West Kennet

[poliphilo]

 







It was probably always a ritual site, not a tomb, but who knows? I suppose the one doesn't exclude the other. It is oriented East-West- just like a Christian church. 17th century treasure hunters messed up the archaeological evidence. Digs in the 19th and 20th centuries uncovered the remains or approximately 50 disarticulated bodies.  The individuals were of both sexes and all ages.

A jolly American woman had established herself in the furthest chamber with a set of singing bowls. You can see the flames of her candles in picture #3. The bowls were humming away and members of other parties were harmonising from the side chambers. The woman had a tray of sand from Ayers Rock in Australia and was inviting us to help ourselves to a handful.

Local folklore holds that the tomb is visited on Midsummer morning by a ghostly figure in white, accompanied by a white hound with red ears.

I asked the big stone at the mouth of the tomb what it was there for- and it told me it was there for the sunrise.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I used to have a piece of gneiss (metamorphosed granite) on my desk at work. I would tell everybody about it: this rock is one billion years old! I found it in the Smokies!

One day a chemist brought me a little vial filled with black dirt. He said, You have one of the earth's oldest rocks; here are some newly born rocks, from the volcano in Hawaii!

I was delighted, until I heard about the scary legend of Kali, who curses anyone who carries away the dirt from her volcano! And that people who kept having bad luck after taking home volcanic soil would send it back to the post office in Hawaii.

A student came through our Lab one week, visiting us on his way back to college in North Dakota, and he came by to talk with me awhile. I showed him my billion year old rock, and then the volcanic soil, and told him how I was now afraid to keep it because of the curse.

I'll take it, he said. Give it to me.

I sent him off with it, and I hope he made it home.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely story.

I have bits and pieces of rock lying around. Rocks have personality, don't you think? I'm very careful to treat them with respect.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I agree about rocks and personality!

Kate and her cousin and I went out to an old field behind a deli and gas station and found (her cousin's a geology major--has his masters, although he left the field after college) many fossils from the ordivicean era!

I wrote about it, back then. During that time, I was having a wonderful time exploring religion. I miss it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a beautiful piece of writing.

I once collected a whole bunch of fossil shells on the banks of a man-made lake in Kentucky.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I think Tennessee and Kentucky are part of a vast Ordovicean sea. I have snail fossils in the garden, and the straight-coned cephalopod I mentioned is out in my yard--I carry it with me every time I move. To me, these fossils remind me that we're part of a great movement, maybe to Teilhard's Omega Point, who knows?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's strange to be picking up sea shells in a place that's now hundreds of miles from the nearest sea.

When I was a child I was taken to a beach where there were black rocks full of fossil ammonites- some of them huge. I don't remember where it was- it wasn't one of the places we normally visited on holiday- but I'm sure (or am I?) that it wasn't a dream.