The lunar symbolism of kerb stone 78 at Knowth

This is kerb stone 78 at Knowth, located not far from the entrance to the western passage. It is one of 127 kerb stones at Knowth, of which 90 have megalithic art. But what do these symbols represent, if anything? Are they merely art for art’s sake?

Kerb stone 78 at Knowth. Picture © Anthony Murphy

American artist Martin Brennan published a book called The Stars and the Stones in 1984, having studied and drawn the megalithic art on almost all of the known decorated prehistoric stone sites in Ireland. Brennan’s overall supposition was that the ancient engravings at Neolithic sites such as Newgrange, Knowth, Loughcrew, and many others, were related to astronomy. His book was later republished as The Stones of Time.

The main plank of Brennan’s hypothesis was that the megalithic mounds and art are “interconnected, sophisticated calendar devices”. The summary on the back cover of the book says:

At critical times of the year, the rising or setting sun projects beams of light into the inner chambers of the mounds, illuminating specific images carved on the stones. Those images – seemingly abstract wheels, spirals, and wavy lines – suggest provocative new insights into their makers’ understanding of celestial cycles and the importance of those cycles in human affairs.

Brennan’s interpretation of kerb stone 78 (which he labelled as stone NW4 in his own personally devised numbering convention) is that it contains a diagrammatic representation of the moon through the use of what he calls “bijections or one-to-one correspondences with the phases of the moon”.

Brennan suggests that lunar imagery predominates on the kerb stones on the western portion of the great kerb of Knowth, where the crescents and arcs that dominate the imagery were generated by an interest in the moon and the division of time long before the age of mechanical clocks.

The crescents, waved lines and circles on Kerb 78 represent the phases of the moon, according to Brennan.

A ribbon-like development of the wavy line extends from the central image. The line follows a sequence shaped to fit the lunar month. The wavy line is transformed into crescents and then a full circle or full moon on the fourteenth count. A line divides the rest of the month, towards the end of which the crescents revert to the wavy line at the last quarter, defining a month of 30 days.

He proposed a second way of ordering the month using a different interpretation of the symbols. The top line counts from the first day of the moon as far as the seventeenth day, which is the day upon which the moon begins to wane. The sequence continues at the bottom of the stone, as far as day 27 and the last visible crescent. A final three-count wave represents the three invisible days of the moon.

Brennan's alternative lunar month count for kerb stone 78, Knowth.

The number 17 is often treated with special significance in connection with the moon, he says. "It may have had significance in a calendar of ritual. Usually it is the seventeenth phase of the moon which appears on the horizon and projects a beam of light into the mounds."

Brennan’s work is not without its detractors, and the analysis and categorisation of megalithic art has been an area of debate and dispute. Some scholars argue that the megalithic art is abstract and non-representative. Brennan, however, develops a comprehensive thesis around the astronomical symbolism and, coupled with his team’s important discoveries at Loughcrew and Dowth*, it all makes for a fascinating interpretation.

Kerb stone 78 at Knowth.

* Brennan, along with Jack Roberts and others, discovered that the southern passage at Dowth is aligned so that light from the setting sun on winter solstice reaches the stones at the rear of its circular chamber. They also discovered that Cairn T at Loughcrew is aligned so that a stone with solar emblems at the rear of its chamber is bathed with sunlight at dawn on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

Further reading

Knowth: archaeological and astronomical legacy

Knowth's Calendar Stone
The 19-year Metonic Cycle of the moon

Anthony Murphy (Mythical Ireland) with Martin Brennan at Newgrange.

New Year, New Moon - sunset, dusk and the arrival of the moon, Venus and the stars at twilight at Newgrange

The first evening of the new year was a glorious one at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley. The first sunset of 2017 was magnificent, followed by a descent into twilight that featured rich hues and colours, and then the crescent moon next to Venus, the Evening Star, made it a really gorgeous close to the day. In a couple of the shots, you might also catch a glimpse of Mars, which was trailing the Moon and Venus. I was lucky to be able to spend time there putting together this very special time lapse video. It might have been cold, but it was lovely.

Enjoy watching this time lapse with music to match. You will see the sun setting behind Réaltoge Hill, and the last tourists of the evening departing from Newgrange, before seeing the gradual arrival of twilight and darkness. Shot on four different cameras from six different vantage points over the course of four hours. Well worth the effort, I hope you agree. This video captures some of the essence of a place that, as a sacred monument, sees hundreds of visitors every day, but which once evening falls becomes a lonely and lovely place.

What could be better than to watch the sun, moon, planets and stars from Newgrange, where our ancient ancestors did likewise?

On the night of a lunar eclipse, there's a beautiful halo around the moon in the Boyne Valley

A halo around the moon over the Boyne Valley, viewed from Newgrange.

