Stone Solstice

Friday, June 27, 2008

By Brooke Williams

This past week on the solstice, I thought back a few years to a summer I spent in England doing research on European prehistory. I timed my visit to Stonehenge with the summer solstice, as did about 10,000 other people. I knew that this was the one day that authorities took down the ropes and let people mingle with the stones. My plan was to get there early and spend a few hours next to and touching the stones, and then leave. Instead, I got very caught up in the festivities and stayed all night watching fire jugglers and dancers, listening to music and poetry. It felt like a Grateful Dead concert without the band.

Prior to visiting Stonehenge, I’d prepared by studying the many theories as to why it was built. Was it constructed as a giant clock/calendar? Or as a giant observatory to study the movement of key celestial bodies, including both the sun and moon? Or was it built as a religious site where animal and possibly human sacrifices were performed? On the morning of the solstice, the sun rises over what they call the ‘Heel Stone’ which is situated outside the perimeter of the main circle, sending a beam of light between the upright stones, into the very center of the structure, where it ‘impregnates’ the alter stone. Or so the theory goes. That cold solstice morning when I was there, clouds on the horizon masked the setting sun, and as we all stood there for hours facing the direction where the sun should be rising, nothing happened. A naked man, draped in a flag, sang songs while we waited.

I think it’s interesting how many anthropologists and scientists have spent their entire careers coming up with explanations for why prehistoric people built Stonehenge and all the stone monuments in Europe and elsewhere. I wonder if our modern minds can hope to understand the prehistoric mind. It’s entirely feasible to assume that the people building Stonehenge had no capacity to even dream about the Internet, flying in 747s, or living 90 years.

If I think about this in reverse, is it also feasible to assume that we don’t have the capacity - or the business - trying to explain what they were doing, or why?  Somewhere in my files I have a copy of that story written decades ago, about a future time, when archeologists discover a Motel 6 that had been preserved in a glacier or volcanic ash. They are quick to pronounce that the skeleton in the bath tub with the shower cap is a deceased queen, with a crown made of some unknown material, in the burial chamber, which sits next to her altar (the toilet), where she had been worshipping cranes. How else would one explain the bird’s picture and “CRANE” embossed into the surface of the throne?

I want to believe that in general, Stonehenge as well as many other stone circles, quoits, and monuments were built by Druids - the priests in charge of conducting rituals and ceremonies (and possibly my ancestors) who believed their actions affected the universal energies controlling the natural cycles with which their lives were intricately and inextricably woven.
PERMALINK:
Stone Solstice | Planet JH News Article: Left Wing Local

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