Following the White Trail to Stonehenge Part IV

I’m kidding of course, about the snail’s head…………….sort of , but I don’t think he was included in the surveying, even though it fits nicely with everything else. This was the Dodmen’s Temple, and in England, a snail is sometimes referred to as a dodman. While watching a snail in his garden, Alfred Watkins wondered why they were called this. Then he noticed its antenna, which look like small sticks with balls on the ends.  And like all other antenna on animals, snails can move them around.  He realized that the ancient surveyors would have used staves for their surveying, and they would have been moving back and forth trying to get their sightings straight on. Their heads would have been the balls.

Snails are among the few species of animals which have both terrestrial and aquatic types. Snails also leave a luminous white trail. When the ancient surveyors created their track ways, they included flash ponds and beacon points along the way, making them luminous at night. The Queen/Quin/Gwyn Stone likely had torches in some of the grooves at night, making it a beacon after dark. The Altar stone may have symbolized the start of this luminous trail.

Snails seem to have played a bigger part in people’s lives in ancient times, and not just to eat. They were used for jewellery, decoration on clothing and baskets, certain types were used for dyes, and likely for many other things as well. Such as ‘beaded’ curtains to go over doorways or windows. They give privacy while helping to keep out the insects and allowing in the fresh air.

The Aztec Moon god was, Tecciztecatl, and he had a snail’s shell on his back. Among the Aztec, snails were connected to the Moon and rebirth. But at Chichen Itza, there is El Caracol, The Snail. This very impressive tower was used as an observatory. The windows in it were used to observe the Equinoxes and the Summer Solstice. In Mesoamerica, there is also Viracocha, the Staff God, another astronomer/surveyor.

The Welsh word for a snail is, malwoden. That definitely caught my eye in the dictionary. Investigating a bit, I found that an obsolete meaning for, mal; it means, as or like. So, As Woden or Like Woden? No, woden, in the Welsh dictionary though. A modern meaning for, mal, is a mill. Isn’t there a saying, “The mill of time grinds fine”? If it was As or Like Woden, then it just means that its shell goes round and round just as the Sun seems to do to the Earth. The mill of time can also refer to the Precession of the Equinoxes, which also go round and round, only over a much longer period of time.

The 72 years which were being kept track of at Stonehenge had to do with precession. It takes 2150 years to pass from one sign of the Zodiac to another. When the original part of Stonehenge was built, the Sun rose in Taurus on  the Vernal or Spring Equinox, and all the other important days of the eight divisions of the year had their own sign in which the Sun rose. When Taurus gave way to Aries, all the other divisions of the year also shifted into a different sign. This shifting from one sign to another has always been viewed as a time of chaos, because suddenly all the seasonal sky formations were different. The most important were the two Solstices and the two Equinoxes. The Constellations the Sun rose in at those times were thought of as the Four Pillars of the Earth. When things moved from one sign to the other, the Pillars were thought of as collapsing, and a whole new framework would have to be constructed. The framework being the four new Constellations.

So the snail is not quite so silly after all, and is connected to astronomy. In the picture below, you can see how one looks all stretched out, the back-end of the body is narrower than the front. The Sarsen Circle sits right in the middle of the Station Stone quadrangle, which is narrower on the opposite side from where I drew his head.



The stringing on the diagram above may look a little over the top, but looking at the Dulcert Portolano, a map dating to 1339, I can see that this was used as a mapping device. Most of the old portolanos were constructed using much older maps. The Piri Re’is Map dates 1513 and shows Antarctica. The World Map made by Orontius Finaeus, dated 1531, shows all of Antarctica, and a great deal of it was shown without ice. The coast is shown as ice-free, and there are mountain ranges and rivers shown open to the ocean. This hasn’t occurred for thousands of years, and yet this map is fairly accurate according to modern scientific study, and must have been mapped by someone when it was in this condition. The Antarctic wasn’t discovered by modern mariners until 1820. The Piri Re’is Map shows all of South America in 1513, but Francisco Pizarro only went from Panama to Peru in 1530, and the Spanish never explored south or further inland for quite some time after. All of which goes to show that there were people sailing the oceans a very long time ago. At the moment, who they were is a mystery, but they do seem to have passed on their knowledge, since such details still show up in the 1500’s.

There is a theory about Earth crust displacement, which suggests that the Earth’s crust ‘slipped’ south, and that Antarctica, which seems to have had a temperate climate at one time, was displaced south by 2000  miles or 30° of arc. Everything else was displaced also, Europe would have slipped south and Alaska north. It’s known that Alaska and other places on Earth which are the frozen north now, where in a temperate zone, while a great deal of our current temperate zones were under ice. This sudden displacement may have caused the end of the last Ice Age, c11,000 BCE. There would have been massive flooding after, volcanos erupting and violent earthquakes. The land, freed from the heavy burden of ice, would have rebounded and heaved upwards causing more earthquakes, volcanos erupting and flooding.

These disruptive events may have continued intermittently for several thousand years, as the land settled into its new position. Doggerland started to sink lower and some flooding occurred, starting c6500 BCE. The Storrega Slide off the coast of Norway caused huge tsunami waves which flooded  large portions of Doggerland c6200 BCE. Only the area now known as Doggerbanks would have been left, and that would have been cut off both from England and the Continent. Within a thousand years Doggerbanks was totally flooded, and nothing remains of that very large piece of land, only Heligoland, the North Sea and the English Channel are there now. At one time this area may have been Europe’s richest hunting ground, many animals roamed this area. There were also marshes filled with all sorts of birds. People had settlements there, and likely many died in the tsunami. 

 It is in the period, starting c11,000 BCE, that mass extinctions of many animals occurred, and an almost mass extinction of mankind also. If there were already high civilizations before this episode, they were likely  wiped off the map, and mankind went back to a much reduced  way of living. But among the survivors, there must still have been mariners, astronomers, surveyors, architects, mathematicians, healers and other well-educated people, who continued to pass on their knowledge. The sky would have seemed in total chaos, absolutely nothing would have looked the same up there. Observations would have had to be made from scratch again. Just as mankind had to start from scratch again. 

We hear echos of those times in ancient legends which exist among all people on Earth. We also hear about The First Time, The Golden Age, when gods trod the Earth. But they were not gods, only survivors of a much higher civilization that once existed, possibly on Antarctica. In Egypt these people were known as the Neteru, they brought agriculture, animal husbandry, mathematics, writing, astronomy, healing and all higher learning. It took some time for everything to get rolling again, but once it did, sophisticated civilizations suddenly appear. As if by magic, mankind went from Stone Age hunters, gatherers and homestead type farmers, to building cities including houses, temples and palaces, filled with rulers, priests and priestesses. There was suddenly all types of art, writing, religions complete with a pantheon of gods, and a keen knowledge of mathematics, surveying and astronomy.

Returning to the diagram above, this Square of Enlightenment has 28 lines coming from each one of the corner posts, and going to 28 separate Aubrey holes. Even the Y and Z holes look as if they were laid out by these lines. The only place on this whole net where you can construct an equal angled octagon is around the Sarsen Circle. The other two eight sided figures are no longer true octagons, and don’t sit at line conjunctions very well, whereas the true octagon does, and so does Lugh. Any stringing mistakes are mine, not their’s. The ratio between the side of the square, and the long side of the larger rectangle, is the same ratio between an Egyptian royal cubit and a common cubit. This is really not that surprising, since a great deal of Egyptian mathematics has been found there. “The Stonehenge Codes”, by D. P. Gregg deals with this in great detail.

Since this is a mapping device, and such detailed maps were usually only used by mariners in ancient and not so ancient times, it would seem that there is just a little more than a faint smell of salt water here. Stonehenge and Bluestonehenge are connected by the Avenue, and the Bluestones, which connects them to water and sailors. Even the way Lugh’s head was raised, is very much like hoisting a sail. Manannan was a sailor and merchant, so it shouldn’t be any surprise to find sea connections at Stonehenge. Ancient mariners were astronomers, that’s the way they made their way around at sea. Mariners also used to take sightings of the Sun’s position at noon, and at Stonehenge this sighting was done with the line of light which appears on the ground between Sarsen 11 and Trilithon 53-54 just before noon, not only giving them the time of day, but also giving them longitude, since the line of light sits N/S. The builders of Stonehenge were full of little tricks.

Although Lugh has the correct angles I found for him originally, one of his legs doesn’t quite make it to one of the Trilithons. However, the Trilithons were set up to correspond to major events of the Sun and Moon as seen from within the space of the Trilithon Horseshoe, and through the openings between the uprights of the Trilithons, and the openings between the Sarsen uprights in the circle. The Great Trilithon may have had a space of three feet between the uprights, but the other Trilithons only have 12-16 inches of space between the uprights. This narrowed the view considerably, and you would have to stand in one spot to see the Sun or Moon event through these openings. Each spot would have been different for each event, but because of the narrow opening, there would only be one place to stand for these sightings. One step ahead or one step back would take away the sighting.

The opening in the Great Trilithon is greater because the Summer Solstice Sunrise line does not correspond with the Winter Solstice Sunset line, although I am showing only one line. At Sunrise on the Summer Solstice, the Sun would cast the shadow of the Bluestone in front of the Great Trilithon through the opening. Winter Solstice Sunset appears between the Great Trilithon uprights, and the shadow of the Bluestone would be cast onto the Altar stone.

According to Gerald Hawkins, Winter Solstice Sunrise could be seen through the openings of Trilithon 51-52 and Sarsens 6-7. Summer Solstice Sunset could be seen through Trilithon 59-60 and Sarsens 23-24. Both maximums of the Summer Moonrise, that is the full Moon closest to Summer Solstice, could be seen through Trilithon 53-54, but the Minor position would show through Sarsens 9-10, while the Major position would show between Sarsens 8-9. On the other side, Midwinter Moonset could be seen through Trilithon 57-58. The Minor position through Sarsens 20-21, and the Major position through 21-22.

On the above diagram, are two more reasons why I think he is meant to be Lugh, at least at some point in time. The Winter Solstice Sunrise would have thrown a beam of light on his ankle. Lugh/Lugus was very popular among shoemakers, he was considered their patron. Among the Celtic artifacts, there appear ankle length pottery and metal boots. They have always been found singly and never  in pairs. They’re Lugh Shoes.

The Equinox Sunrise beam would hit him in the thigh. Lugh/Llue’s wife, Blodeuedd, and her lover Goronwy conspired to kill him. The only way he could be killed was if he had one foot on the back of a goat, and one foot on the edge of a bath tub. The spear to kill him had to have taken a year to make. Eventually they meet all the conditions and attacked Lugh/Llue, he was injured but not killed, instead he flew up into the air as an eagle. On Equinox Sunrise the shadow of one foot would be thrown onto the Trilithon, the goat, and the shadow of his other foot would appear on the Bluestones, the tub of water. The spear was the shaft of light, and since Blodeuedd is connected to Spring, this would make it the Spring Equinox Sunrise. This story may be connected to something which happened at Stonehenge when the Temple was being built. Someone may have wanted it to be Equinoctial rather than Solstitial. Obviously they didn’t get their way.

After stringing all their lines, they would have put small stakes at the corners of the octagon, and possibly at the corners of the smaller eight sided figure. Stakes would have marked the top point of Lugh’s  head, and at the angles of his hands and feet. All the Y and Z holes would have been staked also. They then took away all their lines except the red quarter and cross quarter  lines. A line would then have been strung between the stakes of the octagon and the other eight sided figure. Lugh and the Y and Z holes would just be left as stakes, no stringing required there.

In the following diagram, the red lines are the quarter and cross quarter lines. I then put in the black lines, two Aubrey holes away from each red line. Then I put in the blue lines, which sit half way between two black lines, and not on any Aubrey holes. This divides the circle into 32 pieces, and not all the angles are the same, some are larger than others. However, as can be seen, many of the lines are placed along the sides of Sarsen uprights, making me think they must have used this method to place them.


I came upon the idea for stringing the Temple after playing with a picture of Thoth. Zecharia Sitchin called this Thoth as the Winged Measurer, but I call it Thoth with the Winged Measurer. It’s the snake that has the wings. A snake can move straight or in a zig zag, and when it rests, it coils up. The measuring cord can be used straight or in a zig zag, and when you are done with it, you would coil it up. It has wings because you can take it anywhere, even across an ocean. Many snakes in Egyptian art symbolize the measuring cord, just another version of the strip of the whale’s back.




On the Gundestrup cauldron, the measuring cord is a ram horned snake. Cernunnos has one in his hand. The ram’s horns are connected to the age of Aries, and the bull in the bottom of the cauldron is connected to Taurus. The panels of the Gundestrup cauldron tell a story about astronomy and the calendar at a time when one Zodiac sign was close to changing from Taurus to Aries. Taurus is still alive though, and Aries is not yet in command. Manannan doesn’t seem to have been part of the Celtic mythologies in Continental Europe where the cauldron was made, so no strip of the whale’s back appears, but there is a whale in the panel of Cernunnos. Someone is riding on its back, and this little picture has always been a mystery, but it likely refers back to Manannan.

Everything I have discovered at Stonehenge, started with the Queen/Quin/Gwyn stone, and Wodin upside down on the Ash tree. After that, Thoth took a hand. In ancient times it was believed that if you asked Thoth for help, he would help you. When I was trying to draw the Trilithon Horseshoe with Lugh hanging there, I had a very frustrating time trying to get the perspective correct. Since I had been reading about Thoth at the time, I thought, “Well, Thoth old boy, if you’re still around, I could sure use a hand with this”. Half an hour later, I had the drawing done, without once having to change a line or erase anything, so I guess, Thoth gave me a hand, and has continued to do so. Not long after playing with the above picture, I discovered that I am now Ophiuchus and not Sagittarius any longer. Ophiuchus is the Snake Holder, which had me laughing quite hysterically, and yet……………it felt like a stamp of approval, as if Thoth had taken me under his wing.


Alfred Watkins, “The Old Straight Track”

Arthur Cotterell, “The Encyclopedia of Mythology”

Caytlin and John Matthews, “Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom”

Charles Hapgood, “The Path of the Pole”

Charles Hapgood, “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings”

Fernand Neil, “The Mysteries of Stonehenge”

Gerald S Hawkins and John B White, “Stonehenge Decoded”

Graham Hancock, “Fingerprints of the Gods”

Y Geiriadur Mawr, The Complete Welsh-English English-Welsh Dictionary

Zecharia Sitchin, “When Time Began”

Photograph of the snail,

Thoth with the Winged Measurer, “When Time Began”, Zecharia Sitchin

Groundplan for Stonehenge, Ancient Monuments Branch, Ministry of Public Building and Works, England

Groundplan of the Sarsen Circle, “Stonehenge Decoded”, Gerald S Hawkins and John B White

Dulcert Portolano, Wikipedia


Following the White Trail to Stonehenge Part III

The Stonehenge Temple

Since I haven’t  a clue what was meant by the double Bluestone circle, I’ll just skip to the completed Temple. That is, the Sarsen Circle, the Bluestone Circle, the Trilithon Horseshoe, and the Bluestone Horseshoe. I had been looking at this setup since reading Alfred Watkins’ book, “The Old Straight Track”. The Gwyn stone he writes about, names Stonehenge the Ash. So it is the Cosmic Ash. Among the Scandinavian mythology we find that Wodin hung upside down on the Ash tree to gain enlightenment of the Runes, and was pierced by his spear as he hung there. Rune stones were used as oracle stones, they predicted things. It is interesting to note that there is a hill close to Avebury named Woden Hill. Odin/Wodin/Woden are all the same god. So I hung Wodin upside down on the Ash tree.


