He also stated:
[In other words] the cave at Newgrange can be taken to represent a womb. Because it symbolizes the creation of the universe, it is a womb of the world, a sort of cosmic egg. It is female, earth, mother, and matter. At dawn on Winter solstice it is penetrated by a ray of the sun extending sixty-six meters down its passage. The ray of light is male, heaven, father, and spirit. This union symbolizes cosmic totality—the harmonizing of opposing forces—in a concrete way. It is a celebration of the marriage of spirit and matter and the birth of the universe through the fertilization of the cosmic egg using the earth and sun as the primary symbols, delivering its message each year in a universally intelligible language.17
Brennan’s insights into how the universal forces of nature are also revealed in many solar alignments found on petroglyphs in North America will be detailed later in chapters 8–12.
Brennan is also a fabulous storyteller, especially when he introduces his readers to the Tuatha Dé Danann, the pantheon of the earliest known native Irish gods. According to lore, they were a supernatural race of wizards and magicians who descended from the sky and inhabited Ireland before the emergence of the Celts. However, by following old legends he and others think that there is a historical basis for suggesting the Tuatha Dé Danann came not from the sky, but were members of the Tribe of Dan fleeing from the Levant. While the Hebrew Tribe of Dan is considered one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, their forefathers were thought to be indigenous people whom Greek Macedonians had intermarried with. And even though translating Old Irish can be imprecise, the phrase Tuatha Dé was also used in referring to the Israelites in early Irish texts.18 Thus, the timing of the earlier “Danite” migrations could have occurred a millennium earlier than the estimated date of the Exodus from Egypt ca. 1600 B.C.
The territory occupied by the earlier Danites and the later Tribe of Dan was located on the Mediterranean coast, and being a seagoing people, the Danites would have sailed westward across the Mediterranean. Their possible multiple migrations could have resulted from climate events, including comet disasters, pressures from the Philistines and other neighbors around 1000 B.C., or foreign invasions, including the conquering of the Northern Kingdom (Samaria) by Assyria in 722 B.C. They would have first arrived in Greece before spreading north into western Europe, Ireland, and Scandinavia, where they are now known as the Danes.19
As I will document later in chapter 14, my own process of discovery was in the future when I eventually came across evidence indicating that some of the Hebrews not only made it to northern Europe but also arrived in America thousands of years ago. In other words, reading Brennan’s book on Ireland set the stage for decades of investigations that lay ahead of me, exploring Celtic sites throughout North America and meeting many other investigators, including, by incredible serendipity, Martin Brennan himself.
4
Celtic New England
FINDING THE TRAILHEAD
Back in the spring of 1986 I was living in Wrentham, Massachusetts, a small town south of Boston. I had begun my New History studies, and after combing through America B.C. I excitedly began to contact other New Englanders interested in the area’s archaeology. I quickly learned about the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA) and was soon on my way to its annual conferences in Albany, New York.
Founded in 1964, NEARA is a nonprofit organization, and its collection of books and journals includes significant archival material.*8 It also has its own press, NEARA Publications. For example, in 1998, one of its books, Across before Columbus? Evidence for Transoceanic Contact with the Americas prior to 1492 (edited by Donald Y. Gilmore and Linda S. McElroy), presented evidence of Old World contacts in the Americas that went back at least five thousand years.1
At the conference, I met a variety of people interested in one or more of the many aspects of the mysteries of our planet. They included dowsers, historians, preservationists, archaeologists, and academics, so that, for example, pagans interested in “sacred sites” could converse congenially with geologists and local college professors. Uniting these diverse individuals was a shared interest in the visits made by the ancient Celts and other groups to the Americas.
I found that the NEARA meetings were often organized with presen tations in the morning and field trips in the afternoon. The conference I attended was well organized, with formal presentations and smaller breakout sessions. Books, NEARA journals, and regional maps showing general locations of Celtic earthworks in New England were also available. These documents plotted and described the stone chambers, perched rocks, stone piles, and standing stones that have been discovered over the centuries. However, the maps did not reveal the precise location of sites, to prevent unwanted people from gaining access.
