Stonehenge (Essay Sample)

Stonehenge is a model of ritual art that combines religious practice with architecture to create a structural artwork as community symbol that also functions as a both temple and burial mound. Originally, the creators of Stonehenge buried the ashes of their leaders, forefathers, and priests in a circular pattern on the location, placing the cremation ashes in holes at the base of a ring of vertical stone columns, known as Aubrey Holes, and arranging these columns in concentric circular patterns. These burials expanded over time and generations with the growing complexity of religious practice on the site, which some have theorized as representing the operation of a regional temple complex with a residential committee of priests performing ritual services to the community and engaging in the advanced study of astrology. (Ray, 1987) Local construction continued over thousands of years at Stonehenge, adding elaboration to the monuments until the site eventually took a form and structure similar to the one recognized today. Stonehenge acts as a monument that bridges the macrocosm, represented through the duality of heaven and the underworld/afterlife, with the microcosm, as represented by the minds of the people who worshipped there traditionally.
It is evident that the culture that constructed Stonehenge had complex religious and cultural views, even if the identity of the people and their religion remains a mystery to researchers to this day. Thus, in the context of art history one can view the Stonehenge monuments as one of the earliest records of cultural expression, and from there begin to decipher the symbols of its authors. Stonehenge is a symbolic artwork whose pre-historic creators are unknown to modern science. What modern individuals see in Stonehenge will be a reflection or projection of the individual’s own mind and sense of self onto the monument, of the individual’s own views of pre-history and spirituality. Thus it is a reverse expressionism where one comes to know one’s self and ideas through the de-constructing of a legacy artwork and cultural heritage.
The history of Stonehenge dates back to the early Neolithic period, nearly 12,000 years ago when the first pre-historic people began to construct on the site. It is not known if there was even earlier cultural expression taking place there, and archeologists have not discovered much of anything about the language, customs, dress, or identity of the people who lived in England at that time. Yet, archeologists have developed a theory through excavations on site that posits that Stonehenge was a type of early cemetery, with burial mounds and monuments created in the manner Christianity creates tombstones today. Whereas current customs may include the engraving of the names of the dead with quotes on stone as the dead are lain to rest, the people who created Stonehenge built monuments that synchronized with the patterns of the stars, the movement of the celestial bodies, the round of the sun through the seasons – the people knew the solstice and equinox in a way that modernity has forgotten.
Stonehenge posits the question of the current nature of modern culture, and what will remain of it as art and monument 12,000 years in the future. For example, when Gerald Dawkins published his groundbreaking research in 1963 decoding the astrological connections in Stonehenge, he used what would be considered a primitive IBM computer today, but then top-of-the-line at Harvard University. He reported that through computer analysis, he had discovered 165 astrological alignments in the way Stonehenge matched the movements of the moon, stars, and planets on key days in the annual calendar. (Hawkins, 1963) Like the ancient Maya, the civilizations that built Stonehenge had a complex astronomical and calendar system, and Stonehenge likely functioned as a type of temple, church, and cemetery with different manners of priests and shamans presiding over rituals at key times of the year – solstices, equinoxes, eclipses, marriages, funerals, perhaps births. (Pollard, 2009) Modernity has lost the chants and hymns that might once have been sung at these functions, as well as the meditations and prayers that composed the rituals. Yet, one wonders if it was not the intent of the culture to create a structure that would endure, and cause people to remember them throughout time, as Ozymandius had proposed years ago.
Unlike that ancient king who would enshrine his ego in a monument to be eroded by the sands, the kings of Stonehenge chose to give us an artwork that coded Being as vast as the universe. Their expression was not limited by form but expanded mind, for everywhere one looks one sees the patterns of angles and lines of connection to stellar bodies in the deepest space, mind travels on these pathways to a vision of Being that is infinite as the universe, and cyclical as the circle. This integral geometry of the stones has been associated with wizardry, as modern cultures have been amazed at the mystery of its construction and believe only magic could have been its cause. Stonehenge carries magic and mystery into the modern age from the very pre-history of civilization, and inspires the minds of the entire planet in a way that few other works of art can claim. This is why Stonehenge is appealing as an object of art for study, for it functions as a type of portal and mandala of being that keeps the primordial, mystical, and magical active in the imagination of the 21st century.
As artists, as poets, as individuals one can search for the miraculous and try to preserve it from further deterioration and dissolution in the modern age. When the IBM computer discovered 165 astrological alignments in Stonehenge in 1963, which modern priest in England could name even one? Stonehenge challenges modern ideas of progress in a way that brings one to a recognition of Being as an integral part of the environment, but also a Being that expands the self to the farthest reaches of the universe. This is why the intentionality of the creators of Stonehenge is inspiring historically, for few other cultures have been able to preserve and transmit a subtle ...