ion of Z Rod Pict Symbol 2

8/6/2019 ion of Z Rod Pict Symbol 2

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Z-Rod and V-Rod Explained

Andrew Sturdy

My hypothesis on the interpretation of the Z-Rods and V-Rods symbols has been constructed on the

assertion that a pre-Columba Christian movement existed in Northern Britain, Albion or Alban,

outside but on the verge of the Roman Empire shortly after the third century.

The once communally held belief of an early Christian existence was challenged in 1860AD and the

discovery of The Book of Deer in Oxford, England. Within its pages was penned the then unknown

legend of St Columbas conversion of the Picts of Buchan (modern Aberdeenshire, northeast

Scotland). At the time, without any further evidence either documented or from local folk law,

academics soon declared the story a myth and suggested that the scribe had more than likely

confused Buchans St Colm with that of the more famous St Columba. However since 1860 the

legend has been gaining unwarranted authenticity, which has had the effect of placing the Picts as a

wholly Pagan society and inadvertently erased the achievements of the native British saints like

Ninian, Drostan and Kentigern (or Mongo) from the public record.

The danger of persisting with the St Columba legend as being fact is that the concept that the Picts

were already exposed or converted to Christianity becomes inconceivable.

But if we are to gain any understanding of these symbols we must conceive the inconceivable and

view the symbols through a Christian Picts eyes.

Our knowledge of the Picts is often portrayed as being very limited mainly because they either did

not commit themselves to writing or what was written has not survived. This has often led them tobe seen with an air of romantic mystery; but this is an illusion and once realised, they should be

viewed as no more mysterious as any of the native British Iron Age tribes. It is this British link, more

ancient and substantial than the perceived Irish link, that may provide the Rosetta Stone to the

understanding of the Rod symbols.

Beginning with the Z-Rod symbol, we find a meaning with the story of St Paulinus bringing

Christianity to Northumbria, and more importantly the reaction of the Pagan priesthood to it.


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Most startling of all, Paulinus message offered the English hope beyond the grave. Here

was the reply to a problem deep in the human heart which their priests had never answered.

When he ended, an old counsellor spoke. The life of man, O king, he said, is like a sparrows

flight through a bright hall when one sits at meat in winter with the fire alight in the hearth, and

the icy rain-storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door and stays for a moment in the light

and heat, and then, flying out the other, vanishes into the wintry darkness. So stays for a moment

the life of man, but what it is before and what after, we know not. If this new teaching can tell us,

let us follow it! (Arthur Bryant, 1953, The Story of England, Makers of the Realm, page 67-70. More

text at Annex A below).

This account shows that the old order believed that we are only visitors in this world and were we

came from before birth and were we go once dead was the same place. Now the Christians believed

this also, but their teaching gave the other worldly-place as being with Jesus and God. All things

come from God and will return to God; to represent this they used the Greek letters Alpha and

Omega.

Now look at the two parallel lines of the Z-rod on the Picardy Stone:

They run parallel showing that they are the same, travelling in the same direction, the same world.

But look at the symbols on the end of the rods. Often thought to be the head and fletching of arrowsor spears, could they not also be symbols to represent Alpha and Omega? (The left one could also be

an anchor, one of the first Christian symbols found in the catacombs).

The diagonal linking the parallel lines could quite possibly be the flight of the sparrow across the

warm hall.

Therefore the Z-rod is telling a life story. A story of someone coming from God, living amongst us,

and then returning to God. All is left to complete this story is the name of this person.


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The Picardy Stones serpent may represent St Patrick who rid Ireland of snakes, but it is also used for

St John the Evangelist. St John is one of the earliest doctrines know to have spread through Britain,

and it has been linked with the Culdee order, an order that its self has been explained as the result

of the conversion of the Pagan Druidic order to Christianity. It would be more likely then that it was

St John depicted here.

I have purposely used the Serpent Z-rod because the serpent is so recognisable as a Christian

symbol, but I feel with more research other symbols like the double disk will prove to represent

another British Saint.

Applying the same hypothesis to the V-rod reveals a much more intriguing explanation. The Alphaand Omega is still present, but the journey in this world is missing, and the parallels have been

joined. This hints that the person it represents was continuously with God, even if when they existed

on earth. There is only one person in Christian theology that existed as God on earth, and that was

Jesus.

The reason why a symbol like this may have been used and not an animal or a written name, comes

to us with the second commandment of the Old Testament, You shall not make for yourself an idol,

whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in

the water under the earth. The early Christian church, based on the Jewish religion, had a dilemma.

They needed to broadcast their faith but the commandment forbid them. The Eastern Orthodox

church turned to Icons, but I feel the Pict Church may have used this V-rod symbol.

