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Landscape Zodiacs (Mandalas):
A landscape zodiac
(or terrestrial zodiac) is a map of the stars on a gigantic
scale, formed by features in the landscape, such as roads, streams
and field boundaries. Perhaps the best known alleged example is the
Glastonbury
'Temple of the Stars', situated around
Glastonbury in
Somerset, England. The Glastonbury Zodiac was first described by the artist, Katharine Maltwood
in the 1920s, and has remained controversial ever since, even though over fifty
more zodiacs have been since described in Britain and Europe. The
focus of the question appears to no longer be whether these
mysterious zodiacs exist - but rather, how and why they do.
The
idea that the heavens were mapped around Glastonbury
is not a new one. It is said for example, that
Katherine Maltwood's revelations had been fed by her
remembering reading 'the 13th century antiquarian
William of Malmesbury's gnomic comment that
Glastonbury was a "heavenly sanctuary on Earth."
(6)
The
occultist Dr. John Dee, following Druidic/Hermetic
traditions, made several visits to the area around
1580 from which he prepared charts and a commentary
regarding what he called 'Merlin's Secret' around
Glastonbury. Dee had noted the unusual arrangements
of prehistoric earthworks in the Glastonbury area,
as Richard Deacon, his 20th century biographer
notes. (6)
He makes clear mention of the way they apparently
represented the constellations of the Zodiac in the
following sentence:
"The Starres which
agree with their reproductions," Dee wrote, "on
the ground do lye onlie on the celestial path of
the sonne, moon and planets...thus is astrologie
and astronomie carefullie and exactley married
and measured in a scientific reconstruction of
the heavens which shews that the ancients
understode all whic today the lerned know to be
facts."
Glastonbury was mentioned as one of 'Britain's
Perpetual Choirs'
in the 1796 edition of a translation of FABLIAUX
(TALES) which includes a four line Welsh text (known
as a Triad - or 'triade'), and an English
translation of it. The theme is the Perpetual Choirs
of Britain, and the three sites given in the
translation are the 'Isle of Avalon'
(Glastonbury), 'Caer Caradoc' (Salisbury) and 'Bangor
Iscoed' (Disputed). (7)
In 1801, Iolo Morganwg
recorded that 'in each of these choirs there were
2,400 saints; that is there were a hundred for every
hour of the day and the night in rotation,
perpetuating the praise and service of God without
rest or intermission.' The function of the
choirs was to maintain the enchantment and peace of
Britain. John Michell later adopted this into his
concept of a vast landscape 'Decagon'. (see below)
The theory was next
brought to light in 1929 by
Katherine Maltwood, a Canadian artist who was
researching landscapes around Glastonbury to
illustrate a book, when she 'realised' the
zodiac in a vision.
The
Glastonbury
'Zodiac' was 'refined' by Mary Caine in the 1960's, and
has been expanded upon since.
Criticism: The idea was
examined by two independent studies, one by Ian Burrow
in 1975 and the other in
1983 by Tom Williamson and Liz Bellamy,
using standard methods of landscape historical
research. Both studies concluded that the evidence
contradicted the idea. The eye of Capricorn identified
by Maltwood was a haystack. The western wing of the
Aquarius phoenix was a road laid in 1782 to run around
Glastonbury, and older maps dating back to the 1620s
show the road had no predecessors. The Cancer boat (not
a crab as would be expected) is made up of a network of
eighteenth century drainage ditches and paths. There are
some Neolithic paths preserved in the peat of the bog
formerly comprising most of the area, but none of
the known paths match the lines of the zodiac
features. There is no support for this theory, or
for the existence of the "temple" in any form, from
conventional archaeologists or mainstream
historians. (1)
Which of these images matches
Gemini.
The biggest
problem with Katherine Maltwood�s discovery is
that she used features seen in the present-day
landscape. Some of the details are derived from
roads and field boundaries that can be
demonstrated not to have existed before the
nineteenth century. Some, which she and her
followers identified from aerial photographs
have turned out to be signs of agricultural
activity at the time the photographs were taken
(such as the �eye� of Capricorn, which was a
haystack)! Even then, the figures do not
correspond to the traditional figures of the
zodiac as we know it: The Image for Gemini is
now said to be a figure of 'Jesus', and Cancer, for instance, is
not a crab but a ship. And yet the �Glastonbury
Zodiac� is supposed to be the best attested and
most convincing of such �monuments�.
