Primer for PLATONIC THINKING

Any attempt to ‘explain’ Plato will inevitably expose the cultural bifurcation caused by the split between what the modern world calls spirit and matter, that fundamental polarity that has lain deep and uneasily in human consciousness and whose duality has been fully played out during our Age of Pisces. From Classical Greece onwards, spirit and matter have been adversaries within a historical creation story, and mankind’s allotment has been to face and deal with this dual dragon, having the fiery breath of fundamentalist polarity, and has most recently chosen matter as its friend and abandoned spirit as superstitious.

Plato’s works are of crucial importance in describing a cosmology which offers humankind the chance to believe in and even interact with higher intelligences. In The Sleepwalkers, the materialist Arthur Koestler is not keen on Plato. He attacks him and Platonists in general for their non-scientific and passive view of the world, which he claims held back the ancient world even though those Greek empiricists appear to have kick-started both the scientific process and logical methodology remarkably well from the sixth to the fourth century BC.

Meanwhile, Richard Tarnas, in The Passion of the Western Mind, unlike Koestler, has read and understood his astrology and his metaphysics, is pro-Plato and places him as a philosopher who saw this possibility of building of a relationship with Higher Intelligence and that scientific experimentation is not the sole way forward if one wishes to understand the workings of the Cosmos.

To Plato, it hardly mattered if one improved one’s lot by understanding how a lever worked or what made an elephant able to stand up. What mattered was that one understood that all things ‘under the Moon’ belonged to the sublunary world representing the imperfect mortal world, a distortion or false picture of the cosmic perfection of Divine Mind. Man’s task was ultimately to be able to understand, even reflect back, that perfect Form, the creative Idea that lay behind mortal experience of the senses – the Form.

The Idea precedes the Form.

By setting this as a central plank in his philosophy Plato was emphatically a metaphysician. But Plato also knew that the geometry and number science underpinning material forms was essentially derived from a spiritual idea, and this also made him an avid student of mathematics and geometry. Plato visited Egypt and had been initiated into Egyptian philosophy, which makes him a very interesting historical character indeed.

The reason I mention these two popular and well-known books first is that they are probably two of the best written and most clearly expressed popular accounts of the rag-bag path of history since the Greeks that have ever been written, sparing the reader the heavy approach required of the academic style. They explain in much detail how the modern world came about. However, neither book dares to take on the Egyptian world view nor that of the Neolithic stone movers. Honest in admitting this, by the simple act of simply omitting it, both books set the Greeks as the first recorded experimenters with what we would recognise as modern science.

However, any unbiased researcher into Egyptian or megalithic culture will quickly come to understand that scientific methodology, as one might recognise that term today, was being practiced, at least in its main essentials, fully three millenia before the rise of the Greek civilisation. The megalithic culture has been shown to have held a high level of knowledge of astronomy, geometry, number patterns and time periods, while the reader can find countless examples of deep knowledge of both science and technology within Egyptian civilization, simply by studying the odd pyramid or two.

In the post classical Greek world, as Greece fell into a corrupt quagmire of self-satisfaction, it became ripe for Roman and barbarian invasion. From about 200 BC, the outcome of all their scientific effort and understanding became diffused, even lost awhile, leaving the large scale works of Plato, a pupil of Socrates, and Aristotle the Engineer and to a lesser extent the texts and codices of other Greek natural philosophers for the new Roman world order to make sense of.

Plato’s works were in many ways a set of social, metaphysical and cosmic order guides to human life, underpinned by geometry and number science, a sort of Haynes manual for developing a working cosmology, whereas Aristotle’s works were a sort of Haynes manual of How Things Work, more physics and resembling an engineering textbook.

The inherited historical viewpoint, not even a truthful historical progression, is that had the great Greek natural philosophers carried on with their progressive work, and had Greece not fallen into the abyss it did around 200 BC, we would not have had to wait 1500 years for the enlightenment and the rational scientific advances of Galileo, Kepler, Newton et al. While Greek ideas became passé, quaint even, and the world moved on via the New Roman World Order, the Greeks, together with the Phoenicians had been the inheritors of much Egyptian, Iron Age, Celtic and prehistoric science that had gone before, and this is hardly ever pursued, and remains to be more understood and accepted within our present historical perspective. One reason for this is that the Greeks, alongside the other trading nations of the Mediterranean, had travelled widely beyond the Pillars of Hercules and had rubbed shoulders with the hyperborean cultures.  The commercial links were those of friendship and mutual interest through trade, whereas the Romans stomped into the Northern lands armed with spear and sword. There are repercussions in this simple fact that may it unwise to overlook a second reason.