One of the greatest experiences was hearing personal recollections from researchers. I listened intently to one talk by Tom Brannan called “Great Ireland in New England.” Brannan was a retired surveyor who had regularly come upon stone piles while surveying the New England countryside. He suggested that earlier Celtic surveyors marking the distances between their villages or monuments could have left many of these piles. Like many of the conference speakers and attendees, Brannan had his own stories about New England mysteries, and this was his special field of interest. But I also found out that, like that of many local researchers I would meet in the coming years, his years of tracking and documenting evidence of Old World travelers has been virtually ignored by scholars.
Other speakers discussed theories about oceanic travel. Most interesting were presentations by locals on diverse topics, including stone chamber archaeoastronomical research, recent finds, and New England earthworks. Thus I eagerly signed up for a day tour to a local stone chamber. I also bought a book by William McGlone, whom I was to meet the following year in Colorado. The conference had a distinct buzz of excitement, as though participants knew something that most Americans were unaware of. I felt right at home in this mix of amateur archaeologists, geologists, history buffs, neopagans, dowsers, researchers, Native Americans, and other not-so-easy-to-categorize members of the New England Earth-mystery community.
EXPLORING CELTIC AMERICA
The Celts of Europe constructed structures encoded with astronomical information and archaeoastronomical features, and this is also a characteristic of some sites in the New World. With the aid of Manitou: The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization by James W. Mavor Jr. and Byron E. Dix, I began visiting and researching stone chambers and other stoneworks in Massachusetts and surrounding states.2 With maps in hand, I spent many weekends driving to nearby townships and adjoining New England states to locate and record stoneworks and other noteworthy sites, mainly by myself, but often with my new acquaintances from NEARA.
I discovered that there were many hundreds of identified stone chambers in New England and that they are concentrated in regional locations. For example, there are 156 chambers in Putnam County, New York, alone and perhaps more to discover. Most seem to be located in nonproductive, nonagricultural land, and some are quite accessible, like the dozens built near the Taconic Parkway in New York and Connecticut. They were often built into hillsides, and the in-curved, stacked stone walls are capped by lintels, which are large, long stones mounted to support the openings and roofs. The chambers in New England nearly all pointed easterly toward one of three astronomical horizons:
Due east, aligned to the vernal and autumnal equinoxes
Easterly (+23.5°) on the horizon, aligned to the summer solstice
Easterly (−23.5°) on the horizon, aligned to the winter solstice
According to Barry Fell, dedications to the Old World god Bel are found carved on the lintel stones and on the vertical stones supporting the openings of some of the New England stone chambers. The name of the Celtic god Bel, from the Akkadian BÄ"lu, is also a title given to various Babylonian gods and generally means “lord” or “master.” In Greek Belos and in Latin Belus, Bel is associated with the Babylonia
n god Marduk and is often identified as a sun god. The Bel that Barry Fell was referring to was known to the Druids of Ireland, who celebrated the return of this solar deity at Beltane, the May cross-quarter day.
Fig. 4.1. Stone chambers in New York
Fig. 4.2. Stone chamber at Gungywamp in Connecticut (Reprinted with permission from Brad Olsen, www.cccpublishing.com)
Fig. 4.3. Old World stone chamber, cairn entrance at Slieve Gullion, Ireland.
(Photo by Cheryl Yambrach Rose)
During the next twenty years, I was to come across what were translated to me as Celtic dedications written to Bel that were carved in stones on many New World inscriptions. These included the lintel stones of chambers at Mystery Hill in New Hampshire; near South Woodstock, Vermont; and in Colorado (as told in chapter 7), Oklahoma (chapter 8), and Kansas (chapter 9).
