Last year was perfect for solstice and full moons.
This year the full moon is a week away from the solstice, which doesn't matter much really.
Perhaps only a degree or two in the sun-position at most
In fact I guess it is better because of the hoards drawn to Wessex for solstices...Police; flashing blue lights...road blocks.
Even at Midwinter.
But on the other hand.
Rain! so much rain this year.
I let The Sanctuary in
Let it obsess me.
In the end all I'm left with are facts
And guesses.
And plenty more questions...
The winter solstice is soon.
Let's hope the sky is thin and clear
The space of heaven will freeze my breath and bones.
No clouds please...
Speculation about the lay out and time of use of The Sanctuary, Avebury.
The solstice is a week before the next full moon.
27th December 2012.
Though midsummer is the obvious time for a party, midwinter is a harder and colder time and still celebrated with feasting: with fire and alcohol. It is a time for visiting relatives, meeting new people and strangers. A time to trade, gifts and purchases.
4000 years ago the dead may well have been acknowledged and perhaps openly invited, to party along with the living at this dead time of year.
Back to the sky.
I have tried to work out the 'official' positions of the sun and moon several times for this year. This version is the most accurate and includes speculation as to how or why the winter solstice and full moon may have been significant. Keep in mind that the hills change the time and position of where the sun and moon sink and rise, but the positions of the sun and moon have not changed significantly since The Bronze Age. Unfortunately azimuths from charts cannot tell the whole story.
The positions of the planets this year will be different next year.
And as to what the Pleiades were doing 4000 years ago?
Well they rose in the east, not the north-east and set in the west.
Also, they were visible for fewer hours than they are in our century.
So, what can you see in the sky if you visit The Sanctuary this year?
Midwinter solstice morning.
7 AM.
The day starts with the moon sinking towards the horizon, marking the avenue that used to lead to Avebury. The Avenue is in the north-west quadrant of The Sanctuary and it leads down a hill, at first parallel to and latter towards the river.
The Avenue used to follow the line of the road, the A4.
Unfortunately this road is horrible to walk along.
If you drive down the road and take the right turn- the B 4004, you will soon see the Sarcens marking the route towards the henge and stone circles of Avebury.
There is usually some parking space.
The yellow route on the map marks the Avenue.
The Avenue connected Avebury to The Sanctuary.
But did the people who created it regard The Sanctuary as the distant end of a journey, or the beginning?
How likely is it that during the Bronze Age, this avenue was used at midwinter morning?
Time to speculate wildly and make a guess.
I think that the morning may have been symbolically important, but what was happening at sun-rise did not require living, human agency.
In the morning the moon descends and could be imagined as travelling under the ground in the Other-world to rise again in the early evening above the round barrows (the houses of the sleeping dead) at the north-east side of The Sanctuary.
Though it is fairly pointless in my opinion to mention Mesopotamian myth -in which the sun and moon descended to the Underworld to act as judge/ maintain if not law, then order...But where would you think the moon had gone, if you did not know modern astronomy?
I have vertigo when I imagine a flat earth
The Underworld a mirror world...
At the winter solstice at sun rise, the moon follows the seven stars of the Pleiades and both appear to be going down, under ground.
It is tempting again to mention Mesopotamian myth. The Seven were the original Four Horseman of the Apocalypse plus three more- The Ilu Sibitti (Akkadian for literally, gods 7) had a temple in Khorsabad, Iraq.
On the other hand, the Akkadian name for The Pleiades is MUL MUL which means...star star.
Often the stars are seven sisters.
In Japanese the Mutsuraboshi meaning- six stars.
As in Greek myth, one of the sisters is missing.
If the moon draws the soul...
The living cannot follow the moon and the stars.
Unlike the dead...
But, if the dead follow the moon at night, it leads them clockwise towards the avenue.
The moon carries on down, but do the ghosts follow the avenue down to Avebury?
Avebury - a massive henge- looks like Durrington or it would look like Durrington had not Alexander Keiller conducted excavations and re-erected the stones on the site.
The Sarcens march out towards the Sanctuary where they met up with another two rings of stones surrounding the timber henge.
The inclusion of stones sealing the outer rings of the timber-henge at The Sanctuary appear from the Cunnington's survey to have been positioned to prevent anyone going inside the timber henge.
The timber henge pre-dates the stone.
So what was The Sanctuary at this time?
If The Sanctuary was indeed 'fenced-off' and protected by the stones, possibly it was at best a land-mark and at worst, a place to be feared, shut off like West Kennet
But not forgotten.
Still included.
As a landmark, the Sanctuary would have acted as a station, marking the way to Avebury, rather than being the ultimate destination.
