Making Light

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Back when I was a starry-eyed camp counselor in the Western Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, “Christmas in July” was a chic (in as far as Christians can be chic) trend. Kids lucky enough to be at camp that week were treated to a neo-Christian holiday that included a half-birthday for Jesus and cheap gift-giving. (The fact that Jesus’ birthday, in as much as it can be determined, is mid-way between December and July seemed a strangely mute point.) Our “gifts” were generally manufactured from natural products found in the woods and were a diversion to help the homesick campers concentrate on the truly Christian practice of getting stuff. Interestingly, here on Midsummer (the solstice is actually the first day of astronomical summer, but our pagan forebears were more into astrology, it seems, than astronomy) we are on the second most-celebrated holiday in the northern latitudes. With its midnight sun in the far north, and warm temperatures starting to make a regular appearance, light outweighs darkness for just a little bit, and life is never easier than this. No wonder Midsummer appeals to the archetypal mind.

Of course, Christianity could not accept a purely natural holiday, attributed as it was to the beneficence of heathen gods. In an even more dubious exercise than fixing the date of Jesus’ birth, Midsummer became the nativity of John the Baptist, or St. John’s Eve. While some scholars dispute the historical existence of Jesus (not terribly convincingly), the case against John the Baptist might be a little stronger. The prototypical forerunner, the herald announcing something greater than himself is so uncharacteristic of religious folk that it lends itself to considerable doubt. John is described like Elijah, one of the greatest prophetic figures of biblical times. John’s birthday? Anybody’s guess. Since he is second to Jesus, put his birthday on the opposite solstice. (I realize the solstice was June 20; at this early hour of the morning, I think today may also qualify.)

Back at Easter, historically near the vernal equinox, I found myself at Stonehenge. Knowing I was missing Druid priests by a full set of quarter days, it was still an exhilarating experience. Ancient people welcomed the return of increasing light with religious fervor. The effort it took to move these monoliths to the barren plains of Salisbury is nearly unimaginable. They represent, at some level, the invincible nature of the sun, our warmth and light. In physical, astronomical, terms they had no idea what the sun might be. It was, undoubtedly, the source of light and warmth, and even every lizard and turtle sunning itself on a rock participates in welcoming its return. So we’ve come to the solstice once again. It is the high point of the year. Now we begin our slow descent back into nights that will grow longer until the winter solstice once again reverses the trend. We don’t need Christmas in July–we already have it in June.

Religious Studies Project

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Edinburgh University is often the overlooked gem in the academic crown of the British Isles. I have to confess that that declaration is in part based on the natural pride of an alum, but it also arises from seeing the various projects the university has in some way sponsored or spawned. The study of religion is still taken quite seriously at my alma mater, and among the more recent incarnations is a website called The Religious Studies Project. (It at first reminded me of the Edinburgh Ras Shamra Project, with nearly the same initials, initiated by a couple of talented chaps just after I left town.) Founded by a couple of post-graduate students in religious studies, the RSP offers weekly podcasts and various articles on topics of interest in the realm of my erstwhile and eternal profession.

The Internet has forever changed the way that people learn about religion. This democratization of knowledge is generally a good thing, especially for those who test what they read (or hear) against other sources. This is the heart of the academic enterprise. Many people think that higher education is all about getting the answers. This may be true in some fields, but the disciplines known as the humanities—the things that make us human—find education in the perennial raising of questions. Religions should be the source of questions, not the monolithic bastions of all-answers. You can always tell when you meet someone truly educated in religion—s/he will be the one admitting that s/he doesn’t know.

In our cost-effective society we live under a prevailing myth that when you pay for something you should get a certain commodity in return. In fact, education often works just the opposite way, robbing the learner of easy certitudes, leaving him or her wondering more deeply. So I’m pleased to give my colleagues a shout-out.

