I had some time to kill the other day. Hey, this happens when you hunt from sunrise to 10 am, then again from 3 to sunset. So I drove over to Neilsville, Wisconsin. There were a few things I wanted to look into. A couple of former brewery sites, and, while I was in town, a big cemetery. Seems like the place you'd find a bit crop of Tree Shaped Tombstones.
But actually, no. The few specimens represented were of one of the boring subtypes, basically just a log with a name on it. But wait a minute. That name. Manes.*
You'd have to be a fan of both tombstones and Roman stuff to make this connection.
The Manes were the spirits of the dead. Or more correctly, one sort of spirits. Lares were the good spirits. They were assumed to already be on your side. Lemures ** were the evil spirits. You did not invoke them. Manes were the the sort of generic spirits of the dead and definitely worth trying to appease. So, a dedication to the Manes was customary.
---------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment
I'll be putting comments into "moderator" format for a while. Sometimes they get a bit off topic. I'll post almost all of them even the One Weird Trick Spamsters if they amuse me. I also answer my email at dagmarsuarez@gmail.com