104. Callanish Central.
Professor Alexander Thom interfered with numerous monuments. It seems that there was no end to his interference. Even Callanish Central, as seen in the picture, did not escape his meddling. A few years later, some students from Glasgow University conducted a survey that shifted a stone metaphorically to give bias to Thom's distorted geometry.
Moreover, professional and amateur authors disregarded Thom and Glasgow University's deception to profit from books that had sections on Callanish. Such corruption is endemic in Britain's archaeological world.
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The Callanish stones are situated on gently sloping land that ends with a rocky outcrop called "Cnoc-an-Turso." The early inhabitants constructed a pathway of standing stones up this slope to reach a viewpoint where they created an egg-shaped ring of more standing stones, measuring around 13 metres across. In the centre of this egg was a stone-lined burial kist where the body of a significant person had been interred.
Notably, the egg's axis points to where the moon bathed in secret in Loch Rathacleit at the time of her Major Standstill. This Loch (lake) is marked by a notch in the northern horizon, which is one way the astronomers John North and Alexander Thom were able to date the stones of Callanish to at least 1800 BC.
The moon reaches the Major Standstill at the farthest point north on the horizon once every 18.61 years, completing a full circuit in 56 years.
There are stone rows on either side of the egg, resembling wings. However, it is unclear if this holds any significance.
Thom made Callanish famous for how the moon skims the horizon when furthest south without mentioning that this apparition cannot be seen from the egg because Cnoc-an-Turso blocks the view.
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105. Callanish overview. Alignments and Sightlines.
A small diagram on the left, like those given by John North, shows the azimuths of the sun and moon with upper limbs on a horizon of zero altitudes for Callanish's latitude 58.2 degrees north in the year 2,500 BC. However, while zero altitudes can be realised at sea, it is impractical for terrestrial monuments.
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So, we now know that Callanish Central is a geometric egg whose axis points 24 degrees clockwise from the north to where a notch in the northern horizon appears between two hills, some 3.5 kilometres from the stones. As stated, the northernmost moon hides behind this notch, as she will do in 2024.
It is also significant that a freshwater lake (Loch Rathacleit) nestles at the base of this notch. So the moon, which early folk wished to make pregnant with the egg - and since pregnancy involves copious amounts of water - the moon collects this water from the Loch.
Somerville noted a scattering of stones in the shape of an egg attached to the side of Callanish Central, which aimed at the summer solstice. This was intended to pronounce Callanish Central as male.
Also, Professor John North found several alignments on the sun that cut across the 'Avenue.' North called these alignments 'sightlines' as a matter of convenience. However, these lines obey the Stone Age 10-degree rule propounded at places like the Arminghall Henge in Norfolk.
So, what was Callanish all about?
Once again, we have to look elsewhere for the answer.
Woodhenge near Stonehenge is a moon egg to be fertilised by the sun and cast into the northernmost sky, which some regard as the “Dark Sky” because our natural sun and moon never visit it. And because timber Woodhenge aims at the real moon, Neolithic folks considered her female.
Once fertilised, Woodhenge was to be launched into the Dark Sky by a causeway through the ditch and bank that aimed at it.
Avebury's West Kennet Avenue is replete with alignments on the moon. Therefore, the WKA was a female entity: an umbilical that connects the mother henge to its child - the Sanctuary. Boy burials placed at strategic points along the WKA prove the Sanctuary male.
With an azimuth of 10 degrees, Callanish's double row of stones points even further north than Woodhenge. So Callanish’s Avenue ensured that the egg, after fertilisation, should grow to become a second sun and light up the dark sky to give warmth to grow their crops all year round. Well, what should we expect from Britain's first farmers but to embark on a search for perpetual summers? That is what those thousands of stone rings were built for!
The time of the Major Standstill is close, and we need some keen photographers to visit Callanish around Xmas 2024 to photograph it. Remember that the northernmost moon will be higher and more apparent than in prehistory due to the precession of the earth's axis.
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106. Callanish Central, Isle of Lewis.
This image is based on Somerville's survey, which we trust above all others, and was found in Megalithic Sites in Britain on Page 123 by Alexander Thom. This is the geometry that the Callanish egg is based on. The egg's axis is 15.5 Megalithic Yards long, and its minor axis is 14.
Early folks favoured this egg style, based on three circles, because three is the most important Stone Age number – father, mother, and child. This is also why triangles with their three sides were so vital to them. Such were Stone Age messages to the gods!
The Callanish egg can be compared to Woodhenge's outer ring, based on triangles and three circles. It should also be compared with the outer ring of Durrington's Southern Circle, another egg based on three circles.
It is easy to imagine that Callanish set the trend and brought the idea of triangles and eggs based on three circles to Wiltshire, where it might have been copied. And, since Beaker People built Woodhenge and Durrington's Southern Circle, Callanish folks were possibly their ancestors.
