Ancient signs

You may no longer be surprised to run into a green man in a church. This prechristian symbol found its way into many churches. But did you know that more interesting symbols can be found in churches?

In the 1940’ies there have been people going around looking for odd-looking images in churches, graveyards, in the fronts of buildings, etc. There were people like F. Farwerck (Netherlands), W. van Heemskerck Düker (Netherlands), Hermann Wirth (Germany), W. Stief (German). Some published books with many photos. I want to draw your attention to a few of such images.

It is hard to find the images I want to show on the world wide web, but I found one German website which has a few images. I will link to three Google translations. Have a look at the photos. The text is not too well translated, but understandable.

• Here we have just two photos. The middle figure on the left photo has quite a striking posture, does he not?
• Here are a few more photos. Especially the photo on the right upper corner looks interesting.
• This page has a familiar-looking posture too.

A bit clearer are the images when the photos have been redrawn. In this little article you can see two images that come from a book of Farwerk (bottom line of images).

And what about the Gundestrup cauldron?

These are but some of the ‘odditities’ that interest me. Did you ever notice anything similar?