If you’ve found this blog you likely have some passing interest in religion. Having been trained in Edinburgh I laud the method I learned: ask questions. Seek answers. Ask more questions. This is the tradition of religious studies. Even if it doesn’t lead to jobs, we hopefully emerge from it a little bit wiser.

Egyptian Afterlife

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The day after Maurice Sendak died, Google’s doodle celebrated Howard Carter’s 138th birthday. Although Howard Carter’s name may not immediately ring a bell, his work still affects all of us in the western world in profound ways. An inspiration for both Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, Carter is best remembering for discovering the intact tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings. This discovery generated a neo-Egyptian revival in western culture, notable in the Art Deco movement and the Egyptianizing architecture it inspired. As Google’s doodle shows, we are still reaching back to ancient Egypt to find some kind of meaning for ourselves today. In a world of gadgets and hi-tech baubles, we still cast an envious eye towards the dwellers along the Nile.

It is difficult to assess why the Egyptians are so enduring. They were, after all, polytheists and occupied a country that is now part of the “Middle East.” It is, however, a mystique that they held even in antiquity. Raiders and invaders who came to Egypt ended up trying to walk like the Egyptians rather than attempting to force them to follow foreign ways. The ideal in ancient Egypt was a stable cosmos. In a perfect world Egypt would be an island of calm and tranquility. For this they had their strong kings to thank, and they spared little expense to build him tombs that would remain the largest buildings on earth until Eiffel began to tinker with steel.

Perhaps the characteristic we most admire about the Egyptians is their unshaken confidence. Assured that they were in the favor of the gods, they took that assurance to the grave. Even as the neighboring Israelites still confined the dead to a gloomy underworld, the Egyptians were constructing an afterlife that would keep the good times rolling as long as time itself survived. A great deal of effort was expended on the pampering of the dead. Funnily enough, in our Christianized nation the confidence of divine pleasure only seems to be enacted in the limiting of the rights of others. And when it is all over, the righteous still fear death. Google has an almost unlimited choice of inspirations for its doodles, but Howard Carter seems especially appropriate on a day when we remember those who are willing to go to dangerous places where the wild things might lurk yet.

Staking a Claim

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Okay, I confess. When I learned my recent host in London lived in Highgate, my thoughts immediately went to the Highgate Vampire. I first learned about the Highgate Vampire from Matthew Beresford’s From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth, a book that spoke to me at some inexplicable level. Claims had been made that an actual vampire roamed the north of London in the 1970‘s. My first thought was utter skepticism—one of the reasons that I was never afraid of vampires is that I knew they couldn’t possibly be real. The mythical world of a fundamentalist allows deity, devil, angels, and demons. No more, no less. The vampire, as a supernatural creature largely dreamed up by John William Polidori and Bram Stoker, was a literary monster only. As a doctoral student in Ancient Near Eastern religions, I learned that the prototype of the vampire went back to Sumer, the earliest civilization known. Still, I wasn’t worried. The Sumerians also believed in night hags and dragons and had no crucifixes to keep the beasts down. Then I learned about the Highgate Vampire.

I have just finished reading Sean Manchester’s most recent iteration of his account of slaying the Highgate Vampire. Manchester, a bishop in the Old Catholic Church and a descendant of Lord Byron—Polidori’s close associate—claims to have staked the vampire in the backyard of a haunted mansion in Hornsey. This transpired in 1973. There’s one born every minute, right? But then, there are the claims of physical evidence: exsanguinated foxes, photographs of rapidly decomposing corpses, the obvious ardor of Manchester’s personal account. The mental jarring was extreme—surely a priest would never fabricate such a tale? Surely the vampire is a fictional creature with no place in a rational world? Why did Manchester’s account resemble Jonathan Harker’s diary so much?