There is absolutely no way that I can prove that this figure ever hung there, but it does ‘tie’ everything else together. However, here we find the star from the Sator Square. This star formation gave us the message TEREO OPERA AESET, which I translated as: “Attending carefully to the workings (of the spheres) is an asset (to understanding)”. An apt Motto for Stonehenge. One of the things we forget about Stonehenge is that it wasn’t just a calendar and an astronomical observatory, it also gives land directions, and there was a great deal of ‘stretching of the cord’ that went on in that whole area. Surveying is a direct result of astronomy, and was very much tied together in ancient times. Stonehenge may have been ‘head office’ for the Dodmen, who were the surveyors, but who may also have been geologists.

I’m sure they didn’t just go around the British Isles surveying to find out how big the place was just to pass the time. Educated people have always looked for the wealth of any area they inhabited. At first they were likely looking for different types of stone, the Cumbrian Axe Factory dates c4000 BCE. But they would also have been looking for metals and gem stones, and  anything unusual. The UK and Ireland did become well-known for tin, copper, silver and gold. Amber and Jet were also popular items. The other very important commodity which was found was salt. Salt is something we take for granted in our modern world, but in Neolithic times it would have been worth a great deal. Salt wasn’t just to cook with, food could be preserved using salt, even meat, fowl and fish. It gave a longer storage life to food, making for a better variety in the winter. In hot climates it stopped food from going bad. Fresh hides, salted down, rolled up and kept in a cool place will keep for months, or until you had a chance to tan them. It made for less of a rush dealing with the hides while you were dealing with the butchering. Salt taxes existed for hundreds of years because it was a commodity everyone needed. There were massive deposits of salt at Droitwich, mined since ancient times. The natural brine there contains 2 1/2 pounds of salt per gallon. This is ten times stronger than sea water, only the Dead Sea is saltier. Salt may have been one of England’s earliest export items.

At first I was taken up by the triangles that this figure was made up of. There is one equilateral triangle, three isosceles triangles with angles 30°,120°,30°, and six right-angled triangles with angles 30°, 60°, 90°. I then noticed that his arms, legs and head, each showed one Bluestone within them. I guess that flash of lightning must have hit me then. I realized that what I was seeing was a body hanging upside down in the Cauldron of Immortality. The five trilithons are the cauldron and the Bluestones the magic fluid in the cauldron. The whole Temple is a cauldron. The Sarsen Circle is the top rim of the cauldron and the Bluestone circle the magic fluid in that cauldron. The Earth itself was considered a Cauldron of Immortality, and She is, since all life comes from Her and returns to Her in a never-ending cycle. This figure is also ‘a thing of beauty’, just like an apple, it looks like five seed pockets containing five seeds. The Ash tree in Avalon.

Although this is a Celtic interpretation, there may be another symbolic meaning which comes from Egyptian mythology. It concerns the birth of Ra. In one version, Ra was born from an egg, laid by Thoth as the Ibis, upon the Mound of Creation, which was Hathor as the Milky way. The Sarsen Circle would then be the Mound of Creation. The Trilithon Horseshoe, the egg. The Bluestones then represent the Primordial Waters, which was symbolic of the Egyptian goddess Neith. Star light, star bright then becomes Ra born from the egg.


The Bluestones may have been polished, and when this stone is polished it can look very much like lapis lazuli. Only the very best clear blue lapis was used for jewellery, furniture inlay, etc., but lapis can also have white veining and small inclusions which makes it look much like polished Bluestone. From a distance, the polished Bluestones would have looked like water.

The following is by Donald MacKenzie: China and Japan

“The colours of stones were supposed to reveal the characters of the spirits that inhabited them. In Egypt, for instance, the blue turquoise was connected with the mother-goddess Hathor, who was, among other things, a deity of the sky and therefore the controller  of the waters above the firmament as well as the Nile. She was the mother of Sun and Moon. She was appealed to for water by agriculturalists and for favourable winds with seafarers. The symbol used on such occasions was a blue stone. It was a “luck” stone that exercised an influence on the elements controlled by the goddess. In the Hebrides a blue stone used to be reverenced by the descendants of ancient sea-rovers. Martin in his Western Isles tells of such a stone, said always to be wet, which was preserved in a chapel dedicated to St. Columba on the Island of Fladda. “It is an extraordinary custom,” he has written, “when fishermen are detained in the isle by contrary winds, to wash the blue-stone all round, expecting thereby to procure a favourable wind, which, the credulous tenant living in the isle says, never fails, especially if a stranger wash the stone.”

 Perhaps that is why they had Bluestonehenge down by the Avon. There are supposed to have been many fires burning there, likely beacon fires to guide sailors to that location. If Stonehenge became a pilgrimage place, which it is starting to look as if it was, then one of the closest places to sail to would be where Bluestonehenge was located. This was their sea connection, home port for Stonehenge, the Avenue leads you straight there. Perhaps there was a whole ‘staff’ there, and guards of course. A welcoming committee, perhaps with refreshments and blessings, etc. And perhaps those sailing away would have been given special blessings before their departure, after dousing the Bluestones with water for favourable winds.

I mustn’t forget about Wodin, who hung upside down on Yggdrasil. Ygg was another name for Wodin and, drasil, means a horse. But it is understood that Yggdrasil was the Cosmic Ash. Wodin hung upside down there to gain enlightenment of the Runes. Each trilithon looks like the Ogham symbol for Luis or Rowan, and Rowan sticks were used to cut Runes on. If this figure, created out of cords, hung on the trilithons, the shadows of the cords on the trilithons would look like Runes. Part of him even looks like a spear head.

One other mention comes from Diodorus Siculus, who wrote that the Sun god Apollo, went to the land of the Hyperboreans every nineteen years, this having to do with eclipse cycles, and danced and played upon the cithara all day. A cithara was an ancient Greek lyre which was horseshoe-shaped. As the Sun moved around so would the shadows of the cords of the Sun god, making it look as if he were dancing and playing a cithara, I suppose…………….. By the time Diodorus came up with this story, Stonehenge had already become part of mythology.

One of the problems with really ancient history in the UK and Ireland, is that we don’t know what sort of gods and goddesses were being followed at the time. All we have is the Celtic, Pictish, Saxon and Scandinavian mythologies, but we don’t know what came before that. Picts, however, were from the same DNA group as the Iberian Celts and the Windmill Hill people, not different people, just more of them. Freyja was a reflection of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, the original triple goddess, who later becomes Brigid in the UK and Ireland, and who still exists in St. Brigit. However, Brigid also had a connection to Hathor, another Mother goddess. Hathor was patron of mining, and connected to healing, particularly to do with women and children. Brigid was patron of smithcraft, and also connected to healing concerning women and children. Even St. Brigit was known for her devotion to women and children.The Hebrides are named for Bride or Brigid, the very place where people were still washing the “blue-stone”.

However, there are many clues in these myths which correspond to things we find at Stonehenge and other such places. One of these is Manannan’s Crane Bag. Manannan had a pet white Crane, whom he loved dearly. When she died, he made a bag out of her skin, in which he kept his treasures. Manannan’s Crane was Cygnus, which was circumpolar at one time, but at Stonehenge the major stars of Cygnus; Deneb, Sadr and Altair, start to drop below the horizon part of the night around the autumn Equinox c5000 BCE. They begin to stay longer below the horizon as time goes by. c3500 BCE they disappear below the horizon and don’t reappear before Sunrise. At that point, Manannan’s Crane died.

The Crane Bag is the big white bank at Stonehenge, and likely at many of the other places surrounded by white banks, and all his treasures were contained within the confines of Stonehenge’s big white bank. At high tide the Crane Bag seemed full, but at low tide it seemed flat. On a night of the full Moon, you would be able to see the white bank at Stonehenge as well as the Temple, but at the dark of the Moon you would still see the white bank, but everything else would just look black. You may not have been able to see the Temple at all, so the Crane Bag was flat at low tide.

However, there are egg shaped ‘circles’, possibly symbolizing the egg which Thoth laid on the Mound of Creation. One of the strangest examples is Callanish which actually looks like a long-necked, long-legged bird, although I’m sure that wasn’t Mr. B. Somerville’s intention when he drew this. I added the red line, but the rest is from Mr. Somerville. Arbor Low is 5° east and 5° south of Callanish, and there is a recumbent white stone, egg-shaped ‘circle’ there. Those ancient astronomer/surveyors seem to have had an odd sense of humour.


There is overlapping symbolism about Cygnus in the UK and Ireland. Celtic mythology over top of Egyptian mythology, which continues on into the monasteries in the Book of Kells and in the Book of Lindisfarne. At Newgrange and Knowth there are dished stones with orb spiders carved on them. Apart from being symbolic of the Primordial Waters, Neith, is also the Spinner of Destinies and as such is sometimes represented as a spider. She is equated to Inanna/Ishtar, Venus again. Neith was married to Khnum, the Divine Potter, creator of gods and men. Khnum is another aspect of Min, Khem and Thoth. The people of Uist may have had an Osiris cult. They created mummies out of different people’s body parts, and do seem to have preserved them above ground for at least five hundred years before they were properly buried. In Egypt, an effigy of Osiris’ mummy was brought out once a year and paraded out into the desert and back. Creswell Crags is said to have an Ibis head and an egg carved on the rock close to the entrance of one of the caves. It’s been dated c10,500 BCE. There are others who deny that this is an Ibis.

However, it made me curious enough to check out what was happening at Stonehenge at the time. On November 12, 10,501 BCE (this date was corrected) Cygnus, which sits on the Milky Way, came flying above the horizon and then turned straight up into a  vertical position, almost right above where the Avenue would be at Stonehenge. The Milky Way sat NE/SW and passed through zenith overhead, splitting the dome of the night sky in two. This amazing sight may have started all the ancient connections to Cygnus. Some of the ice was obviously already gone when someone made those carvings at Creswell Crags, and Cygnus may have been seen as the saviour of mankind after the ice started to melt. It became a symbol of resurrection connected to both Perseus and Jesus. At Callanish there seems to have been a rebirth cult connected to waterfowl. By the time Callanish was built, Cygnus was reappearing again above the horizon before Sunrise.

The Isle of Man in named for Manannan, the first of these, was said to be Little Manannan mac Alliot, a druid of the Tuatha De Danann. Oirbsen was his proper name, connected to Oir I wonder? The Enlightened One perhaps? Usually he is called Manannan Mac Llyr, Mac Llyr just meaning ‘son of the sea’. Manannan is an archetype of astronomer/sailor/merchant/king, and basically a well-educated man, who owned a magic horse which could travel as well by sea as by land. Here we are, back at the Trilithon Horseshoe again. This is where you could learn astronomy and surveying, and how to navigate at sea.

In 3000 BCE, being able to navigate the seas would have been a very important talent, particularly if you lived on an island split away from the rest of the Continent. Some of the Windmill Hill people’s ancestors had been seafarers, and some of them were also, or they wouldn’t have made it to the Isles. Once a sailor, always a sailor, and no doubt these sailors would have kept on with their trade, going back and forth to the Continent. It would allow them to check out other lands, to see what they had for trade goods, and to trade their own goods. It also gave them the opportunity to see how things were done in other places, and pick up on any new innovations and inventions. While they were at it, they could tell everyone what a marvelous place they came from. A little advertising never hurts when you live on an island, especially when you had such an interesting, magical place as Stonehenge. You need a drawing card when you live on an island, and Stonehenge was it by 2500 BCE. Perhaps the new sailors, who had learned all their lessons at Stonehenge, left from Bluestonehenge after washing the Bluestones, and being blessed by whoever was in charge of such things.

My own name for this figure made out of cords is, Lugh. Lugh of the long arm or hand. Lugh was the god of light and enlightenment. On the above groundplan of Stonehenge with the figure of Lugh, he has a red line coming off one of his arms. On a sunny day, there is a line of light which appears on the ground at this position every day just before noon. It slowly diminishes, and when it is gone, it is apparent noon at Stonehenge. This line of light only appears between the Trilithon and the Sarsen Circle, it doesn’t penetrate into the centre at all. This line of light also sits exactly N/S. So everyday you would know when it was noon, and also have a refresher on the directions, and this is Lugh’s long arm or hand. There are other things which happen to him there which makes me call him Lugh, but will deal with him separately some other time.

I think this figure hung at an angle, His head was high up, and his legs low to the ground. He could have been put up and taken down very quickly if toggles were used to hang him up with, the toggles would have been at the back of the stones. The only place where you could see right into the Temple was between Sarsen uprights 1 and 30. All the other openings had Bluestones impeding your view into the centre of the Temple. You might have seen small bits, but not enough to get the full view of what was really going on in there. I doubt if the population would have been allowed to come very close. It would have been impressed upon them, that it was too dangerous, after all, this was the full power of the Sun god.

The pulleys are a little higher than they would have needed to be, but this makes it clearer to see. Once they attached the rope to the pulleys, they wouldn’t want to take it down all the time, so they would have been able to untie it from the toggle. There would have been two holes drilled in the toggle to connect the rope. To connect it, one end of the rope would be passed through a hole, then looped around the rope coming from the pulleys, down through the hole again, and then the end would go through the loop from back to front. Now the line would be secured to the toggle, and it could have been undone each time they were through with Lugh for the time being. The ‘arms’ could have been pushed up by using a long forked stick, they didn’t hang that high. The feet, also on toggles, would have been tied down using an upright or possibly a bluestone behind the trilithon.Once the figure was up far enough, the end of the rope could have been held down with a good-sized rock.

I’m not sure what he may have been made of. Something shiny that would have added to the effect, but pliable so it could be stored easily or hidden. Perhaps braided cord with metal beading. By the time the Temple was built, there were metals being mined and bronze was being made. Perhaps a whole host of things were used besides metals, such as amber, jet, and quartz, anything shiny that would flash in the sun. Even fish scales would have done the job, we still make sequins from them today.

The idea for the pulleys came from reading that the lintel of the Great Trilithon had mortise holes on the top of it as well as on the bottom. The question has always been, why? At least that was my question. One theory is that there may have been another small trilithon on top, but when I read that, it gave me the answer to how they managed to lift this figure’s head so high. It is twenty-two feet in the air, not that handy to get at, particularly if you didn’t want to be seen.

