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Anta of Alcobertas (Rio Maior) (**)-One of the most important European megaliths

January 14, 2011 by Castile
Categories: Municipalities , District-Santarém , artistic styles , More , Prehistory (Neolithic) , Rio Maior , All articles

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"Anta

Did you know ... the Dolmen of Alcobertas is one of the most important in Portugal, because it emanates almost unique spiritual continuity?
The human condition that is known to you requires the existence of the sacred and created spaces for the union of the deities (with their avatars) and humans. These are places of knowledge (or forgetfulness), hope in resolving our inevitable problems of rebirth (whether in life or in death), connecting with loved ones missing, requests for votes to the gods and organizational ethics and morals (individual and collective). Tapirs, built in the Neolithic, in addition to collect the deceased loved ones, they were also sacred spaces.
When Christianity arose powerful, leveled or replaced these pagan places. However it was found convenient, in some cases, also due to the efforts of local people who worshiped them, adapt them, preserving the old structures to the new cult. This is the case of the tapirs and chapels.
In Portugal are known tapir-19 chapels and adjoining chapels, such as Anta-Chapel of Senhora do Monte (Penedono) (**). One of the most spectacular of all Europe is anta-chapel of Alcobertas (Rio Maior).
The Anta Alcobertas in limestone, is one of the largest in the Iberian Peninsula. Date of the end of Late Neolithic (4000 to 3500. C.) and was transformed into a Catholic church by the locals. The dolmen was born a chapel in the sixteenth century and was later reformulated in the following centuries until the present parish church (which is a temple banal). The dolmen stood as a side chapel.
Maintaining the strange legend of Mary Magdalene in the Anta Alcobertas
The temple is connected to the legend of St. Mary Magdalen. For the tapir is unaccustomed Catholic church in the population of Alcobertas dismantled the tapir, but to Mary Magdalene, with powers divns reconstutuia the tapir, and many times was disassembled and reassembled the same times for Santa. The people gave up and it was decided to build the church, preserving the Neolithic monument.

anta das alcobertas1 300x239 Anta das Alcobertas (Rio Maior) (**) Um dos mais importantes megalitos europeus This example documents the persistence of pagan ancestor worship, from the deep sea of ​​time, which is later replaced by the Catholic worship. That God would be this ancestor and how it relates to is Mary Magdalene?
The Anta-chapel of St. Mary Magdalene and Alcobertas
Enter in the ordinary church and the gospel side (the left as you enter), we find this extraordinary anta-chapel. It is simple seventeenth-century arch that gives access to the corridor and the interior of a large tapir ... and it is as if we entered a mysterious limestone cave. Incredible! When I was here in March 2009, a Croatian who entered with me melted into tears.
The tapir, which is the chapel of Santa Maria Madalena, the corridor consists of the remaining two columns and a slab of coverage and a polygonal chamber with eight pillars with approximately 5 meters in height. The props are full of intriguing fossetes (dimples magic). The slab of the cover of the chamber tapir was replaced by a simple roof.
There are three representations of St. Mary Magdalene in attendance: a tile panel above the entrance arch (the saint prays at the feet of Christ), a tile panel in front of the altar with the figuration of Mary Magdalene through denuded (as iniquitous ) and a sixteenth-century earthenware polychrome sculpture.
By trackless ways, but arising from a permanent and long tradition, tapir was Christianized by invoking a saint "sinful" and then "sorry", the same happened in the reuse of this giant "womb" of stone. The saint is therefore probably an avatar of the Mother Goddess?
What are dimples (fossetes, cazoletes)?
They are first and foremost a puzzle and one of the most common reasons for all call prehistoric art. Existing in great quantity, are small circular depressions found in dolmens, standing stones and boulders sacralized. There are also naturally in granite caused by erosion tafoni them. Sometimes it is not easy to distinguish the natural from artificial.
What would be the function of artificial dimples? There may be several explanations, and some can be cumulative:
a) They were receptacles for ritual libations on the rocks here-would be able to use human blood or animal, which would explain the small gullies that join each other, but remember that the gullies are also, almost always, a phenomenon usual natural erosion, the mainstays of dolmens and menhirs could be used as containers before being alteadas stones.
b) could be used for ritual after the uplift of the stones of megalithic monuments.
c) Were the result of getting crushed stone of the monument where they are, for ritual purposes, medicinal (this practice is still carried out).
d) might take part in some cases, the symbolic drawing of megalithic art (in Anta of Alcobertas tried to find a pattern).
e) signs were related to the calendar.
f) They constituted representations of celestial objects, trying to reproduce at their disposal in the sky as part of celestial maps. The circle itself would symbolize the cosmic sky, its relationship with the gods and with men. The divinity lurking in stone, the circle, his creation, whose life produces and controls.
g) The circle is also one of the ancient symbols of the protection in its limits and still has this meaning. There has been fear of defeat, the enemy, the return of the wandering souls, demons, ourselves ... comes in the Iliad that the fighters draw a circle around the body before the fight. Is this your meaning in tapirs?
All these explanations may be wrong, in some cases be of these and other cases other. What is certain is that fossetes is a magnificent puzzle, related to the worship of stones (litolatria).
It is normal in people (including me) when they have the willingness, afagarem a strange rite of sensuality.
The Anta-chapel of Alcobertas is a magnificent place as magical and sacred space. Here we can satisfy the triple nature of the hypothetical Mother Goddess (in which Mary Magdalene is an avatar), which comprises the cosmogony of humanity-the underworld, the earth and the heavens. Go Alcobertas the reader to decide, no more forgotten the site until the last day of your life.
Good Trip!

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