Anthony Thorley has
more recently identified over fifty Zodiacs across the British countryside and has researched the
subject in depth. It is perhaps his mention of an acausal relationship
between the consciousness of humanity and the landscape that offers
something of a glimmer of hope in trying to understand the process
that seems to be occurring here as, seemingly in collusion with
human consciousness, the British landscape appears to have
'manifested' over 50 gigantic zodiac simulacra of zodiac symbols,
'mostly
emblematic animals, in the shapes of its natural and its cultured
landscape'. Moreover, these symbols are said to appear in the same order as their
star signs around the ecliptic.
While it is
true that most of these 'zodiacs' are open to the same intrinsic
criticisms as the esteemed Katherine Maltwood's 'Temple of the
Stars' at Glastonbury, their presence opens the debate of the
existence of an dialogue between the cosmos and what Jung called
the 'collective unconscious'.
Other Examples of
Landscape Zodiacs:
 The Kingston
Zodiac, London. - Mary Caine.
(Image right: From 'The Kingston Zodiac, by Mary
Caine, 1978).
The Walsingham
Zodiac, Norfolk. St. Mary's Shrine. -
Stephen Jenkins.
The
Canterbury Zodiac, UK - 'Fen-lander': (http://fen-lander.hubpages.com/)
The Sussex
Zodiac. - Mike Collier.
Should it be
determined through future investigation that zodiacs (or
mandalas) are - as it is suggested, 'manifesting' themselves onto
the landscape without conscious intervention, then it becomes
reasonable to propose that this might be evidence of the
existence of the primitive umbilical connection
between us and the living-landscape. Should such a phenomena
exist in the west, as it is still practiced and believed to in
the orient, then regardless of the specifics and accuracy of
these zodiacs, by recognising them we have
entered back into the ancient and almost lost acausal narrative
between people and their landscapes, between our unconscious
imaginations and the cosmic structure of all things.
There is no doubting the fact that we
live within a universe that operates on a geometric basis. The motions
of the planets have long been known to follow mathematical
rules, which has enabled us to predict and understand the
motions of the heavens to the degree we do today. In Europe, it was the great Johannes
Kepler, also responsible for the re-discovery of the
'Harmony of the Spheres', who delved most deeply into the geometric nature of the orbits of planets and stars. In
Kepler�s monumental work Astronomia Nova (The New Astronomy)
in 1609 he described the intensive work that finally
resulted in his discovery of the elliptical orbits of planes
the laws of planetary motion. In this book he also drew the
following
drawing of the orbit of Mars from the Earth�s point of view.
This extraordinary step in thinking is still a long way from the
mandalas of Buddhist and Hindu cultures, which represent the
whole cosmos within the perfection of geometry.
(More
About The
Harmony of the Spheres)
Mandalas have a
ritual and spiritual significance in both Buddhist and Hindu beliefs
where they are highly regarded, and used as meditative and spiritual
'tools' or 'guides' for initiates on the path to wisdom. Martin Gray
(5) provides
examples of Buddhist 'Landscape Mandala's', highlighting that sacred
places are located according to various mythological, symbolic,
astrological, and Shamanic factors. Mandala's are generally considered to
be two
dimensional representations of the cosmos, through geometric designs, but
the
Japanese Shingon Buddhists project Mandalas over large
geographical areas, as symbolic representations of the residence
of Buddha. Gray explains:
'The
Mandalas were projected upon a number of pre-Buddhist
(Shinto) and Buddhist sacred mountains, and the practice of
monks and pilgrims was to travel from peak to peak,
venerating Buddha's and bodhisattvas residing in them. the
passage through the landscape Mandala's was made according
to a specific and circuitous route. Ascents of the sacred
mountains were conceived of as metaphorical ascents through
the world of enlightenment'.
Borobudur,
Indonesia: Mandala bridging the gap between 2-dimensional art and
3-dimensional cosmology.