The Altar stone, which has all the mica flecks in it, lay NE/SW. I have not put it on the groundplan since it would look rather rude, although that may have been part of the symbolism. The month of June is associated with Holly, which is a symbol of fatherhood and paternity, and is that battle waging spear. Both Lugh and Wodin are connected to fertility and both had magic spears. Holly is also associated to balance and equilibrium, which must be at the root of the building project. There are many theories about the building of the Temple, although, I’m not sure if anyone has figured it out, but balance and equilibrium probably had a lot to do with it. On the other hand, he may have started out being Min the Moon god, whose festival day was June 21, and who was a symbol of fertility and fatherhood. What may have occurred here was a religion which evolved over time, changing from the Moon god to the god of Light.

A good deal of stagecraft went on here. The population may have been allowed in the complex, but not that close, certainly not in the Temple. Priests and priestesses only, after all, this was where they welcomed the Sun/Moon god. The sparkles and shadows of the altar stone would also show the operators that this was the longest or shortest day. On the longest day, our pointy headed fellow would have been all lit up, and the Altar stone would sparkle beautifully. On the shortest day his cords would have been all lit up at Sunset when the Sun would shine right through him. Only part of the Altar stone would sparkle, because one of the Bluestones in the Horseshoe would cast a shadow down the centre.

Going back to Celtic thought. It was believed that the Sun was at his most powerful at the Summer Solstice, and that the doors to the Otherworld opened emitting three beams of light. Only the three trilithons where his head and arms appear would look as if they were emitting beams of light. His feet would have been attached to the bottom of the other two trilithons, unseen by the audience outside of the Temple.

The period between the end of October and December 21, was considered a dead time by Celts. Which is understandable since all crops would be in, the meat butchered, and there would be no more berries or other fruit to pick. There is one other reason why this would have been considered a dead time. No Sunrise would penetrate into the centre of the Temple between the end of October and December 20, but on the twenty-first, Sunrise would appear between the trilithons again, casting a beam of light into the centre.

One December 21, Celts celebrated Yule. It was the night that they welcomed Cernunnos, who returned on that night. Cern un nos translates to Horn One Night, and he was only celebrated on one night. He was the consort of the Mother (Earth) and watched over all her children (all life on Earth) while she slept during the winter. Since he started off as being another aspect of the Sun god, this makes perfect sense. Seeing the Sun shining right through him on that evening would certainly have had its effect. Was this figure the original Horned One? That pointy head and all. Although he would have represented the Sun god, a star come down to Earth. One of the things found at Stonehenge, was five antler tines carefully placed in one of the Y or Z holes (the author doesn’t say which). I have seen Cernunnos with harts antlers, one place is on the Gundestrup cauldron. A hart is a male deer over five years of age, and a five-year old would have five tines on its antlers. These antler tines placed carefully in one of the holes were quite likely connected to Cernunnos.

I don’t think he hung there all the time, only at special times, like the longest and shortest day, perhaps the equinoxes also, but I think he may have been used on a day of a Solar eclipse. Let’s say that there was a Solar eclipse on June 21. Everyone, including the priest/priestess, would be looking at the spot where the Sun had disappeared. The priest/priestess goes on and on, perhaps brandishing their green stone axe, and the people would hold their breath, perhaps kneeling with bowed heads to the ground. Will it come back, they wonder? While they were all doing  their praying, others within the Sarsen circle would be getting ready to hoist Lugh. The Sun would reappear fully, and when the priest/priestess and the people turn back to look at the Temple, there would be the pointy headed fellow, just to prove that everything was alright, he was still with them.

That night the operators would have taken him down again. Where did they store him? Perhaps under the Altar stone. I realize that this is a very large block of stone, but if it was on a pivot in the centre, and not quite lying on the ground, it could have been moved quite easily. Just a bit, so that the priests could grab their hidden man. Perhaps they used their fat cigarette shaped pieces of flint as miniature rollers.

Were the people, who built this part of Stonehenge, Celts as we understand them? Genetics would suggest that they were, and what happened at Stonehenge does seem to have become part of their mythology. There do seem to have been Druids around when Silbury Hill was built. Among the items found at the core were Oak, Hazel and Mistletoe.  Using the Ogham symbolism, Oak is solid foundation, solid protection and the doorway to enlightenment/the mysteries. This is indicative of the Druids themselves, they were the doorway to enlightenment/ the mysteries, they were the teachers.The Hazel is connected to the Hazels of Wisdom, this is all the knowledge that the Druids taught.The Mistletoe was particularly sacred and was named All Heal. It was seen as a spiritual connection to the fertility of the land. A mistletoe berry has four semicircular formations around a central fifth circle. These represent the four cities of the gods, which are the four directions, and the etheric centre which connects the three planes of existence. It was considered very sacred if found on Oak trees, which isn’t that often, and it was gathered with golden sickles at the full Moon closest to the Winter Solstice. The Oak tree was seen as a powerful life force, since it lived so long, and Mistletoe from Oak would be considered that much more potent as a fertility symbol.

Bran, who belongs to Welsh mythology, owned the Cauldron of Immortality, given to him by two giants. Bran’s Cauldron of Immortality was time, and the calendar which keeps a record of this time. Stonehenge was the Cauldron or calendar, and it was all set up according to the movements of the Sun and Moon, the two giants. We always think of immortality at a personal level, we’ll live forever. However, our ancestors’ descendents are their immortality, just as our descendents will become our immortality. Genetic immortality. The song “Rise Again” by The Rankin Family, says it very well, “We rise again in the faces of our children…….”

There are some characters, such as Manannan/Manawydan, Bran and Branwen, who seem to only have connections to the UK and Ireland, but Lugh was well-known throughout all Celtic lands. The Romans equated him with Mercury, and on the Continent he became known as Gaulish Mercury. However, Celts likely still called him Lugus. After Christianity became the state religion, most places dedicated to Lugus, Lugh, Belinus, Wodin, Odin, Woden, Wotan and Gaulish Mercury were replaced by shrines dedicated to St. Michael. They are all connected to light, enlightenment and justice. Lugh and St. Michael also have connections to lightning as does Mount Carmel.

Elijah challenged the priests of Baal, to see whose god was the most powerful. Their god had to set the sacrifice on the altar on Mount Carmel ablaze, but the Baal priests failed. Elijah pours water all over the altar and the sacrifice, and a bolt of lightning shot out of the sky, crisping the sacrifice and drying all the water on the altar, this being taken as a sign that his God was supreme. Almost as an afterthought it is mentions that it rained heavily after that, ending the drought which had been occurring at the time.

Mercury was Hermes among the Greeks, and they equated him to Thoth. With St. Michael we are back to the lines of incidence, the St. Michael-Apollo line and the St. Michael’s Ley. Apollo was another god of light. So it would seem that these two lines of incidence were based on light, enlightenment and justice, and travelled a great distance. They pass through many holy sites all the way from Mount Carmel to Skellig Michel and possibly Heligoland, which means Holy Land and was also connected to gods of light, enlightenment and justice. Thoth was also connected to justice, he was present when the deceased’s heart was weighed against Maat’s feather.

But just as the White Trail trails all over the map, this story has also trailed away from Stonehenge. So getting back there, the geometric figure that I name Lugh, and which I originally found through the Queen/Quin/Gwyn Stone, did originally have a very important function. Twenty years sit between the time I first hung Wodin on the Ash Tree and my discovery of him in this other role, but that will have to be for next time.


Alfred Watkins, “The Old Straight Track”

Droitwich, Wikipedia

Fernand Neil, “The Mysteries of Stonehenge”

Gerald S. Hawkins and J. B White, “Stonehenge Decoded”

The Ogdoad, Wikipedia

Photograph of Stonehenge, the Science Photo Library

Groundplan of the Sarsen Circle, “Stonehenge Decoded”

Diagram of Callanish by B. Somerville, “Stonehenge Decoded” but originally in “The Journal of the British Astronomy Association, 1912”

Lugh and Lifting Lugh, J Rankin

Following the White Trail to Stonehenge Part II

The Calendar at Stonehenge

The builders of Stonehenge I were using the Aubrey hole circle as a calendar, not just for keeping track of days and years, but eclipses and planets as well. They also kept track of a period of 72 years. This is close to the 71.667 years it takes to move through one degree of one sign of the Zodiac, but 72 years also figures in the cycles of Jupiter and Venus. It would take Jupiter 71.1708 years to go around the Sun 6 times. Venus goes around the Sun 8 times while the Earth goes around the Sun 5 times. It takes the Earth two days longer to complete this interesting cycle. Due to this ratio, Venus appears to draw a pentagram around the Sun every 8 years. The 5/8 ratio is also the Sacred Mean, Golden Section, or Golden Proportion, etc. This ratio can be seen in many things, including humans. Leonardo Da Vinci used this ratio in his artwork, the Vitruvian Man being an example of this ratio in mankind. Venus would take 72 years of 365.25 days each, less 18 days to complete 9 pentagrams around the Sun. The Saros Cycle was used in ancient times to calculate eclipses. This cycle was 18.03 years, 4 X 18.03 = 72.12 years.

There was a very close conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the Sun at Stonehenge in 3133 BCE. They rose together, Venus at 52°  05′ 25.1″, Jupiter at 53° 24′ 52.6″, and the Sun at 54° 05′ 22.1″. These measurements were taken from the centre of each orb, and after the Sun was standing on the horizon. Venus was over the Heel Stone. The blue lines in the diagram below show the positions.


For six mornings these three rose close together, Jupiter slowly pulling ahead. That first really close day, Mercury rose almost two hours ahead of them, the Messenger of the Gods. Then Enlil (Jupiter), and his twin grandchildren Inanna (Venus) and Shamash ( the Sun) rose in a nice wee group. Five hours later Mars comes along, the rear guard, the warrior. The night before, the full Moon rose at 9:15 pm at the orange square, and the Milky Way was behind the Heel Stone, which had Menkalinan directly above it. All and all, it was quite magical, and it is easy to understand how whole histories became attached to these planets, the Sun and the Moon.

This event would be handy to start tracking the cycles of Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, he shows up late in the afternoon of the first day of the really close conjunction. Each one of those cycles could have been counted on the Aubrey hole circle, you would just have to know exactly where they all rose that day to start keeping track of them. One marker for each planet, and when they had each done their cycle, you would know how long it took for each one. A very handy device, the Aubrey hole circle.

The Friar’s Heel Stone is believed to have been named Freyja’s He-ol Stone at one time. He, is Welsh for, to sow, and ol means, track. So it is Freyja’s To Sow Track. Unless the word was actually, heol, which is an obsolete Welsh word for road. So it could be Freyja’s Road instead. Freyja has her root in the Sumerian goddess Inanna, who seems to have been the original triple goddess. She is connected to the planet Venus and the constellations Virgo ( Ab Sin in Sumerian), and Gemini. Her twin brother was Shamash the Sun god, her father was Sin, the Moon god, and her grandfather was Enlil, Jupiter.

There are other places which take in account Venus’ movements. Newgrange, in Ireland, Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales, and Maeshowe in the Orkneys. Likely there are other places in the UK and Ireland also which would have kept track of her. She was a favourite in Mesoamerica and South America, which do seem to have strange connections to things in the Middle East and Egypt. Astronomy was practiced heavily in that area, the Mayans and Incas are quite well-known for this.

The date of this conjunction fits very well with the beginning of construction at Stonehenge. At the moment, it is believed to have been started between 3200-3100 BCE. The purple diagonal line coming from the rectangle, shows the Winter Moonrise Minor point in 3000 BCE. Since this sight line had only moved about one-third of a degree by 2500 BCE, it was saved when the Temple was built. You could stand against Sarsen 1, and sight over Z1, Y1, Aubrey hole 1, and on to the two posts on the bank of the Avenue. This being Winter Moonrise Minor, it was an important spot. If the full Winter Moon appeared in this area, there would be an eclipse of the Moon and/or the Sun at both the Spring and/or the Fall Equinox.

Originally, I chose these Aubrey holes, thinking there may have been two cycles of 72 years being kept track of. If you were counting the years clockwise on the Aubrey holes, one cycle would go from Aubrey hole 1, all the way around the circle and on to Aubrey hole 16. This would be 72 years. The second cycle could have started at Aubrey hole 29, and ended after 72 years at Aubrey hole 44. Finding out that this was Winter Moonrise Minor in 3000 BCE was both coincidental and highly surprising. I felt that there was something important about this rectangle and its diagonal, but the posts on the bank are not numbered or lettered, and no one ever seems to mention them. However, the diagonal line cuts the corners of the rectangle into 48° and 42° angles, a ratio of 8/7 = 1.1428571, which is the same ratio as the maximum Earth-Moon distance/minimum Earth-Moon distance. Seems those posts on the bank were important after all, very important.

Astronomy had been practiced there for several thousand years before the Aubrey hole circle was created. Those first posts on the Equinox line attest to that. Just because there was no megalithic building going on in 7000 BCE,  doesn’t mean that these people weren’t using some other sort of markers for all those important events. Important events and the heavenly bodies used as points of reference have changed over time, it would be impossible to say just what these people kept track of.

Large portable rocks may have been used instead of permanent markers, just as they may have been used at other henge monuments containing no large standing stones. They aren’t there anymore because they were probably removed to be used for something else. These people didn’t just build the Aubrey hole circle on a whim, they were well-educated in astronomy and surveying. The very first line strung for the Aubrey holes was on the Equinox line. This henge monument may just have been a technical improvement, rather than the beginning of astronomy there, which seems to have been practiced there for four thousand years before it was built. Even the Windmill Hill people had been in the UK and Ireland for over a thousand years, perhaps two thousand. They would have been well acquainted with the night sky in that area by then.

This may be true for other henge monuments and stone circles. There are stone circles made out of boulders and henge monuments with no standing stones. They may all have started as plain circles made from large rocks and/or posts. The henges and standing stones being a later, more permanent version of the original. Stonehenge was just the most elaborate. Not all these circles have the same amount of stones, and not all stones seem to line up with anything happening in the sky, at least not that we’ve found so far. All of them were used for astronomy and calendar keeping, including the causewayed camps. Not all are circular, some are flattened on one side, others are egg-shaped. Some may have been very simple, keeping track of the Moon and the eight divisions of the year, while others may have been more elaborate with eclipse tracking. The Windmill Hill people seem to have been the originators of all of these, including the Temple at Stonehenge. We seem to be missing a very large portion of history in the UK and Ireland. Very important history.

All ancient astronomers kept notations of some sort, and in the UK and Ireland we may be seeing a standard practice. Build a calendar ‘circle’ for keeping track of the sky, then keep notations on a ‘circle’ drawn on bark, hide or a slab of Beech. This way the astronomer/surveyors could compare notes, so that they could gain more knowledge, not only about the sky, but how big the landmass was that they found themselves on. Unfortunately, their notations rotted away long ago, and their monuments have stood silent for thousands of years.

