CALLANISH

1. Callanish Central.

Was there no end to the monuments that Professor Alexander Thom interfered with? It certainly seems not. Even Callanish Central, seen above, did not escape his claws. Moreover, 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. Furthermore, professional and amateur authors turned blind eyes to Thom and Glasgow University's deception to profit from books that had sections on Callanish. Such corruption is rife in Britain's archaeological world.

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The stones of Callanish are built on land that gently rises from north to south to end at a rocky outcrop called "Cnoc-an-Turso." Early folks constructed an avenue of stones up this rise to reach a vantage point where they built an egg-shaped ring of standing stones some 13 meters across. This egg had a stone-lined burial kist (pronounced kissed) at its centre, where an important person's body had been laid to rest.

Notably, the egg's axis points to where the moon bathes in secret in Loch Rathacleit at the time of her Major Standstill. This Loch (lake) is marked by a notch in the northern horizon and is one way the astronomers John North and Alexander Thom were able to date the stones of Callanish to at least 1800 BC.

The Major Standstill is as far north as the moon can travel on the horizon. It takes the moon 18.61 years to travel from one Major Standstill to the next and 56 years to make a complete circuit.

On either side of the egg are stone rows that appear to give it wings. But that might mean something or nothing!

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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2. 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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3. 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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4. 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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6. 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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7. 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.

stonehenge geometry