ONCE UPON A TIME

“It is the Earth Goddess for all to see” – that’s what Silbury Hill is according to the narrator on the DVD, “Goddess Remembered.”  It is “the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the world's largest,” according to the Stone Pages site on antiquities.  It looks like a gigantic pile of dirt.  It is more than four thousand years old.

I couldn’t recall Silbury Hill.  I looked it up in my book, Voyages of the Pyramid Builders; The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America, by Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D. with Robert Aquinas McNally.  The book says, “Whiteness is a key characteristic of another pyramid candidate:  Silbury Hill, which is located just south of the village of Avebury in England’s Wiltshire.  A massive artificial mound with a flat top, Silbury Hill stands approximately 130 feet high, with a base circumference of 1,640 feet that covers more than five acres.  The hill contains over 12 million cubic feet of earth and chalk, the latter originally coloring it white.  This monument was built in three stages, the first beginning in about 2660 BC.  Various legends and stories attach to Silbury Hill, but the monument’s purpose remains unknown.”

If Silbury Hill is a mound of the Great Goddess, does it signify her breast or her womb?  The DVD would seem to favor the idea of a breast because it launches into some sort of paean to her breast.  However, a BBC article says “Earth worshippers believe that Silbury is, in fact, the swollen womb of the Earth Goddess and provides a symbol linking the harvest with the pregnant earth.” 

Silbury Hill is flat on top, but that flat area is atop some sort of round crown, a circle within the much larger circle of the base circumference.  And the round crown – is it a nipple or just some erosion?  This tourism page says, “Each of the six steps was concealed within the overall profile of the mound, except the last one at the top which was left as a terrace or ledge about 17 feet (5 m.) below the summit. This terrace is clearly visible on the eastern side of the mound, but less distinct from the west.”  Yes, it is clearly visible and apparently intended – so the breast idea seems plausible.  I’ll add here what the UK’s English Heritage says about Silbury Hill, “Its purpose and significance remain enigmatic,” just so you know what the official position is.

According to the DVD, people dug into Silbury Hill in order to search for ancient treasure, but apparently, there was no treasure (at least no known report of it).  The top of Silbury Hill collapsed in 2000 and this was a delayed result of destructive excavations in 1776.  And other excavations at Silbury Hill have caused similar problems.  (What barbarians would dig destructive tunnels into an ancient artifact!!!  What a shame!!!)  And now as part of an effort to analyze and remedy the problem tunnels, “investigators” have drilled seven boreholes deep into the mound.  No doubt adding to the destruction.

The DVD shows Silbury Hill covered by sheep.  The hill is brown compared to the surrounding countryside and I had to ask myself if the brownness is grass or some other plant that is seasonally brown, or if the hill is nearly denuded by the sheep (that tend to nibble down to the roots and kill the grass).  Without sufficient grass, this ancient monument will just wash away in the rain.  The photo in the book shows erosion gullies cascading down the sides of the mound.  (Maybe something has already been done to protect the mound from the sheep by now?  We can only hope so.  And perhaps the sheep are allowed there only briefly to provide some sort of ecological “mowing” function to keep tree saplings from taking over?)  Seems to me their sharp little hooves could dislodge bits of surface material.

An aerial view of a different pre-historic site in the DVD astonished me.  Some bureaucrat had put a paved road right across the Stonehenge site.  The circle of prehistoric stones there is just a small circle inside a much larger circle, which has a road across it.  Is nothing sacred?  Didn’t building the road disturb the archeological record?  I can’t imagine how a road could be built there without disturbing at least the top layers.  I was just aghast to see that road!  In their hubris they thought no doubt that they could find and knowledgeably analyze everything there was to find of any archeological significance before they sent in the bulldozers.  What a shame!!!  And the road had no purpose other than to get the tourists within closer walking distance of the stones. 

There is also a major highway that misses the Stonehenge outer circle by mere meters – what artifacts were lost putting in that highway?  Not much thought went into that either! 

There’s a major highway going right past Silbury Hill, too.  Not much thought went into that either!

I wonder what motivated the ancient people to keep on building Silbury Hill generation after generation for 400 years.  What was its purpose?  Did they climb it to make harvest offerings to fruitful Earth at the top of the hill?  Did they dance on it to celebrate the rising of the full moon?  Did they sing hymns to the nourishing Great Mother?  Sounds like more fun than sitting in front of a screen clicking on a mouse.

Sometimes a circle is just a circle.

Full-size image

It is interesting that the Silbury and Stonehenge design of a circle within a much larger circle is also found in the huge “rose windows” of many Christian cathedrals; for example, the beautiful rose window at the Cathedral of Notre Dame (for many more, search Google images for “rose window”).  Could it be we remember her still in a way, even after centuries of having spiritual traditions subverted to fit a male mold? 

And sometimes a circle is an octagon???  According to the UK’s English Heritage, their recent survey using satellite mapping “suggests . . . that the mound is not in fact truly circular: on the summit it appears to be more angular than circular, while at the base it is almost octagonal in form.”  That page also says that the steps may in fact be a spiraling ledge.  I went back and viewed the DVD again to see if the periphery looks octagonal.  Nope.  The aerial view in the DVD shows nearly the whole circumference.  Sure looks like it was intended to be a circle to me as the whole mound is rounded except for the top and crown.  I couldn’t find the particulars on their “suggestion of an octagon,” but I expect the edge is wobbly after 4,000 years of weathering and that’s all it is.

Of course there’s no way to prove (yet) what the Goddess Remembered DVD implies, that Silbury and Stonehenge were used for worship, let alone a particular kind of worship, but it’s a good bet, because worship of the Goddess was prevalent at that time.

Our legacy will not be an enigmatic pile of dirt, or the temples, art, and statues of the ancient Goddess worshippers.  Rather it will be gigantic piles of rusting containers oozing radioactive waste and hazardous chemicals, thousands of landfills overflowing with garbage, it will be a gazillion tons of crumbling asphalt and concrete, it will be a toxified and desertified landscape, polluted air and water, biological warfare germs, etc., the legacy of ripping-off the Earth.  We’d do better to get re-acquainted with our connection to the Earth.  A consumerist, hierarchical way of life is not the only way – there are alternatives that revere the Earth.  We hope.

-2008-

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