STONEHENGE ENGLAD

1. STONEHENGE ENGLAD Stonehenge is a prehistoric, mysterious circle of upright stones in southern England. Construction on the great monument began 5,000 years ago; the famous stones that still stand today were put in place about 4,000 years ago. The great age, massive scale and mysterious purpose of Stonehenge draw over 800,000 visitors per year, and several thousand gather on the summer solstice to watch the sunrise at this ancient and mystical site. The stones are aligned almost perfectly with the sunrise on the summer solstice, and it is almost unquestioned that Stonehenge was built as a spectacular place of worship. Although the faith of the Stonehenge builders predates any known religion, the site has become a place of pilgrimage and worship for Neopagans who identify themselves with the Druids or other forms of Celtic paganism. It is also popular with New Age devotees, who report powerful energies at the site.

2. Stonehenge, the most visited and well known of the British stone rings, is a composite structure built during three distinct periods. In Period I (radiocarbon-dated to 3100 BC), Stonehenge was a circular ditch with an internal bank. The circle, 320 feet in diameter, had a single entrance, 56 mysterious holes around its perimeter (with remains in them of human cremations), and a wooden sanctuary in the middle. The circle was aligned with the midsummer sunrise, the midwinter sunset, and the most southerly rising and northerly setting of the moon. Period II (2150 BC) saw the replacement of the wooden sanctuary with two circles of ‘bluestones’ (dolerite stone with a bluish tint), the widening of the entrance, the construction of an entrance avenue marked by parallel ditches aligned to the midsummer sunrise, and the erection, outside the circle, of the thirty-five ton ‘Heel Stone’. The eighty bluestones, some weighing as much as four tons, were transported from the Prescelly Mountains in Wales, 240 miles away.

3. A visit to Stonehenge begins across the highway from the monument, at the large and efficiently-run Visitor's Centre. There is a fee for parking as well as for admission, which includes an optional audio guide. A pedestrian passageway leads under the highway to Stonehenge itself, where a designated path allows for views from all sides. For conservation reasons, visitors are no longer allowed to approach the stones except on the summer solstice.

4. Prehistorians and archaeologists speak about the ‘myths’ of renewal of ancient cultures, but to the ancient people the festivals were not celebrations of myth but rather celebrations of a current reality. That reality was the periodic energetic effect of solar, lunar, and stellar cycles on human beings, the animal kingdom, and the earth itself. This energetic effect, the increased presence of energy at the sacred sites during particular periods of the astronomical cycles, was the focus of the ritual use of stone rings and so many of the other ancient sanctuaries found around the world.

5. The stones are greatAnd magic power they haveMen that are sickFare to that stoneAnd they wash that stoneAnd with that water bathe away their sickness