bmike, Ken, etc:


I know this pagan road I've been traveling on sounds far-flung and like a page right out of the Da Vinci code… I laugh sometimes thinking about carpenters and magic. No doubt my comment that "a carpenter might have been killed by the church for employing it," was a little out there, but I'm trying to chase down assertions I've found that suggest the wheel was a symbol to "ward off evil spirits." This is not my hypothesis, but that of others from England, a country, may I remind us, that was home to the Druids and gave us Stonehenge: a circular design that no one seems to pass off as trivial.

I had no idea we’d find this symbol in America. That's interesting. We also had the Salem Witch Trials: pagan customs were not exactly embraced by everyone. Would a carpenter have felt comfortable scratching a pentagram into a summer beam? Maybe the wheel was dropped b/c carpenters had to learn another way? Maybe not.

I don't see any harm in thinking outside the box on this one. I mean, who really knows about the wheel? It does sound like it's more than just a cute symbol children played with--passed off as a trivial remnant of the past.

"Go and meet him. Offer him curry and beer, sit back, listen and be amazed!" were Marko’s comments (someone from England,) regarding Laurie and the wheel. He must have fairly good reason for saying this.

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“and the notion of it being pagan and then dropped - that does'nt make sense. if it was useful the church would have just co-opted it like it did with all the other symbology, sacred dates, festivals, etc. throughout the ages... there'd simply be a pope or a cathedral or a saint inlaid in the circle, and history would have been tweaked and re-written to make sense out of the 12 rings (tribes, apostles, you name it), etc. etc. etc.”
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bmike, I know exactly what you mean. This was the pattern of the church. We still have the Yule log and Christmas is celebrated right around the winter solstice (a pagan holiday). But there were surely a few Pagan custom, symbols and rituals that fell by the wayside for one reason or another.


Here's what I’ve found asserting the wheel was used to ward off evil, etc… again, not my idea.


http://www.obr.org.uk/PDF/OBR_panels.pdf (see pg. 10... Daisy Wheel scratched on a door frame at Cogges. This is to stop evil spirits from entering the building. Note a resemblance to the consecration cross.)

http://www.apotropaios.co.uk/ritual_marks.htm
It appears to have been a general protection against ill-fortune or was deemed a good luck symbol. These 'daisy wheels' are common throughout England and Wales with many examples from Kent, Devon, Shropshire, Powys and Yorkshire. It is likely, however, that they are far more widespread than this.

http://archaeopagans.blogspot.com/2008/06/apotropaic-marks.html
There are some apotropaic daisy-wheel marks in the doorway of the tithe-barn at Bradford-on-Avon.