All Hallows Eve, Thrinacia, Haithia( Haitia)

Happy all hallows eve and the darkness that descends upon us as those of us who return to standard daylight savings time must put our clocks back one hour to make sure those getting up in the mourning wake up to light rather than giving people extra daylight after work. So all the spirits come out tonight savouring the last vestige of daylight savings time as those faint of heart grip white knuckled to their bed sheets praying for the speedy return of day. Well this year the spirits are shorted one whole our as the sun rises earlier and thus beckoning in all the Gods, angels and saints of all hallowed day. The army of light enters our world one hour earlier, Scary boys and girls!!!



Some say Thrinacia was actually Sicily because the word Thrinacia implies three and Sicily has three corners. Now the placement of the whirlpool between Sicily and Calabria’s might indicate Sicily is the land of the sun. The land of the sun was a matriarchal society and was led by eldest daughter of the sun, Lampetia. She was an elder and high priestess of Helios. However calypsos' island was the next stop and we have determined her island to be in the Caribbean. Now the three implied in the name Thrinacia might represent the three islands of Atlantis which may have succumb to full flooding after the time of Ulysses. Prior to reaching the island of the sun, the islands were the sun set and seemed to offer a home and rest spot for Helios, Ulysses had visited the land of the dead or Hades. Though he had descended into this land (I will look at this adventure next week) he had sailed to it. Haiti which derives its name from the same African root is a West African name- along the Ivory Coast. So Ulysses had already left the Mediterranean by the time he had reached the lands of Hathis (Hades); this fits our idea that Calypsos Island was in the Caribbean. This places the whirlpool just outside the straights of Gibraltar. Could it be that Scylla and Charybdis were at the Pillars of Hercules and Charybdis represented the pirates of the savage waters of the Atlantic? Circe had told Ulysses how to navigate past matriarchal societies and Ulysses had to cross Charybdis after being on Thrinacia.
Historically people have relegated the Greeks to the Mediterranean and far east, realising Greeks prior to Hercules had journeyed to the Americas and up and down the coasts of Europe and Africa( all the way to Asia) helps alleviate this shortsighted interpretation that unnecessarily restricts and biases ones interpretation, In fact the whirlpool might even be the English channel which may have been the root taken to the Americas but most likely Ulysses followed the islands in the mid Atlantic taking off from the coast of Africa. Recall that triremes have been found in the Caribbean, amongst Egyptian ships and Phoenician writing.
Food for thought till we look at this more next week.

Thrinacia, the island of the sun- the end of violent ancient Greek greed

Odysseus next sails by Thrinacia, the island of the sun. Here the sun has cattle or followers that are cattle or merchants. Due to a storm Odysseus was convinced by Eurylochus to take refuge on the island that he wanted to avoid. The storm beaches the crew for over a month. At first Odysseus crew live secluded and kept to themselves till they ran out of provisions. Once stores dwindled Eurylochus convinces Odysseus crew to pillage the island of the sun and kill the cattle for food. The Sun to Zeus and requested revenge for this inhumane behaviour and Zeus stirs up a great storm as Odysseus and his crew leaves the island, the ship is wrenched and everyone except Odysseus dies. He is swept back to Charybdis. Odysseus barely survives the second encounter of the whirlpool before being sent east to Ogygia, Calypso’s. Odysseus then stops telling his story to the Phaeacians. As we have already claimed this is where the Odysseus that represents the paradigm of the Greek who formed in this epoch began. The Greeks who lived in seclusion from the Thrinacia till the circumstances of their life became more meager due to circumstances of nature, the storm. The Greeks are then led Eurylochus to pillage and attack the peoples of Thrinacia. This was done because they were seen as more profitable than the Greeks. It was Eurylochus who first convinced the Greeks to seek shelter amongst the people of Thrinacia. Inasmuch as the Greeks had shared their island and culture of the Thrinacia, the wealth overwhelmed them and rather than allying they attack the peoples of the island to gain their wealth, their subsistence for themselves. This was the last act of the Greeks that were not like Odysseus, only Greeks as virtuous survive this storm and revenge of the peoples of the sun. The events that follow the pillaging kills the other types of Greeks, the violent Greeks and leaves only Odysseus as a paradigm of the Greeks of that age. These are the Greeks that sail past the Pillars of Hercules and go far and wide, including to the Americas. This New Greek creates alliances and marriages rather than fighting to dominate others. By the time of the Phaeacians the Greeks had learned the appropriate behaviour for then international diplomacy.