The Temple of Johns of Disappeared Forests
or as in Latvian “Jāņu templis izcirstiem mežiem”

…is located in the northeaster part of Latvia, about a twenty minute ride from Burtnieku Lake. More specifically, we are located at the former farmstead called “Ceļmalnieki” or “Waysiders”, Braslavas pagasts, Alojas novads, Limbažu rajons, Latvia. Directions from Valmiera: drive west to the small town of Matisi (23 km), then turn left on the road to Aloja until you reach the first significan crossroad at the village of Vilzeni. At Vilzeni take a left. About 6 km down the road you will enter an oak covered alley. About a 1/2 km on, you will see a sign that reads “Melnays Jānis”. Our temple is about 1 km from there on the right. Please park your car on the road.

Planning for the temple began some ten years ago, but the accelerating pace of deforestation in Latvia makes the temple so much more timely. The temple is private, and open for visits to the public on Sundays or by special arrangement. We welcome inquiries if you plan some special event, anything from meetings, conferences by the “Greens”, a Garden Party, a weddings. concerts, dance, etc. Please contact us by way of our blogsite.

The Temple of Johns of Disappeared Forests
http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/
is soon opening for visitors.

You seem to have ignored the information I posted in an early thread of yours, so I’ll repeat it.

In 1939, 25% of Latvia was forest, now it is 49%.

What deforestation?

Meža dienests apšauba LVM mežu izciršanas politiku.
Read news at http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

Why “Temple John of Disappeared Forests”?
The English text.
http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

Prose translation in English of poem below. It is to be sung by the Latvian melody of “Kas tie tādi, kas dziedāja?”

1. ”Who are the ones who sing by the Johns fire? They are all the Children of Johns who no longer acknowledge themselves.

3. History has been forgot, which is why the song of Johns is mute. Who are these Children of Johns, who no longer know themselves.[/color]

….For more click http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

The Johns Eve bonfire at Braslavas Park, Alojas novads on 22.06.2010. An estimated 400-500 people attended the event. For more see http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

What does the Prince of Wales HAVE TO DO with the Latvian countryside? What does the Latvian Ministry of Economics NOT HAVE TO DO with the Latvian countryside? Discover the answer at http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

Cut it down, cut it down!

Yesterday, July 13, 2010, traveling from Riga to Valmiera, I noted that the deforestation noted last fall and this spring, is turning these areas—thanks to the +30C heat—into a desert of grey sand an dry brush. For link that explains more click at the link below.

If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author and http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

JaņdžsFor the curious: We take the name of our temple from the name Jahnis. This is a cognate of John, Johann, Ivan, Huan, Giovanni, etc. While there is no definite proof of it, we believe that the name “pagan” originates from Jahnis prefixed with a “pa-” + Janis, re “pa-gan”. The word “gans” in Latvian means herder. Thus, pa-gan (originally pa-jahnis) is meant to belittle John by making him a lesser John, a lesser herder. Lesser to whom? You figure it out.

Full or partial entries of my blogs (look for the name “Jaņdžs”) may be found at LatviansOnline+ Forum Home + Open Forum. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

Jaņdžs the Perversely Plural wrote:

While there is no definite proof of it, we believe that the name “pagan” originates from Jahnis prefixed with a “pa-” + Janis…

pagan
late 14c., from L.L. paganus “pagan,” in classical L. “villager, rustic, civilian,” from pagus “rural district,” originally “district limited by markers,” thus related to pangere “to fix, fasten,” from PIE base *pag- “to fix” (see pact). Religious sense is often said to derive from conservative rural adherence to the old gods after the Christianization of Roman towns and cities; but the word in this sense predates that period in Church history, and it is more likely derived from the use of paganus in Roman military jargon for “civilian, incompetent soldier,” which Christians (Tertullian, c.202; Augustine) picked up with the military imagery of the early Church (e.g. milites “soldier of Christ,” etc.). Applied to modern pantheists and nature-worshippers from 1908.

Emphasis (blue) mine.

A full discussion of the use of paganus in late antiquity, and quarrels about its meaning, can be found here.

Ganīt, to herd (in Lithuanian ganyti—see also “Lithuanian Verbs with the Infinitive Suffixes -in- and -y-,” where it is discussed as a mixture of Balto-Slavic iteratives), ultimately derives from PIE *ghwen, “to strike, to kill,” like the word dzīt. Karulis (I, p. 258) observes that the meaning of “strike” is apparent in dzīt naglu—“No ‘sist’—-> ‘trenkt’ (piem., ‘dzīt lopus’).”