What is special about the direction of the midwinter morning moon set?
The North-West.
Standing at The Sanctuary looking north-west along the Avenue, you are looking broadly in the direction of the Neolithic long barrow of West Kennet and the mound of Silbury.
Both those older structures are 'excluded' from the Avenue by the river, and are not linked directly to Avebury. It looks as if the Avenue provided a path avoiding West Kennet and Silbury, as the large stone hauled into place to block West Kennet long barrow indicates, such 'old' places may have been avoided by the people of the Bronze Age.
8 AM
About an hour latter, the sun is rising.
But...there are hills and trees, so the sun will appear latter.
And nor does this direction seem especially significant.
The shadows from the timber posts would be long and pointing towards the avenue, nothing else as far as I can see.
Before the sun appears you may see Pluto, Mercury and Venus, broadly in the south east direction, fading into the morning light.
Conclusion.
I believe that The Sanctuary accentuated and echoed the moon-set, nothing more.
But the evening was a significant time for people, and fire and processions.
Midwinter solstice evening.
3:30 PM.
The moon begins to rise in the most significant of the henge builders directions (the north-east) behind the Bronze Age barrows. This place used to be known as 'The Seven Hills' and though most of the barrows are Bronze Age, at least two contained Roman burials. This was, poetically speaking, a land belonging to the sleeping dead.
The cold moon guards their icy graves and links them, in its underground movement, from the the place of its sinking at the Avenue and Avebury, to its rising at this edge-land.
Above the moon Jupiter points to the seven stars of The Pleiades.
4:04 PM
The sun is setting in the south-west.
Pluto follows the sun down, whilst the other planets: Mars, Neptune and Uranus are in the sky.
This quadrant was marked at The Sanctuary by a recumbent stone, and extra post holes. Indicating that this quadrant was significant to the people who dragged the stones here.
Here is the evidence indicating that midwinter solstice and full moon is a significant time at the Bronze Age configuration of The Sanctuary,
More happens, astronomically speaking in the evening than in the early morning:
This year the full moon is a week away from the solstice, which doesn't matter much really.
Perhaps only a degree or two in the sun-position at most
In fact I guess it is better because of the hoards drawn to Wessex for solstices...Police; flashing blue lights...road blocks.
Even at Midwinter.
But on the other hand.
Rain! so much rain this year.
I let The Sanctuary in
Let it obsess me.
In the end all I'm left with are facts
And guesses.
And plenty more questions...
The winter solstice is soon.
Let's hope the sky is thin and clear
The space of heaven will freeze my breath and bones.
No clouds please...
Speculation about the lay out and time of use of The Sanctuary, Avebury.
 |
| For anyone who doesn't know The Sanctuary, this is how it may have looked 4000 years ago. Now it is a field by the roadside, containing small concrete posts. |
The solstice is a week before the next full moon.
27th December 2012.
Though midsummer is the obvious time for a party, midwinter is a harder and colder time and still celebrated with feasting: with fire and alcohol. It is a time for visiting relatives, meeting new people and strangers. A time to trade, gifts and purchases.
4000 years ago the dead may well have been acknowledged and perhaps openly invited, to party along with the living at this dead time of year.
Back to the sky.
I have tried to work out the 'official' positions of the sun and moon several times for this year. This version is the most accurate and includes speculation as to how or why the winter solstice and full moon may have been significant. Keep in mind that the hills change the time and position of where the sun and moon sink and rise, but the positions of the sun and moon have not changed significantly since The Bronze Age. Unfortunately azimuths from charts cannot tell the whole story.
The positions of the planets this year will be different next year.
And as to what the Pleiades were doing 4000 years ago?
Well they rose in the east, not the north-east and set in the west.
Also, they were visible for fewer hours than they are in our century.
So, what can you see in the sky if you visit The Sanctuary this year?
Midwinter solstice morning.
7 AM.
The day starts with the moon sinking towards the horizon, marking the avenue that used to lead to Avebury. The Avenue is in the north-west quadrant of The Sanctuary and it leads down a hill, at first parallel to and latter towards the river.
The Avenue used to follow the line of the road, the A4.
Unfortunately this road is horrible to walk along.
If you drive down the road and take the right turn- the B 4004, you will soon see the Sarcens marking the route towards the henge and stone circles of Avebury.
There is usually some parking space.
 |
| The West Kennet Avenue, looking towards Avebury, from where the stones, and avenue now end. |
The yellow route on the map marks the Avenue.
The Avenue connected Avebury to The Sanctuary.