So, we were staying in Highgate, London. The first morning as the sun rose, I dragged my family to Highgate Cemetery. I hadn’t read Manchester’s account yet, and Beresford’s book was almost three years back in my memory. Looking through our pictures, there I found it—the tomb in which Manchester claims to have originally discovered the black coffin with the actual vampire inside. Whether fictional or not, I was in the presence of the vampire. The overcast sky, ivy coated tombstones, the jet-lag—all combined to provide the atmosphere for the impossible. I have no idea what really happened in London when I was a child in school, but I have learned that many adults will gladly drain off the very lifeblood of others in order to attain their own benefit. From the days of Sumer to the present, growing in number there have been vampires among us. Our lives are much more comfortable if we simply refuse to believe.

Degradation

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Having felt like an automaton in the realm of higher education, I was occasionally overwhelmed by the number of students and lack of resources. One of my fervent beliefs is that multiple-choice tests do not really demonstrate what a student knows, but playing the numbers, I sometimes had to resort to them. Being an adjunct, I didn’t have access to Scantron, so I devised a method of stacking the sheets precisely and grading them with a power drill. It was my one bit of notoriety at Rutgers—I was the guy who graded with a drill. All the while, however, I knew that a truer method would be to allow students to write for themselves. Even that, however, is going the way of automation. A recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education reveals that student papers are sometimes being graded by robots. Real robots. The truly scary part of the story is that the robots provide grading almost indistinguishable from the professor, a species quickly becoming obsolete. I tell myself not to panic.

“Don’t panic,” of course, was the catch-phrase popularized by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In a world overwhelmed by forces we can’t hope to understand, panic is a natural enough reaction. Adams gave us Marvin the Paranoid Android. Higher education has given us the paranoid professor. Parents who pay extraordinary—mythologically high—tuition rates often ask me where all that money goes. It certainly doesn’t line the pockets of humanities professors; indeed, many of the classes are taught by adjuncts who are the penny dreadfuls of academia. I don’t know where the money goes. I do know that university presidents and football coaches are not wanting for material goods, but even their greed can’t account for the entire greenback drain.

If I were still a professor I’d be tempted to ignore the sage advice of Douglas Adams about now. Courses can be covered by an overwhelming army of competent adjuncts, and grading can be contracted out to robots. Students really don’t even need to come to class any more as distance education has taught us. College becomes little more than an excuse to drink while away from home with a hefty tab being picked up by the folks back home. Higher education may have had the seeds of its own destruction always planted within itself. We’ve confused technology with the desire for increasing comfort and ease of lifestyle. It was only a matter of time before universities caught up. Standing by the grave of Douglas Adams in Highgate Cemetery I’m thinking that his bizarre vision of the future was more sensible than what has actually evolved in our culture. That, and I’m glad I learned to use a power drill.

Darwin’s Descendents

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The plague that goes by the name of Creationism has been attempting to spread its reach to the shores of Britain. Proponents of a biblical literalism, whether overt or covert, have championed the idea that the world is terribly young—a mere cosmic toddler, in fact—compared to the vast geological ages of actual fact. When I unfolded my first ten-pound note and found Charles Darwin on the back, I smiled. England may claim a lion’s share of the heritage of one of the great unifying theories of science. In my brief jaunts between bouts of work I came across the tombstone of Herbert Spencer, the man who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest.” On a visit to Kew Gardens I strolled through the Evolution House. When I paid for my lunch, Darwin passed hands as the common currency of the realm.

Ten pound note

A school of thinking exists among many religious believers that insists that if science makes its claims justly then God cannot condemn them. Evolution runs as close to fact as does atomic theory. Those who doubt the latter should visit Hiroshima. Or Three Mile Island. Our literalist companions certainly don’t doubt nukes, but then, the Bible is mum on the subject of what things are really made of. Well, almost. According to Genesis 1, everything is made of chaos and divine words. The Bible doesn’t describe the origin of chaos—it is the natural state of things. God’s word, when it generates uranium, can be very deadly indeed.