Fig. 4.4. A statue of the Canaanite god Ba’al or Bal, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries B.C. (Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen)
Fig. 4.5. The eye of Bel. This motif from near South Woodstock, Vermont, is also found in other New England locations. Fell proposes that the distorted top Ogham letter G was made to resemble an eye. Other examples are found at America’s Stonehenge. (Drawing from Fell, America B.C., 144)
While earlier researchers*9 provided detailed documentation on the nature of stone chambers and their archaeoastronomical importance, finding these chambers’ locations was not always easy. However, despite my knack for getting lost, I usually arrived at my intended destinations, albeit after several failed attempts.
I also learned that New England has many mysteries in addition to the stone chambers. On a field trip with a group of dowsers I visited a large, circular underground kiva. It was an oddity, as most kivas are known to exist only in the American Southwest.
From my journal:
A group of mostly young enthusiasts walked on a small path through New England’s damp forest on a cool spring day. Upon arriving at the property, we were led by our guides to a clearing. This destination revealed a mound of dirt about 10 feet in diameter. Inside was a large dug-out round chamber, lined with stone walls and the roof intact. It was nearly impossible to ascertain who built it or when, and there was no consensus among the group. It could have been built by Native Americans long before the colonial period. Or did ancient Celts construct it, I wondered.
Through a narrow opening we descended one by one on a hand-made wooden ladder. The shape was not as round as a typical American Southwestern-style Kiva, however, what struck me most was not its +15-foot diameter but the people in our group.
The men, dressed in overalls and work vests, scurried up and down ladders, taking measurements of stones and discussing details of construction. The women, wearing long dresses and shawls, sat on the ground outside, and later inside, with eyes closed in a circle while holding hands. Observing their connectivity, I thought I heard a light humming and my heart felt a deep resonance with their collective action. After the group’s informal gathering, the women told me that they were searching through visualization and had perceived other underground chambers, “yet to be revealed.”
What was noteworthy and amusing to me about this experience was the disparity between the yin, feminine approach and the yang, masculine response to this work. One listens, the other speaks. One path remains receptive, the other quickly forms opinions that must be defended.
AN AUSPICIOUS MEETING
As mentioned in chapter 3, I had read The Stars and the Stones by Martin Brennan, the artist-explorer of Brú na Bóinne, who along with John Michell, Paul Devereux, and Nigel Pennick is considered to be one of the influential Earth-mystery writers. The reclusive Irishmen from Brooklyn had recently taken up residency in the small town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where I happened to be living in 1995. From my journal:
It was synchronicity; Western Massachusetts was blanketed by a major snowstorm. As travel by auto was impossible I stayed home from work to be with my family. To break the monotony, I bundled my daughter into a backpack and we headed out into three feet deep snow in the overcast and cold New England winter. As I walked toward the small New England town surrounded by unbroken snow, a very tall figure gradually approached who was getting closer until we came face to face. He was somewhat hunched over, exuberant in disposition with a twinkle in his eye. After exchanging greetings, we discovered that we were both relative newcomers to the area. We also found we were mutually interested in many things and, as we conversed, the stranger mentioned that he was researching the subject of the Mayan calendar. He became quite animated and went on at length about his discoveries. The imposing figure introduced himself as Martin Brennan, the author.
When I met Brennan, he had moved beyond the subject of The Stones of Time and was working on a book about the ancient Maya of Central America with the help of a benefactor. He found it remarkable that I had read his book. And so our friendship began.3
Brennan and I made several expeditions into New England, but I generally explored these sites on my own and visited many stoneworks of various kinds, including some chambers in the winter. While shivering from the cold, I would sit inside a darkened chamber, gazing east toward the horizon through the chamber’s opening, imagining what the ancient landscape looked like with colonies of hundreds or perhaps thousands of Celts living and building structures, as Fell had written.
