IN the Ndebele language, the dark moon is perceived as the time when the moon is characterized by death. It is the unending cycle of alternating life and death. That which dies must have had a life until its death.
The alternation between life and death must have been considered by the ancients as having some influence on the lives of members of a particular community.
The cosmology, worldview and thought of a community differentiated between life and death. I will argue that between the two, there was a negative condition and a positive one. Inevitably, the life stage was a desired state. The reasons are quite straightforward. Each time a new moon emerged in the western sky, African communities celebrated through chants, ceremonies, sacrifices and offerings.
It was time for pomp and ceremony. There was promise of continuing life. That was reason enough to celebrate. It was also true of other cosmic bodies that moved around the planets.
That observation implied that the movement of cosmic bodies to cultural and natural events on earth was related. The movements of cosmic bodies were rhythmic, seasonal, periodic and regular. Different positions produced different effects on nature and culture.
That meant communities had to keep track of the cyclical movements of cosmic bodies. To facilitate the same annual positions, it was imperative to create and construct physical structures to keep track of cosmic movements. In pursuance of that, objective material structures were built that served as astronomical calendars, the monitors of cosmic movements and their impacts on culture and nature on the earth’s surface.
In terms of the moon, there is, during its course or cycle, or orbit, when its position has to be known. Cultural events, in particular those of a spiritual, ritual and ceremonial nature, have to be linked to the varying positions of the moon in the firmament. Essentially, that translated to astronomical calendars of a physical nature that served as indicators of the positions of the moon in terms of altering lunar energy potencies.
So, what did the Ndebele people and indeed other African communities mean when they referred to the moon as being dead? Death has serious implications for continuing life. Its occurrence is associated with reduced quality of life and even its total absence. Rituals are not likely to operate at their best when their energy potencies are at minimal levels.
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Moon
There simply is no threshold energy potency to facilitate efficacy. That phenomenon is taking place within the context of a lunar month of a period of 28 lunar days. However, communities such as those that created, built and used Stonehenge had to contend with the impending hyped lunar standstill.
Therefore, I would seek to understand that phenomenon, the lunar standstill in facilitating ritual, natural and cultural processes and events. In the changing continuum of energy potencies, is energy at its maximum as is the case when there is the summer solstice? I would posit that during a lunar standstill, energy potency is at its lowest. That position has to be known and structurally concretised as the built environment in Stonehenge. Knowing and understanding the ancients and their thought, worldview and cosmology, I just do not see how they would have ignored to keep track of the unending cycle of a lunar standstill.
The lunar standstill constitutes a longer cycle, precisely an 18, 6-year long cycle. The changing lunar energy potency would have to be taken into consideration alongside the shorter lunar cycle of 28-day duration. I see an emerging picture that had to be interpreted and come up with a mediated position of maximum and minimum lunar energy levels. Within that context, rituals and ceremonies were allocated.
Imagine the time of a lunar standstill, the position of the moon is at the minimum level in terms of lunar energy potency. That position had to be captured structurally within Stonehenge. Rituals would not be conducted at such low levels of lunar energy potencies. However, if the lunar standstill is not close by and it is the time of full moon, wouldn’t that be the best time for the holding of rituals and ceremonies all calculated to ensure cultural and natural processes that underwrite and ensure continuity of the human species?
As we grapple with energy potency, facilitation and efficacy, we should always keep in mind the ancients and their worldview, thought and cosmology. The ancients were not, in my view, religious people. Instead, they were strongly spiritual. They centred their ancestral spirits and deities whom they invoked through chants, offerings and sacrifices. They believed that ancestral spirits took a keen interest in the affairs, welfare and well-being of their progeny.
Many African communities took the trouble to bring back the spirits of their dearly departed. Some societies and communities in Africa still take these ideas seriously and put them into practice. It is through their cultural practices, some of them of a spiritual dimension that we can surmise that they still hold onto the cosmologies and thoughts of the ancients such as those who created, built and used Stonehenge. To me, Stonehenge without some spiritual dimension would be unthinkable. The ancients linked the movements of cosmic bodies and spirituality as a way of ensuring eternity, continuity, perpetuity and endlessness of the human race.
For them, spirituality and energy potency levels were closely related, connected and linked. Cosmic bodies and spiritual potencies were proportionally related. After all, they posited that after millennia the spirits that went through incarnation finally departed towards some identified celestial bodies.
