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I was walking out of a flea market in Bogota, and amongst the unlicensed sidewalk vendors with random crap spread out on blankets, I found this odd little placard thing mixed amongst crap like stolen watches, chargers for long-obsolete cellphones, bundles of shoelaces, etc. The main script appears to be Hindi or something like it, but the big angular things across the middle look almost like Norse runes or something. Anyone have any idea what this thing is? My absolute shot-in-dark guess is it's some kind of gambling token, since it vaguely resembles those rectangular tokens some casinos use for large amounts. I figure someone here must recognize something of these scripts. And no goddam idea what it was doing with a sidewalk vendor in urban Colombia.
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Nov 17, 2014 00:58
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 00:11 |
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The Norse is Younger Futhark. Can't help you with the translation or the Hindi. Good luck - seems interesting.
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Nov 17, 2014 03:27
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That's a pretty intriguing... thing. I'm not sure what kind of context you'd find Nordic runes and south/Central Asian script together historically, but there's an element of connection with indo-European linguistic history, as well as a more sinister connection to Nazi Archaeology and early 20th century racial theory. (The term "Aryan" was used originally used to describe a group of people in ancient India) This is obviously not an ancient artifact. But whoever made it may have had that connection between Indic peoples and Nordic Europeans in mind when it was produced. I've heard stories about Nazis fleeing to Argentina and southern Brazil after world war 2, but that's still pretty far from Colombia. Obviously the next step would be finding out what it says. SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Nov 17, 2014 |
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Nov 17, 2014 05:02
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The Indian writing is Sanskrit, it's an evocation of the Goddess Lakshmi, "bright and beautiful." It's written poorly though.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:07
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Huh, Sanskrit and Norse Runes on one little plate. And it looks to be cast or something, so mass-produced on some level. Who in the world would need presumably dozens/hundreds of copies of this sort of thing? Thanks for the Sanskrit heads-up. Maybe it's some sort of good-luck token then? Now we just need to find someone who can read the Norse words. It doesn't have any kind of fastening or joining device, so it doesn't seem like it's made to attach to anything. Is it just supposed to sit on a desk, or be carried in the pocket? If it's Sansrkit and Norse, I'd presume it can't be anything too-too serious, probably just made for the novelty of it? Unless it is indeed some kind of white-power trinket that's supposed to be capitalizing on ancient Aryan languages or something. I'm still curious as to what this is/what it says, but that's almost superseded by by wondering why someone would take the trouble to have such a thing made.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:33
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:If it's Sansrkit and Norse, I'd presume it can't be anything too-too serious, probably just made for the novelty of it? Unless it is indeed some kind of white-power trinket that's supposed to be capitalizing on ancient Aryan languages or something.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:36
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It's a map to long-forgotten Nazi gold, obviously. You're the chosen one.
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Nov 17, 2014 05:40
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Noctis Horrendae posted:The Norse is Younger Futhark. Can't help you with the translation or the Hindi. Good luck - seems interesting. Are you sure Younger? Looking online it seems to much better match Elder Futhark. This is not a phrase I imagined myself saying at any point in my life, and I'm a major language nerd. A bunch of the letters don't match Younger, but all but one letter, the angular "E" thing, match this chart of Elder: http://viking-source.com/Runes-Guide.html Here's what I transliterated it as: OMLAK?HMIHThRAKODAIAT
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Nov 17, 2014 06:11
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The runes say Om Lakshmi Thrakodaiat, don't know that last word means but the first match the Sanskrit. So you found some weird nordic Aryan synergist plaque in Colombia, that's pretty cool
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Nov 17, 2014 06:30
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Y'all Sanskrit readers, so does the Rune part match part of the Sanskrit? Is the Lakshmi the upper Sanskrit part, or the bit down in the box below? EDIT: there's a flipside to the piece, but the back appears to be identical to the front except for the little mark to the right of the box, that looks kind of like an "®" trademark sign. Is it a trademark? Is this some sort of viable commercial product? Something Hot Topic ordered a few crates of? TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Nov 17, 2014 |
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Nov 17, 2014 06:33
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Are you sure Younger? Looking online it seems to much better match Elder Futhark. This is not a phrase I imagined myself saying at any point in my life, and I'm a major language nerd. I'll take your word for it - I was basing it off of a quick google search and a glance at a chart, really. Thanks for the clarification.
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Nov 17, 2014 06:36
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Y'all Sanskrit readers, so does the Rune part match part of the Sanskrit? Thanks to my roommate, this wasn't me!