It’s quite likely that these places were used for more than astronomy, such as rituals to do with the festival days, marriages, last rites, etc. They may have been weekly market places, clinics, law courts, or perhaps meeting places for clan chiefs and their retainers. Perhaps they were considered neutral ground. Circle casting traditions likely had their beginnings with these places. When circles are cast, they should be thought of as bubbles standing outside of time, a place separate from the surroundings, which is what all henges do, they separate the area within from the area surrounding it.

The Aubrey holes have always remained a mystery. Cremated remains were found in many of them but not in others. Great pains were taken to place these holes the same distance apart, although they are not all the same diameter, and they were not all placed in the correct spot. But that’s only human, I suppose. It isn’t known whether any posts made of wood or stone ever stood in them, although they did use some of them when they surveyed for the Temple. There is a debate about this subject at the moment, because it is thought that one of the holes has compacted chalk at the bottom. The hole in question is Aubrey hole 7, which has recently been excavated again. This has led to the theory that Bluestones once stood in them. However, since Aubrey hole 7 was used to hold a post in connection to laying out the Temple and the Y and Z holes, this compacted chalk could just as well have come from a wooden post, they didn’t need the Bluestones for that. Either way, it makes no difference to the calendar.

First let’s look at the number 56 which is an interesting one. It can be divided 2 x 28, 4 x 14, 8 x 7. It also gives the 19, 19, 18 and 10, 9, 9 cycles associated with eclipses there. 6.5 x 56 = 364 which is only one day short of one calendar year.

The Winter Moon travels back and forth across the Avenue over a period of 18.6 years. When standing in the centre of Stonehenge today, and sighting over D or F, the full Winter Moon appears at these locations in a cycle of 19, 19, 18 years. It appears over the Avenue in a cycle of 10, 9, 9 years. If the full Moon closest to the Winter Solstice appears either over D or F, there will be an eclipse of the Sun and/or the Moon at the time of the full Moon closest to the Spring and/or Fall Equinox. If the full Moon closest to the Winter Solstice appears over the Avenue within a space of about 7°, there will be an eclipse of the Sun and/or Moon at the time of the full Moon closest to the Winter and/ or Summer Solstice. There was an eclipse of the Moon there on June 25, 1964 which appeared between the uprights of the Great Trilithon, or at least it would have if one of its uprights wasn’t lying on the ground now.

The above markers, D and F, were not being used for this sighting in 3000 BCE. Winter Moonrise Minor was on the purple diagonal line and Moonrise Major, which sits almost 20° northwest has no marker at present except the end of the inner bank. The midway point would have been to the right of post hole 3A. Summer Solstice Sunrise would have occurred to the right of post hole 4A. The Heel Stone would have been a quarter mark, 5° from the Moonrise Minor point. If the Moon was travelling back northwest from its Minor position, once it got to the Heel Stone, it would be in the zone for eclipses. But the Heel Stone also kept track of Venus, which passes between the Earth and the Sun every 584 days. Ten times around the Aubrey hole circle plus 24 days. It was likely used to keep track of Jupiter, and perhaps the other planets and major stars. These people seem to have liked multi purpose things.

So how did they do it? The years were counted clockwise on the Aubrey holes, starting at Aubrey hole 1, and the days were counted counter-clockwise on the spaces between the Aubrey holes. In this counting of days, the Aubrey holes represented Sun up (a day spot), and the spaces in between represented Sun down (a night spot).

Before any counting started, the operators would have to wait for the proper day. In Gerald S. Hawkins’ book “Stonehenge Decoded” there are tables showing eclipses of the Sun and Moon for a period of years between 1592 BCE and 1452 BCE. (1) (2) In that time period there were three eclipses of the Sun on June 21st. 

My guess is that they started their count  on the evening of June 21st, close to a day or night of a Solar or Lunar eclipse, starting a cycle of 10, 9, 9 years, which would mean that the full Moon the winter before would have been over the Avenue in the danger zone. In 3154 BCE, there was a partial eclipse of the Sun on June 21, this may have been their starting day. Since the biggest reason for watching out for eclipses in ancient times, was to make people believe that the shaman/priest/priestess controlled this event, not only would the population be awed at this display, but it would give the perfect start for the operators, particularly since it was only a partial eclipse. Wonder, did the ones in charge brandish their green stone axes at it? But that story is for another time.

During the first year of our lives, only the days, weeks and months are used to give our age. We don’t turn one until 365 days have gone by. And so it was at Stonehenge.

So let’s begin. On the first day, June 21, the Sun came up, and that evening a marker was placed between Aubrey holes 28 and 27. Aubrey hole 28 represents the first Sunrise, Aubrey hole 27 the second Sunrise. The marker between the holes was used to count the days. Three and a quarter turns counter-clockwise around the circle from the starting point 28-27, will put the day counting marker between holes 15-14. You have now counted 182 days. The next evening your day marker will be between 14-13. The next morning you will have the Sunrise of the Winter Solstice. Today, from Station Stone 93 to H marks the Sunrise of the Winter Solstice. H sits between 14-13. In 3000 BCE this event would have happened a few degrees to the northeast, but your counter would still be at H, letting you know that this was the Winter Solstice. There would have been plenty of time to get prepared for the festivities, since the folks in charge could have told everyone how many days it would be until Winter Solstice.

Six and a half turns around the circle from the starting point 28-27, will put the day counting marker between 1-56. As the operator of this calendar, you will know that 364 days have gone by. One more day and you will have completed one year. Every four years, two days would be added to make up the leap year. This would keep the calendar almost in line with the 365.2422 days of the correct time of one Solar year. On evening 365 of the first year, a marker is put at Aubrey hole 1, this is to mark the first year. Every year after completing the count for one year, the day counting marker goes back to its original position between 28-27. The markers counting planetary cycles would continue on, until they had figured out how long each cycle was. Some cycles are short, such as Mercury and those would have been counted in days, but as soon as they had figured out the 11.86 years for Jupiter, they would switch to counting its cycle in years and days.

However, if you add a day every four years, your calendar will end up going off course, because the difference between 365.25 days and 365.2422 days would add up to one whole day after 128 years. The following is from Secrets of the Pyramids by Peter Tompkins:

“The present calendar derives from the early Romans, who had a 10-month year of 334 days, hence our September, October, November, December. In the seventh century B.C. Numa Pompillus is credited with adding January and February for a lunar year of  354 days. The shortage of 11 1/4 days caused the seasons and the calendar to diverge to the point where Julius Caesar was obliged to add 91 days to 46 B.C. and succumb to the suggestion of Cleopatra that he adopt the Egyptian civil calendar of 365.25 days. Even so, the difference between the civil calendar and the actual solar year of 365.2422 days adds up to an extra day every 128 years, which obliged Pope Gregory XIII to drop 10 days from 1582”

Since 72+ 56 = 128 there’s a good chance that the people at Stonehenge were omitting the leap day in year 128. They may have had two cycles of 72 years going. One marker would have been used for the first 72 years, going from Aubrey hole 1 all the way around the circle and stopping at Aubrey hole 16. At the end of year 73, a second marker would have been placed at Aubrey hole 29 to begin a new 72 year count while the first marker is busy counting to the 128, which it will achieve when it gets back to Aubrey hole 16. Every time year 73 comes around, the new marker will change starting holes. First cycle starts at Aubrey hole 1, the second cycle at Aubrey hole 29, then 1 again, then 29 again, etc.

I think they may have done just that because of the way the Aubrey hole circle is laid out, and that magic number 56, which comes in so handy, 6.5 x 56 = 364 and 72 + 56 = 128. Venus, 584 days, (10 x 56) + 24 = 584, eclipse cycle 19 + 19 + 18 = 56, or (10 + 9 + 9)  x 2 = 56. The ancient Mystery School number sixteen, 16 + 56 = 72.

The red dots are the four Station stones, two of which have mounds and ditches, unlike the other two plain Station stones. The green dots belong to the eclipse cycles, and the blue dots are the two 72-128 year spots. The period of 10, 9, 9 years has been mentioned in connection to the eclipses. If the year count started at Aubrey hole 1, then Aubrey hole 10 lies just before Station Stone 91. Nine more years would put you at Aubrey hole 19 which lies on the ditch on the SW side of Station Stone 92. The next 9 puts you at Aubrey hole 28, and the next 10 at Aubrey hole 38 which lies SW of Station Stone 93. Nine more years will put you at Aubrey hole 47 which lies close to the ditch to the NE of Station Stone 94. Nine more years puts you at Aubrey hole 56. For the first 72 years, one marker counted days, a second marker kept track of the years. Although there is more to eclipse cycles besides keeping track of the 10, 9 9 and 19, 19, 18 years, most of that could have been kept track of just by observing the position of the full Moon at the time close to Winter Solstice.

If the full Moon at Winter Solstice indicated that there would be an eclipse the following Equinoxes or the Summer and/or the Winter Solstice, it is possible to watch the time between Moonrise and Sunset. In 1964, Gerald Hawkins knew that there would be an eclipse of the Moon on June 25, he noticed that the time between Moonrise and Sunset became shorter by almost an hour every day, until the evening of June 24, when the Moon rose just 15 minutes before Sunset. Six hours later there was an eclipse of the Moon around 2 am, June 25. A quote from Hawkins:

“It seems most probable that the Stonehengers noted and made use of that moonrise-sunset time relation to predict eclipses. Compared to the task of determining the eclipse year and month by use of the Aubrey holes and rise-set directions, the foretelling of the night and hour of the event by observation of the difference in time between moonrise and sunset would have been easy.”

This time difference holds true for a Solar eclipse also. If the Moon rises too long before Sunrise, the Sun doesn’t have time to catch up to it. If it rises after Sunrise, then there will be no eclipse. If the Moon rises too far to the left or right of the ecliptic, on which the Sun sits, there will be no eclipse. By combining their observations of the Winter Moon’s position over the Avenue, keeping track of the years, and watching when the Moon rose and the Sun set, for a Lunar eclipse, and watching how long before Sunrise the Moon rose, would give them plenty of information to predict the eclipses. They wouldn’t need to be calculating the exact number of days.

After the first 72 years, the marker would be at Aubrey hole 16, and some sort of tally mark would have been placed here to keep track of these periods of 72 years. Since each sign of the Zodiac takes up approximately 30°, it takes approximately 2160 years to pass through one sign of the Zodiac. Although 72 and 2160 years are usually given, the actual time is closer to 71.667 and 2150 years, but in ancient times 72 years was fairly standard. In mythologies and religious texts, this number 72 is mentioned again and again. Pieces of chipped flint about the size of a fat cigarette were found with the cremations in the Aubrey holes. These may have been their tally sticks. Since Aubrey hole 16 lies NE of Station Stone 92, it would be easy to stick one of these tally marks in the chalk of the ditch surrounding this Station Stone. If you were using two cycles of 72 years and your cycle started at Aubrey hole 29, you would end at Aubrey hole 44 where there is a ditch and mound surrounding Station Stone 94 also. After placing 15 tally sticks in the ditch at Aubrey hole 16, and 15 tally sticks at Aubrey hole 44, you will have completed one sign of the Zodiac.

Using the above method would put you ten years passed the completion of one sign of the Zodiac, but the constellations connected to these signs don’t all take up equal amounts of space in the sky. These people may not have been using our constellations. They were well enough acquainted with the night sky  if they needed to make an adjustment at some time. This is only a very simple calendar, but these people were likely keeping track of the planets and other prominent stars also. I just haven’t ferreted them out of the astronomy program yet. I’m still working on the eclipses, for which I think they may have had a special device constructed.

The people whose cremated remains are in the Aubrey holes, were quite likely the people who kept track of the calendar, and they were likely the teachers. I would think this inside area would be reserved for those people who worked there. In fact, only certain people may have been allowed into the complex. School for young Dodmen, astronomers, counters, sailors, geologists and ‘travellers’. The travellers being people of a certain class, looking to gain new knowledge. Geologists, because the first thing educated people do when arriving in a new, practically empty land, is look for the wealth. At that point special types of rock and ores were being looked for. Ruis or Rowan, one of the Ogham letters, was used for metal divining. Sailors because you need them to catch fish, and for trade, particularly if you are on an island. It’s easier to sail around the coast, looking for rock, than it is to do so on foot. Sailors came with the Windmill Hill people, and likely stayed sailors, whether to go back and forth across the Channel, or scout around the coast, and fish too while they were at it. But sailors needed to understand astronomy, and navigation, which they could have learned at Stonehenge.

When the big white bank was new, it was at least six feet high. This would be an extremely good backdrop for those people learning their first lessons in surveying. There would be no background distractions, and the place was big enough to construct almost any type of geometrical configuration. Perhaps the Aubrey holes were used for that also. The great white bank gave privacy, this type of knowledge wasn’t meant for everyone at that time. All these things would have been part of the Ancient Mysteries, most of which were closely kept secrets.

A few spearmen would have kept guard at the fairly narrow openings. I don’t think any kids were playing football in there. It’s possible that no festivities went on there at that early stage. There are no traditions of dancing taking place at Stonehenge as there are with some other circles, but it would be a great place to learn about surveying and astronomy. Stonehenge was a serious place from the beginning, all the fun stuff took place elsewhere, at least until the Temple was built. Then it became very popular with the population.

The people who designed this place were incredibly clever with numbers and astronomy, but the people operating the calendar just needed to keep count of the separate cycles. Many other things were marked on the circle. For instance, when your marker was at H, the Winter Solstice Sunrise happened the next morning. The mounds and ditches around the two Station Stones were there to keep track of the 10,9, 9 and the 19, 19, 18 year cycles, and the 72 -128 year cycles. In the 10, 9, 9, cycle, the first 10 is before a plain Station Stone, the first 9 is SW of the mounded Station Stone 92. I’m surprised that there is no marker at Aubrey hole 28, this would tell you when you had completed the first 10, 9, 9. As you carry on, the second 10 in before a plain Station Stone again and the second 9 is NE of the mounded  Station Stone 94. These mounds and ditches around the two Station Stones would also help you to know when you had completed the 72-128 year cycles. If your cycle started at 1 then after 72 years, you would be at Aubrey hole 16, NE of the ditch around Station Stone 92. If you started your cycle at Aubrey hole 29, you would be at Aubrey hole 44 which lies SW of Station Stone 94. The markers for each separate cycle would be on opposite sides of these Station Stones.

The people, who were the architects of Stonehenge, knew exactly what they were going to do before they ever started. After all, they had several thousand years to figure out all the astronomy involved. No one stood around scratching their head at any time, wondering what to do next. This whole complex could have been built in less than two months. It is estimated that 3500 cubic yards were removed from the ditch to create the inner bank. After experimenting with this, it was found that one man could remove one cubic yard per day, and probably only one helper would be needed to move the chalk, since the digging wasn’t exactly speedy. With a hundred men digging and a hundred helping, the bank could have been finished in thirty five days, weather permitting. The surveying for the Aubrey holes may have taken a week, after which other men could have started digging these and creating the mounds and ditches for Station Stones 92 and 94.

