Welcome, please share my enjoyment in attempting to make a plausible interpretation of the beliefs and motivations of the people who erected megaliths, created stone circles and built chambered tombs in the Neolithic period.
My proposal is that Neolithic people had an understanding of solar and lunar cycles which they combined with a belief in an analogous cycle of life, death and reincarnation. A belief in the binary and cyclical nature of existence could I suggest, motivate Neolithic people to associate the moon with fertility, rebirth and spiritual return and the sun with death and spiritual departure.
The purpose of lunar and solar movements could be interpreted as journeys associated with transporting spirits from death back to life on earth. Topography, landscape features, rivers, lakes, rocky outcrops and subsequently monuments at specific locations would become significant as points of contact and spiritual interaction between the sun, moon and earth.
An interpretation of life as the presence of a spirit animating a living body would also be associated with other apparently animated features such as flowing water, wind, flames, smoke and mist. Death would have the complementary characteristics of a spirit present but dormant in remnant living matter such as shells, desiccated wood and skeletal bones and also would be associated with other inanimate solid material such as ice, crystals, rocks and stone.
- Cyclical and Eternal
- Binary Polarity
- Rhythms, Ascent and Descent
- Animated and Incarnate
- Radiant and Dormant
- Bones and Rock
- Wombs and Tombs
- Sun and Moon, Shadows and Spirits
- Alignment and Locations
- Portal Comings and Goings
In the absence of historical records there is only circumstantial evidence to inform these conjectures. However perhaps there are vestiges of such beliefs persisting from the prehistoric into Celtic times and recorded by Julius Caesar in his Commentarii De Bello Gallico. He says of the beliefs of the Britons that
“As one of their leading dogmas they inculcate this: that souls are not annihilated, but pass after death from one body to another, and they hold that by this teaching men are much encouraged to valour, through disregarding the fear of death. They also discuss and impart to the young many things concerning the heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the world and of our earth, natural science, and of the influence and power of the immortal gods.”
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, particularly if you have come across similar ideas elsewhere. Please use the contact form or the blog post to comment.
John Miller
Spirits in Stone 