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Nov 17, 2014 06:36
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So the runes are just a transliteration? Is Thrakodaiat a Sanskrit word? Google turns up nothing. This thing is really weird
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Nov 17, 2014 06:38
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I am going to go ahead and take a guess what this thing is. It's some kind of tangible "award" that one gets for reaching a certain rank in some kind of New Age cult that was founded in Colombia in the 1970's (or maybe, depending on the quality of the material, just for joining). Like many pieces of New Age culture from that period it appropriates Sanskrit as well as Nordic runes, probably belonged to someone's grandparent who was a member of the group and the plaque was included with all of the grandparents' stuff when they died, the inheritor has no use for it but it looks unique and possibly valuable so off to the market it goes.
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Nov 17, 2014 18:01
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It's quite obviously an artifact from ancient Atlantis, perhaps made of orichalcum. Both Sanskrit and the Norse runes can be traced to Old Atlantis, as you may well know. See how it gleams? And yet there is the unmistakable aura of antiquity upon it, as if it were forged eons ago. I tell you, this artifact was ancient long before the first stones of the first pyramids of Egypt were laid down. What does it say? What message was its creator trying to convey, all those long eons ago when the mammoth and the smilodon still walked the earth, and the other tribes of man spoke in naught but grunts as they squatted naked in caves and ivory huts? Perhaps it was a spell, an evocation to some dark and alien god to be spoken by high priests as a naked virgin's blood was spilled upon a stone altar beneath a gibbous moon?
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Nov 18, 2014 02:34
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HEY GAL posted:Looks like it. OM LAKSHMI THRAKODAIAT ("bright and beautiful") is the bit above; the stuff in the box says "hare Krishna hare." This seems kind of New-Agy? The placard is literally the worst attempted transliteration (except it's transliterated into Sanskrit script  ) of "aum" I've ever seen.Like, I had to peer at it for a while until I figured out that it was them committing word crimes, not your roommate's translation being weird.
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Nov 18, 2014 02:55
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GreyjoyBastard posted:The placard is literally the worst attempted transliteration (except it's transliterated into Sanskrit script
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Nov 18, 2014 02:57
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That is also part of why I think it is an artifact of some New Age cult, likely the designer of the placard was exposed to these languages/alphabets only through secondary sources and knew rather little about them, but sort of copy/pasted chunks and spliced them together in a way that vaguely resembled or could be made to resemble some core component of the cult's belief system, which was itself likely rather vague and also copy/pasted together in a similar manner. The use of reappropriated and misunderstood Sanskrit and Nordic runes and symbols in weird revivalist religions goes back to Central Europe in the 19th century but I don't think it was as big in South America until later in the 20th century and in particular the style of the thing looks very 1970's to me. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 03:17
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I don't know why they included the first letter, even in an "obviously this works like English" pre-Wikipedia Wikipedia transliteration. Taken literally, it comes out as something like "mah-oh-oom." Assuming the bottom-squiggles on the second and third letter aren't intended to be vowels. "Ah-oh-oo-m", in other words if we ignore the weird first letter (or assume they completely screwed up engraving "a"; this is probably the case, because a confused "a" makes way more sense than a gratuitous "m" that you then screw up slightly), which is how you might arrive at "aum" if you didn't really get Sanskrit vowels and/or the fact that it has its own letter.
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Nov 18, 2014 03:19
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Unless it is indeed some kind of white-power trinket that's supposed to be capitalizing on ancient Aryan languages or something. That was my first impression of it. Maybe I'm being too negative though
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Nov 19, 2014 06:24
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icantfindaname posted:That was my first impression of it. Maybe I'm being too negative though
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Nov 19, 2014 08:31
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shallowj posted:So the runes are just a transliteration? Yeah. Different alphabets have different sounds, depending on what languages they developed to represent. The runes are just a bad attempt at writing the exact same thing as above using what sounds were available. (  )Congratulation, OP, you've found the modern day Rosetta Stone equivalent of Google Translate.
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Nov 19, 2014 08:46
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HEY GAL posted:Lakshmi though? She's the goddess of wealth, love, beauty, and all that junk. Super benevolent. Wouldn't esoteric Nazis be into the darker poo poo? Sounds like hippies to me. I'll be shocked if it's not hippies. There's huge crossover between the sort of hoo-doo hippie spiritualists who get into third hand eastern mysticism and the sort who get into third hand nordic or celtic (generally just generic pagan European) spirituality. The closest you're likely to get to  is it's probably just someone misinterpreting what they read about Indians being Aryans and trying to do a Viking / Hindu crossover as part of some kind of "universal cosmic truth" horseshit.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:47
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 00:11 |
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Cyrano4747 posted:The closest you're likely to get to The Theosophical Society in 19th century Germany was certainly into using both Nordic runes and Hindu symbols, and the society itself still exists in various forms to this day. They were not Nazi's themselves though the Nazi's and their precursor occult group, the Thule Society, were certainly influenced by them in part.
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Nov 19, 2014 21:17
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