Evolution House

Creationists selectively choose which science to believe and which to reject. Fundamentalism can trace its origins to Britain, but the culture rather quickly outgrew these childish fantasies. In America literalism sank deep roots, roots deep enough to withstand the hurricanes of reason that would otherwise clear the air. Can an American imagine Darwin sharing the money which reads “in God we trust”? And yet, Darwin lies scarcely two meters from Isaac Newton in England’s holiest shrine of Westminster Abbey. Science and religion have here embraced one another. Perhaps when we put all the monkey business aside, we will come to realize that we may still have a thing or two to learn from the nation of our founders. Literally.

Darwin at rest

Bookends

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There is something extremely satisfying about bookends. Bookends are those events that bracket moments of our lives and give them a frame, a perspective they would otherwise lack. If my readers will indulge my recollections of my trip to Britain for a day or so longer, some of this may become apparent in esoteric ways. Our kind hosts in London live in Highgate. Our first bleary-eyed morning in the city we wandered to Highgate Cemetery. This burial ground is divided by Swain’s Lane and that makes it frightfully convenient to charge separate admission fees for the two halves. Both, however, are worth the pounds dropped to gain entrance. Our first visit was via tour group on the western half of the grounds. The ornate—indeed grand—architecture of this necropolis bespoke the mysterious connection between the living and the dead. Tycoons are buried there, as is the non-conformist Michael Faraday, a name that lingers on from my childhood physics classes.

Highgate Cemetery West

Just before leaving to board our flight back to the States, we completed the bookend by visiting the eastern half of the cemetery. Here the most famous residents seek eternal rest. The most famous of the dead on this side is Karl Marx. Visitors speaking Cyrillic or Sinitic languages milled about, but even an American idealist might find some grounds for admiring a man who felt deeply about the plight of the workers in society. Just across the lane lies Herbert Spencer, one of the founders of sociology. Less than two minutes will take you to the grave of Mary Anne Evans, known to the literary world as George Eliot. She is not far from Douglas Adams, inventor of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Across the path from Adams rests Anthony Shaffer, writer of both Sleuth and of the screenplay of The Wicker Man.

Highgate Cemetery East

Perhaps it seems macabre to travel such a distance only to bookend a visit with treks to Highgate Cemetery. Death, however, is the ultimate bookend to life, with each generation shoring up those that come after through its unique perspective on what has brought us here. Not even a visit to Westminster Abbey is complete without paying respects to the most noteworthy of the Brits found both within and without its walls. This trip to England will remain in my memory as the pilgrimage bookended by the solemn parentheses of death. With such august company, however, one might have less to fear from that final veil that all must face.

Abbey Rood

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On the long flight home from London, experiences during my brief free time play back in my head in a continuous loop. One monument to civilization I wanted my daughter to experience was Westminster Abbey. I would liked to have taken her to St. Paul’s as well, but churches are just too expensive to visit. I’ve written before about our drive to visit places of significance, the urge toward pilgrimage that is as old as humanity itself. (Perhaps even earlier.) Because of the reach of the British Empire, events that have taken place in Westminster have affected people all over the world. The cream of the British crop is buried there. To see them, however, you need to pay an unhealthy sum of money. “Money changers in the temple,” as my wife aptly observed. And once inside photography is prohibited. How easy simply to become a slab of marble hazily remembered in the mind of an overstimulated tourist. There is no way to absorb it all.

The church has fallen on hard times in much of Europe. Speaking to several Brits the real interest seems to be in Islam, a religion clearly on the rise in the United Kingdom. During a brief respite from work, during which I ducked into the British Museum, the queues were out the door for an exhibit on the hajj. Tickets for the exhibit were sold out. Meanwhile, across town, the Church of England charges a visitor 16 pounds even to enter the great minster with roots in the eleventh century. Christianity and capitalism have become inextricably intertwined. A building as massive as Westminster, let alone St. Paul’s, must be costly indeed to maintain. These have become, however, icons to culture rather than religion. Their value in that regard cannot be questioned.