There may be something in the Welsh language which comes directly from Stonehenge. English, week = Welsh, wythnos, which means eight nights. It is understood that it is the days in between which are counted. Since the day counters were not moved until Sundown, and if one looks at Station Stones 91-92, it can be seen that there are eight nights with seven days in between. The word for fortnight in Welsh is pythefnos, which is a contraction of pymtheg nos, fifteen nights with fourteen days in between them. If you swing the line 91-92 NE or SW, and include the original set of seven days between eight nights, you get fifteen nights with fourteen days in between. At this point I have to question whether fortnight is a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon fourteen nights. What if it actually started as a fourth night, a two week period will give you one-fourth of the Aubrey hole circle.

The whole thing was ingenious, took a minimum of labour, used the most basic materials and was environmentally friendly as well. The most amazing thing about it, is that it could be started up again today, and we could use it just as the Neolithic people did. Gerald Hawkins called it a computer, but there is no computer in our modern lives which will last five thousand years. One thing these people seem to have been interested in was permanence.

The proof of this calendar lies in the Aubrey hole circle, and the way it was set up with its Station stones and its 56 Aubrey holes. Whether they ever had posts or stones in them at one time, doesn’t matter. The calendar could still be counted there. It all works like clockwork, is this a coincidence? I have my doubts. This would have been the most accurate calendar of its time.  I am totally in awe over the skills these people had. I think this whole place was unique to England. They were keeping a Solar calendar, a Solstitial one, whereas many other people were keeping a Lunar or Equinoctial one. However, at Stonehenge they were keeping track of the Moon as well as the Sun. When the Temple was built it was Solstitial, while in the Middle East we still find Equinoctial ones being built. The early Romans had a Lunar calendar, and not a very good one at that. I have to wonder whether Ahknaton knew of this place, and turned suddenly completely Solar.

(1) Gerald S. Hawkins and J. B. White,  “Stonehenge Decoded”

(2) G. Van den Bergh, “Eclipses -1600 to -1207”

D. P. Gregg, “The Stonehenge Codes ” (PDF)

Fernand Neil, “The Mysteries of Stonehenge”

J. Giesen, Sun and Moon Lozenge Applet

Y Geiriadur Mawr, The Complete Welsh-English, English-Welsh Dictionary

Groundplan for Stonehenge from the Ancient Monuments Branch, Ministry of Public Building and Works, England

CyberSky 5 used for the astronomy

The Queen Stone Near the River Wye


Reading the Ogham on the Queen Stone

Traditionally, these Ogham are read as if the top is the line which the letters sit on,  but this one has a double message, and uses the ground as the line also. The  compound message is very interesting. On the SW side there is one line, on the NW side three lines, on the NE side two lines, and on the SE side five lines. (1) Using those marks from the first two sections of the Ogham tract, gives you two words per side. I am giving the most basic meanings.  

One line is for Beith, the Birch and stands for a new start, beginning, it also leads the way.

One line is for Huathe, the Hawthorn or Whitethorn. This is connected to a period of waiting and restraint. 

If there was someone around to record the fact that the Birch tree was the first to grow after the last Ice Age, they would have had quite a wait before moving further inland to do anything. The last Ice Age didn’t cover all of England. The ice covered Ireland, the St. George’s Channel right down to the Scilly Islands, followed the west coast of southern England, cut across England north of the Bristol Channel, then more or less cut across the width of the country, passing slightly north of the Thames Estuary. That was as far south in England as the ice came during the last Ice Age, but it would be extremely cold, and when the ice melted it was very wet. Even Glastonbury Tor was surrounded by water and marsh. You wouldn’t be laying out Stonehenge at that point. However, St. Michael’s Mount is the axis point  for the St. Michael’s Ley and the St. Michael-Apollo line. If you were going to Ireland or the Continent from there, you may have had a period of waiting. Waiting for a seaworthy vessel to take you there.

Three  lines are for Fearn, the Alder, which is for oracles and protection. It is connected to Bran and his talking oracular head.

Three lines are for Tinne, the Holly, which means best in the fight and protection. The fight being both spiritual and physical. Spear shafts were often made from Holly.

Somewhere to the NW of the Queen Stone, there must have been an oracle centre. Perhaps the lady buried with the Mold Gold Cape was the oracle. The Cerne Abbas Giant has this same message on his ribs. Since his club points toward the Trendle, perhaps that was an oracle centre also. His club has three round knobs, the three planes of existence, past, present, and future. An oracle can be any type of divination. Card reading, tealeaf reading, astrology, crystal ball gazing, palm reading, Ogham stick or Rune stick reading, etc., and they all deal with your past, present and future. The oracle, King Gudea went to see, seemed more like an advisor, she interpreted his dreams and explained what they meant.  Some accounts make them seem more like the local psychologist/advisor. 

Two lines are for Luis,  the Rowan which symbolizes protection against enchantment, it was also used for metal divining and to cut Runes on.

Two lines are for Duir, the Oak, which represents the doorway to enlightenment/the mysteries, but also gives solid foundation and protection. 

If you learned the mysteries, you’d be enlightened. Since we see it here with something which was used for metal divining, perhaps there was a ‘school’ for metal smelting and smith craft to the NE. 

Five lines are for Nuin, the Ash. This is the Cosmic Ash, that which links the microcosm and macrocosm. The Earth is the microcosm and  everything else around it is the macrocosm.

Five lines are for Quert, the Apple, and is associated to the Celtic Apple lands, which is where Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor are situated.

 It is sometimes thought that only the great hill at Glastonbury Tor was Avalon, but Glastonbury Tor is the Glass Castle which sits in the centre of the equal armed Celtic cross. Stonehenge is the city of the East position, the position of Air. It is said that Avalon was an orchard, and that Merlin could move it from place to place. The ‘orchard’ is the Grove or sacred place which contains all the trees, shrubs and plants of the Ogham tract, and as I’ve shown in previous writings, if you knew how to use a calendar circle, the sacred place, you could move it anywhere in the world. Since the Grove symbolizes all the knowledge contained in the tract, you would have a wide range of knowledge, enough to set up a well organized society anywhere you went. The Apple also represents a thing of beauty, and when you cut an apple width ways, you will see a pentagram made by the seed pockets.  Stonehenge was the Ash tree in Avalon, and a thing of beauty in its brand new state. Up until then, no one had ever seen anything like it, in fact, it has remained rather unique to this day.


(1)  “The Old Straight Track” by Alfred Watkins

“The Celtic Tree Oracle, a System of Divination”, by Liz and Colin Murray

Photograph Source

Alan J. Wood of Wyenot News

Following the White Trail to Stonehenge Part I

                                                         The Queen/Quin/Gwyn Stone

                                            Solving  the Riddle of the 56 Aubrey Holes

 While reading about the history and building of Stonehenge, I was reminded of a book by Alfred Watkins, “The Old Straight Track”. I had read this book with fascination many years ago. I must give credit to Mr. Watkins for my interest in Stonehenge. Particularly his mention of the Queen Stone, which originally started life off as a Gwyn Stone. Alfred Watkins discovered that this stone was named the Quin Stone on old estate maps. Cornish, Quin = Welsh, Gwyn. He seemed rather puzzled about it being called that, since  it is reddish in colour. Gwyn means white in Welsh, but also, holy. That fact puzzled me for a time until I learned that the same element could be found in gwy as in dwy. Although in modern usage, dwy, means two, an obsolete meaning for dwy is God. Names like Gwydion and Gwion came immediately to mind. There are several other obsolete words beginning with dwy, such as, Godliness, Godly, divine, divinity, holy, Goddess, etc. That explained why Gwyn meant holy, but what had a red stone to do with white?

Mr. Watkins was also good enough to tell us what was cut on each of the four sides of this Gwyn Stone, which is situated on the horse shoe bend of the River Wye. The word, Wye, is also connected to dwy and gwy. Geologists will say that the grooves on this rock are from weathering, archaeologists will say that they were made by archers sharpening their arrows. Alfred Watkins felt that they were cut by the hand of man, these grooves end at ground level. If archers did sharpen their arrows there, they only kept the message in good shape, the weather would have helped as well. This rock is square, with its corners turned to the cardinal points, and its faces to the cross quarters. That alone would tell you which direction you were travelling in. These squares with their corners turned to the cardinal points are still used on maps today. The stone has grooves on all four sides. Each side has an Ogham message on it. But it was the message on the SE side that was most interesting. It was the clue to unravelling some of the puzzling things at Stonehenge.

While I was reading “The Old Straight Track”, I was also becoming acquainted with the Ogham tract. I use Coll Hazel’s Ogham. The last five letters of the tract are called the Forfeda, and I have seen various examples of this, and the meanings of several of the letters are often switched around. However, Colin Murray’s seem to be correct, because of several intriguing things I have found.

This is not your ordinary ABC alphabet. Instead, each letter has many symbolic meanings attached to it. It was a semi secret language used only by the elite and the Druids among the Celts. It has been suggested that the Druids brought it with them when they came from the Continent to Britain and Ireland. However, Julius Caesar did say that the Druids started in England and then went to Gaul.

According to Bryan Sykes, the earliest ‘Celtic’ or proto Celtic people were the Windmill Hill people. The majority of the Celtic DNA found in the UK and Ireland, has its roots on the Iberian Peninsula, and has a history in the male line going back to Cro-Magnon. This is under debate at the moment, with others theorizing that it only goes back to the Neolithic. However, among them was a small strand from the eastern Mediterranean, and also a small strand from north Africa. Their DNA is different from the later Celts found around Lake Neuchâtel and the Hallstatt area, from which we get La Tène artefacts. La Tène is not far from Italy’s northern border, fairly close to the territory where the Ligurians lived. In fact, it is only one degree north to Lake Neuchâtel from Picollo San Bernardo.

Even though there may have been thousands of years between the movement of the Windmill Hill people into the UK and Ireland, and the Celts who are said to have descended from the Milesians, their DNA is similar. Among male descendents of these people, the clan of Oisin is most prevalent. Out of eighty five men tested in Wales, ninety two percent came from the clan of Oisin. That was the highest percent anywhere, including the Iberian Peninsula.

There are others who believe that the Ogham tract was started by the Gnostic missionaries in Ireland, but since I have found an example of Ogham dating 79 AD at least, and the Gwyn Stone is believed to date back to the Bronze Age, I have to wonder about this story. No one really knows how old it is or where it actually started. There has been an Ogham found in Egypt in Ramses VI tomb. The date for his rule was 1160-1148 BCE. One of the things said about the Druids is that they gained their knowledge from the ancient Dodmen who were in the UK and Ireland. These were the ancient astronomer/surveyors who created some of the earliest trackways known as leys.

However, it is interesting to note that the first trees to start growing in England after the last Ice Age were:- birch, pine, lime, elm, ash, oak, alder, beech, maple, hornbeam (oak family), elder (honeysuckle family); shrubs, holly and hazel, plus ivy and mistletoe. Around 3500 BCE there was a decline in elm trees, and it is believed that Dutch Elm Disease may have been the cause. In the Ogham tract we find:- birch, fir/elm, ash, oak, alder, elder, beech, holly, hazel, ivy, mistletoe and honeysuckle. The mistletoe shares a spot with heather and the letter is named Ur in the Irish Gaelic. I found this interesting since there was a city in Sumer named Ur.

It has been argued that this arboreal version of the tract could not have started in the UK because there was no Silver Fir there, but Ailim/Ailm means elm in Gaelic, not Silver Fir. Alfred Watkins found rows of fir and pine close to ancient sighting points. Such as the Constable Firs, ancient Ogham messages planted on the landscape. Although he never mentions Ogham, his theory was that these trees would have been replanted if one died. I think the replanting of these trees became a tradition, even long after people didn’t know about the messaging, that’s why they are still there today. People are very attached to their traditions. There was always a fir tree there, and there will always be a fir tree there, even if they no longer understood why there was a fir tree there in the first place, but this must have been very important at one time, since it was carried on. Single trees were planted also, and very long lived specimens, such as oak or yew, were used for this. It is possible that elm was replaced by fir and pine after the decline in elm trees. Silver Fir, Scotch Pine and elm trees have one thing in common, they’re all very tall, and since this letter symbolizes high views and long sight, that does seem to be logical. Since Alfred Watkins found rows of fir or pine near ancient sighting points, the trees were sending the message, high views and long sight ahead.

According to Irish legends, the first twenty letters were created by Ogma, the God of Eloquence, and also a Sun god. The last five symbols represent diphthongs, and are said to have been created by Manannan, a god of the sea, who is also connected to the Moon. Birch is said to be the first letter, because it was the first tree to grow after the last Ice Age. Who recorded this fact? Beith is Irish Gaelic for birch, but it is also named for Noah’s son Beith/Bith/Beth, and stands for “a new start, beginning”. Beth is the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet, but the first in the Torah, which starts, “In the beginning……..”

The trunk of the birch is white and is said to “lead the way”. Easily seen from a distance, even on a Moonlit night. On the SW side of the Gwyn Stone is the symbol for Birch, and it points toward Lands End. It has already been found that St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall figures in the St. Michael’s Ley, and is on the St. Michael-Apollo Line which runs from Mount Carmel to Skellig Michel in Ireland. These leys are now referred to as ‘lines of incidence’. From St. Michael’s Mount, one could make a new directional beginning. Northwest to Skellig Michel, southeast to Mont St. Michel in France, where you can follow the line through France, several places connected to St. Michael in Italy, then on to Dodona, Corfu, and eventually make your way to Mount Carmel. From St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, you can follow the St. Michael’s Ley northeast into England, where you will find some interesting megalithic constructions, such as the Hurlers, Glastonbury Tor, Avebury, Silbury Hill, Big Rings and Waulud’s Bank. It runs a great distance along the Ickneild Way, and meets up with the Ridgeway Path, a track that goes back to the Neolithic. Some of the ‘Roman’ roads may have been constructed over much older roads and trackways. In some places, archaeologists have found much older ‘paved’ roads below the Roman ones. The ancient surveyors may have been responsible for the straightness of these roads, not the Romans.

You could follow the St. Michael’s Ley all the way to Yarmouth, and after a short period of sailing, be over on Heligoland and northern Germany, and various other areas in Scandinavia. This line may be much older than anyone realizes, since Doggerland once existed between the east coast of England and the west coast of Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium and part of France. It’s quite possible that this line started on Doggerland, and entered England at Yarmouth. Yat is an old Saxon word for road, track or ley, as in Symond’s Yat, which is not far from the Gwyn Stone. Gate, is another form of yat, and there’s Gateshead close to the border of Scotland, the head of the yat. Yarmouth is on the River Yarre, so obviously these names are connected, but perhaps, yar, was another form of yat. It would be easier to say Yarmouth, than Yatmouth. Yatshead and Yatmouth don’t seen to fit the mouth at all, whereas Yarmouth and Gateshead seem to roll off the tongue much better. Archaeologists have found evidence that Mammoth were once hunted off the coast of Yarmouth, and during the last Ice Age, only the south of England was free of ice. Hunters and gatherers trekked trough this area for millenia.