Many alignments can be gleaned from Callanish, but professionals omitted the most obvious - the one that proves Callanish Central to be an egg.
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107. Everything that can be wrong with Glasgow University’s geometry is wrong with this image.
It follows Alexander Thom's faulty convention, where geometry passes through the middle of the stones, not to inside faces as it should. Worse still is that Glasgow has shifted Somerville's Stone 42 over by 0.6 of a Megalithic Yard (19.5 imperial inches) to give bias to Thom’s flatted circle.
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108. Male stone recognition.
It’s not phallic but certainly recognisable to Stone Age folks as male. This is Avebury's Covestone 1. The angle on its top was their way of signifying male. But I am unaware of any burial at Avebury's Cove besides barley seeds placed beneath Stone 2.
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109. With its angular top, Callanish's tallest stone - effectively a headstone to the Kist - is male, too, as are several others in the ring.
The purpose of placing an angle on top of stones to denote them as male gender can be found countrywide from Orkney's Ring of Brodgar, through to the long barrow of Waylands Smithy, to the male bluestone 49 just inside the entrance to Stonehenge.
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110. Waylands Smithy.
This is an early photograph of the long barrow burial mound of Waylands Smithy near Swindon. Note the male and female stones that flank each side of the entrance to its chambers. These stones should be compared with Stone 31 (female) and Stone 49 (male), which stand just inside Stonehenge’s solstice doorway.
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111. The Secret of Callanish I.
Professor Alexander Thom was famous for finding notches on the horizon, and he would only have missed this one if deliberately.
This notch is formed between Beinn Thorsiadair and Beinn Rathaclet, with the peak of the 260-meter-high Beinn Bhragar just managing to appear above Beinn Rathaclet. The notch marks the Major Standstill at A, even though the moon does not appear until it reaches position B.
Guided by the "Avenue," The child born of this union was to be deposited in the "Dark sky" to the left of Beinn Thorsiadair some 10 degrees clockwise from the north.
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All photos of Callanish are credited to Gary and Alison Smith.
Ref: Megalithic Lunar Observatories by A. Thom. Oxford at the Clarendon Press pages 68 and 69:
Ref: Megalithic Sites in Britain by A. Thom. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, pages 122 to 125.
Ref: New light on the Stones of Callanish. G & M. Ponting 1984.
Ref: The Standing Stones of Callanish, Isle of Lewis. G & M. Ponting 1977.
Ref: Stonehenge Decoded. 1966. Gerald S. Hawkins.
Ref: Neolithic Man and the Cosmos. John North. 1996.
I regret to say that this image has been placed here due to limited space. Had there been the room, it would have been placed at the top of the section on Stonehenge gold.
Mount Pleasant in Dorset is famous for the Iron Age henge and palisade, which once enclosed the glacially smoothed rise a mile east of Dorchester. However, the beaker people travelling south from Stonehenge in 2500 BC were the first to be attracted to its smooth south-facing slope, which was ideal for building a henge to observe the Polar stars and the slowly disappearing stars of the Southern Circle.
Mount Pleasant, east of Dorchester in Dorset.
Shortly after finishing or abandoning Stonehenge, Beaker folks relocated south to observe the Southern Cross and create artwork within a small circular henge that Professor Wainwright named Site IV.
Site IV used 180 slender posts about a megalithic yard in height, and when finished, this artwork resembled a hairbrush for combing tangled hair. Site IV artwork featured five eggs pointing toward moonrises and moonsets while its single causeway aimed north. While the moon alignments are close, they are not exact—Ref Stonehenge's axes.
Rings A, B, and C point northwest toward the northernmost moonset, while rings D and E point southeast toward the southernmost moonrise.
Professor John North, a staunch advocate of the megalithic yard, wrote that the outer egg is based on a pair of 1.5, 2, and 2.5 (3, 4, 5) megalithic yard Pythagorean triangles. This egg has a major axis of length 47 megalithic yards. CAD has confirmed John North as correct. “Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and the Cosmos, John North 1996.”
Ring C is the most significant among the three outer rings due to its tri-circle design. This is reminiscent of Woodhenge's outer ring, Durrington's Southern Circle’s outer ring, and the egg in the centre of Scottish Callanish I. These four type-style eggs connect the Beaker people and their geometric representations across the country.
Rings D and E point in the opposite direction towards the southernmost moonrise. These rings are based on the identical tiny 18, 24, and 30 megalithic inch triangle that Stonehenge's geometry is based on.
Ring D geometry can be found in the section on Stonehenge Geometry.
Ring E, Site IV, Mount Pleasant, Dorset.
More proof of the Megalithic yard and inch and that Stonehenge geometry was based on a tiny Pythagorean triangle.
Great oaks from acorns grow.