There are many mysteries about Newgrange. Many Irish legends were written down by Catholic monks about a millennium ago. Some of these texts record descriptions of Newgrange including: “Mac an Og’s bright brugh to approach”, “further place of much light” and “Boyne’s white-headed brugh”. If the cairn had slipped into the Bronze Age, as archaeologists tell us, sweeping the white quartzite that decorated its front into the ground, to be covered by subsidence boulders and gravels, are the signatures Mythical memories like memories of Newgrange as if it were in the distant past?
The entire valley is dedicated to the goddess Bóann, or Boin, whose name means ‘white cow’. This white cow goddess gave her name to the River Boyne, which flows around the great peninsula where Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth are located. Of great significance is the fact that the river seems to be seen as an earthly reflection of the Milky Way, the bright band of our galaxy that runs across the night sky. This river is Abhann na Bó Finne. The Milky Way was known to the Irish as Bealach/Bóthar na Bó Finne, the Way/Way of the White Cow. Newgrange is known in Irish as Brú na Bóinne, Bóinn’s mansion or womb.
But the astronomical significance of Newgrange and its sister sites is much greater than that. There is evidence at Knowth and Dowth of calculations involving the moon, knowledge of the moon’s complex movements possibly including predictions of eclipses. At Knowth, the aptly named ‘Calendar Stone’, one of many giant stones at the roadside, has markings including a crescent and full moon in a counting fashion that appears to list the time period Five lunar years, part of what is called the Metonic Cycle of the moon, are 19 years long. There are words for this 19-year cycle in Irish. It is thought to have been discovered by a Greek named Meton in the fifth century BC, however there are markings on Knowth’s stepping stones which suggest it was studied and recorded around 2,800 years ago. years before Meton existed.
The amount of paving stones at major monuments can also be significant. At Knowth there are 127 curbstones, half the number of sidereal months in the 19-year Metonic Cycle. In other words, if you count each curb as a sidereal lunar month and go around the entire circumference, then return to where you started, you have calculated a Metonic Cycle.
At Dowth, there are 115 curb stones. This is half of 230, which is the number of lunar conjunction months in a cycle known as ‘lunar rotation’, the time it takes for the moon to pass through its maximum rising and setting points above the horizon and return. This cycle is also known as the “stationary” cycle and lasts 18.6 years. Alexander Thom, a Scottish engineer who studied hundreds of stone circles in England and found that many of them aligned with the rising and setting of the moon, asserted that anyone studying the polar deviation The maximum and minimum of the moon (what he called the moon’s ‘stopping’) would be able to predict eclipses.
Notably, the legend of Dowth tells of a sudden darkness, as if from a total solar eclipse, falling on the men of Erin (Ireland) as they built a cairn so that king Bresail Bó-Dibad could ascend to heaven. Darkness caused them to abandon their quest and legend has it that the place would increasingly come to be known as Dúbhadh (Dowth), meaning ‘darkness’.
In addition to observing and calculating the moon’s complex movements, it seems that the mound builders may have noticed the greatest cosmic cycle of all – the precession of the equinoxes. This slow wobble of the earth’s axis over a period of 25,920 years, causes the sun’s equinox and solstice positions to recede westward across the zodiac, and another obvious result is that the sun’s north pole The sky slowly showed a large circle during that time. Today we know Polaris as the North Star, but back in the Neolithic period the polar star was Thuban in the constellation Draco.
At Dowth, a series of seven sun carvings resembling the Dogon symbol represent the rising of the spiral. When Dowth was built, the constellation of the bull, which we now call Taurus, must have risen from the east, with its small cluster, the Pleiades, or ‘Seven Sisters’, rising in the east in the sky before the dawn of the Sun. establish spring. Is this the meaning of the ‘Stone of the Seven Suns’? When Richard Moore and I first suggested this on www.mythicalireland.com in 2000, we were surprised to see how many people thought it was a reasonable explanation for the stone’s symbolism. But it’s much more interesting than that. When you sit with your back to the stone, you are facing east, towards the horizon where the Seven Sisters would appear in the pre-dawn sky of the Neolithic Spring Equinox. Even more intriguing is the legend of Dowth, which says it was built by order of the king, Bresail Bó-Dibad (lack of cattle) at a time of great cattle famine that left only one bull and seven cows in Ireland. Is this a reference to the bull and its cluster of seven small stars?
A series of observations of the eastern spiral rising over a period of several generations will reveal the slow movement of the sun’s position in the zodiac, caused by the precession of the equinoxes. And we have reason to believe that the Boyne Valley mound builders were very interested in precession and its gravitational effects on the stars.