The Romans eschewed the Greek texts. Today we may read in whatever language we choose details of the Greek legacy. Apparently the earlier cultures, Druids, Egyptians and the Pythagorean schools were more hermetic, and chose not to write anything down, yet many Greek ideas were written down and clearly drawn from Egyptian and megalithic (Neolithic) sources, a fact that can be verified by any study of the geometry of prehistoric cultures.

Because of Plato’s emphasis on a higher order being involved in the creative processes of the Cosmos, much of the New Testament draws from Plato and this explains why many of the later Christian monastic orders acquired copies of Plato’s works that survived, even the later Muslim clerics availed themselves of copies. But a crucial point one has to remember is that during the early Christian era, only the Christian monasteries had people who could actually read and translate these Greek texts, and needed these people for the simple reason that many of the New Testament codices and tracts had been originally written in Greek.

The secular world had meantime largely moved on to Latin as their language of no choice, and so did the Roman Church, this placing a further barrier in front of someone wishing to read Plato or the works of the other Greek philosophers. To read Ptolemy’s magnificent Geographia, an eight volume navigational and geographical treatise and his Tetrabiblos, a comprehensive astronomical and astrological textbook, one had to be able to both read Greek and understand the Egyptian culture into which Ptolemy had been born.

These became the standard textbooks on Geography, Astronomy and Astrology, the former work quoting the size of the earth and other key physical constants of the planet, while the second presented the known astrological lore of the time. Both texts were to eventually appear in Latin, Tetrabiblos in the 12th century and Geographia (as Geographia Claudii Ptolemaei) around 1410 AD, and then in English or German following the invention of the printing press in 1439 AD. The Muslim world had copies of all Ptolemy’s works translated into Arabic by the tenth century, and constructed accurate maps from them.

What we may term the ‘Greek connection’ provides a ‘solid reason’ why a researcher may be confident that literate monks in the early Celtic Church had access to important pre-Christian Greek manuscripts, and the ability to understand them.  From this it is safe to presume that they would have drawn extensively from these authors, especially from Plato. But there is another ‘solid reason’ of equal importance. Many of the authors of the New Testament made use of the same analogies, parables and literary structures as did Plato. So, even via the backdoor, so to speak, they were understanding Plato, and why he became an important component of Christian belief for someone taking holy orders. While Aristotle may have been more your man if you were a practical sort, if you wished to know the size of the earth, construct a map or make an astrolabe, one still had to be able to read Greek, or find a translator, which almost exclusively implied someone having had an education within a monastic order.

Western culture, having emerged from a mixture of both Platonic and Aristotlean ideas, is demonstrably split apart by duality, spirit vs matter, and the polarity of good vs evil. The so-called Christian era appears to have followed a two millennia-long pathway of confusion, brutality, competiveness and aggression, by holding such a difficult paradigm in front of their world map. But the Celtic Church appears not to have held to the later nor as extreme viewpoint of Christianity, as did the developed Roman Church model of Christian belief.

The discovery of the vesica, the number sciences in Plato’s works and the metrological system revealed recently by Michell and Neal presents us with the fact that, long before the Church of Rome defined Christian thinking, and further back still, even millenia before the time of Plato or Jesus, there was a healthier tradition operating, perhaps throughout the then known world, that had essentially embraced a heavily Platonic emphasis yet was not so internally divided. And this seems to be where Plato takes centre stage as a crucially important historical figure linking the prehistoric world with the modern world.

To live the Platonian life is, astonishingly, without many of the anxieties that infest the minds of most Westerners. Basically it is all about stopping needing to control everything, leaving the higher forces to get on with keeping the show on the road, which was never man’s role in the first place. This show is found to support human progress as each individual attempts to find a better alignment with the Divine Mind. God then becomes the preserver and not the destroyer of men, even though men are demonstrably and constantly imperfect in their thought, actions and manifestations. Sin becomes the ‘Missing of the mark’ of the Babylonians.

It was Plato’s view that ‘Even if one cannot believe in God, it is good to believe that the Cosmos is better managed than one could ever imagine it to be’ and that Man is looked after as he grows up and will come to finally recognise an original spiritual state of being. Meanwhile, for those who like to hedge their bets, and because God is said to help those who help themselves, a background in the ‘Aristotlean’ practical skills has never been so useful in providing modern folk with a reduction, even an escape, from the wage-slavery imposed on them during that seemingly unstoppable and rapacious materialistic western society, during and since the Industrial Revolution.

That survival skills are an important adjunct to liberate time for contemplative matters would be reason enough to master the skills of engineering and the practical sciences alongside grasping the implications to be found within Plato’s books.

In fact, the Platonic package is strangely familiar if you ever studied the Christian stories, because many of them draw extensively from Plato. In Christian texts ‘God the Father-Mother’ exposed new possibilities for Man, and gave a large nudge to mankind in explaining how they might become spiritualised. In fact it is made clear in multiple examples from the life and teachings ascribed to Jesus and the later apostles that it is only our false thinking that prevents man from having access to the spiritual life right here and now. In this fact alone Christianity might well be thought of as applied Platonism.

