If you are not a history buff, the following will read, “blah, blah, blah.” I know this because my young co-worker read it and blurted out, “Oh my GOD you are putting ME to sleep!!!!!” I am posting it anyway. I have been to many battle sites on the East coast- I love history. History at its best is a good story.
Do you believe in past lives? I have had much experience thinking about them. Western thinkers have good reasons not to believe in them but will have a richer experience if we admit to them.
A customer walked in tonight wearing a torque. He got it at a renaissance fair. I am sure that the desire to attend a renaissance fair is proof of past lives, but I digress.
A torque is a heavy 2 inch thick metal necklace or decorative metal collar with an opening in the front bordered by decorative metal ends. They can be quite ornate. I said, “Nice necklace.” The young man told me that it was a torque and was then surprised that I knew what he meant.
As an art history major (a very useful major), I remember the torques on display as examples of early metal work in Europe. They were heavy looking things in a museum in Ireland. I wondered how one put one on. I assumed that a torque was an Irish or Celtic thing.
I wondered what it would look like on a person until I saw the picture of the sculpture The Dying Gaul (220 BCE). In the sculpture, the man was naked except for the torque and had a noticeably somber look and battered face. Gaul then referred to modern day France.
The residents of Gaul were depicted by the Romans then as barbarians. Invading colonizers always call the rebellious barbarians. Back then, the Romans had a few bad days fighting the rebellious men of Gaul who would occasionally fight naked as a show of strength and fearsome bravery. The Romans were glad when they finally subdued the men of Gaul (hence the Greek copy of a Roman statue about a defeated soldier The Dying Gaul) so that they could move on to problem peoples such as the Celts and Druids in England. My customer talked about the role of Romans in everyday life back then.
Rome was a ‘civilizing force’ in history, but at the time, they were known as oppressive tax collectors. No one wanted the civilization they offered. Ireland was never colonized by Rome and one man (the author of How Ireland Saved Civilization) credits that fact for the great number of great writers from that country.
I talked to the young man for a while. He had a love of celtic culture. Had a celtic Irish pattern tattoo on his arm. In addition, he has a Scottish pattern of tartan that he has picked out as a favorite. (Ireland and Scotland have nothing in common but a former hatred of England as a force of oppression.) He told me that tartans only became a tradition in the 1800’s, not earlier history. Interesting detail, he was born in Germany and has no Irish or Scottish genes anywhere in the family gene pool. His relatives were Prussian. After he mentioned Germany, I mentioned the German Hessians who were the paid marksmen in the English army during the Revolutionary War. This young man had never heard of Hessians. He also never heard of the military might of the Prussian army just a few centuries ago. He loves military history but knows nothing about the military history of his current ancestors. Is this possible? Does it make sense? It struck me as odd that a history buff knew nothing about important historical talking points from his own country’s history.
In another way, it makes perfect sense that he has had past lives. I am sure that he had a past life in the middle East around the time of Christ and in Ireland a long time ago.
PS. According to Wikopedia,
“The Dying Gaul (in Italian: Galata Morente) is an ancient Roman marble copy of a lost Hellenistic sculpture that is thought[1] to have been executed in bronze, which was commissioned some time between 230 BC and 220 BC by Attalus I of Pergamon to celebrate his victory over the Celtic Galatians in Anatolia. The present base was added after its rediscovery. The identity of the sculptor of the original is unknown, but it has been suggested that Epigonus, the court sculptor of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon, may have been its sculptor.”
“The statue depicts a dying Celt with remarkable realism, particularly in the face, and may have been painted.[2] He is represented as a Gallic warrior with a typically Gallic hairstyle and moustache. The figure is naked save for a neck torc. (The spelling ‘torc’ is what you get when you rely on Wikopedia). He lies on his fallen shield while his sword and other objects lie beside him.”
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