Of Stones, Stars, Circles, Status, Secrets, Sacredness, Mystique and Masons. Part I

Ancient Neolithic stones march off into the distance 

against the medieval backdrop of Avebury. 

The wife and I recently had a few days holiday in the City of Bath. On the way to Bath we decided to do a short sight seeing tour through Wiltshire. Among England's counties Wiltshire has an unrivaled mystique generated by its reputation for a fascinating mix of UFO sightings and corn circles. On top of this there are the numerous enigmatic ancient monuments, including legendary world heritage sites like Stonehenge and Avebury; in the minds of many these monuments are somehow bound up with those UFOs and corn circles. In previous years we have stopped at West Kennet long barrow, Avebury and even flown a kite with our off-spring on the summit of Silbury hill in the days when you could still climb it. But during those visits we never saw or felt anything of a strange nature,  unless it be the hippy who was soaking up the vibes as he sat in a rather modest looking  corn circle!

This time we decided to stop again at Avebury, a monument which is well worth several visits.  We arrived around 3 pm on a bright but overcast day, weather ideal for this kind of tourist stop.

Avebury: A chocolate box village scene vies with rough hewn stones for camera pixels

Avebury village goes back to medieval times but in comparison with the largely unknown culture which constructed the henge and stone circle during a period of some 500 years well over 4000 years ago, medieval Avebury feels very much like the familiar home culture one has been brought up with and thinks one understands. In any case the strange gnarled old stones of the circle look very anomalous set against the soft grass covered slopes and the chocolate box village. These stones look like alien monoliths dropped from the skies and don't blend in at all, anymore than, say, an electricity pylon or a wind turbine blends in with its idyllic backdrop.

In their day, however, the stones wouldn't have looked at all anomalous given the very different atmosphere and mood conveyed by the magnificent neolithic spectacle that was Avebury. Archaeology has revealed that the original earthworks would have provided a breath taking back drop of brilliant white chalk dazzling the eyes in the sun. Hints of this can be seen in the white tracks on the outer bank worn away by the feet of the many visitors who circumnavigate the site.  In their time the banks and the ditch would have been higher, deeper, steeper and all in gleaming white, bearing no comparison with the smooth green slopes of today.

It is well known that (by definition) henges have an inverted fortification structure. That is, the usual defensive bank and ditch, rather than pointing outwards, point inwards. This immediately suggests that the henge bank was a place of viewing for the rank and file who looked in on the activities inside the circle. In fact this video conjectures that Stanton Drew henge may have been a kind of theatre for blood sports. This is not a theory I have heard before but it is plausible and would explain the inward looking fortification effect; nothing could get out without a struggle; it would in effect be the ultimate ha-ha. However, it is difficult to imagine blood sports taking place in the smaller henge monuments, or at a very large henge enclosure like Avebury as much of the action would be too far away to see. But the general idea of a henge enclosing some kind of spectacle with an audience standing on the perimeter well separated from whatever went on within the circle could well have been the role of all henges.

The ritualistic and religious particulars of henges have, of course, been lost in the mists of time. (Unless some middle eastern traveller has left us a text somewhere). But there are some general conjectures about henges which seem at least plausible if not probable. These monuments must encapsulate the thinking and world view of the neolithic people who built them, a world view that today would probably strike us as otherworldly and supernatural. The environs of Avebury, with its avenues linking it to other monuments and the vicinity of West Kennet long barrow and Silbury hill, has prompted archaeologists to refer to the whole complex as a "Ritual landscape".  I imagine that the farming families on pilgrimage to this complex from their small thatched huts and farms would have been gob smacked by the huge artificial landscape, all garbed in brilliant white, that confronted them. Above all this landscape would have conferred a sense of power, status and mystique upon the aristocracy and/or priesthood which managed it. That power was real at least in the sense that they had enough control of the agrarian labour surplus in order to organise the building and maintenance of this ritual complex. Their power was also real in that their knowledge was genuine: It is clear from the connection that henges and stone circles have with their environment, especially the astronomical environment, that the builders did know something about how the world worked. Moreover, in an agrarian society where everyone's life was so obviously modulated by the beat of the seasons, seasons apparently driven by the configurations in the heavenly vault, this was significant knowledge. In as much as henges and their stones circles encapsulate information about the neolithic perspective on the world they not only look inwards but also outwards towards the cosmic context.

To the plebeians coming to this monument for the first time it must have seemed that its priesthood was surely in touch with the divine. The power of the site resided in the sense of spectacle, mystery and the sheer theatre of it all. A near equivalent in our own culture are the cathedrals of the middle ages which would have taken the breath away of the peasantry and be clear evidence of the aristocracy's and priest's right to rule. Also, I'm reminded of the Victorian Gothic revival and Pugin's attempt to revive the mystique of Catholic power through the sheer intimidating mystery of catholic rituals carried out in the context of lavishly reinterpreted pseudo Gothic churches.

But perhaps an even better modern analogy to the pilgrim's wonder at Avebury may be seen in the visitor to the huge circle of the Large Hadron Collider where we have engineering on an unprecedented scale. Like the circle at Avebury the LHC impresses by its sheer size lending gravitas and status to the techno-scientific elite who have built it, run it and understand it*. As with the neolithic circles the LHC looks both inward and outward by demonstrating that the builders certainly do know a lot about the workings of the cosmos at large. And like the fortified walls of Avebury the LHC has even had its rumour of being a container for potentially dangerous arcane power; there have been conjectures that it might have had the potential to generate a black hole or two, little gateways to unknown dimensions! All this only adds to the wow! effect and glory of its scientific priesthood as they wrestle with dark forces..... well, it would do if it were not for the fact that in these days of reactionary popularism and benighted fundamentalism the ivory tower establishment is less likely to get a blank cheque of kudos! They need to take note of this!

