Re: General Alignment | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

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General Alignment

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Chris Collyer Mar 17, 2003 22:14:35

Replying to Callevadiva

Hi Callevadiva

As I was sat in my car tonight having been to the supermarket the moon was in front of me and the sun was in my rear view mirror. I was part of a Moon-car-Sun alignment.
Which was nice.

Monument alignments seem to me to be under researched (or maybe I’ve just missed the books) whereas Lunar/Solar/Celestial alignments with sites have been the subject of several books some of them of a rather ‘sensationalist’ nature. ;-)

Some site alignments often seem to be due to existing geography and/or the presence of ancient trackways. I was looking at round barrows in Yorkshire recently and while I was doing some research on them the phrase that kept coming up time and again was ‘sited on a probable ancient trackway’. Whether there was actually a track there, or the authors were just speculating because of the presence of the barrows I’m not sure.

I have the feeling that there may be many more alignments than we are aware of but the destruction of sites and modern towns and construction make them hard to figure out. It’s a case of studying the maps and getting out there and looking at the geography and getting a feel for a place. If you were going to build a barrow, where would *you* put it? You might well find that your guess tallies with the old maps and the Monuments Records.

-Chris

BlueGloves Mar 18, 2003 07:34:53

Replying to Chris Collyer

I suspect that the alignments we see - quite plainly - are the result of us just beginning to learn about geometry then. The first theorem in classical Greek maths is 'the shortest distance between two points, A and B, is a straight line, A-B'. We take this for granted now, as we've been surrounded by straight objects since birth. There are only a very few straight edges in a raw environment. Creating them is an attempt tp create order in the 'seething chaos'.

Quartz fragments in megaliths have been interpreted many times as storing charges of 'force', geomagnetic, sonic, or gravitational energy. This milky-white rock is often the substrate for copper deposits. Find it and quite likely there'll be seams of metal ore nearby. We can't perceive what such a leap forward metal was but we do celebrate our tools in similar daft ways ( http://www.cosmik.com/aa-march03/john92.html ). McLuhan has a good quote - which I'll mangle - 'Man makes tools and tools make man'.

Often when I throw ideas 'into the pot' I get scalded - doing it for the sake of the hiss is called 'polemic' ! Maybe.

Eh ?

fitzcoraldo Mar 20, 2003 20:36:08

Replying to Chris Collyer

I believe that man has observed alignment since..well, the year dot.
For roughly half of his/her life man is surrounded by alignments....the night sky. I believe a lot of what we see on the ground may be a reflection of what our ancestors saw in the night sky. If you want to construct a mythology to perpetuate your oral histories then the night sky is your canvas.
On a local level, there quite a few groups of barrows on the North York Moors know as 'the Three Howes' I've counted 7 so far then we also have the three henges of thornborough, the three devils arrows. I think that they may be a reflection of one of the dominant constellations of the northern skies..Orion or more specifically Orions Belt. I need to look more closely at this but that is my starting point.