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I wonder what gave the author the initial idea.
Russell proposed to connect the Tor and its maze with early Welsh poetic allusions to Caer Sidi, the 'turning' or spiral castle. This was a place in pre-Christian mythology which housed a magic cauldron. Caer Sidi was a point of contact with Annwn, a Celtic Otherworld sometimes pictured as underground. Its wonder-working vessel may have been the same as a cauldron of inspiration that belonged to the goddess Ceridwen.
Certainly the legends of Glastonbury link up with these themes. The cauldron, in one guise or another, is a factor in the making of the Grail story, and a very early Welsh poem tells how Arthur and his men went in quest of it. A tale about a visiting saint, Collen, shows that the Tor was regarded as an entrance to Annwn. Russell suggests that the Quest of the Grail has pre-Christian roots in a Celtic ritual which involved threading the Tor maze to the summit and, presumably, attaining a real or symbolic sacred vessel of otherworldly character.
You can find the Goddess Queen-of-the-Great-Region and her two snakes in the night skies in summertime when you look up to the western edge of the Milky Way you’ll see the star groups of Scorpio and Sagittarius – She is just above them as She has always been and She will be wearing her 7 point crown.
A tale about a visiting saint, Collen, shows that the Tor was regarded as an entrance to Annwn. Russell suggests that the Quest of the Grail has pre-Christian roots in a Celtic ritual which involved threading the Tor maze to the summit and, presumably, attaining a real or symbolic sacred vessel of otherworldly character.
I was reading about the White Horse very recently in John North's "Stonehenge - Neolithic Man and the Cosmos". He explains how the general shape of the figure could have changed quite a lot over time (due to it being retouched over thousands of years - it's in a fairly densely populated populated area compared to the urals) he postulates that to draw conclusions from it we should instead look at the specific location of the figure instead.
Interestingly this elk appears from the pics in the links to be on only a slight incline, and similar to the white horse, not situated for best visibility by "locals" - after all, if they wanted to leave a mark that they could all see to it's best, there are many better slopes around to display the figure on for viewing.
North suggests that the incline of the plane that the figure is on is the key factor, and that viewing along the figure from tail to head points at aldebaran (a major star in taurus, and many think the horse was originally a bull). hence many chalk figures being astronomical/astrological markers. nothing too new there, but the perspective of ignoring the dimensions of the figure, and just taking notice of it's setting and the way it points was a somewhat fresh perspective in '96 when published.
so, not for display and viewing at all, but for providing a sightline?
Archaeologists working at a quarry in Shropshire have found a metalled and cambered road dated to the first century BC – around 100 years before the Roman invasion.
The road was found to include brushwood, a deep clay foundation and cobbles taken from the river Severn.
So far, 400 metres of road has been found, and ruts in it add to the idea that it could have been a trade route. Malim believes that in the iron age, the route could have connected the Wrekin hill, thought to be the "capital" of the Cornovian tribe, to the Ordovices further west. It could also hint that farm produce was being moved from the Midlands into Wales, with perhaps minerals being transported the other way.
Evidence of animal dung and dung beetles has also been found, indicating that before construction of the road it had been used in more ancient times as a livestock droveway.
It may also give an insight into the relationship between the tribes that lived in the region, as the road was almost certainly created to take heavy traffic, suggesting a thriving trade route.
The road, which is 1.5 metres high and six metres wide, was unearthed at Bayston Hill quarry, near Shrewsbury, which fittingly is owned by modern-day roadbuilders Tarmac.
In this paper, a series of possible geoglyph sites have been discovered in Scotland. The sites are of interest because of their location near important religious site, or because they were located within various ancient Kingdoms. The patterns observed at each site are, for the most part, very indistinct, and appear only to be “different” from the surroundings.
However, certain secondary features exist at each sites that appear to tentatively link the sites together. These include the presence of unusual triangular lakes with what appears to be lines running through them at two sites; and at one these sites an unusual horseshoe-shaped stone structure that creates an alignment parallel to the lines running through a nearby circular lake.
The lake and horseshoe structure point “parallel alignment lines” from northeast Scotland to the head of the proposed pattern, at the important 9th century religious center of Holy Island in Northern England. The Holy Island site is anciently connected to it’s parent Abbey at Iona in Scotland (1), where an indistinct “X” pattern can be found.
The intrigue surrounding the sites of Holy Island (2), Dunkeld (3) and Iona is that, together, the sites appear to create the shape of the head and wing stars of the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. The Swan is often associated with British royalty, and the shape of the cross pattern created over Scotland appears similar to the pattern of the Scotland Flag, the St Andrews Cross.
Strangely, the town of St Andrews (which appears by virtue of its name to be the town with the strongest links to the St Andrews Flag) occurs at the same latitude as the abbey at Iona. In addition, Holy Island, to which the abbey of Iona is linked, is at the same longitude as Stonehenge in England.