It might be old but engineering on a huge scale will always impress!

 For the priesthood of Avebury spectacle was the name of the game: The monumental level of construction, the dazzlingly white surfaces and the hint of them being responsible for the control of dangerous forces served to inflate the status of the priesthood in the minds of the plebeians. That priesthood need have done little but keep flashing their wares and imagination would have done the rest to keep up the mystique of power and fear of the unknown. Like a huge peacock's tail it doesn't necessarily have to serve any real purpose other than to say "We know this display impresses you!". In fact sometimes human beings can be caught in the act of outright deception in order to keep the mythology and mystique about themselves going. See for example the bazaar case of Bob Lazar where obfuscation, magic and mystery are an end in themselves.

***

In part II we go to the city of Bath where we will find another world of Stone's, stars, circles, status secrecy,  sacredness, mystique and masons. Another world of facades made to impress!

But there remains to tell of a curious ending to our visit at Avebury. We had just finished doing our tour of the circle and had entered the space in front of the National Trust museum when a low flying black helicopter passed over head! Knowing all those legendary associations of black helicopters with UFOs and corn circles I was absolutely gob-smacked! Moreover, even though I had been taking lots of pictures of Avebury I didn't quite have my camera at ready at that moment, just when I wanted it! Some people would say that's down to the camera imp who turns up and does his stuff whenever the strange makes a showing! I don't, of course, believe in black helicopter conspiracies but, I thought, what a fitting piece of symbolic synchronicity to end a day at Avebury! I was left chuckling over it for some time!

Footnote:

* As we know the construction of the LHC required a large number of specialists each very skilled in their particular specialism. It is an interesting question, then, as to the specialism break down at Avebury. The construction and running of the henge at Avebury would require manual skills, engineering skills, knowledge of the heavens and presumably priestly skills. Perhaps even ancillary tasks like catering and miscellaneous services were needed once the crowds converged on the site! An interesting exercise is to look for parallels between the specialisms needed at Avebury and the specialisms needed at the LHC!

NOTE: Link on New Grange: Quotes from the article:

One of the most tantalizing aspects of Newgrange is that it appears to be astronomically oriented: every year, on the morning of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, sunlight penetrates the passage and illuminates the floor of the chamber. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens within the chamber so that the whole room becomes dramatically illuminated. This event lasts for 17 minutes, beginning around 9 am.

“To the Neolithic culture of the Boyne Valley, the winter solstice marked the start of the New Year– a sign of nature’s rebirth and promising renewed life to crops, animals and humans. It may also have served as a powerful symbol of the inevitable victory of life over death, perhaps promising new life to the spirits of the dead,” said World Heritage Ireland.

The Cosmic Perspective

I have a reproduction of this painting pinned up in my room. It shows a peaceful English country scene at night. The glowing candlelit windows of a church and a distant house betray the presence of human life. Above the idyll the star-lit sky is illuminated by the brilliant streak of the Great Meteor of October 1868, a meteor as bright as the moon and, it is said, with a trail which hung around for several minutes. If you have ever seen a bright meteor you may at first be a little taken aback by the noiselessness of this celestial firework. Intrinsically, of course, meteor strikes are very violent affairs as are most events in the heavens. But for the distant and detached ground observer they are as ethereal and silent as a passing wraith.

The painting of the Great Meteor of 1868 will always remind me of Jonathan's Benison's learned commentary in my copy of H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine" where Benison writes:

"Wells' time traveler .... has to learn to accept his limitations as a human being and to become perceptive to the cosmic perspective, the view of human reality that an impartial external judge might have" 

Benison is commenting on the fact that in spite of the dire straights in which the Time Traveller found himself 800,000 years into the future he is not so distracted that he is unable wonder at the procession of the equinoxes and the changed star configurations of the constellations. The Traveller also notices a fossil megatharium he finds falling into decay in an abandoned museum. Both the stars and the fossil speak of the vastness of space and depths of time far greater than even the 800,000 years through which the Time Machine has taken the Traveller. It is reflections like this which Benison refers to as being perceptive to the the cosmic perspective.

The painting, which is by an unknown artist, juxtaposes the glow-worm like evidence of human life with the spectacular display of the 1868 meteor. In those Victorian days (The same days in which Wells was writing) people had started to understand the very physical nature of heavens; it no longer seemed to (wo)men to be a sacred stage specially prepared for the centrality of the Earth. As the Victorian Wells wrote:

"Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that this light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still."



Of course as a Christian that is not how I read science. Something of my reaction is recorded here and here, although I endeavour to understand the atheist's position: The incongruity of a tranquil and introverted English village scene set against a cosmic event with its potential for catastrophe may have appealed to the artist: I'm sure it would have appealed to Wells.

The primeval object shown entering the Earth's atmosphere was likely ending its long journey in space, a journey far longer in duration than the time traversed by HG Wells' Traveller. Here was an object which, after travelling for perhaps billions of Earth years and many light years, had just noiselessly dissolved into an ephemeral streak of light. Did the people behind those apparently safe cosily glowing windows care or even know?