Fig. 4.6. A large and intact stone chamber from the Calendar Two site, near South Woodstock, Vermont. (From www.ensignmessage.com/archives/calendar.html; accessed July 8, 2014)
Shortly after meeting Brennan, one expedition was to the Calendar One site in Vermont. While many of the New England stone chambers have collapsed or are in ruin, chambers at the Calendar One and Two locations have remained intact. When I entered I found the length of the chamber was oriented toward the east at −23.5°, such that the dawning winter solstice sunlight would penetrate the chamber and strike the back wall, just as it does at Newgrange and other sites in Ireland. Like Brennan had felt there, I was ecstatic and marveled over the forgotten knowledge of antiquity and how earlier historians had claimed that these were “root cellars” built by the colonists. Yet most of the stone chambers were not easily accessible, nor did they appear to be cellars at all.
STANDING STONES AND PERCHED ROCKS
As I explored the mysterious sites of New England I became greatly interested in the placements of standing stones, tall, upright standing stones called menhirs, that represented the phallus. Finally, after hours of searching in Western Massachusetts, I was able to find one that had been pictured in Mavor and Dix’s Manitou. The ten-foot standing stone was at the edge of a field underneath a dying tree and encumbered by bushes, but it was quite magnificent once it was revealed.
It is difficult to prove that these standing stones are of ancient and not colonial origin. However, the sheer number of them and earlier reports by New England colonists that indicated that these large standing stones were built before the arrival of the English settlers convinced me of their Celtic and non– American Indian origins. The New Hampshire Ring of Stone was even more convincing.
THE NEW HAMPSHIRE RING OF STONE
One cool spring day I took a trip to visit the Ring of Stone at Burnt Hill, New Hampshire. After several wrong turns and a slight misadventure, I arrived at the hilly location. It was quite windy as I made my way to the top of a hill, where I sighted the standing stones. Being alone added to my feelings of awe and sacredness, but I was surprised that the remaining standing stones before me were much smaller than they appeared on the cover of Manitou. Still, the fourteen standing stones wedged into holes in the bedrock were striking. Mavor and Dix suggested that the site was created for ritual purposes, similar to the complex at the nearby Calendar One site.
Fig. 4.7. These standing stones from a pre-Colonial culture survive at Burnt Hill, Massachusetts.
On a group expedition later that summer, our guide pointed out a large rock boulder balanced or “perched,” as it is al
so termed, on top of three smaller rocks. This was a formation that is also called a dolmen. At first I didn’t notice the serendipity of such a peculiar position, and it took a second look from the ground level to notice that I could see underneath it. As I walked around the stone several times, the guide said that perched rocks often occurred naturally as melting glaciers dropped stones on top of others. However, he believed that many of them are from the Celts because of their placement near mysterious stone mounds, standing stones, and stone rows. He also noted that Native Americans might have built some, but he suggested that it was likely they may have copied the ones that the Old Europeans had created. In the Old World, these structures were common but mysterious phenomena. As they appear in the Northeast of the United States, these stone chambers offered little shelter or room for sacred activities, so why would Native Americans have built them if they were not part of their culture, as they were with the Celts?
Fig. 4.8. Balanced rocks are found throughout New England and other northeastern areas of the United States. This one is in North Salem, New York. (From Mavor and Dix, Manitou, 111; www.InnerTraditions.com)
Fig. 4.9. Balanced rock from southeastern Colorado
Mavor and Dix devoted an entire chapter of Manitou to perched boulders, and they sorted them into three types. These were balanced boulders uniquely placed to stand upright, large boulders supported by three or four smaller rock pedestals (dolmens), and rocking boulders. Regarding the last, Mavor and Dix wrote, “Several of the rocking boulders that we have encountered in New England have depressions carved into them that can be used as seats. Such a depression can be found on a rocking boulder located in the Shaker domain in northeast Harvard, Massachusetts. This stone, weighing about a ton, can be rocked back and forth easily with but slight pressure from one finger.”4
Secrets of Ancient America: Archaeoastronomy and the Legacy of the Phoenicians, Celts, and Other Forgotten Explorers Page 7