There had to be some link between spirituality and cosmic bodies of differing cycles. When researchers seek the link between Stonehenge and the moon, they should be clear about what exactly they are trying to link. Stonehenge without some spiritual dimension and component would, to me, be unthinkable. Therefore, the links are numerous, extending beyond Stonehenge, the sun and the moon to embrace spirituality as expressed by burials of cremated bones that were buried in numerous mounds within the broader cultural landscape at Stonehenge. Within the core of the Stonehenge cultural landscape, there were burials of cremated bones deposited in the circular dish and in the holes of the Aubrey Holes.
Bones, whether cremated or not, bear some link with spirituality and with cosmic bodies. What all this translated to, is the presence of numerous links, which may not be that obvious to modern researchers who have lost the thought, cosmology, and worldview of the ancients. The emerging picture is quite complex and yet there is one single overarching theme. It would not make sense to include structures within Stonehenge and it turns out there is no purpose for them. A precarious lifestyle simply has no room for such extravagance.
Life was perilous back then. Energy, effort and time had to be devoted to activities that sought to underwrite and guarantee continuing life. We have said that the ancients, Africans and non-Africans alike, looked to the heavens with the desire to emulate what they observed as desirable: aesthetics, beauty, movement, regularity, rhythm, circularity and more importantly, attainment of the eternity of life. The first human beings saw the same sun that we see today.
Sexuality is a natural phenomenon that guarantees continuity. However, that continuity is limited to humans in their totality but not to individuals in their single lives. It was out of this observation that I coined the adage, “Individuals perish and humanity is forever.” Of course, this has to be understood in the right context. Whatever is created shall one day die or perish. The time scale matters here. Given that a human’s lifespan is about sixty years, when we are told the world will die several billions of years later, this is tantamount to saying the world is eternal. The stars and other cosmic bodies are here to stay. Nothing is eternal other than change.
Stars will indeed experience some supernovas; they will burn out and die. New stars will emerge and continue living. Life is born of death. Death terminates and continues life and the two are in some inexorable relationship that has no end and no beginning. The life-death cycle is eternal. This happens to be the case with the moon. A moon is born and grows waxes and reaches the stage of full moon and full life. Beyond that, it degenerates, seemingly becoming smaller and more and more frail with reducing energy potency.
For example, in Africa, the work of royalty terminated about 4 to 5 days before the dark moon. Ritual success or efficacy was not, at that point, guaranteed or underwritten. A king withdrew to his private quarters where he was secluded and inaccessible to the majority of his subjects. Death defiles. Equally, lunar death defiles. The dark moon is a dead moon and therefore a defiling condition or state. Its usual facilitatory role is lost. Its lunar energy is minimal or thought to be lost altogether. Attended spirituality is lost.
Indeed, we see traditional doctors in Africa who are humans of spiritual endowment, abstaining from spiritual work when the moon is in the process of dying or is just emerging from the stage of death, the dark moon. Purification rituals are conducted so that all those whose practices are linked to the moon, have to be cleansed following the moon’s death. These were important cycles that impinged upon the ancients’ lives in an inhospitable and hostile environment and were dear to the ancients for their continued survival in that environment.
So does it make sense that these ancients who relied on cultural, spiritual and ritual interventions for their continued survival would have ignored, creating astronomical calendars, to embrace links between the moon and the monument that Stonehenge was back then? I do not think so.
There is evidence that at Stonehenge there were spiritual individuals. These were persons who carried out divination processes. It was unearthed at Stonehenge some marble that African diviners still use in conjunction with wooden dice/sticks or sea shells. Africa posits the presence of opposites in the world. Some spirits are good and some are evil. The latter is the demonic spirits although in the field of Christianity, all ancestral spirits are regarded as evil and demonic. It is not so in African Indigenous Spirituality. There was and still, there is in Africa an important concept of symbolism that is manipulated to deal with the world of healing and the world of invoking evil spirits. Another aspect that indicates a belief in spirituality was a spiritual manipulation that relied on symbolism. A warthog is both a vicious fighter and a defender. When chased by its predators, it will run for dear life. In Africa, its canines are used as protective gadgets that are worn by traditional doctors.
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This they do in order to counter the machinations of witches who too are dangerous fighters. A defender such as a warthog will defend a traditional practitioner symbolically and figuratively.