But did the people who created it regard The Sanctuary as the distant end of a journey, or the beginning?
How likely is it that during the Bronze Age, this avenue was used at midwinter morning?
Time to speculate wildly and make a guess.
I think that the morning may have been symbolically important, but what was happening at sun-rise did not require living, human agency.
In the morning the moon descends and could be imagined as travelling under the ground in the Other-world to rise again in the early evening above the round barrows (the houses of the sleeping dead) at the north-east side of The Sanctuary.
Though it is fairly pointless in my opinion to mention Mesopotamian myth -in which the sun and moon descended to the Underworld to act as judge/ maintain if not law, then order...But where would you think the moon had gone, if you did not know modern astronomy?
I have vertigo when I imagine a flat earth
The Underworld a mirror world...
 |
| Across the road from The Sanctuary. The start of The Ridgeway. |
It is tempting again to mention Mesopotamian myth. The Seven were the original Four Horseman of the Apocalypse plus three more- The Ilu Sibitti (Akkadian for literally, gods 7) had a temple in Khorsabad, Iraq.
On the other hand, the Akkadian name for The Pleiades is MUL MUL which means...star star.
Often the stars are seven sisters.
In Japanese the Mutsuraboshi meaning- six stars.
As in Greek myth, one of the sisters is missing.
If the moon draws the soul...
The living cannot follow the moon and the stars.
Unlike the dead...
Hang on
Why should anyone think that the moon has anything to do with death.
Answer
Humans look for meaning..
I'm human..
But, if the dead follow the moon at night, it leads them clockwise towards the avenue.
The moon carries on down, but do the ghosts follow the avenue down to Avebury?
Avebury - a massive henge- looks like Durrington or it would look like Durrington had not Alexander Keiller conducted excavations and re-erected the stones on the site.
The Sarcens march out towards the Sanctuary where they met up with another two rings of stones surrounding the timber henge.
The inclusion of stones sealing the outer rings of the timber-henge at The Sanctuary appear from the Cunnington's survey to have been positioned to prevent anyone going inside the timber henge.
The timber henge pre-dates the stone.
So what was The Sanctuary at this time?
If The Sanctuary was indeed 'fenced-off' and protected by the stones, possibly it was at best a land-mark and at worst, a place to be feared, shut off like West Kennet
But not forgotten.
Still included.
As a landmark, the Sanctuary would have acted as a station, marking the way to Avebury, rather than being the ultimate destination.
What is special about the direction of the midwinter morning moon set?
The North-West.
Standing at The Sanctuary looking north-west along the Avenue, you are looking broadly in the direction of the Neolithic long barrow of West Kennet and the mound of Silbury.
Both those older structures are 'excluded' from the Avenue by the river, and are not linked directly to Avebury. It looks as if the Avenue provided a path avoiding West Kennet and Silbury, as the large stone hauled into place to block West Kennet long barrow indicates, such 'old' places may have been avoided by the people of the Bronze Age.
8 AM
About an hour latter, the sun is rising.
But...there are hills and trees, so the sun will appear latter.
And nor does this direction seem especially significant.
The shadows from the timber posts would be long and pointing towards the avenue, nothing else as far as I can see.
Before the sun appears you may see Pluto, Mercury and Venus, broadly in the south east direction, fading into the morning light.
Conclusion.
I believe that The Sanctuary accentuated and echoed the moon-set, nothing more.
But the evening was a significant time for people, and fire and processions.
Midwinter solstice evening.
3:30 PM.
The moon begins to rise in the most significant of the henge builders directions (the north-east) behind the Bronze Age barrows. This place used to be known as 'The Seven Hills' and though most of the barrows are Bronze Age, at least two contained Roman burials. This was, poetically speaking, a land belonging to the sleeping dead.
The cold moon guards their icy graves and links them, in its underground movement, from the the place of its sinking at the Avenue and Avebury, to its rising at this edge-land.
Above the moon Jupiter points to the seven stars of The Pleiades.
4:04 PM
The sun is setting in the south-west.
Pluto follows the sun down, whilst the other planets: Mars, Neptune and Uranus are in the sky.
This quadrant was marked at The Sanctuary by a recumbent stone, and extra post holes. Indicating that this quadrant was significant to the people who dragged the stones here.
Here is the evidence indicating that midwinter solstice and full moon is a significant time at the Bronze Age configuration of The Sanctuary,
More happens, astronomically speaking in the evening than in the early morning:
- Morning-The moon sets towards the avenue that leads to Avebury
- Evening-The moon rises over the edge of the hill above the barrows.
- Evening-The sun sets in a position marked in the circle by a recumbent stone...
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