On the SE side of the Gwyn Stone is the symbol for Ash. It points in the direction of Stonehenge. The Ash of the Ogham tract is the Cosmic Ash, that which links together the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm being the Earth, and the macrocosm being everything else out in space. Considering that it was also a very accurate calendar, the name becomes even more appropriate. Below are the twenty five symbols of the Ogham tract. The line on which all the letters sit, is called the strip of the whale’s back, but symbolizes the horizon. And that’s of, not off. I believe that the strip of the whales back also symbolizes the measuring cord. The rolled up strip was kept in the Crane Bag along with Manannan’s treasures.


The first twenty letters always remind me of shadows cast by a pole standing in sunlight. The last five seemed as if they should belong to surveying. X marks the spot, and a square with its corners turned to the cardinal points. We still use the last of these on maps. The third symbol is two parallel lines, crossed diagonally by two more parallel lines, creating a diamond shape in the centre. Surveying is done by triangulation. The Hook, which when seen on the side of a staff, looks more like an ancient surveying or star watching instrument. The hook usually represented is so turned in on itself, that I can’t imagine hooking anything with it. As a surveying instrument it would be quite handy. Not only could you use it to sight with, but you could also carry a line along with you. That would be very useful if you were ‘stretching a cord’ at Stonehenge. If you had a few of them, your line wouldn’t be dragging on the ground. After all, someone had to make it by hand. The last symbol in this group looks like a net made up of squares. This net is not always the same in various Ogham tracts. I have three by three, this is what Colin Murray used, but I have seen two by two and four by four also. A three by three grid was also an emblem among the ancient Mesopotamians. It was named Bab-Ilu, the Gate of God. A four by four grid would be one quarter of a Square of Hermes, which is eight by eight.

These five symbols, are said to be Manannan’s treasures, and he kept them in the Crane Bag along with the rolled up strip of the whale’s back and the rest of the letters of the tract. The Crane Bag was made out of the skin of a white Crane. When the tide was high, the bag seemed full, but when the tide was low it appeared to be flat.This is an allusion to the Moon, so his treasures were visible at the time of the full Moon, but not at the dark of the Moon. Crane knowledge is shorthand for Druidic knowledge. St. Columba was said to be a Crane cleric because he was brought up in the Druidic traditions and understood Ogham.

After doing some more reading, I became aware that the colour white was also attached to many ancient monuments in the UK and Ireland. The banks at Stonehenge, Avebury and several other sites are white. Newgrange and Knowth were surrounded by white quartz. At Thornborough, the top layer of the banks was white gypsum that had been brought from elsewhere. The West Kennet Long Barrow was white, as well as Silbury Hill. The Long Man of Wilmington, the Cerne Abbas Giant, the various large depictions of horses are all white. Bran’s head is said to be buried at Bryn Gwyn, the White Mount, where the Tower of London stands now. Perhaps that should be the Holy Mount? After all, Bran’s head was buried there. And the hill at Glastonbury Tor, was it also white at one time? This adornment with white can be found over on the Continent as well, mostly white quartz or limestone was used. Where there is white quartz, there could be gold.

I wondered about the white Crane, and found that among its allies are the Ibis and the Egret. All long-legged wading birds, which all have white varieties. The flight profile of the Ibis is much the same as that of the Crane. Some Ibis have a curved bill, but Storks, which are Wood Ibis, have a straight bill similar to the Crane. Was Manannan’s Crane somehow connected to the Ibis headed Thoth? He was the Egyptian god of writing, mathematics, astronomy, surveying, equilibrium and healing. Were the original surveyors in the British Isles, Thothmen? In Welsh, Thoth would be spelled Ddodd. Did it then become Dod later? The ancient surveyors in the UK and Ireland are still called the Dodmen. The Ibis and the Crane were connected I found, they are just another version of the Constellation Cygnus. Many different birds seem to be connected to this group of stars. Ibis, Crane, Swan, Vulture, Goose, Gannet, and other water fowl, but mostly white with a little black in most cases.

There’s an interesting story among the Irish legends concerning Fintan, the Ancient White One. Because he is the oldest shanachies/seanchais in the group, he is asked to relate the history of the people of Ireland. He says that he was born before the Flood, and that he was married to Cessair, Bith’s daughter. Bith was supposed to have been another son of Noah, who is not mentioned in the Bible, but who figures in Irish legends. When Cessair brought her people to Ireland, the Flood overtook them, and they all died except Fintan. He survived by turning himself into a salmon. The salmon in Celtic lore ate the Hazels of Wisdom, and so by saying he turned into a salmon, Fintan is actually saying that he used his knowledge to survive. He recounts the various things that befell successive peoples who came to Ireland, but every time he himself survives. Eventually someone mentions how lucky he was to survive all that, since several thousand years have gone by. Fintan, the Ancient White One, replies, “Someone always survives”.

This story seems to be telling us that the line of seanchais in Ireland go back to Sumeria. It is in Sumer where we find the oldest Flood stories. I don’t mean to imply that Druidism went that far back, only that there does seem to have been a core of knowledge which was passed on from one generation to the next, usually to the priestly class, which usually passed from fathers to sons and daughters also. Ancient kings and their family members were often the priests and priestesses, astronomers and oracles. I call this the White Trail, and since Sumer is where we find the oldest advanced civilization, it probably started there. Anu’s White Temple is at Uruk, one of the oldest temples in Sumer.

There is a connection between Sumer and the UK and Ireland. Among the Windmill Hill people there were descendents of a woman whom Bryan Sykes names ‘Jasmine’. She was found at Mureybet in present day Syria, fifty miles southeast of Aleppo in what archaeologists say is the oldest farming community that’s been found to date. It isn’t very far from Gobekli Tepe either, which is now thought to be the oldest ritual/settlement complex dating c9000 BCE. At Mureybet, the grain these people grew was still the same as the wild grains their seeds came from. A thousand years later at Jericho, people were growing genetically altered grain. Grown over centuries of selective harvesting and planting of grain.

At that time, Mureybet would have been in the area of what became Sumer. Jasmine lived there c8000 BCE. Her descendents have been found on both sides of the Mediterranean, up into continental Europe, came with the Windmill Hill people, and were also found at Skara Brae. The goddess Freyja of the Scandinavians is said to have her roots with the Sumerian goddess Inanna, whose main temple was also in Uruk, very close to Anu’s White Temple.

The question is, did Jasmine’s descendents trek across land for three thousand years, or is it possible that some of the Windmill Hill people had a closer connection to the Middle East when they landed in the UK and Ireland?

This does now seem to be the case. Bryan Sykes has shown that descendents of Jasmine may have travelled by water, and that they brought farming with them.

Bryan Sykes:

” The presence of large numbers of Jasmine’s Oceanic clan …. says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic seaboard north of Iberia, beginning as far back as the Neolithic and perhaps even before that. …….The mere presence of Oceanic Jasmines indicates that this was most definitely a family based settlement rather than the sort of male-led invasions of later millennia.”

Their movement seems to have occurred at about the same time as the Cardium Pottery people, who are also considered to have been the first farmers in Europe. Their oldest pottery found to date was in Corfu, c6500 BCE, after which they moved along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, and were into the Iberian Peninsula and France by c5500 BCE. Most of their movement along the northern coast of the Mediterranean occurred within a period of 500 years. It is believed that they moved in groups by water, and created new settlements along the coast. They were also the earliest farmers in these areas, and seem to have introduced farming to other people. It has been suggested by archaeologists and other experts, that these people were sent out in groups to settle new places. Who exactly sent them is a mystery. Their pottery has also been found in Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. The culture which started in Mureybet, spread out, also moving into Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. Their remains have also been found on Mount Carmel.

However Jasmine’s descendents came to be among those seafarers who arrived in England, they came from an old farming tradition. By the time the Cardium Pottery people arrived in France, there was already herding of domestic cattle there, introduced by an earlier group of genetically related people to Jasmine. J (Jasmine) and T (Tara) are the only two haplogroups connected to the spread of herding and crop growing, they migrated into Europe sometime between c8000-6000 BCE. These two groups have a common background in JT and pre-JT. The place of origin of J and T was in the Caucasus and the Fertile Crescent c43,000 BCE.

At Tumulus Mont St. Michel in France, c6850 BCE, someone’s cremated remains were placed in a stone cist, along with 28 Fibrolite and 11 Jadeite axe heads, a Turquoise necklace and one of Jasper. The cist sat E/W on the Equinox line. It was also surrounded by fifteen smaller cists containing ox bones. It was then covered over, creating a tumulus. Eventually it was greatly enlarged, and up until the nineteenth century, people still built a bonfire and danced up there on June 21st. Over time Tumulus Mont St. Michel went from being Equinoctial, to being important on the Summer Solstice. The earliest known mining of Turquoise was on the Sinai Peninsula by the Egyptians. Iran, Cornwall, Saxony and Silesia are also mentioned as having Turquoise, but how far back it was mined in these areas, I haven’t been able to discover, nor where the Turquoise came from in the necklace.

This tumulus is close to Mont St. Michel which is on the St. Michael-Apollo line. The line runs through Liguria on the northern coast of Italy. The stone for the hand axes buried in France, came from the Ligurian Alps, and in Liguria we find the same mix of people as on the Iberian Peninsula, and parts of France. These people had something in common with the Windmill Hill people, and the people of many other places where early farmers show up. They built megalithic constructions. On the Picollo San Bernardo we find a stone circle, and in the nearby Aosta Valley a megalithic complex has been discovered.

Although some of the earliest megalithic constructions in Europe have been found in Portugal and Ireland, it seems to have spread very rapidly. Even Gotland has Neolithic structures dating c3600 BCE. Most of these can be categorized as complexes. They often include Dolmen, passage tombs and stone rows or circles. Most have been found to have astronomical alignments. Some having to do with the Moon, but others are also aligned to major events of the Sun, and also have possible connections to planets, stars and constellations.

The oldest stone ‘circle’ found to date is at Nabta Playa, Egypt, dating c6000-c4000 BCE. The circle is egg-shaped rather than round, but is believed to have been used for astronomy and calendar keeping. There are now claims that suggest Adam’s Calendar, made of dolerite, may date to c25,000 BCE. If this is correct, then Adam’s Calendar would be the oldest. However, a circle of small rocks or a plain henge could have been used for the same thing. The markers would have been portable stones to mark the important events, whether connected to the Moon, Sun, planets or stars. Some very early henges have been found in Cornwall, one of the earliest areas for mining metals in England. These were mined here before the Bronze Age started in England.

A henge is basically a large round area with a ditch and bank surrounding it. There’s generally one or two openings which allow access to the henge. It isn’t known what they were used for, but later stone circles where generally within a henge. Since most stone circles have astronomical significance, it’s not a far leap to suppose that a plain henge was used for this as well.

It’s a fact that a calendar can be created anywhere on Earth, using nothing more than a plain circle plus some markers for significant events, such as the Equinox, the shortest and longest day, or to track the movements of the Moon, planets and stars. They were often constructed in places where there was at least one major feature on the skyline, such as a hill of two where the Moon or Sun rose or set on a certain day. At Maeshowe passage tomb in the Orkneys, the Sun sets between two hills on the shortest day, and shines right into the passage. Maeshowe can be seen from the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stennes.  These three are now considered a complex along with the Neolithic village of Skara Brae. Some of Jasmine’s descendents were found at Skara Brae.

I posed my original question about Jasmine’s descendents because there are some disquieting things among the ruins of the constructions left by the Neolithic people in the UK and Ireland. Their expertise of construction, astronomy and their knowledge of the calendar can be seen at Stonehenge and many other sites in these areas.

Skara Brae is also……………..odd. We are told by archaeologists that this was a village, but has more the feeling of a one story apartment building. We are told that the people who lived here were probably an interrelated family group. But there is something not right about this picture. I can understand that they would want to bar the outside door to the complex, but why was it necessary for them to be able to lock up each individual dwelling? Each dwelling had a low opening for a doorway, and a stone slab which could be fitted in the opening. Good for keeping out the draft, but there were also signs that there had been wooden bars to lock these doors closed. This sort of behaviour does not fit in with an interrelated family group in such an isolated place. Privacy in each dwelling could have been achieved just by hanging a piece of hide over the opening. This seems more the behaviour of strangers or strangers who were tenants?

There were people at Skara Brae long before these houses were built. They were built within a midden, and people had been there long enough to create quite a sizable heap. The inhabitants excavated the midden, and built their stonewalled houses inside of this. The remains of the midden then became the outside insulation, and stopped drafts or water from seeping in through the thick stone walls. The Skara Brae houses also had latrines with drainage to carry off the waste.

The whole place feels as if it had been transplanted from some other more densely populated centre with a higher standard of civilization. Skara Brae, after all, was a very long way from any high civilization at that time. How then did the people of Skara Brae come up with these ideas? And who exactly were they? And what exactly were they doing there? At present some archaeologists think the people who lived here may have been of the priestly class (astronomer/surveyors?) who were the brains behind the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stennes and Maeshowe. At the moment they are busy digging what seems to be the remains of seven buildings, possibly a temple complex. Time will tell. There may be many other things lurking beneath the soil, or out under the lakes and off shore.

The problem with digging into ancient history is that one usually ends up with a multitude of questions. Stonehenge is one such example. It also becomes apparent that religion and astronomy do seem to go hand in hand the further back in history one goes. The oldest accounts of temple building usually mention “stretching of the cord”, and putting in the corner-stone of the building. It also mentions the fact that the buildings were aligned by Sun or Moon or stars, and that a special day was waited for before the dedication ceremony took place. Even when the temple was complete, the special day was waited for. Sometimes for months. This can be found in the account of Gudea, a Sumerian king who lived c2200 BCE. The reason for this, is that the temple was the place where the calendar started, and you would need a special day to do this. In the earliest temples, their first day was usually the Spring Equinox. This changed over time, from people to people. Usually by the order of some god. A god, or people from a higher civilization? Only where was that higher civilization?

At Stonehenge we see building in reverse order. First they built the calendar, then the temple. The first part of Stonehenge was a calendar and included the outer bank, the ditch, inner bank, the four Station Stones, their mounds and ditches, the Aubrey holes, a marker at the Heel stone, markers at F and H, the two posts on the right bank of the Avenue, which are not numbered or lettered, the posts marked A1, 2, 3, 4, and possibly other outliers. There are many positions on the Aubrey hole circle which at first glance relate to the Sun, but many of these spots are related to the Moon also. For instance, today, Station Stone 93 to H, marks Winter Solstice Sunrise, but it is also very close to the midway point of the 18.6 years travel of the Summer Moonrise. However, in 3200 BCE these positions would have been a few degrees to the NE of where they are now, but with this setup, they could count the days, years, keep track of the phases of the Sun and Moon, planets, constellations and eclipses.