A tusk from a warthog was unearthed during excavations at Stonehenge. The ancients elsewhere, like those on the African continent, believed they were capable of harnessing energies to counter the work of witches whom they believed existed. The one measure that they used was smudging, or fumigation. The smoke drives out lingering molecules of a harmful herbal formulation from some smouldering incense.
At Stonehenge, an urn made out of fired clay was retrieved. In Africa, these are common tools of traditional doctors even to this day. Sometimes before they started the divination process, they burnt some powders or extracts from known herbal concoctions in the hope of driving away evil influences within a working locality. It is believed particles of evil concoctions were repelled and driven out. It was thus a process of purification.
That sort of spiritual practice relied on lunar energy potency. As explained above, traditional or spiritual beings rely on lunar energy potency for their day-to-day spiritual operations. They tracked the movement of the moon. In other words, the changing lunar energy potencies had to be monitored to align spiritual work to the position of the moon as it revolves around the earth.
Further, there were structurally symbolic components that pointed to the desired states. Continuity has already been alluded to. The ancients perceived the earth as female, hence Mother Earth. When a wooden post was driven into a hole in the ground, sexuality was symbolized or expressed. That process guaranteed the continuity of the human race. The idea of sexuality and hence sexuality and related continuity were represented by some standing stone pillars instead of a wooden pole.
Stone is a rock of ages and symbolises eternity as opposed to wood which symbolises and expresses ephemerality. Within the structural components at Stonehenge, there had to be structures that stood as pointers to what were the desired states, and there were many of these.
As already pointed out in a previous article, circularity was embraced. A circle has no beginning and no end. It is thus expressive of diverse yet unified structural components that link up terrestrial structural parts with movements of cosmic bodies, the moon included.
Cremated or uncremated bones provide the link between spirituality and the bones. At one time, bones and spirit lived together and expressed being. There is some continuing relationship between them though spirit now occupies another realm. Arguably, this is the most important aspect as the spirits are the ones that are invoked through sound, music, chants, sacrifices and offerings, Music, it is acknowledged, is difficult to unearth.
Researchers are still trying to figure out if indeed music was an integral part of Stonehenge. Structural evidence may hold hope, as there might be some link between spirituality and sound, especially the sound of a regular and rhythmic nature. This further points to possible links that bring together seemingly diverse and disjointed parts at the terrestrial level.
Beyond that, terrestrial and structural components are linked to the extraterrestrial cosmic bodies in the firmament. Terrestrial components are themselves interlinked and interconnected. The tangible and intangible are connected and work in unison to assist humans to effect their eternal and enduring desire to attain endlessness and eternity as human beings.
The presence of water is likely to have been a phenomenon at Stonehenge. Evidence seems to point to the presence of water within the circular ditch. Water is indestructible and transforms from one state to another: solid (ice), water (liquid), and gas (vapour). That immediately places it in the class of states that symbolize and express eternity, continuity and endlessness. Besides, water cleanses and purifies. Baptism in some Christian churches is understood in that respect.
Immersing an individual in water leads to cleansing beyond emergence. Water washes away. Impurities are eliminated. When medicated water is used to spray an individual the idea of cleansing, and driving out evil influences is understood. That is another link between the numerous structural components at Stonehenge.
The geological constitution of the surface and the underground where Stonehenge is located has special features and traits. The energy leylines depict and point to the energy potencies emanating from below. Monuments have generally been sited on the hubs networks of leylines. We see more energy potencies, not emanating from above but this time emanating from below the geological qualities of the ground where a monument stands. It is, once again, back to facilitation and the link between the underground, the built monuments, and the cosmic bodies that move over the particular site.
In the end, we see a myriad of intricate links at various levels. The moon would not have been left out of this maze of connections, links and relatedness. The ancients were not stupid. They knew what they were doing. They understood the heavens and the earth in their way and linked these to produce a cosmic-spiritual package that ensured the minimization of adversity in the environment that they lived in.
Technology in its facilitatory role was not restricted to one form that was reliant upon a single technique. It was not just science, as we understand it today. Science takes numerous forms in various parts of the world where there are different communities. Over time, science is understood differently. At Stonehenge, more links will be discovered and continue the trend until the complex stone structure is seen as one scintillating whole or unit with complementing structures all adding to some overarching theme and purpose.
Keeping watching. Thank you all for your positive messages to these new developments. 
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