This concept of false thinking, illusion or maya is nothing new, and appears interwoven throughout many eastern and oriental religions. To the western mind it appeared, and still appears, to be completely radical and often seen as complete rubbish, from Roman times onward. The accounts of the early Christian’s healing abilities, written within the Gospels with their parables and stories, provide no small support for the Christian discipline being capable of healing the sick, this lending further support to Plato’s philosophy.

A Component of Geometry

There is a seemingly odd component to this philosophy, one which has often been played down or ignored, so that the modern world has trouble in integrating it within the Platonic package. Above the entrance of Plato’s Academy was written the phrase:

Only he who knows geometry may enter here’.

How can geometry and the knowledge of geometry play a role in the understanding of the cosmic plan ipso facto the spiritualisation of Man? It sounds completely crazy to modern minds cynically sold the ‘New Atheism’ – which is largely about selling nothing as if it were something. Yet St John’s gospel teems with geometry, his Book of Revelation is full of it, and advanced associated number science, and most spiritual architecture throughout the faiths of the world is redolent with geometry and number patterns. Mysticism that goes hand in hand with geometrical thought has all but totally vanished from the modern intellectual horizon! It has disappeared below the horizon of our consciousness in our materialistic and largely Aristotlean based world.

Today we have our PCs and our aspirins, but not any more our geometry nor a dialogue with Higher Intelligence. Plato (or Gurdjieff) might have said that today we may live longer but we die earlier as a result of the over-emphasis on material science and our false belief that it can save us from… well, what exactly can it save us from? This ‘what?’ needs answering while we remain living in anxiety and fear of expressing what we really can be. Which most of us do, according to Thoreau, who in Waldon wrote:

 

‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,

 and go to the grave with the song still in them’

The best teacher of Platonic thought I ever had the good fortune to know was my good friend and one-time co-author, John Michell. His book The Dimensions of Paradise, recently reprinted by Inner Traditions, would be my number one choice as a Plato primer that includes the geometrical and numerical material missing from so many other books that present Platonic ideas. I am, of course, biased in this sentiment, so I should add that the other two books mentioned earlier are also very well worth reading. But the vital truth remains: unless we crowbar ourselves from the human propensity to muddle through with a cobbled together cultural model inherited from our parents and their parents going back into the gloomy medieval Catholic world or the Calvanistic Protestant world of the late Middle Ages, both very Dark Ages in many respects, then we will, I suspect, remain truly lost.

This brief and hopefully helpful explanation as to how and why Platonic ideas came to infuse the Celtic Church gives a viable reason for the behaviour and activities of many of the Celtic saints. Without that reason, and not knowing about their geometrical activities makes these people appear somewhat like wandering eccentrics who fiddled and faffed about while Britain faced and had to deal with centuries of invasion and no little ruin. About this, nobody expressed it better than St Gildas in his massive ecumenical rant against the rulers of Dark Age Britain.

If Brynach Gwyddel had heard about the Preseli vesica through a local oral tradition that went back to the Neolithic era, he could have discovered Plato’s exact geometrical and numerical scheme for a temple by simply measuring what lay, and still lies, on the landscape around Nevern. By making his headquarters directly underneath the northern geodetic marker for the vesica implies that this measurement could and probably did indeed take place, enabling Brynach to understand the ancient cultural significance of the location. He was initiated into the spirit of the place because he lived in that place began to understand it. No book can do that. And Brynach certainly had the opportunity to understand Plato, at St Illtud’s college, located in present day Llantwit Major, where he had been a student alongside Samson, David and perhaps Crannog and a few more of his contemporaries besides. The early hagiography of St Samson, dating from the 7th century, tells its readers that St Illtud taught ‘philosophy of every kind, of geometry namely, and of rhetoric, grammar and arithmetic, and of all the theories of philosophy. And by birth he was a most wise magician, having knowledge of the future’.

Plato’s works offered the Celtic Saints a doorway that could be opened and provide an escape from an ailing state of being. The surviving megalithic monuments, predominantly to be found in the west of Britain, reinforced this possibility, and these artefacts would have been capable, to a Celtic monk trained in geometry, of demonstrating that a culture that clearly predated the Christian era, had erected these monuments, and had previously understood so much of what that latter day creed had salted down within some books of the New Testament and other Greek manuscripts. The central truth was waiting for them to reveal: that the principal megalithic temples in Britain had been built using some of the design rules of Plato, and with full knowledge of the geometrical importance of the vesical piscis geometry.