Standing beside Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, and T. S. Eliot, it is noteworthy how few clerics buried in the Abbey maintain such a draw. Kings, queens, knaves and aces of many suits may abound, but apart from the eponymous Archbishop of Canterbury, few men and women of the cloth stand to gain our attention. The nave soars high overhead and the crowds of sightseers jostle one another to get a view of the sarcophagus that now houses the dusty bones of those whose names endlessly referenced from our childhoods vie for admiration. The sign says “no photography,” and the docents throughout the building cast a suspicious eye on anyone holding a camera. How jealous Christendom has become in a land of secular advance. I stand next to Sir Isaac Newton and contemplate how the seeds of destruction are often planted within the very soil that surrounds the foundations of mighty edifices of yore.

Sutton Courtenay

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Sutton Courtenay lies sleepily outside the bustling business complex known as Milton Park. Over my work time at Routledge in the United Kingdom, I have been immersed in the frenetic world of academic publishing. Putting a book together and selling it may seem a simple prospect, but in reality it involves many people at multiple stages who specialize in everything from writing content to ensuring that the four-color print of the cover looks just right. Sometimes working in publishing one can get so close to the trees that the forest really does become invisible. So it was that a friend of mine took me to Sutton Courtenay over lunch one day. The hamlet was very quiet. Next to the clattering pub—the only real sign of life here in midday—stood the gateway to an abbey long decayed to dust. Iconic thatched roofs and brilliant grassy greens make this place seem very far indeed from the negotiations and dealing that take place just down the road in Milton Park.

In a silent cemetery dotted with yew trees just behind the twelfth-century Norman All Saints’ church, rest a couple of very influential people. Lord Asquith, sometime Prime Minister, holds the most prominent place. A few paces away in an unassuming grave are the remains of Eric Arthur Blair. Unless you knew his penname, you wouldn’t be aware that you were in the presence of George Orwell. Orwell never lived in Sutton Courtenay. When he died in 1950, requesting to be buried nearest where he died, there was no room in the interment grounds. Millions of people live in London and millions have died there. The image conjured in the mind is distinctly Orwellian. Sonia Brownell, his widow, with the help of David Astor, found a resting place in Sutton Courtenay.

Today one would be hard-pressed to find a school child in Britain or the United States who has not been assigned to read one or both of Orwell’s prescient novels. Orwell’s anti-fascist views were often eerily prophetic. In 1949 1984 seemed a long way off. As the latter year came and went, some heaved a sigh of relief that Big Brother never arrived. Those who labor away in busy office parks, those who attempt to board a commercial airliner, those who live in cardboard boxes on busy city streets, and those who pay taxes so that the wealthy won’t have to, however, know that Big Brother is indeed alive. He has grown crafty with age and is well adapted to camouflage. He is known by many names: Free Market, Laissea Faire, Unrestrained Capitalism. One place he is not to be found is in a quiet churchyard in Sutton Courtenay contemplating a simple stone to a man named Eric Arthur Blair.

Latin Goddesses

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Armed with her shield and trident, as if blending those ancient rivals Athena and Poseidon, Britannia sits proudly atop buildings and plinths of the United Kingdom. She is an hypostasis of the island itself, and as Britain catapulted toward empire status, the goddess was adopted as her protector. She even appears on the coin of the realm. Literally. Across the Atlantic Ocean, those coming into New York City via boat (and occasionally jet) see the familiar green lady standing in the harbor. Generally called the Statue of Liberty, the woman is actually Libertas, another Latin goddess, the personification of freedom. She too has appeared on the coinage of her adoptive nation, although she has been replaced mostly by the more human heads of state and symbols of civil religion. In Great Britain, Charles Darwin appears on the reverse of the ten-pound note.

I’m sure that Britain and the United States are not the only nations to honor goddesses in their national mythology. Whenever nations want to display what is truly noble and to symbolize their highest aspirations, they choose goddesses. Ironically, some of the nations to do so hold a stringently Christian view of themselves, as if Yahweh were battling it out with an old, divorced spouse. Civil religion, however, should not be confused with doctrinal belief systems and dogma. These insidious agitators have forged the weapons with which religions daily clash. Masculine religions brook no rivals.

