Many, perhaps most, people would not regard an ancient stone circle as a house. A construction, yes, a significant construction even, one redolent of mystery perhaps. But, a house?
There seems to be a tendency to ascribe religious connotations to pre-historical sites, as if those who commanded the raising of stones were, in some fundamental way, different from people in the modern world.
The reality is, as far as it’s possible to know, those Bronze Age property developers were as we are. Certainly, so much more knowledge is available today and there is now a technology that might inspire those distant people with thoughts that we are as gods.
Except, that is to patronise them as being gullible, almost to reassert the nineteenth century concept of the noble innocent savage, when actually their ability to comprehend was equal to that of present people.
Confronted by a mobile phone it is likely a Bronze Age man or woman would have been initially wary. Yet rather than worshiping it as a conduit to the gods, within a very short space of time they’d be txting like the rest of us.
This means we should question the assumption that stone circles necessarily had mystical associations. Perhaps they were market places: after all, by limiting points of access tolls could be charged to traders wishing to do business.
Maybe, such circles served both God and Mammon, as did many of the medieval cathedrals and churches, being centres of prayer and trade. Then there would have been a secular return on the investment of time and effort required in quarrying, transporting and hoisting upright those stones.
However, I am willing to concede that stone circles, or at least one in particular, were, and still are, spiritual spaces. The one convincing me of this is Castle Rigg, just far enough beyond the bounds of Keswick to be of the Lakeland fells.
Stonehenge has become a theme park, as likely a source of profound insight as Disneyland. Hordes of grockles are herded along designated pathways roped off to prevent any actual contact with the stones. It is a photo opportunity before reloading the coach and off to the next itinerary item on the tourist checklist.
Castle Rigg on a sharp March morning, with snow on Blencathra still and a stiletto wind slicing through any number of gortex swaddlings to pierce skin and flesh down to the bone, has few visitors. It is beautifully bleak.
The sheer magnificence of the setting proves the aesthetic qualities of our ancestors. It is a site chosen not for comfort, being so exposed, but because solace is deliberately not being invoked.
Human fragility is emphasised, both in terms of how insignificant an individual can appear in such a wonderfully harsh environment and how easily that individual might be extinguished and consumed without leaving a trace on those fells.
Today, as our technology probes ever deeper into space and back in time towards the very beginnings, it is the universe providing such a perspective. For Bronze Age men and women the stone circle was their observatory.
The root of the word “church”, the Old English “cirice, signified a circle in much the same usage as a “circle of friends”. It could be that gathering in circles has always had symbolic meaning, reflecting the roundness of the horizon, the arc of the heavens.
Once, on an idle ramble through a Norfolk wood, I happened upon a long abandoned Norman church. No evidence remained of the community it once served and itself was little more than a roofless shell being repossessed by nature.
For me, it had a greater religious tenor in such a state, as an illustration of the impermanence and mutability of everything. This is a more profound truth than any supposed everlasting divine word.
Henges such as Castle Rigg were being built as many years before the designated birth of Christ as those passed since. Those four millennia or so being the merest fraction of time in Earth’s existence, let alone the universe in which it’s set.
It is the prevailing fashion, in Britain at least, to dismiss religion as the last pathetic refuge of the credulous. Everyone from tele-scientists to stand-up comedians confirm their intellectual credentials through public avowals of disbelief.
This is, intentional or not, surely a statement of arrogance. The implication is, that as far as we can tell humanity is the apotheosis of creation, there is nothing greater than Man.
Standing alone within the petrified boundary of Castle Rigg, looking out over the daunting splendour of the fells beneath a grand parabola of sky I have no sense of human pre-eminence.
Nor do I feel insignificant. Rather, I am an integral part of the whole vastness of creation, the purpose of which is far beyond my comprehension, but that it has a purpose I do not doubt.
For me the God is not a divine being, but is divine being and the only true gospel is unfolding creation. And a circle of stones on a windswept hill is a sacred house in which those with eyes prepared to see can catch an elemental glimpse of that which is so much greater.
deismuk 