This revelation, and we must assume that some links were made in this connecting thread, offered an ontology or state of being that was structurally sound and aligned to a higher realm, an ordered cosmos. To study this properly any modern aspirant will, at some point, also have to work, study and reckon with geometry, work with number patterns and gain an understanding of the ancient system of metrology or measurement, in order to light the fuse for the vital process which has been bye-passed, omitted or forbidden by the modern world, and which nobody can circumvent or short circuit. One must at some stage grapple with this material, for it can and will reveal and ultimately allow entry into the Temple, as Plato had promised it would.

So, better grab yourself a survey plan of that stone ring, and study that book of crop circle photographs. Visit a few Gothic cathedrals, Watch the sun and moon rises and sets and note where these occur against the local horizon over the months and years.

 

Amazon Book Review – Probably the Most Important Stonehenge Mystery Revealed

Below is a review of Temple in the Hills, given a five star rating by the reviewer. It’s better than any Easter egg. Half the print run has gone after five months and the book section lets you know how you may acquire a copy. An early chapter from this book is blogged earlier on this site.

Continue reading “Amazon Book Review – Probably the Most Important Stonehenge Mystery Revealed”

Read the first review of Temple in the Hills

The first review of my recent book, Temple of the Hills has been received from author and researcher Dr Thomas K Dietrich, whose most recent book, Temple of Heaven and Earth – Guide to Earth Energy & Inspiration at Sacred Sites was published by Save our Sacred Sites Society, San Bruno, California. It is a thorough and coherent account of the ancient roots of human encounters with what John Michell (in The View Over Atlantis) called ‘Spiritual Engineering’ and which has since come to be re-categorised as ‘earth energies’A professional stone-image carver, once a student of the late Professor Rodney Smith during the 1960s, Dietrich has spent a lifetime reading ancient history, mythology and science, living in Ireland for thirteen years and travelling widely, investigating ancient sites throughout Europe, Corsica, Sardinia, Tenerife, Malta, Rhodes, Crete, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, the Red Sea, Israel, Jordan, in addition to the American Southwest, Mexico, Yucatan, Belize, Guatemala and South America, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

An active researcher, Dr Dietrich has written The Earth Holder (1983),  The Origin of Culture and Civilisation (2005), The Culture of Astronomy (2011) and Temple of Heaven and Earth (2016).

Dr Dietrich is therefore among the rather too few people who are amply experienced and qualified enough to be able to write a critical review of my own work, for which I warmly thank him.

For more details of his research, visit his website cosmomyth.com

Photograph Two. Castell Mawr Henge. Larger than Stonehenge Over 500 feet ‘diameter’, this site sits perched on the flat summit of a rounded hill near Eglwyswrw, north of the Main Preseli ridge and off to the left of the dolmen in the previous photograph (Image via the wonderful Google Earth).

Book Review of Temple in the Hills

Hello Robin,
I thoroughly enjoyed Temple in the Hills, and many others will enjoy it also. Your excellent surveys are really the key to convincing archaeologists of the broad scope of ancient science and knowledge. I have attached a short review and do firmly believe that we should encourage students to follow your footsteps in metrological surveys so that more people may convince themselves of these essential sciences.

Best Regards and Thank you again for your inspirational book!

TKD
Thomas Karl Dietrich is the author of Temple of Heaven & Earth, Culture of Astronomy, and Origin of Culture. websites: cosmomyth.com and donohoememorials.com

Here is his review:

REVIEW

TEMPLE IN THE HILLS, The Discovery of the Original Stonehenge by Robin Heath

The introduction to Temple in the Hills by Robin Heath traces olden traditions and modern movements concerning the bluestone circle at Stonehenge, Zodiac hunters, New Age celebrities such as John Michell and Alexander Thom. The main corpus is dedicated to a review of astronomical phenomena and especially Heath’s discovery of the ‘Lunation Triangle’ within the context of ’the 30-segment, marked rope & peg’ configuration producing the 5-12-13 triangle which numerically defines the Moon’s relationship with Sun and Earth. Heath also gives a basic primer upon how to construct an accurate Equilateral Triangle on the landscape; again by simple rope & peg implements, showing that detailed, large-scale surveys may be achieved with very simple tools –proving that complex constructs were well within the abilities of our Stone-Age ancestors.

Robin Heath brings a solid case of evidence in favor of Neolithic metrology into the courtroom of archaeology. The evidence turns upon his measurements and discovery of ‘the Preseli Wheel’, centered upon the 500 foot diameter henge at Castell Mawr. Heath delineates five spokes of this wheel: Llech Drybedd, Carningli Summit, Foel Feddan, Carn Menyn, and Foel Drygarn which each average 18,630 feet (3.52 miles) upon the Preseli circle. The evidence of this wonderful precision is an indictment of modern archaeology’s continuing neglect to embrace and acknowledge metrological data and refined astronomical alignments. Heath returns to one of his 2010 investigations of his survey of the Preseli Vesica showing the distances between five locations upon a diamond pattern of two base-to-base equilateral triangles. The length of the common base and the sides of these two equilateral triangles show a nearly equal length and a mean distance of 11,759.0 feet demonstrating; in the author’s own words, “An accuracy that showed it to be a surveyed structure.”

