Rediscovering Stonehenge

(title of television program)

I am watching the History channel:

an excited anthropologist

thinks he has rediscovered Stonehenge

as a temple not to the sun but the moon.

Above the window which shows

the sun dawning at Summer Solstice,

another frames the light of the moon

coming to fullness every month.

And even the sun window also shows

Winter Solstice sunset — the true focus?

It seems self-evident to me:

the Goddess and the God,

the cycle of the seasons turning; 

neither sun nor moon alone, predominant,

but both, together, ruling the heavens

and shining down on the earth.

People, he remarks in wonder,

were able to carry out science

at quite sophisticated levels, observing

the movements of lights in the night sky.

Their physical skills, he adds,

cannot be parallelled. At certain stages

of the agricultural cycle, even today,

there’s a labour force with nothing to do.

The great pyramids at Giza

were built around the same period.

Newgrange in Ireland, believed to be

solar observatory and tomb, was earlier still. 

What magic built Stonehenge and the rest? 

He tells us: Infinite time and patience!

A German disc has been found,

dating from the Stonehenge era.

He displays it on screen, noting

it not only depicts the sun

but gives equal space to the moon.

At Newgrange he shows us a carved stone: 

three spirals coiling from one centre.

He wonders if this has religious significance.

Oh, just ask any witch! Yes, that

is a spiritual symbol, a clear triskelion.

After the end of the Ice Age, he tells us,

‘the moon-fearing hunter-gatherers’

were superseded. Agriculture needs

the cycles of the sun. But when crops failed,

did they blame themselves for neglecting

an earlier, lunar worship? (Yes, he suggests.)

He shows us tall gold wizard hats, decorated

with all the phases of the moon. The people,

he supposes, needed priest-kings, masters of time, 

who understood these older mysteries.

Finally, with irritating time and patience,

he arrives at my own conclusion:

sun and moon are united, sun and moon

are in harmony! Those ‘windows’ at Stonehenge,

when you get them lined up just right, reveal

everything that they reveal: the movements 

of the sun mimic those of the moon; and

the movements of the moon mimic

those of the sun. It becomes self-evident,

and he says it: They are one and the same.

Journalling my relationship with the moon: 25

Aso submitted for dVerse Poetics: Repetition.


P.S. The triskelion mentioned is duplicated in the Poets United logo in the sidebar at the right!

Included in the book, THREE CYCLES OF THE MOON