The fact is that the word paganus was used quite early in contradistinction to miles and armatus—in a purely secular sense. [1]

The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology:

“The sense ‘heathen’ (Tertullian) of paganus [the Latin root of the English word] derived from that of ‘civilian’ (Tacitus), the Christians calling themselves enrolled soldiers of Christ (members of his militant church) and regarding non-Christians as not of the army so enrolled.”

To try to relate this term to the Baltic is ludicrous. Peter Robert Lamont Brown:

The adoption of paganus by Latin Christians as an all-embracing, pejorative term for polytheists represents an unforeseen and singularly long-lasting victory, within a religious group, of a word of Latin slang originally devoid of religious meaning. The evolution occurred only in the Latin west, and in connection with the Latin church. Elsewhere, ‘Hellene’ or ‘gentile’ (ethnikos) remained the word for ‘pagan’; and paganos continued as a purely secular term, with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace.

Emphasis (blue) mine.

As Brown observes, the religious connotations of the word did not affect the Byzantine world until the conversion of the Balkans in the 9th century. [2]

Unless you plan to evoke a Fomenko to delete some centuries, your speculation is more than a millennium off.

Vysu lobu,
/P

The readers might also consider that the so-called Roman soldiers of Rome (more likely ancient Constantinople) were known as janiserries. In “Rome” they marched off to war through the gates of Janus.

Perhaps pa+gans or pa+jans were janniserries who were not so willing soldiers forced to go to war? In other words, the name of Janis—cognates of which are John, Ivan, Jean, Huan, etc.—was already being coopted by princely secularization. Thus, pa+Jans or pa+gans when Y or J slipslides and becomes G.

Karulis is great and has many suggestions to make as to the origin of words, but I doubt that he has the final word. We must not forget that Karulis was, like many Latvians, “romanized” to the Catholic view that prevailed over Europe until the so-called Religious Wars (1562-1598) and survives to this day in many in many parts of the world, Latvia including. Note the Lutheran archbishop Vanags idea of joining his flock to the Catholic Church.

More on the Temple Melnays Jānis at http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

Karulis is great and has many suggestions to make as to the origin of words, but I doubt that he has the final word.

Karulis’ two-volume dictionary is not about having a final word; though brief, it includes summaries of different views and cites most every dictionary of the Latvian language. You can then go to the original sources, and in case of cognates go to broader works, which you can even do on line now (e.g., at the Leiden University Indo-European Etymological Dictionary and at the University of Texas Indo-European Documentation Center).

I am not relying upon Karulis; I was merely giving the origin of the word gans. What you write of pagan is quite obviously dead wrong—the secular use of the word predates the Christian use, and the Christian use was in Western Christianity only until the 9th century. Read Brown’s entry at Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World; it is fully sourced and explains the origin and usage. It is insane to suggest a Baltic origin for the word, and your speculations make no sense whatsoever.

As far as Janissaries go—again absurd. The Janissary force was created under the Ottoman sultan Murad I in the late 14th century, much later than you suggest, and the word has nothing whatsoever to do with Janus; it is a simple Turkish word, Yeniçeri, meaning “new soldier.” Yeni means “new” in Turkish. See The Encyclopedia of the Middle East, or Britannica, or any reputable source (though you are apparently allergic to reputable sources). The Janissaries were not Roman; they were mostly prisoners or persons abducted in the Balkans as boys, mostly Christian. I know of no Gate of Janus in Constantinople—and anyway, the Ottomans were Muslim.

You want to take perfectly simple things and twist them in a mystical fog, mixing elements of the elements of words to produce a confused tangle where there isn’t one.

Vysu lobu,
/P

The presumption of Western historians that the neo-Christian version of their history is correct has become a rather perverse one by this time. The ridicule by Cedrins (above post) of Fomenko and anyone who uses him as a reference has of course the BBC as his supporter. BBC refused to advertise Fomenko’s by now famous Fomenko’s “History: Fiction or Science?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6-e_s5ynvo No doubt, Fomenkos studies could be augmented by additional studies. Even so, I consider his thesis credible enough to put the chronal moment of history not at the year 0-1 or 2010 years ago, but rather at about the 11th and 12th centuries on the Western scale of its chronology.

The argument about the origin of “pa+gans” cannot be resolved as long as the chronology of the West prevails and as long as the fiction of Western Rome is allowed to have the last word. However, if the death of Basil http://www.reformedreader.org/history/brockett/bogomils.htm (click on Chapter X) serves as the basis for the story of Jesus, later rewritten so that death by fire becomes death on the cross. In short, our by now dysfunctional neo-Christianity was preceded by an arch-Christianity with its roots in many thousands of years of antiquity.