The first thing that was done there, was a long period of observation. In fact, observations may have been taking place there since c7000 BCE, this is when the first posts to mark the Equinox were placed here. Another set of posts were placed on the Equinox line c6000 BCE. The locations of these two sets of posts are in the current parking lot, filled with concrete. Whoever placed Stonehenge on this spot may have been looking for this place on purpose. It is located at the only place in the Northern Hemisphere where the Sun and Moon have their maximum risings and settings at 90°. So that the Station Stone quadrangle could be created. The only other place on Earth where this can happen is close to the Falklands Islands in the Strait of Magellan. I wonder will some underwater archaeologist find another Stonehenge there some day?

While this long period of observation was going on, there was probably much cord stretching and rock placing. All you need to survey a place are some surveying instruments, some cord and some rocks or stakes to mark the important places. Two straight staves will do as surveying instruments. At first you can use small rocks to mark the appropriate points, no need for the heavy ones until you’ve found what you are looking for. They were not only looking for the Equinox line, but also the maximum risings and settings of the Sun and Moon. When the henge was constructed, they were already tracking eclipses, and this became part of the construction. They kept track of planets and significant stars as well. They were in the Neolithic, rocks are the most basic of markers.

My theory is that these people already knew all the significant positions long before they created the henge and the Aubrey hole circle. Boulders, large rocks or more posts may have been placed there early on. The henge and Aubrey hole circle were just a new technical improvement over just posts and large rocks. The Aubrey holes allowed them to create a permanent calendar, so that they could keep track of days, seasons, years, cycles of the planets and stars, and the eclipses.

 In diagram A, we see the first part of their surveying. First they put in the Equinox line, which runs from Aubrey hole 93 to F, although these two points may not have been created until later. Although I’m mentioning the Aubrey holes in connection to the lines, no Aubrey holes existed at that point, only the lines. Next they put in the line from Aubrey hole 28-56-A4. A4 is one of the four small posts on the Avenue. This was the Summer Solstice Sunrise line in 3000 BCE. Then they put in the line from Aubrey hole 14 to Aubrey hole 42, quartering the area and giving them a centre to work from.

The Station Stone quadrangle is basically a rectangle 12 units by 5 units, but dividing this again would give  24 units by ten units. Measuring out twelve units from the centre on both sides of the centre line, they strung two lines parallel to line 28-56. These are the black lines A and B.

The blue lines are the Major and Minor Winter Moonrise positions in 3000 BCE. The centre blue line which runs past post A3, is the mid-point of the Winter Moon’s travels. It takes 18.6 years to travel from the Minor to the Major points. Gerald Hawkins found that this movement of the Moon worked in a cycle of 19, 19, 18 years between the Minor and Major point. The Moon appears over the central line every 10, 9, 9 years, so twice as often than the other two points.

The green line over the Heel stone is 5° northwest of the Winter Moonrise Minor point 3000 BCE. Once the Moon traveled close to this on its way northwest, it entered the zone which was important to the eclipses of Sun and Moon. Eclipses which happened both at the full Moon closest to the Winter Solstice and at the full Moon closest to the Summer Solstice. This zone is approximately 7° wide, and between the green line running to post A2 and the green line over the Heel stone is the area where these dangerous Moons would appear. The green line from the Heel stone was drawn all across the circle as shown. This line was used to help set up the Station Stones.

The next step was to put in the Station Stones. At Aubrey hole 14, they measured 5 units NE and 5 units SW. This gave them the positions of Station Stones 91 and 92. From Station Stone 91, they drew a line parallel to line 14-42 all the way over to where Station Stone 94 would be placed eventually. This line sits at 90° to the Summer Solstice Sunrise line c3000 BCE. The line from Station Stones 92-93, sits at 90° to the green line coming from the Heel stone, which was at 5° northwest of Winter Moonrise Minor point c3000 BCE, and was the danger zone indicator of eclipses once the Moon had travelled northwest of here. The fact that they did this, shows that they were definitely taking into account the eclipses from the beginning when they built this place. We haven’t even come to the Aubrey holes yet.


 Diagram B shows the next step in the surveying. From the centre to Station Stone 93 was used as the radius of the circle. Diagram B is a copy of Diagram C which was originally drawn by hand, and after trying several points on the circle, I found that the centre to Station Stone 93 worked best, so I gather these points were used for the diameter. After creating the circle, they marked in the quarters and cross quarters of the circle at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49 and 56.These are the blue dots. The positions of the Station Stones were marked, these are the green dots. The black dot is F.

Since I’m neither a mathematician nor an astronomer, I have no idea about the theory that was used for the next part, but it worked very well. Some genius must have been at work here. One of the first markers on the Aubrey hole circle would have been F. Station Stone 93 to F is the Equinox line.

Once they had marked the circle for the Aubrey holes, they could then determine how far away they wanted to place the bank. Men could start digging the ditch to create the inner and outer banks. While this was going on, the surveyors started marking in the rest of the Aubrey holes.

They strung a line between Station Stone 93 and F. (green line) Then they measured the distance between Aubrey hole 56 and F, and transferred it to the northwest side, creating point A. Then they strung a line between A and Station Stone 92.

They transferred the measurement from A to F, to the SW side of the circle, using Aubrey hole 28 as the centre, creating points B and C.

Then they strung lines from B to Station Stone 91, and from C to Station Stone 94.

The resultant green diamond or lozenge has angles of 80° at Aubrey hole 56, 100° at Aubrey hole 42, 79° at  Aubrey hole 28 and 101° at Aubrey hole 14. The difference in angles is due to the distance between the Station Stones being shorter on the northwest side than on the southeast side.

At this point they strung lines parallel to these lozenge lines at the cross quarters 7, 21, 35 and 49. (blue) The result being that they now had two parallel lines the correct measurement between three Aubrey holes. This configuration can be seen on the gold lozenge found buried with the Wessex lord in the Bush Barrow, which also has angles of 80° and 100°. The Stonehenge Logo as I like to call it. It’s at the very heart of the layout of the Aubrey holes. It has been discovered lately by J. Giesen that this beautiful artefact may have been used as a vernier for keeping track of all the Major Sunrise and Moonrise events. The Wessex lords belt hook is a quadrangle, just like the Station Stone quadrangle.


                                                               The Bush Barrow Lozenge

Then they divided the distance between these Aubrey holes and drew their central lines. This gave them three Aubrey holes at each cross quarter. It was only at those positions that they were able to arrive at the correct measurement between Aubrey holes.


 Once they had the correct measurement, they could put in the three Aubrey holes at each of the four quarters of the circle, using 14, 28, 42 and 56 as the centres.

All the red holes are the ones left over after all this stringing. This left four pie shaped pieces with three Aubrey holes each, and four pie shaped pieces with five holes each. For the ones with three holes, they likely divided the angle in two and then in two again. For the sections with five holes, they divided the angle for the central hole, and then used their previously found measurement for the next two Aubrey holes on either side of this central one. And, voila, we have 56 Aubrey holes, and the Wessex lord’s gold lozenge may be proof that this was the method used to lay out these holes.

The Forfeda


It is my belief that the last five letters of the Ogham tract, called the Forfeda, had their birth at Stonehenge. By joining Aubrey holes 28/56 and 14/42 they had created X since these positions sit almost NE/SW and SE/NW.

By joining Aubrey holes 49-7, 7-21, 21-35, and 35-49 you create a square whose corners sit almost N, S, E and W. Now you have a square with its corners turned to the cardinal points. That Square of Enlightenment.

The basic configuration for this layout was started with two parallel lines crossing two parallel lines. The green lines and then the blue lines.

The Hook was the surveying instrument used, and the line was the measuring cord.

They did create the Net, and even though it was not three by three squares, it is still Bab-Ilu, the Gate of God. In this case, it may have been the Sun god’s gate or possibly the Gate of Min, who was a very early Egyptian Moon god, whose festival day was the Summer Solstice. After coming to understand what happens in the area of the Avenue, I can see that this had as much to do with the Moon as the Sun, and highly important for predicting eclipses. Min is one aspect of Khnum, Khem and Thoth. One of Min’s devices was a disk inside of a crescent which is lying on its’ back. I have seen this device over Thoth’s head in several pictures, and I have read that this device is carved at Gobekli Tepe. After delving into ancient Egyptian history, I discovered that there had been a movement of people who migrated from Egypt into Sumeria c10,000-c9000 BCE. It’s thought that these people brought farming to ancient Mureybet and the rest of the Fertile Crescent, and that they were responsible for building Gobekli Tepe. Considering that Min’s device made it to Gobekli Tepe, this could to be correct. The people who built Gobekli Tepe seem to have been very advanced for their time. The stone carvings there are highly unusual for that time period.

Lets look at what these symbols represent.

X is named the Grove, a sacred place. All the knowledge, which represents all the other symbols of the Ogham tract, can be found within the Grove. Each tree and plant symbol holds its own knowledge, and so the Grove contains all this combined knowledge. If Stonehenge was the Grove, then many things may have been going on there, including healing, since almost all the trees and plants in the tract have medicinal uses.

The square with its corners turned to the cardinal points is named Oir or Spindle, but it has an alternative name, Tharan or Thunder, but it is the lightning which is referred to. Just as a flash of lightning will illuminate the night sky, a sudden flash of inner enlightenment may light up a prickly problem which you have been dealing with. These sudden flashes of insight often lead to new inventions, discoveries, and ideas. But Oir is also connected to perseverance in the face of a difficult task, which is generally what you need for a prickly problem. I call it the Square of Enlightenment, and it was used at Stonehenge in an other very interesting way which I’ll write about at another time. Whoever dreamt up that idea was certainly enlightened.

It is this same square with its corners turned to the cardinal points  which we find in the Queen/Quin/Gwyn Stone, which is also a square of enlightenment since it shows the directional quarters and cross quarters, and tells you what lies in the four cross quarter directions. Spindle wood was used for spindles, bobbins and pegs among other things. The Gwyn Stone is a peg in some ancient surveying, a surveyors trig point. Since it stands six and a half feet above ground and seven and a half feet below ground, it was well pegged. Not likely to move anytime soon.

The Hook is named Phagos or Beech, and symbolizes old knowledge, old writing, which suggests that astronomy and surveying have a long history. Considering that many cave paintings are now believed to have astronomical notations, it goes back a very far way. After all, people were acquainted with the night sky for millennia. When people were hunters and gatherers, they ranged over huge areas. Each feature of the landscape, the Sun, Moon and stars became their map, and told them which part of the year they were in. Most hunters and gatherers had a base camp where they spent the colder part of the year. The positions of the stars, the Sun and the Moon counts, would have told them when to head back to their base camp. Vegetation would have been a seasonal marker, but raspberries and blueberries aren’t always ripe at the same time every year, that depends on the weather, but the Sun, Moon and stars are a constant. “writing” may not have been the original word used for this type of thing. Planting trees as messages could be considered writing. Just a different sort of writing than we are used to. The word, book, also comes from an old name for Beech. Long ago, thin slabs of Beech were used to write on, and connected together to form a ‘book’.

The Net is named the Sea, and symbolizes the sea, travel, maternal links and the Moon. Understanding lines of latitude and longitude, and their cross quarters, and also understanding astronomy would indeed give you the ability to travel in any direction, even by water. If ley lines, as described by Alfred Watkins, were established at that point in time, one could travel either by night or day. Mr. Watkins thought that some of the older trackways in the UK may have been established sometime between 4000 BCE and 2000 BCE. Ancient mariners used the Moon as well as the Sun and stars to navigate. If they were going any distance, these would become a seasonal marker for them as well.

The two parallel lines crossing two parallel lines is named Uilleand or the Honeysuckle, and symbolizes the hidden secret. Since the layout and use of the 56 Aubrey holes has been debated for many years, this formation remained the hidden secret for a very long time, five thousand years worth of time. The bird connected to this symbol is the Pewit. It nests on the ground, and when disturbed will fly up and away, thus creating a distraction away from its eggs hidden in their nest on the ground. I found this symbolism very appropriate for Stonehenge, where the general population would have been watching what was happening in the sky, and not paying attention to the Aubrey holes. When they were filled with chalk, they would look like eggs within a nest, the big white bank creating the nest. The Aubrey holes were the hidden secret as far as the general population was concerned, but this is where the operators of the circle did their counting of days and years, which gave them knowledge of the coming of the Solstices, the Equinoxes and the eclipse cycle.

Stay tuned for part II, and I’ll tell you how they did it.

Photography sources:

The Queen Stone by Alan J. Wood of Wyenot News

The Bush Barrow Lozenge, Wikipedia

Ground plan of Stonehenge, Ancient Monuments Branch, Ministry of Public Building and Works, England

Ogham tract by J Rankin

Other sources:

 Alfred Watkins, “The Old Straight Track”                                                                                          

Alfred Watkins, “Early British Trackways, Moats, Mounds, Camps and Sites”. A lecture given to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, at Hereford, September, 1921

Arthur Cotterell, “Encyclopedia of Mythology”

Bryan Sykes, “The Seven Daughters of Eve”

Bryan Sykes, “Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots of Our Tribal History, published in the United States and Canada as, “Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland”

Caitlin and John Matthews, “Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom”


Fernand Neil, “The Mysteries of Stonehenge”

Gerald S Hawkins and John B White “Stonehenge Decoded”

J. Giesen, Sun and Moon Lozenge Applet

Joseph J. Thorndike Jr., “Discovery of Lost Worlds”

Liz and Colin Murray, “The Celtic Tree Oracle, a System of Divination”

Richard Cavendish, “Prehistoric England”

Zecharia Sitchin, “When Time Began”

Wikipedia, Y haplogene and MtDNA

Y Geiriadur Mawr, “The Complete Welsh-English, English-Welsh Dictionary.

A New Look at the Sator Square

 While searching for information about the Constellation Cygnus, I came across the mneme MEW3 and the Sator Square. I’ll admit, I’d never heard of these. I made a Sator Square, left it on my computer, and had a look at it every so often, trying to figure out what it was all about. Most of the translations seemed to suggest something about farmers ploughing, but I thought that rather odd. Why would ayone create a palindrome about farmers ploughing? Then I found the following, which seemed more logical.

“In Rome during the Middle Ages this square was inscribed on a variety of common, everyday objects such as utensils and drinking vessels. It was also found above doorways. It was believed that the square had magical properties, and that making it visible would ward off evil spirits. The words on this square roughly translate to “The Creator (or Saviour) holds the workings of the spheres in his hands” (1)

A translation of the words of the Sator Square (2)




(arrepo) (I) creep/move stealthily towards, also trust, its similarity with arrepo, from ad repo, ‘I creep toward’, may be coincidental


hold, keep; comprehend; possess; master; preserve


(a) work, care; aid, service, (an) effort/trouble


(rota) wheel, rotate; (roto) (I) whirl around, revolve, rotate

My translation

From the Creator flows the understanding of the workings of the spheres.