Heath’s detailed demonstration of these irrefutable similar dimensions at the Preseli Wheel and Preseli Vesica represents no small contribution to science –because every well-documented opus elevates and substantiates the case for large-scale Neolithic metrology, precision alignments, as well as the broad based canons and traditions involving cycles, numbers, and geometry. It is absolutely important to celebrate this achievement for what it has and will accomplish. But, rather than bemoan the slow acceptance of new scientific data, I am quite sure that colleges and universities would take up such an interesting project for their students to gain valuable expertise in metrology; namely, to confirm Robin Heath’s survey measurements. This would once and for all guarantee the acceptance of accurate large-scale metrology in the Neolithic period and ignite a fire under the dragging feet and torsos of the archaeologists.

In his conclusion, Robin Heath presents the initial stages of his paramount discovery that the Aubrey Circle and the Sarsen Circle of Stonehenge bear the same relationship to one another as do the Preseli Wheel and its central circle around Pentre Ifan and Eglwyswrw. This correspondence shows that Stonehenge was based upon the template of the Preseli Wheel in Wales dated between 3200-3800 BC. Heath notices that genetic biologists conclude that the brain capacity of humankind has been more or less the same for almost 200,000 years.    TKD

To purchase a copy of this book, full details are found in this category (Books) of the website.

 

Books by Robin Heath

from Bluestone Press, The Old Post Office, GLANRHYD, Cardigan, Pembs. SA43 3PA.

Bluestone Press was founded in 1993. All our titles are locally printed by Gomer Press, perhaps the best known publisher/printer in Wales. Our titles are traditionally designed books, printed onto high quality paper and sewn covers, and bound into soft back format. They last, and some. In addition to books by Robin Heath, Bluestone Press has also published specialist astronomy and astrology textbooks, audio books, soli-lunar calendars and leaflets on musical instrument restoration and megalithic site tour guides, in addition to postcards and gift cards.

Once payment has been made it is often possible to dispatch books within 24 hours. We like to know that they have been received safely, and we need to know if books have arrived damaged during transit.

There are substantial discounts for multiple book orders, for larger quantities and trade, please note that our distributors are all happy people.

www.robinheath.info.                                                             email : mail@skyhenge.plus.com

Bluestone Press Titles

  •  A Key to Stonehenge (1993), rev. 2nd edition 2005, Out of print.
  • Sun, Moon & Stonehenge (1998) Out of print.
  • The Measure of Albion (2004) (with John Michell) Out of print.
  • Powerpoints (2007)*
  • Alexander Thom : Cracking the Stone Age Code* (2008)
  • Bluestone Magic : A Guide to the Prehistoric monuments of West Wales* (2010) Full colour.
  • Proto-Stonehenge in Wales*(2014)
  • Temple in the Hills: Discovering the Origins of Stonehenge (2016) Full colour.

Hodder Headline

  • Stone Circles : A Beginner’s Guide (1999)

Wooden Books

  • Sun, Moon and Earth (1999 etc), various editions and available in 10 languages
  • Stonehenge (2000 etc), various editions and available in 4 languages

Adventures Unlimited Press (AUP)

  • The Lost Science of Measuring the World (with John Michell)(2006) A facsimile US edition of The Measure of Albion.

Mythos Press

  • The Secret Land (with Paul Broadhurst)

All Bluestone Press titles (marked above in bold and asterix) are available by post, as a soft cover edition.

ORDERING BOOKS

To order a book from this list, we will need the following information, by email or snail-mail :

  1. Your name, address, phone number and email address.
  2. A shipping address, if different from the address above in item 1.
  3. The title(s)of the book(s) you want to buy.
  4. Whether you want the book signed, and do let us know the name of any recipient to be mentioned for a book to be gifted.

email : mail@skyhenge.plus.com

  1. A nice person at Bluestone Press will then email or phone with a quote for the book(s), inclusive of postage and packing costs.
  2. You then have two options: either
    • to pay via PayPal through mail@skyhenge.plus.com or
    • issue a cheque payable to Bluestone Press for the full amount (including post and packing charges), posted to,
    • Bluestone Press, The Old Post Office, GLANRHYD, Cardigan, Pembs. SA43 3PA.

Once payment has been made it is often possible to dispatch books within 24 hours. We like to know that they have been received safely, and we need to know if books have arrived damaged during transit.

