Mab's Celtic Knot

Duloe.

2008-07-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

In 1979 I was 21 & in England with pretty much just two things on my mind: I wanted to visit Stonehenge & cross the causeway into Tintagel.

Stonehenge disappointed, even before they fenced it off completely. We wandered round with all the other tourists but whatever Stonehenge had once been it's ambiance & secrets were not for me. I was given something far better & I have remembered it clearly all the years in between, the important things, not frustrating things like name & location. I know we were driving west, still stinging from the disappointment of Stonehenge, probably somewhere on Bodmin Moor. I don't have a good sense of direction even in my own country. It could have been anywhere in Devon or Cornwall but there are limitations. Someone might know where we landed.

Driving down the road I noticed a small standing circle at the top of a hill on the side of the road. I remember it had been raining. We had to pick our way over the fresh ploughed fields. The heavy clods of black soil made us cautious; it was obviously a working farm but the farmer graciously gave us permission to climb his hill & walk around this site.

I remember the view. I remember standing under the tall dark trees staring out over a very English valley with its patchwork of hedgerows & small fields & grey rainy skies.

I think we had found by accident the smallest stone circle in Cornwall, Duloe. Duloe stands in the corner of a farmer's field on a flat ridge overlooking the Looe valley. There are only 8 white quartz standing stones in the circle & they aren't big ones. Even the diameter is small ~ about 11m.

There was no~one else round but as I investigated the circle I was overwhelmed with a sense of darkness & evil. My skin prickled. Without a shadow of a doubt I *knew* blood had been shed here. I did not know then (how could I?) that in the 1800's, when a hedgerow growing through the centre of the circle was removed, that a burial urn with cremated human remains was also found. I know the Celts, along with most primitive peoples, practised human sacrifice. Whether they did or not at Duloe there is no way of knowing for sure.

I have had the same sense of evil & doom on other ancient sites & have grown more cautious but the love of archaeology is, at root level, the love of people & a huge curiousity about who they were & why they were the way they were.Deuteronomy29:29 is applicable ~ The secret things belong to God alone, but the things revealed belong to us & to our children forever.

Hanging Henges.

2008-07-06T01:53:00.000-07:00

I know I shouldn't touch this one. Everyone has a theory about Stonehenge ~ everything from aliens to druids & all the things in between.

I don't have a theory as such. I am merely pleased to note that ongoing research is being done at the site & new information is being recorded all the time. Information is good.

There are some facts to hang the occasional theory on. The mortice & tenor joints linked by tongue & groove joints are woodworking techniques & there seems little doubt that Stonehenge is based on the Woodenhenge that was nearby.

The largest British woodhenge is at Stanton Drew & it would have been twice as big as Stonehenge, with 9 ~ 10 concentric wooden circles 100 yards in diameter. Unlike Stonehenge there seems to be little doubt that it was used as an astronomical observatory. It may have looked a bit like this or been capped in the same way Stonhenge is capped, or even roofed.

TheArchaeologists have known the long barrows beside Stonehege were communal burial mounds but having found little evidence until recentaly of burials within the henge itself theorisied other uses. Now they are speculating it may have been the communal monument & burial place of the local *royal* family. When you think of the trouble the Egyptian kings went too to self grandize themselves this does not seem at all unlikely & given that we know the Egyptians also aligned their tombs with solar equinoxes & such it is not beyond the realms of speculation that the Celts did the same thing. Thus two theories come into agreement.

It does not matter. It rises out of the Salisbury plain as it has for centuries, drawing the eye, dominating the landscape, beautiful in its stark simplicity.

And I end with this quote to think on:

Jacquetta Hawkes "Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves and - desires"

of knots & birds & other things.

2008-07-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Celtic art is almost always identifiable by its intricate knotwork, or it's triskles,
or by the strange man/animal/plant shapes. The stories have been lost; the themes remain, hints of far older beliefs that can be traced back along the spirals of time ~ like birds.

There are plenty of birds in Celtic legend: Morrigu's ravens feasting on the dead; Rhiannon's song birds; Blodwedd of the flowers, who's other shape is an owl. And if you were file, poet, half mad & consecrated to the muse of inspiration, you came to your full making adorned in a cloak of small songbird feathers with a swans head for a tippet. The symbolism is clear & unmistakable. They were birds too, who came with your muse, & their names were Thought & Memory.

What the Celts actually believed no~one now knows. There are some who say they do but it can't be true. Too much time has passed & not until Christianity came did the Celts write anything down, not because they couldn't write but because power is not power when it is shared. Making the gaining & keeping of that power by requiring rigerous training in memorization ensured that power remained in the hands of an elite few. Twenty years it could take to train a file or a brehon or a druid. And having acquired that training they held equal status with a king & weilded more power.

Certainly I think the knotwork symbolises the eternal path, but whether it is freedom or bondage depends very much on your point of view. It is interesting that though the Celts wove their knots around the Christian cross, the arms always break free.

Once Upon a Time...

2008-07-04T21:43:00.001-07:00

...there was a woman who had five children ~ me. But who am I without the children? Who was I before the children came along & who will I be once they are gone again?

I like this person. I like the chameleon that is me, whose roots go down into the rich red soil of Kibbenkibbenwa & are anchored in a Celtic past of women warriors, poets & mothers...& so much more; always more.