian shamanism.
The image is the key to the sacred secrets of the White Sea, to the distant Hyperborean past of the modern Russian Northwest. Therefore, the chain of footprints carved on the rocks, with a deep magical meaning embedded in them, fulfills its very specific role, not understood by scientists, but perfectly understood by the indigenous inhabitants of these places: dolmens, seids, stone labyrinths, stones-tracers - all these are "entrances" into the invisible world of mysterious forces worshiped by the ancients …
Interviewed by Dmitry SOKOLOV