Swords in stone

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

There is one "legend" related to the Anglo-Saxon culture. It has survived to this day. You've probably heard it: “sword in stone”. The legend is identified with the sword of King Arthur - Excalibur. And it says that some time ago the stones were or could have been for some time in an amorphous state. It was then that buildings and structures that are now unimaginable were built from them.

Someone stabbed a sword into a stone and he stood like that for several centuries, delighting the minds and stirring up the imagination. There is one more thing.

Didn't think about the very meaning of the name "order of free masons". Why bricklayers?

This is the beginning of the solution to all the riddles. They know for sure (knew) almost everything on the topic of "casting stone blocks".

There is a place (could not find specifically) where such a sword exists:

Perhaps it is a fake Excalibur to attract tourists.

The following is a symbolic place where the "sword in the stone" is installed:

The monument is located in the Kardavagan canyon in North Ossetia. In the Kurtat Gorge, the Trail of Miracles is stylized; on it there is a stone split into two parts. The sword of the bloodlines is driven into the stone.

According to legend, a hunter was walking along a narrow road and saw a traveler who was in trouble. The traveler was his blood enemy, the hunter was supposed to kill him out of revenge. But after the rescue, the hunter and the traveler made up and, in honor of friendship, stuck the sword of the bloodlines into a stone.

And one more place:

Durandal (fr. Durandal) - the sword of Roland, the character of numerous French medieval legends and literary works, including the "Song of Roland". A fragment of Durendal, according to legend, is located in a rock near the Rocamadour sanctuaries.

Forged by the blacksmith Galan (or, according to other legends, by the blacksmith Madelger from Regensburg, Munifikan). Given by Charlemagne to his knight after taking the oath. Forged from the same iron as the sword of King Joyeuse.

It is possible that this is also a tribute to the legend: the sword itself, or maybe a fake, was driven into a crevice of the rock.

But the legendary sword in stone, which is often associated with the legend of King Arthur, exists. He is not in some Avalon, but in Italy. He can be seen in the Montesiepi Chapel, near Saint Galgano Abbey in Chiusdino, Tuscany.

The story is as follows.

Thirty kilometers southeast of Siena is the dilapidated abbey of San Galgano, which once belonged to the Cistercian Order (an order adjacent to the Benedictines). This abbey was built just in the XII century, in honor of the memory of the saint, who in the world bore the name of Galgano Guidotti.

This Guidotti led a very dissolute lifestyle, was arrogant, voluptuous and much to all kinds of violent atrocities. But once he had a vision of the Archangel Michael, and Guidotti, abandoning everything, became a hermit, and after his death, in 1181, he was canonized.

It is said about him that, as a sign of his renunciation of the world - and war - Guidotti drove his sword into a stone that "gave way like butter." As a result, only the handle sticks out of the stone, and three or four centimeters of the blade, forming a cross.

Here you can see that the sword is inserted into a small frame made of a different metal. How can this be explained? Perhaps the metal oxidized at the base and to fix it, so that the handle would not break off - this place was reinforced with a kind of clamp.

Galgano's sword was studied by experts. Although the sword was considered a fake, for many years, recent research has proven that the composition of the metal and the style of the sword is fully consistent with the period from 1100 to the early 1200's. This is a really metal sword, forged, apparently, just at the time when the legendary saint lived. Therefore, it appeared before the Arthurian plots in the retelling of Chrétien de Troyes and others. But this does not mean that the Celts could not have similar plots.

During the study of the Tuscan sword in the stone, it turned out that there was a kind of emptiness under it. The church authorities, however, have not yet given permission to move the stone, so scientists do not know what hides the sword in the stone underneath. Nowadays, it is kept under protective glass, everything is also in stone, in the chapel and is available to everyone.

Spoiler (click to open)

Options for explaining these legends.

1. All these legends about the sword in the stone say that in the past, many rocks were plastic. Perhaps they had a fossilized crust and a plastic internal structure (in the process of fossilization). Or Podust stones, like the rocks from which the blocks were modeled for many buildings in St. Petersburg - were available in many parts of the world.

2. The masses into which the swords were stuck had an artificial, constructional origin, like the stone "Victoria", from which many things were built in Europe.

On the chemistry and physics of the process.

yuri_shap2015: At work, I often have to communicate with road builders, but recently we discussed one technology: in the southern Federal District of the Russian Federation, the problem of road destruction, due to the fact that the base is clay, and high acidity.

So, there is a technology called STABILIZATION OF SOIL with limestone flour and cement…. For example this.

As a result of chemical reactions, the once clay base turns into an analogue of concrete. Those. there is a transformation of clay into concrete or in Russian: into an analogue of stone.

Let us recall the mass of recipes, our ancestors for the creation of artificial granites, marble and other stones (products from which exist to this day), we can conclude that our ancestors took their recipes from the surrounding reality, when they themselves observed the processes of transformation of mobile substances into solid …

Now run this modern building technology with the information below:

Remember the mention in the Russian folk tale "Geese-Swans": "… rivers of milk, jelly banks"? Show the former "jelly banks" in the past?

R. Katun, Gorny Altai. These water-eaten rocks in the past were probably liquid clay, "jelly", which quickly petrified during the withdrawal of large water.

Several years ago I was sent photographs from the Katun River with fantastically "eaten away" boulders and banks. Water could do this only in plastic masses. She grinds hard stone over the entire surface.

It doesn't look like the water has washed it for hundreds of thousands of years.

The Milk River is a stream of seething water in many rapids, ledges

With a large number of rapids, the river has a white color over its entire surface.

I gave this example as an analogy that in nature after the cataclysm there were processes of transformation of clay masses into stone. And the legends about swords in stone say that this happened in historical time.