But the Sator Square doesn’t quite end there. No, for some reason I’m not sure of, I had to add ‘star light, star bright’ to the picture. I think my original idea had to do with squaring the circle, and I wondered could I add a pentagram, and would it suite. But that didn’t work, so I ended up with the black configuration. I was very curious to see if the lines created any meaningful words. They do.

By only using letters through which the lines run, I came up with: tereo, opera, aeset. Start at the top point of the ‘head’, move down the left leg, and up to the right arm. Then straight across the shoulder. Then move down the right leg, and back up to the top point of the head.

Well…………it turns out these are words from three different languages; Greek, Latin and Spanish. Tereo is Greek, and from the New Testament Greek Lexicon, the definition is: to attend to carefully, to guard………..metaphor, to keep, one in the state in which he is to observe……………… reserve: to undergo something.

And from Bible usage:

King James Word Usage – Total 75

keep 57, reserve 8, observe 4, watch 2, keeper 1, hold fast 1

Opera, I translated as, workings

Aeset, is Spanish for, asset. Although it isn’t likely that modern Spanish as a language existed on the Iberian Peninsula in 79 AD, none the less, the Spanish word, aeset, does mean asset in English. This word is neither Greek nor Latin. The Latin term was, ab assit. It comes to the English language through old French and Latin. However, the oldest ancestors of modern Spanish were Common Latin, Celtiberian and Basque. By 79 AD, the Romans had been in Spain for more than two hundred years, and obviously this word existed in 79 AD.

So my translation then becomes:

From the Creator flows the understanding of the workings of the spheres. Attending carefully to the workings (of the spheres) is an asset (to understanding).

After a few hours though, I realized that there was a fourth language used. That fourth language turned out to be Ogham, and this was a really big surprise, but the message makes perfect sense.


 My very first clue came from the four Ts. When they are joined together it creates a square with its corners turned to the cardinal points. This is Oir, the Spindle tree, it has an alternative name, Tharan, but it is the lightning which is referred to. This tree symbol is connected to enlightenment. Just as a flash of lightning can light up the sky for a moment, enlightenment can also come in a flash. I refer to this symbol as the Square of Enlightenment. I have found this device several times, in rather strange places, and it was always ‘enlightening’. On the other hand, T is also Tinne, the Holly, which is said to be best in the fight both spiritual and physical. It speaks of balance and equilibrium because spear shafts were made from Holly. So perhaps this person is throwing a spear of enlightenment, with balance and equilibrium. “The pen is mightier than the sword”, perhaps.

So after this find, I decided to make more squares using only the letters at the corners of each square to get the meaning. The red square says SRSR. S is Saille, the Willow, this has to do with the Sun and Moon combining to create the pattern of the year, punctuated by days and nights. It also has to do with eclipses, since these are part of the movements of the Sun and Moon. R is Ruis, the Elder which symbolizes the beginning in the end, and the end in the beginning, and is connected to the Cauldron of Immortality. The Earth was considered a Cauldron of Immortality, since all life comes from Her and returns to Her. We think of immortality as being a personal thing, we’ll live forever. Our ancestors passed on their genes to us, we are their immortality, just as our descendents will become our immortality. Genetic immortality over great spans of time, which we keep track of with a calendar. For me, Cauldron of Immortality  equals Earth time and the calendar. Therefore, SRSR, tells us that the movements of the Sun and Moon create the calendar.

RPRP, gives us Ruis again, and Phagos, the Beech, which symbolizes old knowledge, old writing. The message being that the calendar is old knowledge, and can be found in old writings.

EEEE gives us Eadha four times. This is the White Poplar, whose whispering leaves give us the small still voice of God. But the letter also symbolizes rebirth. Every year is reborn, June 21st will keep coming around again and again. These four Es are also an example of the mneme, MEW3, which is symbolic of the quarters and cross quarters, regardless whether it is the year or the land directions. In this case, when the four Es are connected, it also creates a square of enlightenment. The eight divisions of the year are very old and come from astronomy, our calendar is based on astronomy. Land directions are a very big part of astronomy. If you want to know if it is the longest or shortest day, you would have to know in which section of the horizon the Sun will rise and set. To be able to predict eclipses, you would have to understand the movements of the Sun and Moon in relation to each other, and know the direction to watch to be able to do this. The four Es are telling us that we must observe the eight quarters and cross quarters of the horizon, so we will understand the eight divisions of the year, and be able to predict eclipses.

In the centre we have N which is Nuin, the Ash, the World Ash or Cosmic Ash, that which links together the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm being the Earth, and the macrocosm being everything else around our planet. It’s certainly in the right place. Because a circle can be created anywhere on Earth, the World Ash, can exist anywhere on Earth. I can create my own private calendar circle in my own back yard, and so can anyone on Earth, if we have the right sort of horizon available.  The circle is our own World Ash. But the circle will not just give you the means to create a calendar, it will also give you land directions once you have sorted out the movements of the Sun and Moon.

Next we have AOAO or OAOA, depending on which square you look at. A is Ailim, the Silver Fir, however the name actually means Elm, but Silver Fir and Elm are very tall and symbolize high views and long sight. O is Oir which is enlightenment. I have seen Oir used as O in another document, where it was also represented as a square of enlightenment. So high views and long sight gives you enlightenment. On the other hand, enlightenment gives you high views and long sight. Usually O is Ohn, the Furze, which represent collecting together the elements needed to attain an end. So high views and long sight will give you the ability to collect the information you need. On the other hand, collecting together the information you need will give high views and long sight. The long sight being the ability to know what is to come and when, whether eclipses, or the eight divisions of the year when Celts celebrated their major festivals. Very Celtic, that duality. It shows up in their art a great deal.

The whole message we have here:


The four Ts alert us to the fact that this Sator Square is a square of enlightenment, and he or she is throwing it at us like a spear. We need to be in one spot with high views and long sight, where we can watch 360 degrees of the horizon, to gain knowledge about the quarters and cross quarters of the year. This will give us knowledge about the movements of the Sun and Moon, which will give us the ability to predict the coming festival days and eclipses, and that this is a continues cycle which will go on for ever and ever. Once this information is gathered, we will have gained knowledge about the movements of the Sun and Moon, the eight divisions of the year, eclipses, land directions, and water navigation also. According to this writer, the calendar was old knowledge and could be found in old writings. Which by his or her time, it was old knowledge, and today we know that there are ancient astronomy records.

At the moment, the oldest calendar we know about is from Egypt and dates c4236 BCE, however, if all stone circles and henge monuments were for keeping a calendar, then this knowledge is much older, even if we have no records connected to them. The stone circle at Nabta Playa in Egypt, dates c6000-c4000BCE. Adam’s Calendar in southern Africa, may date to at least c25,000 BCE. This might seem surprising, but why not, after all humans have been on Earth for millennia, and at one time there was nothing to watch at night but the Moon and the stars. Hunters and gatherers ranged over large areas of land. The Sun, Moon, stars and landscape became their map. Many people today never take any note of the movements of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. We no longer depend on them to hold our festivals, nor do we need them to travel around by. Many people living in cities all their lives, have never seen a sky full of stars. I’ve witnessed someone over seventy years of age discover this for the first time. She was quite in awe, and thought it so unusual that nothing would do but I had to go outside to see this wonderful vision she had discovered. Have to admit, it was quite fabulous that night, Milky Way and all.

Well………..must say………………….I’m really quite stunned by this message contained in the Sator Square. This square has been connected to the Knights Templar, but they came long after this square was created. They may have understood the whole message, or not, but the oldest one of these was found at Pompeii. Because the words are Latin, and the oldest was found at Pompeii, it’s thought to be Roman, and that the Romans spread it all over Europe and England also. But I don’t think the Romans were using Ogham, in fact, they seem to have had little time for the Celts and their Druids. No, whoever created this cunning square understood Latin, Greek, an early form of Spanish, and Ogham, but I have no idea how it became so widely spread.

It’s possible that there are numbers involved here also, but the most noticeable one in the Ogham configurations is four. That number four, which as far as I’m concerned has to do with hidden secrets. Well hidden here. There were four languages used, that was also hidden. And ‘star light, star bright’? well I know where that comes from, and I will write about it another time, but it also gives number five. There are five rows of five letters each, giving a total of twenty five. There are five divisions of five letters each in the Ogham tract, for a total of twenty five. Tereo opera aeset gives fifteen letters. That’s how many letters were said to have been in the earliest tract. These were the consonants. The next group to be added were the vowels, the last group the diphthongs.

I can find all the diphthongs on this square. In diagram e, we have a red cross or X, this is the Grove or Sacred place. All knowledge can be found within the Grove. All the tree and plant symbols of the Ogham tract contain their own knowledge. The Grove contains all of them. Since this covers the whole square and crosses through the Cosmic Ash, this square is the Sacred place, and it contains all the knowledge within the trees which gave us the Ogham message.

The two blue parallel lines crossing two parallel lines is Uilleand, the Honeysuckle, and it symbolizes the hidden secret. This configuration usually gives a diamond or lozenge in the middle, but we’re working with a square. The hidden secret it reveals is the fact that one must observe the sky from one place and be able to see in all four directions, to obtain good results which will give you an accurate calendar. This being the four Es and the N within the square.

In diagram f, we see a representation of Phagos, Beech, the Hook, old knowledge, old writing. Our English word, book, comes from an old form of the name, Beech. At one time thin slabs of Beech were used to write on. Several of these were attached together, creating a ‘book’.

When you join the four Ts or the four Es, you get the square of enlightenment, which is Oir or Tharan.

If you join all the letters vertically and horizontally (g), it gives you a net, four squares by four squares. This is one quarter of a square of Hermes. There are various forms to the net in different Ogham tracts, some have two by two, others three by three and some four by four. My tract has three by three because this is what Colin Murray had in his tract. In Mesopotamia, this version was known as Bab-Ilu, the Gate of God.

If all the outside letters are joined through N, you get a sixteen point windstar. A flower with sixteen petals is said to have been the device of the Ancient Mystery Schools. Astronomy, mathematics and surveying were some of the mysteries taught.

There is still a debate about the age of the Ogham tract. Some scholars believe that it was created by the Gnostic missionaries in Ireland. The Forfeda, which are the last five letters in the tract, represent diphthongs which were supposed to have been missing in the Irish Gaelic. However, the oldest Sator Square was found at Pompeii, and is dated 79AD because that’s when Pompeii was buried under volcanic ash. I have found an example which dates to at least the Bronze Age, and the Forfeda came into existence c3200 BCE. I will write about that another time also, but ‘star light, star bright’ comes from the same place. But for the moment, the Sator Square proves that the whole tract was intact by at least 79AD, consonants, vowels and diphthongs. It also shows that there was a genius at work here, who understood several languages. The whole thing is also typically Celtic, it has layers for those who could understand this message.

The first one which says SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS, the second which gives us TEREO OPERA AESET, the third which gives the Ogham message. I would put the last five symbols, the Forfeda, in a separate category. They would be the fourth layer which makes them the hidden secret. The Forfeda symbols are all connected to astronomy and surveying.

X marks the spot. The square with its corners turned to the cardinal points, we still use those on maps today. The two parallel lines crossed by two parallel lines, usually gives a diamond or lozenge in the centre when seen in the tract. Divide a square or a diamond in two and you have two triangles. Surveying is done by triangulation. The hook represents a star watching/ surveying device. The net which is usually called the Sea, represent lines of latitude and longitude. You would have to understand those to navigate at sea, particularly out on the ocean, where there is no landmass to give you direction. The Forfeda are said to be Manannan’s treasures, but along with them he also had the rolled up strip of the whale’s back, and these were all kept in the Crane Bag along with all the other letters of the tract. The strip of the whale’s back is the line which joins all the letters together. The rolled up strip of the whale’s back is the measuring cord.

The sixteen point windstar is a separate device altogether, although this does have to do with astronomy, surveying, map making and sailing, it seems more like a signature or seal. The mark of the Ancient Mystery Schools, which became the fifth layer.

Just think, while some of the major religions were trying to curtail the common people’s interest in astronomy, this message was sitting in plain view for all to see all during those long, long years. Astrology has been mixed up with astronomy since very ancient times. This is a type of divination which suggests that the Sun, Moon and planets regulate our lives. Our fate is connected to these orbs and the Houses they appear in. The Sun, Moon and planets were worshiped as gods at one time, but both the Jewish rabbis and the Christian priests, discouraged this running after pagan gods, and tried to steer the common people away from both astronomy and astrology, and put their faith in one God instead. And listen to them.

Neither astronomers nor astrologers died out, but definitely had a hard time of it for a long time. More than one person found themselves excommunicated and/or locked up for suggesting something as simple as, the Earth goes around the Sun, even though the Sumerians already knew that the Earth and all the other planets go around the Sun. The idea that the Sun goes around the Earth came from Ptolemy with his geocentric theories of planetary motion, which held that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, with the Sun, Moon and planets revolving around it.This idea lasted for fourteen centuries until the theories of Copernicus were finally adopted.

Any connections to the Ancient Mystery Schools were also discouraged, since they were also involved with astronomy, higher mathematics and surveying, and whatever other mysteries they studied. They didn’t die out either, rather they were driven underground, the remnants of which do not reappear among the general population until the seventeen hundreds, but even then under a heavy veil of secrecy, and only accessible to certain people. The Knights Templar may have had a great deal of this knowledge, but they were persecuted into near extinction.

But who was the creator of the Sator Square, and why did they hide it among Latin words? A Druid dragged off to Pompeii as a slave? Or a well educated noble or Druid, leaving their message behind on their travels? Whichever way, it probably tickled their Celtic funny bone. Considering their other artifacts, they seem to have had a very sly sense of humour.

Although I have seen the meanings of some of the symbols of the Forfeda switched around, Phagos the hook as the hidden secret being an example, I think Colin Murray had it correct due to other things I have found, where the parallel crossed lines as Uilleand, was symbolic of the hidden secret. It is possible that at one time, the meanings of Phagos, Uilleand and the Net may have been interchanged to keep the secret hidden. Without Colin Murray’s interpretation, I would not have discovered the hidden secrets within other things. All of which were quite enlightening, and very surprising.

One of the most amazing things the Sator Square brings to light, is that Ogham, once understood could bypass any language.The person who created this didn’t speak the same language as I do, but symbolic meanings translate into any language, even over almost two thousand years. They didn’t spell out words with it, but used the most basic symbolic meanings of each letter instead. So far, this is not the only example of Ogham being used this way that I have found, and it may be lurking in other ancient pictures and constructions.

(1) math

(2) Sator Square, Wikipedia

Coll Hazel’s Ogham, from the Celtic Tree Oracle by Liz and Colin Murray.

The Ogham tract and the Sator Squares used here, were created by the author.