There are substantial discounts for multiple book orders, for larger quantities and trade, please note that our distributors are all happy people.

www.robinheath.info.                                                             email : mail@skyhenge.plus.com

Those Old Preseli Blues

An excerpt from Temple of the Hills – The Discovery of the Original Stonehenge

 by Robin Heath, Bluestone Press, 2016

Long lodged in folklore and myth there runs an ancient Welsh tradition telling of an original bluestone circle in the Preseli region of west Wales. The matter was referred to in The White Goddess, a seminal work by the Irish academic historian and poet Robert Graves (Faber, 1948),

It has been suggested that the smaller (bluestones) stones, which are known to have been transported all the way from the Prescelly Mountains in Pembrokeshire, were originally disposed in another order there and rearranged by the people who erected the larger ones. This is likely, and it is remarkable that these imported stones were not dressed until they were re-erected at Stonehenge itself.’

However, this tradition goes back much further than recent times, in essence the tradition is about a bluestone circle being uprooted from Preseli and taken in antiquity to Stonehenge,  then reassembled as part of the monument that has stood on Salisbury Plain for at least five millenia, mute, magnificent and yet, above all, mysterious. And despite centuries of attention from all manner of specialisms, the purpose of Stonehenge still remains unclear. This monument’s many secrets and its extant bluestone circle still tantalize and taunt those who attempt to understand the history and purpose of this unique monument.

Unexpectedly, one might think, professional archaeologists are presently taking this tradition seriously, as if it were a prehistoric fact, and are combing the Preseli Hills in an attempt to discover the original location of this alleged bluestone circle. Why would they do that?

Why Preseli?

The archaeologists are the latest activity that feeds the bluestone tradition, adding to it more stepping stones across the wide river that separates Stonehenge fact from Stonehenge fiction. As for many other traditions, their recent activity is neither new nor is it unexpected. This mythic territory and this sacred landscape have both been visited before.  But there are several good reasons why the Preseli hills have become the hot spot for this bluestone circle treasure hunt, the most important being that this landscape’s connection with Stonehenge has been greatly reinforced during the past century.

In June 1903, a geology professor called William Judd scrutinised the implications of the tradition in an article for The Wiltshire Magazine His scientific account of that year listed the difficulties that could be expected in attempting to transport bluestones from ‘a distant locality’ to Stonehenge. He also noted that the bluestones had been shaped and polished at Stonehenge after having been transported, forming the so-called ‘bluestone layer’ of chippings around the monument. Judd made the following astute comment,

The old tradition concerning Stonehenge is that it consisted of a circle of ‘bluestones’ which had acquired a certain sanctity in a distant locality, and had been transported from the original home of the tribe. If so, the stones, brought from so far away, would have been reduced to something like half their bulk…

Is it conceivable that these skillful builders would have transported such blocks of stone in their rough state over mountains, hills and rivers (and possibly over seas) in order to shape them at the point of erection?

Professor Judd did not link the source of the bluestone circle as being in the Preseli region. In 1903, that source was not known for sure, and nobody then could be certain where the ‘distant locality’ of that original bluestone circle might have been. This remains essentially true today, although within two decades of Judd’s work, much stronger evidence was produced to support why the bluestone circle at Stonehenge might have once been located in the Preseli Hills, even where it might most likely be found.

In 1923, a bright light was shone on what had previously been a rather nebulous tradition. Another renowned geologist Dr Hubert Thomas wrote the first scientific paper that supported a connection between the Preselis and Stonehenge. Thomas undertook a petrological analysis of the bluestones found at Stonehenge, enabling a crucial breakthrough to be made. The evidence suggested that these bluestones had almost all originated from a small collection of outcrops along the main ridge of the Preseli Hills, most notably the outcrops around Carn Menyn, a mile or so from Foel Drygarn, at the eastern end of the main Preseli ridge.

hhthomas

If there had ever been a bluestone circle installed in the Preselis, as the tradition suggested, Thomas provided good evidence to back up that possibility, and indirectly identified its location. His work forged a geological link between the Preselis and Stonehenge and although Thomas’s work had not directly mentioned the location of any bluestone circle, his paper undoubtedly was suggesting that were there ever such a monument, it would likely have been located near to Carn Menyn.  In other words, Thomas had confirmed scientifically that an original lost bluestone circle could certainly be a possibility, and indirectly had suggested where it might best be found.

