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Stonehenge
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No place has generated so much speculation and wild theories as the standing stones of Stonehenge. After driving for miles through the rolling hills and plains of the English countryside the sight of this unusual structure makes people gasp. A walk around it only provokes more strange feelings. There's a sense that this is something very important. It taunts us with it's mystery. For over 5000 years it has stood silent vigil over the earth. It has been excavated, x-rayed, measured, and surveyed. Yet despite all that has been learned about its age and construction, its purpose still remains one of the great mysteries of the world.
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Stonehenge.
Where the demons dwell,
Where the banshees live,
And they do live well
Stonehenge.
Where a man is a man.
And the children dance,
To the pipes of pan.
Stonehenge.
Tis a magic place,
Where the moon doth rise,
With a dragon's face.
Stonehenge.
Where the virgins lie.
And the prayer of devils,
Fill the midnight sky
.And you my love,
Won't you take my hand.
We'll go back in time,
To that mystic land.
Where the dew drops cry,
And the cats meow.
I will take you there,
I will show you how.
And oh how they danced, the little children of Stonehenge, beneath the haunted moon for fear that daybreak might come too soon.
And where are they now? The little people of Stonehenge. And what would they say to us, if we were here...tonight."
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A circular group of massive, upright stones, the Stonehenge monument was once thought to have been a type of prehistoric astronomical observatory or clock for predicting the seasons and other astronomical events.
Stonehenge's axis is pointed roughly in the direction of the sunrise at the summer and winter solstices. Some scientists believe that early peoples were able to foretell eclipses of the sun and the moon by the positions of these celestial bodies in relation to the stone monument. The site may have served as an observatory where early rituals or religious ceremonies took place on specific days of the year.
The early belief that the monument was built as a temple for sky worship has never been definitively proven.
Another earlier notions was that Stonehenge was connected with the Druids, a caste of Celtic priests.
Druids did not appear in Britain until a few hundred years before the Christian era; so the belief that Stonehenge was a Druid temple seems to hold no weight with science.
A circle of 30 sarsen-stone (weighing up to 50 tons each) uprights 30.5 m (100 ft) in diameter and capped by a continuous ring of sarsen lintels was erected in the center of the site. This circle surrounds a horseshoe-shaped setting of five sarsen trilithons (formations in which two uprights support a lintel). After transporting the sarsen stones from Marlborough Downs, 30 km (20 mi), the stones were shaped and jointed together with stone hammers. Other changes involved adding, moving, and rearranging stones that had been used during the second period. No other megalithic structure in northwestern Europe displays the precision and architectural refinement that Stonehenge does. Some of the bluestones were later reerected in the center in an oval structure that contained at least two miniature trilithons, and holes were dug for the rest to be set in two concentric circles (the so-called Y and Z holes) outside the sarsen circle. This plan was abandoned unfinished, however, and the bluestones were finally rearranged (c.1550 BC) in the circle and horseshoe whose remains survive today.
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Stonehenge itself remains a steadfast observer of the world, watching the seasons change from summer to fall to winter to spring and back again thousands of times over. But it also bears witness to movements in the heavens, observing the rhythm of the Moon and, more noticeably, the Sun. For most parts of the year, the sunrise can't even be seen from the centre of the monument. But on the longest day of the year, the June 21st summer solstice, the rising sun appears behind one of the main stones, creating the illusion that it is balancing on the stone. This stone, called the "Heel Stone", sits along a wide laneway, known as the Avenue, that extends from the northeast corner of the main monument. The rising Sun creeps up the length of the rock, creating a shadow that extends deep into the heart of five pairs of sarsen stone trilithons -- two pillar stones with one laid across the top -- in the shape of a horseshoe that opens up towards the rising sun. Just as the Sun clears the horizon, it appears to hover momentarily on the tip of the Heel Stone. A few days later, on midsummer's day, the sun will appear once again, but this time, it will begin to move to the right of the heel stone. The same phenomenon happens again during the winter solstice, only it's in the opposite direction and a sunset. But both indicate a change of season.
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Why it is here?
But it is a monument made of more than just rocks. There is the henge, or a ditch and bank, that surrounds the stone circle. There is also a laneway that extends from the northeast side of the monument from the open horseshoe to the River Avon, a few kilometres away. Several stones mark this laneway, just outside the henge of the monument.
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So if this is true doesnt it suggest the evidence of cerimonies here? And why doest science believe the Druids had something to do with it. If it si an astrological phenomenon this suggest the presents of Celtic Religions.
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