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Excerpts from Stone Circles: A Modern Builder's Guide to the Megalithic Revival by Rob Roy

Chapter 2: The Earthwood Stone Circle, page 35

Designing the Earthwood Circle Now, with a pool of good stones to form the nucleus, I could seriously begin to design a circle. Ideally, the circle would have twelve standing stones. I chose the number for two reasons: First, because it would be easy to lay out - there would be "corner" stones at the four cardinal compass points - and second, because the circle was being built in North America, and I had heard that the Native American medicine wheels often had twelve radial spokes in their geometry. This theory turned out to be wrong. However, Aubrey Burl discovered something of equal interest and import, which shows that sometimes it is possible to be on the right track for all the wrong reasons. In The Stone Circle of the British Isles, Burl provides a statistical abstract of the number of stones in 316 stone circles. Of all the possibilities, the number twelve is the clear winner with thirty-two examples. The next most popular number, four (with twenty-nine examples), hardly counts, as these "circles" are actually a special class of monument called four-posters, almost all of which are found in northeast Scotland.

And why was twelve the most popular stone circle number? No one has the foggiest idea. But if I were to venture a guess, it would be that twelve was chosen for much the same reasons that I chose it: The number is easy to work with (having several factors), has elegant geometrical symmetries when placed in a circle (see Ivan McBeth's herb garden circle in chapter 6), and has the obvious potential for true north-south and east-west alignments.

Chapter 4: Bill Cohea and Columcille, page 93

It is important to explain what Columcille is: a place of solitude and spiritual regeneration; a focus of research into myth and mystery; a playground for the soul and spirit - and what it is not: a megalithic Disneyland. I am not a religious person, although, like Bill, I have conducted a lifelong spiritual odyssey, with fluctuating degrees of success. But it is clear to me, each time I visit Columcille, that if anyone has ever successfully drawn the natural earth energy from a site, it is Bill. Standing stones, perhaps, are conduits to the pulse of Gaia. I don't pretend to know the answers, but the question of earth energy seems to come up whenever ancient or modern stone circles are discussed. If you are not receptive to that line of thought, don't worry. Stone circles and their like operate on different levels for different people. And keep in mind that starting an investigation with certainties is unlikely to lead to truth. At Columcille, people walk among the stones and speak reverently in subdued voices. They meditate in the special places hidden along woodland pathways. The way is open to them, as it was for the ancient Irish monks, to "journey to the thin places, where the veil parts and dreams, visions, saints, druids, angels, and other beings become companions and spiritual mentors."

Stonehenge Our conversation began with Stonehenge and the druids, an appropriate place to start given the preparations that were going on. I asked Ivan and Julie about the connections, if any, between druids and stone circles.

"We have to go by what feels rights," said Julie. "We know when the druids were first written about, but we don't know how long they were around before that. There's this assumption that they arrived when the Romans reported them."

There have been people who have been dedicated and committed to finding out the secrets of the universe since the beginning of time," observed Ivan. "And, in order to do that, you need to increase your personal power, to increase your life force, so you can understand more. So these people would have gone to the places in nature that afforded them the best chances of doing this, which we call sacred spaces or power spots or whatever. Waterfalls, wells, sacred mountains, tree groves, and, eventually, stone circles. And there's something about stone which is incredibly powerful. These people created the stone circles, but at that time, maybe they weren't called druids, which is just a label. They were the shamans of the day."

"So the line goes straight back," said Julie, matter-of-factly. "Dead easy."

I brought up the common complaint among archaeologists that the druids had nothing to do with the building of Stonehenge and that they find the annual druidical presence there on important solar dates to be a joke.

"Those are people with territorial problems," replied Ivan.

Ivan respects Stonehenge on every level: spiritual, intellectual, astronomical, inspirational, physical, aesthetic. He goes there by special access - sometimes alone, sometimes with Julie or others - to visit in an intimate way. He goes there to celebrate, to get answers to life questions, to tune into what he thinks of as the transrational reality.

"Whenever I go to Stonehenge," Ivan explained, "I feel that I have an appointment. I know that I wouldn't get anywhere near it unless it was inviting me in. And when I go there, there's always a message and it comes when I relax. I greet it. I honor it. And, somehow, I just open myself up, if you like, and go into a sort of dream state."