Thomas’s work represented a major breakthrough in understanding the origins and purpose of Stonehenge. It carved through many of the Dark Age and medieval elaborations of the original tradition, but it left untouched another story, linked to the 6th century Merlin, who told that the bluestones arrived at Stonehenge from the Wicklow hills in Ireland, by giants, and had been shipped over the sea on rafts, by giants who assembled them into Stonehenge. This variant of the original tradition was made very popular by the twelfth century chronicler, Geoffrey of Monmouth. His popular fourteenth century romance was later embellished, this famous artwork showing a giant placing a lintel onto a waiting megalith in order to complete the sarsen circle at Stonehenge.

merlinstonehenge

Unfortunately, the geology is all to pieces here, for these are sarsen stones being depicted in this cartoon illustration from the period, not bluestones from Ireland or from anywhere else. The bluestones at Stonehenge are all much smaller than the incredulous mortals shown here watching the giant’s superhuman (and mechanically impossible) feat. However Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story does at least involve a sea journey during the transport of the stones.

Allegedly born in Carmarthen, an old Roman sea-fort less than 15 miles from the Preseli Hills,  Merlin was brought up in that part of Wales two centuries after it had become an Irish colony, within a large part of southern and western Wales that spoke Irish. Whoever created this story, perhaps it was the late fifth-sixth century wizard, Merlin, who may have thought west Wales was Ireland!

This all becomes rather irrelevant however, simply because this tall story is not referring to the bluestones, but instead to the much larger sarsen stones, else Merlin’s giants would have come over as wimps and his story unlikely to impress anyone, for the average bluestone is a tenth of the size and weight of the mighty sarsen stones found at Stonehenge. Then as now, most people visit Stonehenge to see the sarsen circle and the trilithon horseshoe, the central part of the monument. It has been the logo for Stonehenge for a very long time.

There is also the not insignificant factor that no one can be certain whether Merlin actually existed or was simply a legendary folk hero. The Merlin story thus fails to convince as a credible explanation of the source of the bluestones at Stonehenge. However the narrative does link Stonehenge to a source of megalithic stones to the north-west of the monument and suggests they were transported by ‘giants’ rather than glaciers, and that the journey involved a sea passage. Geoffrey’s yarn is part of Stonehenge’s history, but it’s foggy message is confusing and gets us very little nearer the source of the tradition of a bluestone circle being moved to Stonehenge.

The Preseli Zodiac

During the 1970s an apparently new Preseli tradition concerning an ancient circle in the Preselis was placed into popular consciousness. This was a claim made by a group calling itself by the acronym IGR (Institute for Geomantic Research) for the existence of an ancient Preseli landscape zodiac. Just as was the case for the bluestone circle tradition, the idea of a prehistoric British landscape zodiac was anything but new, the concept permeating through the works of Taliesin and other great Bards. Welsh history does not go back much further than Taliesin.

Much more recently, in 1809, Welsh author Edward Davies published Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, which contained a powerful statement concerning the significance and purpose of landscape temples,

As the Britons distinguished the Zodiac, and the Temples or Sanctuaries of their Gods, by the same name of Caer Sidi, and as their great Bard Taliesin blends the heavenly and the terrestrial Sidi in one description, we may presume that they regarded the latter, as a type or representation of the former.’

The two component words that make up Caer Sidi, have a duplex meaning in Welsh, they refer to both the celestial zodiac and to temples consecrated to the ancient British gods. These two words are worthy of a better understanding. In Spurrell’s Welsh-English Dictionary of 1850, Caer is listed as meaning a wall, fortress, castle, fort, citadel, city. The milky way is cited as being Caer Gwydion, often known as Arianrhod.

The root sid- is clearly connected with spinning, weaving, rotation or wheels, and the list of words using this prefix is long. Sidell – fly-wheel; winder; whirl; whorl; rim of a wheel. Sidelliad – revolution; rotation. Sidellu – to whirl; to revolve; to rotate. Siddelydd – winder. Sidydd – zodiac.  Sidyll – whirl; twirl; whorl; rim.

From this Welsh term to describe the celestial zodiac comes an important realisation. Any ancient British monumental circular structure is implicitly going to be a representation or reflection of the sky above, a celestial clock-face, a year-circle and a temple, a manifestation of As Above, so Below, as expressed in one of the tenets of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, which may date from the seventh century, of similar age to the period of Taliesin.

That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above, working the miracles of one*.’

While it may be impossible to prove the veracity of that hoary tradition concerning the existence of a circle of bluestones once erected in the Preselis having been taken to Stonehenge,  we can be a lot more confident that this circle, rim or wheel, had it ever existed, would have been understood by its builders to have represented a temple, and would have  mirrored the zodiac or celestial sphere in some way.

To settle the matter would require that two things can be identified. Firstly, the site of the original (bluestone) circle must be located, a tall order, to put it mildly. Why? Because it would require that archaeologists find a stone circle somewhere in the Preselis where there are probably no longer any stones in situ, else it would have been identified a long time ago. By now it would be presumed to be solely defined by hidden but disturbed earth and in-fill debris where once there had been stones with socket holes. It would be like finding an empty packet of needles in a well-rotted haystack!

