Featured Title:
Stones Playing Cards, great gift idea |
 |
| Great Stone Circles, Aubrey Burl |
 |
| Login |
|
Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As a registered user you have some advantages like your own home page, fewer ads, and your contributions link to your page. |
| Who's Online |
There are currently, 113 guests and 2 members online.
You are a guest. To join in, please register for free by clicking here |
| |
| Review your Reply |
megalith6
Joined:
28-10-2001
Messages: 153
from London UK
 ON-Line
|  New Message Posted!2013-06-19 01:10
Rune posted 09-06-2013 at 23:50 about Ric saying: Perhaps the recumbent circles symbolise the moon - the moon which fragments and reassembles itself once a month, perhaps that is also the significance of the recumbent stone, that the lunar circle is somehow interrupted? This is just pure speculation though
Rune commented: "Maybe.
"One school of thought is that the recumbent stone allows the moon to roll across its length at standstill. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/recumbentcircles.htm
Apologies if this has been said before, certainly it's been discussed on other threads, not sure about this one and 38 pages are a few too many to check! If this is old news, please ignore."
No, you are quite right - that would be an archeoastronomical function of that prone 'space' in the circle. I was thinking of the overall symbolism.
R
|
megalith6
Joined:
28-10-2001
Messages: 153
from London UK
ON-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-19 01:04
Sorry George, that earlier post was an awkward paraphrase and so I include your full comment here.
George posted 04-06-2013 at 18:19 commenting on Ric's question: " what of the stations of the moon? "
George had asked: What seasonal festivals are based around standstills?
................................................
Ric: I'd love to know - don't those recumbent stone circles record lunar standstills?
http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/archaeology/special/recumbent.asp "
George: If we assume the alignment is from the centre of circle over the the centre of the recumbent then RSC's tend to be aligned on the a part of the horizon where the low summer full moon (not always in the standstill period ) can be seen to skim along the recumbent , but there are no historical or contemporary festivals associated with it .
Burl had suggested that they were aligned on the standstill but had failed to take the height of the horizon into account ,skewing the figures . Some certainly are , others aren't, some can't be , and one is aligned on the solstice .
.......................................
And to repeat, George asked: "What seasonal festivals are based around standstills?"
My point is that it is reasonable to theorise that these recumbent stone circles (link) marked seasonal, lunar observances - in effect possibly 'stations of the moon' and we may by all means discuss such a theory. We don't have to have chapter and verse before us to make some cautious guesses about the lunar observances that the megalithic peoples may (or may not) have made. We can talk about it, we can speculate.
Personally I cannot conceive of solar worship without equal reference to the moon, and vice versa, because it seems absurd to me.
Ric
|
guile
Joined:
22-03-2010
Messages: 10
from y fêl ynys
 OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-14 18:38
cerrig - that's a marvelous post! unlike much of the posts on here i was able to understand and enjoy what you had to say. thank you for sharing your observations, truly intriguing and informative.
|
ledgehammer
Joined:
29-06-2011
Messages: 746
from Surrey
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-14 17:35
Ric ,
yep that Shap. It has been said to house a similar double serpent avenue like Avebury.
I am very sceptical about Avebury being solely an alignment feature although there must be some. Its a shame that there's little left of it to compare with Avebury as this would be very indicative (perhaps).