Chapter 7: Cliff Osenton, Modern Stone Mover, page 158

Sidebar: Observations of a Megalithic Engineer by Cliff Osenton

It's like you're riding on a really big horse, that's also really fast. You don't kick it. You just squeeze your leg muscles a fraction, and the horse changes up a gear. It's like you're sitting up on a stepladder moving thirty-five miles an hour across the countryside. That's the feeling I get with these stones; high excitement and danger, not brute force.

***

An archaeologist is not trained in the site handling of fifty-ton stones, but heavy-lift engineers are. We're not looking at a big mystery here; 90 percent of most megalithic structures are above ground. From studying that, we can assess the build quality, the tolerances, the techniques. You don't shy away, even from the biggest, most difficult site. If you can solve that one comfortably, you'll find that it will come down to one technique, and that technique is going to build the next difficult awkward site. By going through every single detail of every single process, the technique is going to tighten up every time. You don't estimate something. You actually test it, every detail, every aspect of surveying. For example, if I lay out a circle which is too accurate, I've failed. I want the same percentage errors as they had, and then I know I've matched their technique.

***

I'm working to an international standard of auditing. To test a theory, you have to ask, "What evidence do you have to support that statement? Show me every detail of every process to match that tolerance and procedure." There can't be any gaps. There's no saying, "Well, that's a mystery; we shall never know." We are talking about heavy engineering, and heavy engineering comes after a process.

***

A train crash is not designed. The train has gone straight over the embankment. In the past, you couldn't use a mobile crane of 100-tonne capacity, so you had to use rail stock to extract the train. And that's heavy engineering at its best. You've got no cranes. You've got winches, you've got timbers and levers, that's all you've got. Whatever condition you find those trains in, you recover 'em.

Chapter 11: Designing a Stone Circle, page 241

Stones Before Design It is usually better and easier - and always cheaper - to design the circle after you have a pretty good idea of the stones available. One of the rules for building a low-cost house is equally valid with regard to stone circles: Design around the available materials. Once you've gathered the candidate stones together on site, cataloged them, and become familiar with them on a first-name basis, you can let the stones themselves design the circle. How can this be? Well, let's look at just one hypothetical example. Suppose that despite all your best efforts, you can only come up with four really substantial standing stones. An obvious choice would be to place them at north, east, south, and west, which will give you both a North Star alignment, as well as sunrise and sunset equinox alignments for both spring and fall. Other, lesser stones can be spaced between these corner stones. Got five stones? How about a center stone, as at the Dragon Circle or Boscawen-Un? Or use the fifth stone as an outlier for midsummer sunrise. Only three are available? Leave out the south stone in favor of a recumbent or sitting stone, to give a place for the North Star observation. Got the idea?

These are hypothetical cases only, just to illustrate the value of flexibility. Stone circle design is a numbers game, and this is why I say that the pool of stones itself will help to design the circle. The alternative is to get locked into a rigid design that you absolutely must have, and then to go out and try to procure the stones you need to satisfy this plan. The quarry owner will love you, but you'd better have deep pockets.

Chapter 16:Backward and Onward, page 347

Everybody's different This remains the one thing I know that might qualify as a universal truth. At the very least, those two words imply tolerance; at least they do to me, and I'm as different as the next guy. And tolerance is important. How important? Well, the two big stories in this morning's news are about intolerance: a horrific shooting in a Colorado high school, perpetrated by young people who hate those different from themselves; and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the result of intolerance that dates back hundreds of years. Of course, the real answer to the world's problems will be found beyond tolerance. It will be found in love. Better authorities than I have spoken eloquently about this for thousands of years, and, eventually - we can only hope - the idea of love will reach critical mass. Only then will our species, at last, deserve to be called a civilization. But universal love is a goal, a distant destination, and we have to pass through tolerance to get there. We can't love somebody we can't even tolerate.

What does all this have to do with stone circles? Everything. Two years ago, I thought I'd write a book about stones circles and how to build them. It turned out that the book was as much about people as it was about stones. Good people. Maybe even eccentric people. But certainly tolerant and, yes, loving people.

Building stone circles has to be good for the human condition. In a time when religion takes on ever greater overtones of intolerance (instead of the love that was supposed to have been the main idea), I have found that the kind of Earth-based spirituality often connected to the building and using of stone circles is inspiring and invigorating, and it extends hope for the human/planetary relationship. Stone circle people are peaceful people, to a man and woman, and they have a deep respect for Gaia.

All excerpts © 1999 Rob Roy. All Rights Reserved.

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