If and when located, their second task would be to understand the way that the zodiacal rim or circumference of this structure, the year-circle, was divided up. This cannot be undertaken by conventional archaeologists for they are not trained in, and do not have the required skills in recognising astronomical, geometrical or metrological patterns at prehistoric sites. And then there is the small matter that, for over a century, they have been trained to minimise the significance of prehistoric archaeoastronomy as a matter of course. To mention the father of modern archaeoastronomy, Alexander Thom, is to professionally fall on one’s megalithic rod (btw, that’s two and a half megalithic yards or 6.8 feet). So this second task, to understand the sky-circles, will have to be undertaken by someone who understands both megalithic science, zodiacs and year-circles. Guess who?

The 1970s quest for a Preseli zodiac can now be understood to be more obviously aligned with the present archaeological hunt for the original bluestone circle in Preseli. It is a shiny modern extension to the traditional ‘bluestone myth’, courtesy of Hubert Thomas’s petrological report from 1923, that originally impelled Lewis Edwards and later researchers of earth mysteries to visit the ‘Prescelly landscape’, in search of a landscape zodiac. And this same report almost certainly provided the initial impetus for the current archaeological froth of activity in Preseli.

From this short prologue  a gambling man could reasonably predict that the Preseli bluestone myth may have a few more twists and turns left in the telling by the end of the twenty-first century.

bluestonesites

Despite the Preseli zodiac remaining understood having become essentially a dismissed modern myth, it has been possible to demonstrate in only a few paragraphs that this modern myth has roots nourished by much older beliefs, and contains mythical elements that may go way back into the prehistoric period. In effect the myth of the Preseli Zodiac and the tradition of the bluestone circle collide and may be one and the same thing.

So here is the nub of the matter. Ancient traditions are rarely lacking in some core truth, however gaudy, evanescent and flimsy the wrapping paper may appear to suggest otherwise. Open up the package and this particular box is found to contain a tenacious legend about a sky-circle or zodiac or stone circle once built in the Preseli hills. Once the box has been opened up, the quest should then be to locate this hoary monument and try to work out who built it and why, and in so doing reveal its original purpose. It was identifying this task that originally impelled me to write Temple in the Hills, a project led me to the discover the original Stonehenge.

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If you want to purchase a copy of Temple of the Hills by Robin Heath, please send an email to mail@skyhenge.plus.com, with your name and shipping address, and whether or not you will want the book signed.

This will be acknowledged and the options of payment methods made available.  Currently, these are £10 inclusive of P&P, in the UK, £12 in EU and £15 in US.

Other countries will require an appropriate shipping charge). The book contains over 80 original colour illustrations, including many of the Preseli landscape and its monuments.

 

 

Discovering the Original Stonehenge in the Preselis

robin-at-dolmen-llech-y-drybeddPresentation Event at Castell Henllys on 19th October 2016, starting at 7:30pm

Prehistoric archaeologists are currently focussing their attention on the Preseli region of West Wales. Why are they here, and what are they looking for?

The answer has to do with Stonehenge, 140 miles away in Wiltshire. Some of this mighty monument was constructed using bluestones that originated here in the Preselis. A fiery debate is raging about how they got there, whether they were taken by human toil or arrived on Salisbury Plain through glacial action.

So archaeologists are now looking for evidence of an original bluestone circle here in the Preseli hills, looking for surviving stones which, if they geologically match those at Stonehenge, will prove that human intent moved them there.

Robin claims to have recently discovered the original design for Stonehenge here in the Preselis, and has surveyed it using a theodolite. He will show this design has more to do with the Caer Sidi of Welsh legend, and the motions of sun, moon and stars, than it has with how a few bluestones ever found their way to Salisbury Plain.

In his illustrated and not too technical presentation he will also reveal that Stonehenge was a derivative taken from an original design conceived here in Wales, so how good is that?!

A graduate of UCNW, Bangor, Robin Heath was previously a research and development engineer with Ferranti, then a college head of technology department, late of Coleg Ceredigion. Since 1990, local author and presenter Robin Heath has been finding the prehistoric science embedded within the surviving megalithic monuments in Britain, Ireland and France. In 1993 Robin founded Megalithic Tours and has written ten books revealing evidence of high culture to be found in the astronomy, geometry and metrology of ancient artifacts. This material has been presented to students at the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, John Ruskin College, Brasenose College, Oxford, the British School of Dowsing, The Gatekeeper Trust, RILKO (Research into Lost Knowledge Organisation), and the Royal Institute of Mathematics.

 A launch copy of Robin’s latest book, The Temple in the Hills, will be available at £10.

For more information and to make a booking contact Castell Henllys on 01239 891319

PRESS: Please contact Robin Heath by email (mail AT skyhenge.plus.com) for interviews or further information,