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Unless otherwise stated, this image is the copyright of the submitter. Contact them for permission to reproduce it. |  | | Description | Never visited before so I had to take a shot from the classic angle. |
| Posted Comments: JimChampion
(2005-06-16) | Difficult to get bored of this site: nice crispy photo too! | AngieLake
(2005-06-16) | Good one Sem - was your chin on the floor? No-one with a big belly could get down to shoot this angle, could they? (or is it easier with digital cameras?) | JimChampion
(2005-06-16) | You could always lie on your back and look upwards. An 'upside down' photo is not a problem. | nicoladidsbury
(2005-06-17) | Its a great angle, and great framing. Class shot Sem! | Monica Ratcliff
(2005-07-06) | What a beautiful, elemental, seductive image! Can this stone heal souls, I wonder? | sem
(2005-08-02) | I wonder if there is a male-female element in this somewhere, or have I been watching too many Vannessa Del Rio films ?
PS The first sentence is serious.
| Thorgrim
(2005-08-02) | The problem with trying to understand Men-an-Tol is that the present arrangment of stones is not thought to be original. Not sure when they were arranged as they are now, but it has been suggested that they once formed a circle or even a burial chamber with the holed stone being the portal. I dunno, but I often think that we read our current pre-occupation with sex into things megalithic. For example - are those diamond shaped stones at Avebury really female and the thinner ones male. Why? | AngieLake
(2005-08-03) | Hi Sem. I've got Aubrey Burl's book 'Rites of the Gods' from the library today, and he comments on Men an Tol: "Curative properties were linked to many stones with holes in them. The prehistoric people who raised them must often have had traditions reaching back to the times when skeletal bones were handed out through the entrances of neolithic tombs to be used in rites for the well-being of the community and, centuries later, these rituals persisted, now perfomed by shamans, often connected with the sun. The Men-an-Tol ('the stone with a hole') in Cornwall was believed to cure their illnesses if children were passed through it, boys pushed through by a woman to a man, girls by a man to a woman, always passed towards the sun." He also adds under a photo of the site: "Fertility legends attached to such perforated stones are widespread in the British Isles. The Men-an-Tol stones have probably been rearranged." When I dowsed there in 2004, my findings showed that it probably formed the mouth of a tomb, and had been re-erected at right-angles to its true position. | mickm
(2005-08-04) | I can't find the reference but if my memory serves right the Cornwall Archaeology Unit cleared the area of gorse not so long ago & found a fourth fallen stone & evidence for a total of eleven stones which could originally have formed a circle of 19-20 stones. It is highly likely that the holed stone has been moved as the fairly reliable William Borlase drew a plan in the 18th century showing it in a different position. | AngieLake
(2005-08-04) | I did dowse a circle (or circular movement area) very close to the Men-an-Tol triple stone setting. It was to the NE of the two stones* that stand between Men-an-Tol and the pathway to the lane. The beginning and end of my walked processional (ritual) route moved between them*, as if they were the circle's portals, and, once 'entered', part of the movement inside this 'circle' made alternate semi-circles [right, anticlockwise; left, clockwise] each time moving towards NE before tracing those alternate perimeters of arcs (a pattern sometimes found in front of chamber tombs i.e. St Lythans, Glamorgan, also in NE circle at Stanton Drew). As well as small anti-clockwise and clockwise swirls near the 'centre', there was also a long looping movement from the portals to the centre, so there may just have been a standing stone or totem pole there. Both of the 'portal' stones were walked around in an anticlockwise direction while linking the two large 'segments' of movement. At the end of the 'ritual' I exited the circle through them. (All these movements, inc. swirls, were walked while following the direction my copper L-shaped dowsing rods were pointing, while concentrating on being shown where the ancient people moved in their most important ceremonies.) To try to place the area in your mind: The holed stone was 3 paces in a southerly direction from the SE arc of the possible 'outside edge' of this 'circle'. In my diagram, the NE'ly limit of movement inside this 'circle' would touch an imaginary line projected from the NW side of the holed stone. (If projected to the horizon, the NW line would reach the highest point of that hill.) Anyone interested in seeing the diagram, or the ones recorded when dowsing the holed stone, can contact me on my member's page. | JCAntunes
(2005-09-28) | This foto is clear. Very easy to know what it is! |
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