Annex A Arthur Bryant, 1953, The Story of England, Makers of the Realm, page 67-70

More than two hundred years after the last legions left Britain, and soon after the English

conquest, a tall, dark stranger stood before the king and chieftains of Northumbria. His hair was

black, his face thin, his nose slender and aquiline, his asect venerable and awe-inspiring. His name

was Paulinus, and, like the men who had once governed Britain, he was a Roman. But he bore noarms and stood there at the mercy of the rough warriors around him.

He had come to Northumbria the wild northern kingdom that stretched from the Humber to the

Forth with a Kentish bride for its king. Thirty years earlier her father, the Jutish ruler of Kent, had

welcomed to his capital a band of Roman monks to minister to his own queen, a Christian princess

from Gaul. Their leader Augustine, had been so persuasive that he had converted the Kentish king

and his nobles to Christianity the mysterious religion that had survived the Roman collapse on the


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continent, and, though rooted out of southern Britain, had lingered on in the mountains and islands

of the Celtic West.

The Northumbrians round Paulinus were no friends to this creed. Fourteen years before, they had

slaughtered hundreds of its priests after a great victory over the Britons of north Wales. The very

word , church, that they used for its houses of worship was associated in their minds with plunder.

They listened, therefore, to the eloquent Italian with suspicion. Yet what he told caused them to do

so in silence. For it was a tale of heroism and devotion. Its purport was that behind the forces of fate

was a God who had made men in his own image and, loving them, had given them freedom to

choose between good and evil. He had made them, not helpless actors, but partners in the drama of

creation. And because men had misused that freedom and God still loved them, He sent them His

son as leader and saviour to show them, by revealing His nature, how to live and, by sharing theirs,

how to overcome sin and death.

For by a miracle beyond human comprehension God had made his love for man incarnate. Six

centuries before, when Rome was establishing her empire of force, there had been born to a poor

peasant woman in an oppressed eastern land a child name Jesus. With the flawless and

compassionate nature of God, whose true son he was, he had taken upon his shoulders all the

sorrows and burdens of mankind and voluntarily chosen pain and death. Rejected and

misunderstood by those he had come to save, he had fought his last battle on earth alone and

deserted. Yet, even in agony on a criminals cross, his love for men had never faltered, and he had

died forgiving those who had betrayed and slain him.

Then the English were told how in death Jesus had triumphed as no victor in battle had ever done;

how his body had vanished from the tomb in which it had been stoned up, and how he had

appeared to those who loved him, risen from the grave. Poor, unarmed, abandoned, this gentle,

heroic leader was now worshipped as Lord and Saviour in almost every land over which Roman

oppressors of his country had ruled. And he had opened the doors of Gods kingdom to all with faith

and courage to follow him.

Paulinus tale cannot have seemed wholly strange to his hearers. He had spoken of a leader who

had been brave and true, who offered his followers a freemans choice between good and evil and a

heros reward for those who were faithful. But in two respects his message was revolutionary. For

the virtues Jesus had shown were not merely those the English honoured, but others they had never

regarded as virtues at all. Love not hate, gentleness not force, mercy not vengeance had been the

armour of this great battle was small compared to the cold courage of facing death with only these

meek virtues. And, proof of it, here was this solitary stranger standing unarmed in their midst.

Most startling of all, Paulinus message offered the English hope beyond the grave. Here was the

reply to a problem deep in the human heart which their priests had never answered. When he

ended, an old counsellor spoke. The life of man, O king, he said, is like a sparrows flight

through a bright hall when one sits at meat in winter with the fire alight in the hearth, and the icy

rain-storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door and stays for a moment in the light and heat,

and then, flying out the other, vanishes into the wintry darkness. So stays for a moment the life of

man, but what it is before and what after, we know not. If this new teaching can tell us, let us

follow it!


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For these northern heathens, who held a man should stand up to his fate but believed he could

never master it, responded eagerly to the hope that there might be a purpose behind it. It made

sense of life, and all its pain and suffering, in a way that the tales of their own dark gods had never

done. The very simplicity of the Christian story and the courage of the man who told it disarmed a

people themselves simple and brave. Living in a world of terrors and wonders they could not explain,

they were use to taking things on faith. As they crowded round the man who had brought them such

tidings, their own high priest was the first to cast his spear at the idols their fathers had worshipped.

Afterwards they were baptised in thousands, pressing into the Yorkshire streams to receive from

Paulinus hands the cross of water which enrolled a man as Christs followers and offered him

deliverance from the grave.

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ion of Z Rod Pict Symbol 2