As Britannia sits in my pocket, and Libertas reigns in my head, I think of the nations run with male agendas and their goddess consorts. The temples to Britannia and Libertas are in the Square Mile and on Wall Street, for lucre always assumes the superior position in any relationship. I fondly recall the days when goddesses had actual power. Of course, the skies have always been empty, with the exception of our imaginations, but once the belief that protective goddesses were there gave humans cause for hope. Maybe they grew a little ambitious now and then, but the Latin goddesses always had the best interest of their patrons in mind. Have we outlived our need for goddesses? That will only happen when mothers and nature’s best protectors are no longer necessary. The Latin goddesses will long outlive our civilization.

Rule Britannia

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Being back in Britain serves as a constant reminder of how conspicuous consumption has come to be a hallmark of American culture. When my wife and I moved to Britain back in the 1980s we soon became acclimated to the shift in scales to a size that seemed much more within our grasp. Yes, civilized people could live without undue excess and still be quite happy. Living in the States swiftly eroded the confidence that less is enough. Those who do not climb die. Back in Britain, there is evidence that the unabashed capitalism is spreading like a poison through this nation as well. Too readily the draw of gain and personal comfort outstrip our concern for other people. On a whole, however, the ideals of a society where all have health care and the elderly are not simply forgotten still remains intact.

Perhaps it is the benefit of having once been an empire that spanned the globe, or perhaps it is a hangover from having borne the burden of monarchy and a stratified society where noblesse oblige ensures that those below are not left behind. Not that such a system is without its faults. A century ago Titanic was setting forth from these ports and sank with the humble classes going first. Such tragedies show that even where noble ideas hold sway, the inexorable draw of evolutionary development will favor those who assert themselves. The monkey on top when the ship sinks gets to draw the last breath.

Back in my Nashotah House days I used to have recurring nightmares of sinking ships. In our attempts to extend mastery over the largest environment on our planet, the one in which we cannot survive, we face an uncomfortable reality. Even if those whose names still register a nod of recognition are those who had amassed the most wealth, they are equally as deceased when the hull strikes the Atlantic floor. Is it such a difficult matter to make sure that everyone has enough before allowing those enamored of wealth to accumulate superfluous amounts of it? When the ship sinks, those with the wealth to buy themselves extra minutes may have time to think. And if those thoughts are honest, they will realize that the cost has been too great all long.

As on Earth

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Today’s version of the afterlife requires simple assent to a belief system, at least according to prominent interpretations of some religions. Belief alone is enough to ensure an eternal reward. The ancient Egyptians, however, considered the path longer and more torturous. Anticipating modern GOP ideals, they believed that only the wealthiest deserved a place in the beautiful west, while the poor and struggling should just fade away with the sunset. At an even earlier period the afterlife was reserved for the king alone. Even he didn’t have an easy time of it, however. To get to the afterlife you had to face many perils and trials. To help him along, as a royal crib-sheet, many kings had the requisite spells inscribed on the inside walls of their pyramids. After time these “pyramid texts” were copied by the wealthy and inscribed inside their coffins. These “coffin texts” allowed the rich potentially to buy their way into eternity.

Eventually the afterlife became democratized. The spells were inscribed on scrolls and sold to those who could afford them. This final development gives us our “Book of the Dead.” Egyptians had an organic view of death as a continuation of life itself into the inevitable future. That future offered a continuation of the prejudices of the present. Kings continued to reign, peasants worked the fields of Osiris. It may have been work, but it was better than the alternative. Christianity’s version of the afterlife was strikingly fair. At first.