On the night of a penumbral eclipse of the moon, it seemed appropriate that I should go out to Newgrange and Dowth to try to get a photo of the full moon over the valley where, anciently, people watched its movements very closely.

When I arrived at Newgrange, there was a giant ring, or halo, around the moon. In older times, the locals would have said, in the native tongue, "Tá Fáinne ar an Ghealaigh".(1) Literally, "there is a ring around the moon".

Tonight's eclipse was what's known as a penumbral eclipse, which means that only the outer part of the earth's shadow falls upon the moon. What this means in reality is that one would probably find it hard to notice that anything was happening, as the moon only dims very very slightly. It's not like a full eclipse, where the moon enters the shadow of the earth and turns a coppery red colour during totality.

In terms of observable phenomena, it was much easier to capture an image of the halo around the moon than it would have been to capture a penumbral eclipse. (As it happens, the eclipse was already over when I arrived at Newgrange).

The halo had changed as the clouds moved when I got to Dowth, whose name might be related to eclipses.

With the autumn equinox only days away, the eclipse interested me even more, and that's because eclipses occurring around the equinoxes signal something very interesting - that the lunar node is at or near the sun's equinox points, and therefore the moon will be at maximum separation from the ecliptic at or near the sun's solstice points. When it is at these points of maximum separation, we get the so-called lunar standstills - either major standstill or minor standstill, depending on what part of the nodal rotation cycle we are at. This cycle lasts 18.6 years, or 230 synodic months (a synodic lunar month is the time it takes the moon to return to the same phase. So if you see a first quarter moon tonight, it will be one synodic lunar month (approx. 29.5 days) before you see its next first quarter phase.

As it happens, we had minor lunar standstill in 2015, and the moon's nodes are currently drifting westwards from the equinox points. The next major standstill will be in April 2025.

References:
(1) McCionnaith, L. (1935), Foclóir Béarla agus Gaedhilge, p.812.

Boyne Valley Bridge with crescent moon

The Mary McAleese Boyne Valley Bridge with waxing crescent moon.

from Flickr http://flic.kr/p/FshxWj

You can now buy images from Mythical Ireland as downloads, prints, canvas prints, framed prints and e-cards at http://bit.ly/MI-gallery

Circles in stone at Dowth

Dowth kerbstone with circular carvings, illuminated from different angles to highlight the art.

This is a montage of four different images of a kerbstone at Dowth that has a number of circular features carved onto its surface.  I headed out with the camera tonight to try to get a photo of the triple conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter over Newgrange, but was disappointed when a bank of cloud rolled in before it got dark enough to get a nice shot. Not to waste the journey, I went from Newgrange to Dowth (my son Luke was with me for company) and we decided to try to light some of the kerbstones on the eastern side.

This stone is located two stones to the right of the famous kerbstone 51, the Stone of the Seven Suns. It is better exposed now than in any of my previous visits over the years. Some work has been done in recent time to clear away the grass around these kerbstones, which are fenced off to keep livestock away. Regrettably, whoever carried out the work also cut down a lone bush which had grown over kerbstone 51 a couple of years back.

To try to highlight the four circular features apparent on this stone, I tried to light it from different angles using a technique which I have been fond of for 16 years now which is familiar to photographers as "painting with light". What do these arcane circles represent? We could make many guesses. Given that Dowth's mythology as well as its design are likely connected to the study of eclipses, we could speculate that these are perhaps representative of full moons. Cosmic imagery is plentiful on the monuments of the Boyne Valley, where a community of farmers and astronomers built huge stone structures aligned on cosmic events over 5,000 years ago.

Triple conjunction of Moon, Venus and Jupiter over
Newgrange, pictured in 2012.

While we did not see the triple conjunction in all its glory, we did get a glimpse at the three planets hanging in the evening sky over Newgrange just before the cloud obscured them, and wondered what our ancient ancestors would have made of such a sight all those millennia ago.

Fittingly, as Dowth's Irish name, Dubhadh, means "darkness", it became pretty much completely overcast as we photographed its stones . . .

Lugh of the Long Arm carries the sun across the sky on the longest days of the year

See also this new video explaining some of the astronomy and mythology behind this event.


The longest days of the year have arrived. The sun's rising and setting positions have reached their most northerly points along the horizon and these rising points are now "standing still" - hence the word solstice, or in Irish grianstad, meaning, literally, "stopped sun".

Orion "carries" the sun across the sky on the three longest days of the year.

The further north you are located from the equator, the longer the days in summer, and the shorter in winter. Here in Ireland, in the Boyne Valley, the sun rises before 5am on Summer Solstice and sets around 10pm. Even in the middle of the night, there is no real darkness as the whole northern horizon remains bathed in light. This is a result of the fact that the sun does not go far enough below the horizon at midsummer for Astronomical Twilight to end.

