Re: Is it a white cow when you're not looking? | Forum

White Cow 1

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Is it a white cow when you're not looking?

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tjj Sep 2, 2009 20:56:37

Replying to gjrk

Today I found myself doing a bit of research on Boscawen-un stone circle near Penzance in Cornwall - much is written about it from Edward Thomas to John Michell.

Rupert Soskin (Standing With Stones) started his long and winding trip here - though it may have been the Merry Maidens, both circles have nineteen stones. Rupert intriguingly wondered if there was a connection betwween the Callenish lunar phenomenon of the eighteen and a half year cycle and the nineteen stone circles.

Boscawen-un also has a slanting central stone, however, one of the nineteen stones is quartz and I read somewhere that this was considered to be the 'healing stone'. Quartz is still considered to have healing 'energies' though this would probably fall down under scientific scrutiny.

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/boscawenun.htm

thesweetcheat Sep 2, 2009 21:47:55

Replying to tjj

tjj wrote:

The quartz stone at Boscawen-Un is a beauty, a squat, square block in total contrast to the central gnomen stone. A male/female pairing if ever there was one, I'm pretty sure the quartz stone here is the one Julian Cope mentions one of his daughters going straight to in TMA (sorry, can't be bothered to check!).

:-)

gjrk Sep 3, 2009 14:46:42

Replying to tjj

Thanks very much for that.

Quartz is a funny one. I've always felt drawn to it as well. Though this may just be the precious white shine of it, in comparison to the grey alternatives. The trouble with it, where we're concerned, is, if I may borrow one of Tiompan's phrases (;)), that it's so ubiquitous it would be hard to prove that its presence at monuments was always intentional, except if it could be proved, for example, to have come from some distance away.

I suspect that it may have meant different things in different areas. You coiuld make a good case for universal meaning where a type of architecture is concerned, (although even then, the variation in age and morphology between, say, types of stone circles would seem to put a stop to that run) but not a single type of stone.

Having said that, there has been research (and counter argument) into our reactions and, I think, the 'meanings' we may universally ascribe to different basic colours. I'd have to check this last sentence 'cos I'm working from memory.