At first simply being resurrected was gift enough. After all, otherwise standing in line for martyrdom at an obscenely young age utter madness. Before long, however, like the Egyptians Christians began to create Heaven in their own image. Mary inherited the heathen title Queen of Heaven. When Heaven grew too crowded with questionable types, Purgatory was invented. Social stratification became a hallmark even among the clouds. Perhaps it is our primate biology, but we humans just can’t seem to accept and promote true equality. In that respect the Bible has become a kind of Christian book of the dead. Even eternal life seems to have its drawbacks.

Divine Checkmate

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The first time I met Jehu I did not recognize him. When I first visited the British Museum a couple of decades ago I hadn’t had the benefit of teaching students long enough to realize the importance of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III. But then, who really does? The obelisk, one of many artifacts essential to understanding the Bible in its context, contains the only known image of an Israelite king from a contemporaneous period. Jehu is here mistakenly considered the “son of Omri,” but is correctly identified as the king of Israel. He is bowing in tribute to a foreign king, a position in which no monarch likes to find himself. Before leaving the British Museum this time around I made sure to include him on my list of ancient people to meet.

The Bible contains far less history than we are accustomed to think, so when we find a case of convergence where Assyrian and Israelite agree, mostly, it is worth pausing to consider. Assyrian interests can only in the most abstruse way be considered religious; ancient peoples lived in a world where gods were both ubiquitous and largely irrelevant to daily life. Irrelevant in the sense that probably most people only tried to access a god’s pity when a time of trouble arose—priests existed to keep the deities happy on a daily basis. Citizens supported this system with taxes. How reluctantly we can only guess.

We have no reason to suppose that Israelites were more religious than the rest. Eventually, after the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, they came to see their religion in terms of monotheism. Still, the work of keeping Yahweh happy devolved on the priests, with the backing of the king. The king was God’s representative on earth. In this sense the only surviving image of a king of Israel, showing him bowed before the unflinching might of the Assyrians, becomes an unexpected paradigm. Both kings were pawns of the gods, and at the end of the day one stands regally and the other bows in utter submission.

Pharaohs of Stonehenge

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Stonehenge on Easter Sunday is a remarkably popular place. Tourists from all over the world crowd the pathway around those ancient stones as if they hide some arcane secret in their tumbled, massive form. Stonehenge may be the most iconic location in Britain, surpassing even such modern structures as Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Far pre-dating the art of writing, the purpose and nature of Stonehenge involve considerable speculation, but given the unquestionably costly years of labor required to plan, dig, transport, and align the monument, it stands to reason that it must have been religious in nature. One of the standard—perhaps even hackneyed—critiques of archaeological interpretation proves true in this case: if you can find no sensible reason for it, it must be religious.

The main phase of Stonehenge, the one that incorporates the iconic monoliths instantly recognizable today, came under construction some six hundred years after the pyramids of Egypt. In the case of the latter we know their language and we know the motivation behind the structures. More than just buildings to demonstrate the power of the king, they were celestially aligned portals to the afterlife. Although the Egyptians had no word for religion, the pyramids were as religious as the great temples that would soon surpass them in the energy consumption of the empire. In England of the time, we know no names, nor even an accurate assessment of the “nationality” of the inhabitants. Even nations, as we know them, did not yet exist. The builders of Stonehenge surely had something close to our concept of religion in mind. Otherwise, like the great cathedrals of millennia later, it would have been simply a waste of time and resources.

Wiltshire Downs on the Salisbury Plains is studded with ancient locations of significance. On the near horizon, among the eternal green of the English countryside, are dozens of barrows where people of unknown significance are buried. In that respect Stonehenge is emblematic of the individual struggle for eternal recognition. The name Menkaure stirs instant recognition among few. His pyramids stand as eternal monuments to a decidedly faded greatness. Stonehenge and its environs hold the remains of unknown numbers of unknown nationality bearing unknown names. It symbolizes the fate of us all. Yet on Easter, many believers in resurrection crowd in and gaze in awe at a pagan monument to human striving that no one truly understands.