The modern interpretation of what
constitutes a �sacred� place is far removed from that of our
earliest ancestors who lived in a world without cars, houses and
motorways. Theirs was a natural landscape in which the rivers, rocks
and mountains were all seen as components of a larger, living
earth-mother-earth. Remnants of the way our prehistoric ancestors
perceived their landscape are still visible in their monuments and
art and also through ourselves, if we look deeply enough.
Sacred Spaces: Some of the earliest examples of �sacred spaces�
are found deep in the heart of underground cave systems, in which
the living Earth itself was both symbolically and physically
penetrated. It was within these deep, confined and distant spaces
over 30,000 years ago, that the relationship between Palaeolithic
people and the �spirits� of the earth can be first seen to have
become physically ritualised. It is currently believed that the
painters of these primitive, archetypal images were
Shaman attempting to connect
themselves to the spirit world in order to influence the outcome of
issues such as fertility, hunting and death. These early examples of
sacred spaces were confined and private, and were presumably
intended to stay so, as although some were used for long periods of
time they show no evidence of habitation and most, including
examples such as Lascaux and Chauvet have remained unseen for
millennia until relatively recently.
This
private, internal communication can be seen as the tap-root of what
makes a place sacred. Even today at the worlds most sacred locations
such as Allahabad, Jerusalem or Mecca, each attracting several
million people a year, it is from within each individual that the
interpretation of what makes a place sacred occurs. In contrast to
the early enclosed private spaces of the Palaeolithic, sacred sites
can be seen to have become progressively more communal and public,
arguably reinforcing the sensation of the moment. It was during the
great Neolithic construction phase c. 3,500 - 3,000 BC that the
first examples of public sacred places begin to appear. During this
time several civil-scale constructions were built along Western
Europe and the Atlantic coastline, some of which were built over
existing structures revealing a pattern of re-use over thousands of
years.
The
continued use of the same sacred sites and associated rituals would
seem an obvious means of reinforcing the sacred nature of a site or
belief system. The development of Palaeolithic rock-art in caves is
also associated with the deposition of bone fragments and other
items forced into cracks and fissures in the walls of the caves, an
act which can be seen to have occurred for over 20,000 years in
different cave systems across Europe. In contrast however, the exact
spot where Stonehenge was built has been in use for 9,000 years now
and has likely served several different purposes in its time, so
that while the design and location proposes an astronomical origin,
the extensive funerary landscape surrounding it is suggestive of a
different cultural influence. It has recently being dubbed the �Lourdes
of Prehistory�, following the discovery of several foreign
remains and artefacts in the region. Julius Caesar in the first
century BC wrote that at his time Stonehenge was a Druid
sanctuary and today the same majestic, half-ruined monument serves
as little more than a tourist pilgrimage for most people. Perhaps in
this we can identify that it is not just the interpretation of what
is sacred, but that we carry within us an unconscious urge to
identify sacred places and be in their presence, in order that we
may extract a portion of it into ourselves.
The
Living Earth: Ancestral memories of a time when the Earth was
seen as �alive� are still present in our mythologies. In Greek myth
for example; following the great flood Deucalion and his wife are
instructed by Zeus to throw stones over their shoulders, each of
which transforms into a new man or woman thus repopulating the earth
with life. A recent discovery in Turkey confirms the idea that stone
was thought capable of possessing a soul. It comes in the shape of a
funerary stelae of a high official burial at around 800 AD, and on
its face an inscription saying that the entombed man had made an
offering which he considered a ��ram for my soul that is in this
stone��.
Fragments of the intimate relationship between the living and the
dead, animate and inanimate can also be seen in the commonly found
Simulacrum at megalithic sites. As well
as the numerous examples of anthropomorphic megaliths, many
structures are now realised to have been placed in view of �sleeping
giants� and other anthropomorphic features in the profiles of the
background hills, again reinforcing the sacred quality of the
location. The �Goats� cave in Swansea, is a vaguely
anthropomorphically shaped mountain which has an entrance at the
approximate location of the reproductive organs, giving it female
gender. The cave revealed a ritual burial from the Palaeolithic
period and was used through the Neolithic and even into Roman
times, leaving little question that the �human� shape of the Hill
and the location of the cave were influential in this.