The sun is crossing over the Milky Way right now.

Something else that's really interesting is happening right now as the sun crosses the sky on these, the longest days. If you could somehow darken the sun, like what happens in a total eclipse, you'd see that the sun is currently positioned directly above Orion. In fact, at Summer Solstice in this modern epoch, the sun appears to be "carried" across the sky by this great anthropomorphic warrior/god/hunter constellation, in his upraised arm. Further to this is the fact that the sun is currently located in one of the two positions where it appears to "cross" over the Milky Way. Astronomers today call the sun's path the ecliptic. This imaginary ring through the sky intersects the Milky Way in two places - one above Orion and the other beneath Ophiuchus, between Sagittarius and Scorpius. It just so happens that in our lifetime, these positions correspond with the location of the Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice sun, respectively.

It is fascinating that the Boyne river, along which the greatest megalithic passage-tombs in Europe were built, has a name that is the same as the old Irish name for the Milky Way - Bealach na Bó Finne, the Way of the White Cow.

In mythology, there are many gods and warriors, but some particularly interesting ones which we examined in Island of the Setting Sun - In Search of Ireland's Ancient Astronomers. One of these is Lugh Lamhfada, Lugh of the Long Arm (or the long throw, perhaps). In the ancient mind, was it perhaps Lugh who was seen to "throw" the sun, moon and planets from his upraised hand?

Amergin's poem, on a photo of the Boyne estuary where he
arrived in Ireland with the Milesians.

There are other characters of mythology that are interesting. Amergin, leader of the Milesians, was known as Amergin of the Bright Knee. The star that we know today as Rigel has an Arabic name which means "bright knee". Amergin asked "who but I knows the place where the sun sets, who but I knows the ages of the moon?" The Annals of the Four Masters says the Milesians arrived in Ireland at Bealtaine in 1694 BC. On that date, the sun was above Orion, being carried across the sky. Because of an effect of the wobble of the earth's axis called Precession of the Equinoxes, the sun's position on the ecliptic on a specific day of the year (eg solstices, equinoxes) is slowly moving westwards through the ecliptic. When the Milesians arrived in 1694BC, their bright-kneed leader set foot on the shore of the Boyne river at the moment the sun was being carried by the constellation Orion - that might have been known then as Amergin. Nowadays, the sun's position at Bealtaine has moved so that it is beneath Aries. It is on Summer Solstice now that Orion/Amergin/Lugh appears to carry the sun across the sky.

And then there's Cúchulainn, the warrior hero of The Táin Bó Cuailnge, who battles in ford water - a ford being the crossing point of a river. Was he guarding the ford of the sky, as hinted in The Táin?

a fair man facing your foes
in the starlit ford of night.

It is no mere coincidence that Cúchulainn is a son of Lugh. The Milky Way was known as Lugh's Chain and Lugh used a weapon called the Tathlum, which is described as a concrete ball - made of his enemies' brains hardened with lime. Could this be the moon?

To the hero Lugh was given
This concrete ball – no soft missile –
In Mag Tuireadh of shrieking wails,
From his hand he threw the tathlum.

Today, as you watch the sun make its way across the sky on the weekend of the Summer Solstice, it would be nice to reflect upon the powerful imagery. The god of light has the sun in his hand.

Moon and night sky over Newgrange

There was a beautiful sky over Newgrange tonight. There was a lovely half moon peeping out from behind cloud that was moving along nicely, creating this lovely effect.

Could the moon's mountains be seen from ancient Ireland?

The writings of Diodorus Siculus describe an island which many think was Ireland, inhabited by the Hyperborei, from which he said the moon appeared closer to the earth, and features like mountains could be seen. He also wrote that these inhabitants knew all about the 19-year cycle of the moon. Interesting stuff. You can hear me reading from Siculus and discussing the passage in the above video. 

Eclipse of the moon takes place this Friday

Eclipse of the Moon this Week

Penumbral eclipse takes place on Friday night

This Friday, October 18th, the Full Moon will undergo a penumbral lunar eclipse as it passes through the outer region of Earth's shadow.

During this type of eclipse the Moon will darken slightly, and this can be observed without any special equipment.

Unlike a solar eclipse which may last only a few minutes, a lunar eclipse can last hours and is viewable by anyone on the night-side of Earth. The eclipse will begin at 10:50pm when the Moon begins to enter Earth's shadow. By 12:50am (then into Saturday morning) the eclipse will be at its greatest, and almost all of the Moon will be slightly darkened by the shadow. The eclipse ends at 2:49am.

"I’ve seen lots of lunar eclipses over the years and I’ve always found them very fascinating to watch," said David Moore, Editor of Astronomy Ireland magazine. "This Friday is a great opportunity for people all over Ireland to go out and see an eclipse for themselves. The best thing is to look at the Moon before the eclipse starts, so you can see how much darker it gets as the night goes on."