best
Tom
|
ledgehammer
Joined:
29-06-2011
Messages: 746
from Surrey
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-14 17:30
Many thanks,Do you mean this Shap please?http://www.visitcumbria.com/evnp/gunnerkeld-stone-circle/Will look out the 1955 Thom Have visited Avebury on numerous occasions. Someone ought to write a book not just about Avebury but about the Avebury region and all the lost monuments whose ghosts people the Avebury horizons. Perhaps Julian Cope or someone like that, and all the anecdotes and folklore which surrounds these sites.Avebury will never be restored at the present level of popular awareness and that suits EH and the National Trust. They don't like Avebury because as a 'business venture' it is a nuisance, it is too vast to fence off and charge admission for, and more visitors mean more maintenance costs, so the tragically low profile of Avebury suits EH and NT well.A new book might begin to reverse this - a book which lists and even attempts to profile all the recently discovered buried standing stones at Avebury and on the Beckhampton Avenue, some of which were uncovered only to be hastily spaded under again.The sad reburying of Avebury's stones is highly symbolic, a perpetuation of past actions - in that sense it can be seen as a ritual action. It prints it loud and clear that the mindset which mostly wrecked Avebury and many other sites from the Middle Ages to the 18th century is still very much alive and with us. It calls itself secular and progressive in the 21st century but it is basically puritan to the core. This mindset has been unfortunately exported to Ireland which is now seeing the final demise of its language and the destruction of its megalithic heritage on a catastrophic scale.Am based in south London.The more Stonehenge is explored and it's landscape context, the more we will learn about the monument. A lot of folklore is of the tall story category, but bits and pieces can shed light on the past. I was amazed to discover recently that the curiously named Heel Stone at Stonehenge is phonetically similar to the modern Welsh word for the sun. That could be a red herring, or possibly not?http://en.es-static.us/upl/2011/12/Stonehenge_heel_stone.jpegRic
|
tiompan
Joined:
09-01-2005
Messages: 2706
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 22:29
Cerrig , I don't agree that the full moon rise on 23 June will be on the same poistion on the horizon as the winter solstice sun rise .Depending on where you are in the UK the two points could differ by 6- 9 degrees .
George
|
tiompan
Joined:
09-01-2005
Messages: 2706
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 20:57
Of course it's a detectable event , people have known about it for millenia .
|
cropredy
Joined:
01-01-2006
Messages: 5598
from Oxon
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 20:24
"Not a striking visual event"
A striking none visual and detectable event.
cropredy
|
cropredy
Joined:
01-01-2006
Messages: 5598
from Oxon
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 20:20
Cerrig,
Wonderfull post...for a Welsh man.
cropredy
|
cerrig
Joined:
25-09-2009
Messages: 918
from Brecon Beacons
OFF-Line
| New Message Posted!2013-06-10 20:03
For what it's worth, I would like to offer an observation I have made regarding the Moon at Easter time, and it's links to the Sun, and also the use of alignments for both.
It's a peculiarity of the horizon rising position of a full moon that the Sun will rise in the same position 6 months later. This means that the upcoming full moon on June 23rd will be rising in the far South East, in the position of the winter solstice Sun(approx). The Sunrise on June 23rd will be in the far North East in the summer solstice position. This is the extreme end of the differences between the Sun/Full Moon positions.
As the year progresses and the sun moves further South, the Full moon will move further North, still maintaining the 6 month relationship. There will come a time when it is possible, even though it's not too common an occurrence, that the Full moon and the Sun, rise at the same place, on the same day, and still maintain the 6 month separation as previously mentioned. This makes perfect sense if you come back 6 months after this date and again see the Sun rise from the same spot.
This date is the Equinox, and occasionally the Full moon does occur on this day, but of course at Sunset, which happens to be at approximately the same time of day as the moon rises at this time of year, in the UK. It is also the day the Sun rise position changes from one side of the East/West line to the other, depending on whether it's heading South or North. The Full Moon rise will be changing also, but heading in the other direction.
Generally, the Full moon misses the exact day of an Equinox, but this time of year is still very much a time of coming together for the Sun and Moon, and this can be seen readily in the shadows cast by both bodies.
I have posted before about the shadows cast by Maen Llia standing stone, but not much about it's sexuality. It would seem to me to be both Male and Female, depending on the angle it's viewed from. North to South it is very obviously phallic.
East to West is the traditional Female shape.
What is really interesting to me is that the shadow cast by both the sun and full moon swap over at the Equinox, with the Sun casting the shadow into the nearby stream during the summer, and the full moon doing the same during the winter, again maintaining the 6 months separation, only coming together at the Equinox.
This has fertility symbolism written all over it to me. 
cerrig
| |
|
Main News