Aubrey
Burl argued that in the Neolithic mind both death and fertility were
integrated so that:
�The fertility of the ground, the fecundity of women, the spirits of
forebears that interceded with nature on behalf of the living, the
cold winter sunset and the joyful summer sunrise��
Seen
this way, the natural human cycles, the seasonal and the celestial
cycles can be seen to merge together, creating a single unified
belief system. This single tapestry of landscape unites everything
together in such a way that the earth and the sky, the living and
the dead all became one. The ritualising and restructuring of our
environment to conform with these cycles endow us with a higher
purpose, in effect entering us into communication with the higher
universal spirit of all things, through which we can become more
sacred ourselves.
Linear Landscapes: An important aspect in the consideration of
sacred places is how they are viewed in terms of their relationship
to each other. While this might seem an alien idea to us, there is
plenty of evidence to suggest that it was utmost in the minds of our
ancestors. The deliberate transportation of stone from one sacred
site to another sacred site demonstrates this attempt at
connectivity as �parts of places� were brought together to integrate
and enhance sacred locations. We know for example, that the
�Bluestones� at Stonehenge were shipped from the Gors Fawr region of
Wales which itself appears to have been an important (sacred) area.
Perhaps significantly, the Gors Fawr stone circle, built in plain
view of the source of the bluestones was constructed using smaller
glacial erratics for half of its stones, an act which reminds us
that what appears �sacred� to one person is invisible to another.
Whatever the original significance of such specific selectivity, the
presence of the Bluestones and the solitary 21ft mica
�slaughter stone� was clearly of greater significance than the
energy required to quarry, transport and cut such hard stone instead
of the softer and more readily available sarsen stone which
was used at both Stonehenge and Avebury and found in abundance not
more than 20 miles to the north. It seems then, that these
additional connections between sites reflect a conscious effort at
�sewing� the component parts of the landscape together into the
larger living tapestry. Alignments of sacred and prominent places
can be seen to reinforce each other like synapses as the spatial
perception of the ritual landscape developed. Although today this
vision is almost lost, the remnants of these once �living� arteries
are still found in the orientation and alignment of ancient and
sacred places along with prominent hill-tops, significant moments in
the solar and lunar cycles, and other sacred sites in the form of
linear and geometric alignments.
This
deliberate placement of sacred sites into alignments is yet to be
understood fully; but that such alignments existed around the
ancient world is no longer in dispute. Remnants of our ancestor�s
linear mentality are still clearly visible today in the shape of
the Peruvian Ceques radiating from Cuzco and the extensive
network of Roman roads that criss-cross Europe. While in contrast,
the Chinese Dragon lines, Irish Fairy paths, aboriginal
turingas and the English Ley-lines, which are not necessarily
physically visible still conform to the same linear insistence.
Alfred
Watkins was the first modern man to pioneer studies into
leylines following his imaginative
revelation of a connected landscape in 1921. The UK alignments
include both natural and man-made features, they were orientated
astronomically, geometrically, along funerary (spirit paths) and
simply between significant locations. Watkins concluded that a large
number were remnants of trade routes, while other people such as the
famed antiquarian William Stukeley had already hinted at the
existence of an integrated sacred landscape as far back as 1700 AD.
So ambiguous is the definition of a leyline that hundreds are
claimed for and there is still no single theory can yet be said to
satisfactorily represent them definitively. One of the most
contentious aspects in the leyline debate is determining what
exactly they are in the first place. Unlike the Peruvian Ceques for
example, ley-lines are not always visible, and arguably few were
ever designed to be walked or seen. Herein lies the �marrow of the
bone� so to speak, as an alignment of ancient sites is not in itself
enough to constitute a leyline. Watkins considered their length, the
number of ley-markers and any associated local traditions or myths
related to them. Recent research is opening the door for new (old)
ways of measuring such alignments, as it appears that the evolution
of the prehistoric linear mentality did not stop at simple
alignments.
