Cartosemiotics - Who Knew?

Cartosemiotics tackles the same fields - the math, geometry and the pictures - as chess and other board games - comes from the same roots - but it avoids discussing games - except obliquely. It's not like they don't know about games though - because I found Wim van Bimsburgen's mancala & etc. in the midst of a bibliography and he's pretty goddess friendly. At least he's an open mind. Their problem - like ours - is decipherment - "orientation" - what these maps/games really meant - not just their friggin "historical origins". Not that history isn't useful... BUT - What I mean is - there you have all these references to Ashtapada in Indian chess and no one discussing chess history seems to have a clue or a care what that system meant. It's part of a whole cosmic system, an entire canon, not just a game left dangling out there with no strings attached. It was part of their sacred means of orientation and very scientific too. Chess history is not chess anthropology, nor is it semiotics. It's seldom very comparative beyond the immediate needs of some scholars to jack up a hypothesis - that's for sure. It gives us dates and moments - OK good enough - but mostly, it's like tearing a page out the Bible and saying you know something about the book. Cartosemiotics admits that "imaginary" maps or maps that use just images to explain locations (like games) are valid and there is lots of crossover. Take a look at THIS! http://ancientworldblog.blogspot.com/ The cloak is interesting.. using stones to triangulate location - totally logical. Precedents? Well... Piccione does a spectacular job on the linen folding ceremony in senet and senet cross references the Egyptian 30 day calendar - not to mention the way they regulated EVERYTHING according to the stars. In cartosemiotics stars come first - earth second - maps of the mind - a little later. Remember those old magician's cloaks of stars? Unh huh. Oh yeah! And, when required, you could probably turn the capes inside out so nothing was showing and use the pointy black caps to do a few tricks too. Ptolemy's maps were done in conic section. What ho! Linen! So, when Pirates (or the Pope lol!) showed up on the high seas, or for dinner, you either turn your cape inside out, fold it, ditch it, burn it - whatever... hmmmmmm... This goes hand in hand with the Phoenicians deliberately beaching their ships if they thought the Greeks were following them to the tin and gold mines. The reason cartosemiotics is important to us is that it gets INSIDE the distant past - into the heads of the people who were making these maps - confirms the practical side of hermetic methods of remapping stars into giant earth maps and smaller stuff too - like chessmen and dice. Also, it shows methodology, which means they scoop the goddess stuff right out of the sky and cross reference like crazy. I know we can find some of that in Pennick - but there is nothing much about cupholes and really old starmaps there. Here there is.... Scroll way way down and after you have had your mind blown several times over at Kaulin's blog (I'm still reeling) you'll see the Chinese cup hole map of Ursa Major!!!! Major find for Chinese chess IMHO. Betcha Banacheck thinks it's a game.... Maybe it is (lol!) - but it's other things too - not just more "old games we don't understand". Duh! We already know that the scorpian man of Jiroft was the scorpion lady of Egypt and at least one game of twenty squares takes after that pattern - the one with the "J" attached to a set of 4x4 squares. Instant cartosemiotics! We're already there! a bientot Pimander