My own theses, presented here over a few years now, is that the “religion” of the proto-Latvians (Balts) was represented by the Children of Johns (Jāņu bērni), with the headquarters of the faith centered about Jersika (Jerusalem in colloquial Baltic). Critics can always claim the theses a fiction, except it is no fiction that Jersika was destroyed in 1209, at the very time that the secular princes of the West, using the Pope as their front, destroyed the Cathars in Languedoc, France. The Children of Johns survived because Livonia of the time was a forested land, and the forest and its swamps offered protection against the Western Romans.

I may mention in passing that the demise of the Children of Johns, the Bogomils, the Cathars, etc. is closely associated with the rise of secular princedom against the government of the Sacred King. Since the Sacred King had by then also become—by way of demoralization?—a more or less secular ruler, it was easy to make appear that the princes represented “democracy” (re Magna Carta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta—1215). 

Gans = Yans = Jans = herder = the itinerant preachers of arch-Christendom, who were either killed by burning or imprisoned in cloisters-monasteries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloister  (military bases or camps of militant supporters of princes), while those who were made “trustees” very likely joined the “monks” as servants. A good example of the latter team is Don Quixote http://geophagus.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/don_quixote_5.jpg and Sancho Panza, the latter surely a pa-gan, probably a pig herder, before he was assigned to his Don. Incidentally, the “don” of Quixote originally comes from Jon, just as Don Huan literally translates into Jon John.

Original site at http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

I linked to Konstantin Sheiko’s “Lomonosov’s Bastards: Anatolii Fomenko, Pseudo-History, and Russia’s Search for a Post-Communist Identity” some time ago, but here it is again lest anybody is tempted to swallow any of this claptrap. It’s worth reading because it details the compulsive urge toward pseudo-science in the former Soviet Union.

For those who lack the patience, here is a brief journalistic debunking of Fomenko. An excerpt:

Nevertheless, despite lacking facts and evidence, Fomenko’s world-view argues that history is a massive fraud: “Roughly speaking, ancient English chronicles are in fact Byzantine chronicles which were taken from Byzantine to England and then modified in a such way that they seem to speak about events in England.” (8) Yet to make his case Fomenko has to massacre history and ignore the archaeological evidence from the island and from Constantinople. He has to willfully manipulate the historical record in the very way he accuses the medieval English of doing. And to what end?

Well, that answer is quite simple. Fomenko is Russian, so it is not surprising that Fomenko “discovered” that Russia was the source of universal empire and that its culture gave rise to England. That explains his Byzantine chauvinism, for the Russian czars (= Caesars) saw themselves as the legitimate successors to the Byzantine emperors through the miracle of shared faith in the (then united) Orthodox Church. If England could be shown to “really” be Byzantium, then all the advances of England, and America, are “really” Byzantine and hence Russian. In other words, this elaborate theory is nothing more than an attempt to bolster the battered and broken shell of the formerly great Russian state, and to claim for Mother Russia a small piece of the reflected glory of a world that passed it by.

As Colavito writes, “this is nonsense of the worst kind.” It has the same credibility as the rest of what Jaņdžs writes—less than zero.

Vysu lobu,
/P

The catholic Latvian ideologue (see above post) insists that his antiquated view of history is the correct version of history. He supports his argument by stating that “Fomenko is Russian….” and quotes a journalist obviously an orthodox “westerner” for support. Alas, my maternal grandmother was Russian, too. Moreover, my dna analysis (12 marker y-dna matches) point to Italy, Croatia, Greece as the countries where my paternal ancestors came from. So, are Latvians (bastards or “pajāņi” all who think other than the “West”) to defer to “echt” neo-Christian Latvians born in Chicago?

Needless to say, I am not against the West, East, North, or South. It was the military machine of the West which invented the internet, which is recapturing some of the freedom of speech (without the intermediation of editorial offices of either the academia or government) our ancestors possessed. Ivan = Vanjka = Janchuks = Jahnis et al are bringing John back to Earth again. Yes, the Latvian John, Jahnis, is not at the tail end of yesterday, but in the vanguard of tomorrow.

Come visit us at Melnays Jānis @ http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/

Your wild leaps of illogic are always fun, Jaņdž! See the dissertation on “Lomonosov’s Bastards” that I linked to—I made it quite clear that I linked to the journalist for those who don’t want to read Sheiko, who comes to pretty much the same conclusion but is certainly not “Western.” As to my being a “neo-Christian”—I’m not a Christian, neo or otherwise.

Vysu lobu,
/P