"We want people to send in their observation reports and photos for publication in our magazine. Email them to observe@astronomy.ie," said Mr Moore.

More information about the lunar eclipse can be found at www.astronomy.ie

International Space Station to pass in front of moon as viewed from Ireland tonight

Rare space event takes place at 8:54pm

The biggest and most expensive spacecraft ever put into orbit around Earth will pass in front of the Moon as viewed by people along a line from Dublin to Bantry, Co Cork, tonight. See map at bottom of this post.

The International Space Station (ISS)

At 8:54pm (Thursday, October 10th) the International Space Station will rise in the west and blaze through the sky towards the Moon in a spectacular sight. Astronomy Ireland urges everyone to go out and see the spectacle.

"The ISS will almost look as if it will crash into the Moon, but of course this won’t happen, as the Moon is about a thousand times further away than the space station," said David Moore, Editor of Astronomy Ireland magazine. "However, if you imagine a line drawn from Dublin to Bantry Bay in Cork, people along that line – or within 16km either side of it - can look up and see the ISS pass in front of the Moon. This is a very rare event and we want everyone who can to go out and see it!"

"Because this is so rare, we want people to send in their observation reports and photos for publication in our magazine. Email them to observe@astronomy.ie," said Mr Moore.

A map of Ireland showing where people can view the International Space Station pass in front of the Moon can be found below.

The ISS will continue to pass over Ireland every evening until October 26th, and the times it will be visible will be posted online at www.astronomy.ie/iss each afternoon.

The Evening Star setting at Newgrange, Ireland

The Evening Star, Venus, setting behind Newgrange. Click image to see larger version.

More than 5,000 years ago, the people who built Newgrange peered out into the heavens and watched the movements of the sun, moon, planets and stars. They recorded some of these apparently complex movements on the giant stones which make up their enormous passage-mounds. A folk tale about Newgrange says that once in eight years, the morning star (Venus) shines into its chamber on the morning of the winter solstice. The above photo was taken coming up to summer solstice, with Venus on the opposite side of the sky to the winter solstice position. Mercury is also in this picture, higher up, above Newgrange, but is very difficult to see.

An eerie mist surrounds the cattle on the fields in front of Newgrange, with Venus to upper right.

Newgrange and Mound B with mist forming on the Boyne in the afterglow.

The Christmas Star - Moon and Jupiter in Taurus

A lovely conjunction of the almost full moon and the bright planet Jupiter shining brightly in the night sky over Ireland on Christmas Day, December 25th, 2012. The pair are located above the head of Taurus and make quite a sight, being only a degree or so apart.

Moon and stars over Newgrange

A crisp winter sky over Newgrange, featuring the moon and the constellation
Aquila, the Eagle.

A similar scene except this one includes the cross-
shaped Cygnus, as well as Lyra.

A star-filled November sky over Newgrange.

Above are three images of Newgrange I took this evening, Saturday, November 17th, in the afterglow after the sun had gone down. It was very cold out there this evening, but that did not take from the spectacular beauty of the sky. The crescent moon hung low in the southwest near the Milky Way, beneath Aquila, the Eagle. Some nicely timed clouds made a nice flourish in the first two images. The Plough (Big Dipper, Ursa Major) can be seen over Newgrange in the third image.

On the scent of an ancient mystery in Wexford

During the past week or so I have visited County Wexford, where I had been invited by the newly formed JFK Heritage Group to help them research ancient sites of interest around the Slieve Coillte area, not far from New Ross.

Members of the JFK Park Memorial Heritage Group, from left: Mairead Cairbre,
Tommy Grennan, John Flynn, Simon Kennedy and Jim Foley with (third from left)
Fr. Seán Ó Duinn and (third from right) Anthony Murphy.

It was a very exciting week. Perhaps the big discovery of the week was the probable location of the Teampall Geal, an ancient healing centre at Whitechurch, very close to the location of a standing stone alignment of three stones which point towards Slieve Coillte. Several stones which were possibly part of this 'temple of healing' remain, in a heap under a sycamore tree at Whitechurch. They include what members of the JFK group think might be Dolerite, a blueish granite, from which the famous 'blue stones' at Stonehenge are made. These stones are said to have curative properties.

The stone alignment at Whitechurch might point to the Major Northern Standstill rising position of the moon, but further observations will have to be made to determine if that is the case.

The investigations took place during Heritage Week, with a public meeting on Wednesday last at the JFK Arboretum followed by a symposium on Saturday night to discuss findings and future lines of research.

On Wednesday, the group was joined by Fr. Seán Ó Duinn, of Glenstal Abbey, author of 'In Search of the Awesome Mystery'. I was delighted to meet Fr. Seán, whose writings on pre-Christian and Early Christian Ireland are very insightful.