 Gray
continues to say that 'the architects of these vast terrestrial
Zodiacs made their landscape a living image of the heavens'.
(2).
In fact, it is has been shown that the major Buddhist shrines, monasteries, etc. of Japan, China and
Tibet were placed within the much wider geographic context of
natural terrain to both create spiritual focus and to take
advantage of the energetic power forms in nature. The intended
effect was not only to build in auspicious places, but to
position the shrines within immense natural mandalas of form and
power. (3)
Carl Jung is said to have
recognised that the Mandala symbolically represented the 'self', but
the classical development of mandalas as meditative tools,
constructed according to particular aesthetic criteria, emerged in
India, specifically in Hinduism and later in Buddhism. Iconographic
forms similar to the mandala in construction and sometimes in
interpretation and purpose have been developed in other cultures,
but the literature currently available suggests that it was in
Hinduism and Buddhism that they achieved their most precise and
elaborate characterisation as cognitive tools. Within these
religious cultures, the mandala was most often understood as a
cosmographic representation which would assist the contemplative
achieve a cognitive identification with the metaphysical structure
and dynamism of the cosmos. (4)
In recognising this process, we are again reminded of the
possibility that such identification implies an element of
conjunction between cosmic structure and the structure of human
consciousness.
John Michell:
The theme of a
metaphysical geometric landscape arrangement is reminiscent of John Michel's discovery of
a 'Great Decagon'
across the British Landscape. It is a curious but nevertheless
factual statement that the three most important southern English
sites (Glastonbury, Stonehenge and Avebury/Silbury) are connected
through geometry accurate to 1 part in 1/000. As well as both
Glastonbury and Avebury/Silbury lying on the St. Michael's Leyline,
Glastonbury and Stonehenge are also 'nodes' on a vast landscape
'mandala/decagon' centred on
Whiteleaved Oak. Michell's attention was drawn back to
Glastonbury more than once as he became immersed in the legends and
geometry of prehistoric Britain. One of his most notable discoveries
was the proposal of a spiritual and physical 'Decagon' across the
landscape. His research led him to the 1796 texts of which spoke of
'perpetual choirs', or holy locations from which the eternal chanting of monks
maintained both the heavens, and the spiritual harmony of the
people. This vast geometric figure, (or at least the basis of one),
he realised, encompassed at
least two of the most spiritual places in Britain. (Glastonbury and
Stonehenge), The
1801 text by Iolo Morganwg added that
'in each of these choirs there were 2,400 saints; that is there
were a hundred for every hour of the day and the night in rotation,
perpetuating the praise and service of God without rest or
intermission.' The function of the choirs was to maintain the
enchantment and peace of Britain and the connection between human
consciousness and the landscape in this myth shows a clear
similarity to the Buddhist and Hindu traditions of forming landscape
Mandalas.
John Michell also
wrote at length on the subject of the tradition of a 'New Jerusalem'
being both a physical and spiritual reality. He came to believe that
Glastonbury was the 'celestial city' described and proposed in the
bible, following on the tradition that Joseph of Arimathea brought
more than just Christianity to Britain (Glastonbury), as in the 12th
century he became known as the first holder of the Grail. The concept
of a 'New Jerusalem' wasn't, in Michell's opinion, just a schematic
for a city. He was aware that while it has its origins in the text
in Revelations (Rev 21,12) which mentions the '...12 gates of the
celestial city..', it also enigmatically describes the
dimensions of the city as a perfect cube with length, width, and
height of 12,000 furlongs (fifteen hundred miles). A cube of course,
is hardly the ultimate design for a 'heaven on earth', and
there has been much work on the idea that such references are purely
symbolic, although interestingly, Michell used this as the
centre-piece for a Mandala he designed of New Jerusalem.
(More
about the Great Decagon)
Gallery of Images: Mandalas on the
Landscape.
The
'Forbidden City', Peking. Designed c. 1406 -1420.
Palmanova, Italy.
Designed 1593.
Canberra,
Australia. Designed 1913.
Nazca Mandala,
Peru. Origin Unknown.
(Simulacrum)
(Earth
Energies)
(Altered
Landscapes)
(Geometric
Alignments)
(The
Origin of the Zodiac)
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