THE "JUPITER" OF LEWIS

by A Pagan Place

Due to the cultural genocide of our pagan traditions by the Dark Age totalitarianism that was the Catholic Church, we have been left with only a few scraps and remnants of our ancient beliefs. There are vast yawning gaps in our knowledge, and to have any sense of our ancestral faiths we must spin out the little we can be sure of, with much conjecture and occasionally a little archaeology.

Such is the case of the Callanish Stone Circle on the Island of Lewis.

Undoubtedly this remote site was once a place of great religious significance, but, besides that, little is known. However, in recent months the veil of darkness has been pierced by the exciting discovery of an ancient lightning strike at the centre of a "satellite" stone circle, about 2.8km from the main circle. Yes, in addition to the main circle, a number of smaller, connected stone circles have also been discovered.

This discovery points to the site being, in some sense, connected to the worship, commemoration, or reverence of a god, deity, or supernatural phenomenon associated with thunder and lighting.

Could it be that Callanish was a site dedicated—at least in part or for a limited period—to some sort of now nameless thunder god?

The strike right at the centre of the stone circle.

The discovery was made by a team of archaeologists who used new technology to reveal a "star-shaped burn mark" seared into the bedrock under the satellite stone circle.

As reported by the Guardian:

...archaeologists have uncovered dramatic new evidence that suggests our Neolithic ancestors were inspired to construct the megaliths as devotional monuments by the natural phenomenon of lightning strikes. A geophysical survey around one of the stones has astonished archaeologists by revealing a star-shaped pattern formed by one, or possibly multiple, earth-shaking lightning strikes. New technology has exposed a clear pattern covering an area of up to 20 metres in diameter, buried until now beneath peat bogs.

The single stone, within “site XI”, is about 2.8km from the famous Callanish great circle in the island’s Loch Roag area. Geophysical techniques have mapped buried features and the new evidence shows that this 1.5-metre-high stone was originally part of another circle with the lightning strike pattern at its centre. The stones’ original positions have been revealed as magnetic anomalies in the survey.

“We’re really excited,” said professor Vincent Gaffney, one of the archaeologists. “This was completely and utterly unexpected. Seeing the evidence for a massive strike, right in the middle of what now seems to be a stone circle, is remarkable.”

He added that such a lightning strike may have hit an upstanding feature – perhaps a tree or a rock – in “a prehistorical equivalent of an act of God”: “It does rather look as if lightning was part of the game in creating this stone circle.”

Dr Richard Bates, a geoscientist at St Andrews University, who is leading the project, described the discovery as highly exciting. He said: “We’re finally getting new results on these places because of new technologies, allowing us to look at standing stones in a whole new light.”

The Callanish great circle is thought to have to have been erected 5,000 years ago. Around 3,000 years ago peat started to form in the area as the climate grew colder and damper. It is believed that the lightning strike occurred before the peat formed.

“Did the lightning strike come first or did the building of the stone circle come first?" Bates asked. "The lightning strike occurred before peat started forming So we know it’s pre-peat, which started to form around 3,000 years ago. It seems more than coincidence that these are occurring in the same place.”

“We’ve never seen this before. It just says so much about how our ancestors related to nature. It is not a great leap of the imagination to believe early societies would have been enamoured with natural events. Standing stones are linked, for instance, to astronomic events. Remember what Jove used as a weapon – lightning bolts. This is something which occurs in a number of religions. So we can identify here a rule of nature perhaps informing or reinforcing belief structures in the past.”

The idea that stone circles = astronomical structures is well known, but the apparent religious commemoration of lightning at Callanish fits in well with the radical climate change that was turning areas like the Western Isles of Scotland into increasingly stressed and marginal lands. 

The period 4000 - 3500 BC (some references say 4000 - 2500 BC) is usually referred to as a "climatic optimum" with calmer, warmer weather and weaker, less frequent spells of low pressure (i.e. stormy weather). In other words, excellent farming weather for our Neolithic ancestors.

Around 3000 BC this started to change. While the weather was still warmer than today, there was a downturn in climatic conditions with cooler/colder and wetter periods, and a lot more stormy weather. This is when the peat started to form.

This would have had a much more disproportionate impact on areas like Lewis, at the edge of the zone of human cultivation, than further south. It is therefore easy to imagine how this would have played on the beliefs of our pagan ancestors and inculcated a sense of awe for the "storm gods."

Also published at A Pagan Place

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