Tea at Trianon: Natural Harmony at Stonehenge

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Natural Harmony at Stonehenge

From Ancient Origins:

What appears to be emerging from my mapping research is that during the British Neolithic there once existed a body of knowledge relating to the positioning of monuments in the landscape. This knowledge seems to have demanded an acknowledgement of the importance of the natural features in the landscape and their corresponding dimensions. Once this “knowledge” was understood, it was then translated into both a monument’s location and its inherent dimensions.

So why would the Proto-Druids behave in such a manner? The answer to this question is difficult, especially as the Neolithic communities were pre-literate. But is there any evidence for such a body of knowledge ever once existing within British pre-history? Maybe so, and the nearest explanation that can be offered here belongs to the late Iron Age druids.

Of course, these druids appeared almost two thousand years after the creation of Stonehenge and its ritual landscape. But we can comfortably place their appearance in British pre-history between 300 BC and 400 AD, when they are directly referred to in classical sources. I cannot find any earlier evidence from these written sources, even though a number of pre-historians are starting to think that the origins of the British Druidry might extend much further back in time than previously thought. For instance, Iron Age specialist Barry Cunliffe now considers the possibility that aspects of druidic knowledge could have originated as far back to the start of the Bronze Age , or 2,500 BC.

Undoubtedly, I believe that we are looking at some kind of specialist surveyor who possessed the ability to accurately measure on a large scale, in a way that would later be observed by the historical Greek and Roman classical authors. Obviously, for this to happen then the practice of their surveying would have had to continue across many generations (from the Neolithic, through to the Iron Age). (Read more.)