Stargazer’s Menhir
Back in the early days of Pan, I decided to combine my lifelong love of astronomy, the beauty of the stars, and my growing interest in ancient history, mythologies and speculation, to create Stargazer’s Menhir. I wanted to discuss and explore how the ancient people – historic and pre-historic – understood the celestial ceiling, through their mythologies, art, and enigmatic stone constructions. I also wanted a place where we could bear witness to contemporary stellar happenings – at the Star Party thread, people wrote about their experiential encounters with comets and with last year’s brilliant approach of Mars.
Everything but the dustjacket got lost in the Melt, so I and my fellow MoBsters Azrael, Khaliq Rumi ben Uriel and Rosalind are working on the re-creation of this Reference Book, organizing it in a fashion more useful than in the past. Our only enemy is Time, for I and the others have a slew of reference material to sort through, organize, and post, or re-post.
Not all of the old stone menhirs were astronomically-aligned, or if more than we know about were, it may be difficult to determine what they were aligned with. Others, however, are definitely aligned. The effort expended to transport and place stone was in many cases tremendous, which indicates there was a serious rationale behind the task. I’m also taken in by the concept that the ancient Peruvians named the dark spaces *between* constellations and clouds of stars. There’s a beauty in things celestial, which has been reflected in art and music through the ages, and we will be discussing this, too. Knowing the practical applications of astronomy – for instance, the rising of Sirius had important implications for the timings in Egyptian agriculture – is likewise something we focus on.
So, if the sirens of the skies are calling to you, or the phases of the Moon influence you as strongly as they influence this planet’s tides, or you are interested for any of a myriad of reasons, come on over, sign on up! It’s a journey intended to explore the age-old question of our relationship to the universe.