Divining the Earth: Recognising the path of this linear
evolution makes it easier to understand how such a cultural force
could develop into an art or a science (or both), which is exactly
what appears to have happened in all the corners of the ancient
world. What might be best described as a natural progression
occurred, in which the role we developed with the earth evolved into
something new and profoundly sophisticated. Having �sewn� the
landscape together, two sets of specialised skills emerged, one an
art and the other a science - The twin fields of Geomancy and
Geodesy were born. Both of these fields ultimately leading to the
same place: Sacred Geometry, through which it became possible to
unite both geometric design and natural cycles together in harmony.
The
field of Geodesy has its roots in
earthly measurements, as the name suggests. The placement of all the
great Egyptian temple complexes on significant latitudes is one of
the strongest evidences of such a science operating at a civil level
in prehistoric times, but the same fingerprint can be found running
around the Mediterranean and along the Western European coastline.
The preference for building on the 30th latitude was not
restricted to Egypt, but is also found in the Sumerian cities of
Larsa, Eridu and Ur, Persepolis and even Lahsa in Tibet, which was
placed exactly 30� east of Giza (Heliopolis). It has become apparent
that other sacred Middle-eastern cities such as Baalbek, Nippur,
Korsabad and sacred Greek cities such as Delphi, Knossos, Delos,
Dodona and Eleusis are related to the Egyptian anchor at Giza. In
Europe, Avebury sits exactly � of a degree north of Stonehenge, and
along with Glastonbury, the three form a perfect right-angled
triangle. The Geodetic network reaches out from England to both
Ireland and Scotland then to France and beyond. Silbury hill in
England also shares a geometric relationship with the Great pyramid
in that they both have the others latitude as their exterior angle
of slope. We are now able to see that in fact, many of the
prehistoric sites were being located in accordance with a universal
geometric system based on a 360� division of the earth which was not
only encoded into the design, orientation and location of sacred
places but also into the mythology, text, art and song that
surrounded them.
Whilst
ancient texts concerning the rituals of design for Egyptian temples
reveal a geometric basis, other ancient cultures demonstrate a
different means based on earth energies. Chinese Dragon lines,
aboriginal Turingas and certain British Leylines are alignments that
fall into the contrasting category of Geomancy. These
alignments show a stronger dependence on dynamic factors such as
astronomy, topography (water and hills), and the human element in
the role of the shaman. The art of geomancy is concerned with the
harmonic balance of yin and yang � positive and negative earth
energy. Chinese geomancy is still very much alive and practiced for
the placement of all important buildings or tombs and although it is
little understood to the western mind, a common understanding exists
between the people and the geomancers that the living landscape is
fed by negative and positive currents of energy which are connected
to us and can affect the outcome of our lives. Exhaustive studies on
the largest known Dragon line in Europe, the St. Michael�s
ley, led by Hamish Miller have resulted in the proposition that it
is composed of two energies, one flowing directly and the other
coiling around it along its length. The similarities with eastern
philosophy are striking.
Recent
research is beginning to open new avenues to the past such as the
recognition of geo-magnetic forces by pigeons, fish and other
animals; Paul Deveraux�s �Dragon project� (researching the
connection between megaliths and earth energies) and perhaps more
relevant, the discovery of several finely carved Pre-Olmec statues
found in Guatemala which testify to a definite ability in the past
to detect earth energies, having been carved so that the naturally
magnetic areas of the rock became the temple and navel of animals
and people (such as the famous �fat boy�), including one
turtle which was found to contain both positive and negative
magnetised rock in its nose and tail. We are left today looking at
fragments of a dream time when the universe itself was considered a
sacred place from which we ourselves stepped into the light.
Alex Whitaker. 2010.