The alignment of the Newgrange walk towards the Red Mountain, where the sun rises, continues towards another small tomb called Fourknocks, located 14.7 km (9.1 mi) away. In contrast, Fourknocks’s passage points to the position on the horizon where, around 3000 BC, the bright star of the swan constellation, Cygnus, would have risen after a brief ‘collision’ with horizon line.
So Newgrange points to Fourknocks, and Fourknocks points to Cygnus in the Neolithic period. Interestingly, there are several legends about swans in Newgrange, the most famous of which is about Oengus Óg, the owner of Newgrange, who dreamed of a beautiful woman and wasted away with illness because of her. Finally, with the help of Tuatha Dé Danann’s family and friends, his lover was found at a lake called Dragon’s Mouth, in Tipperary, where she took the form of a swan. Oengus is told that he must also transform into a swan so that they can become lovers. He took the form of a swan and they flew to Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) where they lived happily together.
Newgrange is also an important wintering site for Whooper Swans, who come to Ireland every year in large numbers from Iceland. They arrive in October and return to Iceland in March. Ornithologists have long said that Newgrange is one of the most important wintering grounds in Ireland, as it regularly attracts more than 50 birds each season winter. Did the ancient mound builders believe that the swans were carrying the souls of the dead after winter, northward, perhaps toward the sky where the great cross-shaped constellation of swans lies?
There are many more factors that corroborate this argument. Newgrange’s passages and chambers are cross-shaped, like the constellation itself. The Cygnus star group lies in the bright strip of the Milky Way, as if a swan was gracefully gliding across the surface of this starry river. Oengus’s mother was Bóinn, who gave her name to the river, the Milky Way, and the entire valley.
What makes the Cygnus alignment special is its precessional significance. During almost the entire 25,920-year precession cycle, Cygnus is cyclic, that is, its stars do not dip below the horizon. But for a short period of time, perhaps about a century, the bright “tail” star Deneb seemed to glide along the northern horizon and disappear for a moment. The time this happened was the period when Newgrange and Fourknocks were built. It is as if the builders intended to preserve this special moment during the period of precession.
Another event related to Neolithic precession that does not occur today involves the bright ‘ring’ of the Milky Way becoming visible along the entire horizon, from north to east, south to west and back north. It is a characteristic of slow precessional vibrations that causes the Milky Way ring to ‘wobble’ across the sky, like a wedding ring spinning on a table before it stops. But as Newgrange was building, there were certain times of the year when this bright band of stars did just that – it stopped, settling along the entire horizon, enveloping an observer in the Boyne Valley in a circle of light. It must be exciting to be alive at a time when such exciting things are happening in the skies. But it doesn’t stop there.
At the time Newgrange was being built, another notable cosmic event was taking place. The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, the star we call the ‘dog star’, is rising exactly where the winter solstice sun will rise. Its declination places it firmly in the sky window framed by Newgrange’s roof box aperture, seen from its chamber. Every night, probably about 2/3 of the year, the dog star will ‘shine’ into the room, or at least it will be visible to observers in the room through the entrance. Did this happen purely by chance, or was Newgrange designed as a ‘well-lit’ room, as the myth might imply? Is it an observing room not only for the sun but also for the moon, the Morning Star and perhaps the Dog Star as well?
We thought that the legend of the fortress on the nearby hill might commemorate this special connection, this sacred moment in the history of the precession. The hill lies southwest of Newgrange. On the shortest day of the year, the sun sets over this hill as seen from the entrance to Newgrange. Interestingly, the name of the hill is Réaltoge, which means ‘star’ or ‘young star’. The folk tale of the Réaltoge hill fortress says that there was gold buried there and was guarded by a dog. Is this the golden glow of the setting sun in Réaltoge at the winter solstice during the Stone Age, followed by Sirius, the Dog Star, setting at night?
Newgrange may have been designed as a kind of crude precession screen. This is what we proposed in Sunset Island in 2006. The slow shift of the Dog Star caused by precession could be clearly seen by the dedicated observers in the Newgrange room over a period of several decade. Of course, within a few centuries of the monument’s completion, the Dog Star’s light would no longer be visible in its chamber. The carvings on a rock at the rear of Newgrange, curb 52, located along an axis formed by the stone in the entrance as well as the passage and chamber, seem to represent the three belt stars of Orion, pointed towards Sirius. And Sirius seemed to be sitting exactly in a vertical line on the rock, as if it were in line with the passage and the room. In addition to all this, we also read in mythology that Bóinn, mother of Oengus and goddess of the moon/Milky Way, had a loyal pet dog named Dabilla.
We find that a meaningful interpretation of the true functions of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth can only be achieved when several aspects and disciplines are studied, including archaeology, astronomy, mythology, spirituality and geodesy, among others. Only when the stars, stones and stories come together can we see a bigger picture emerge.
It is a remarkable testament to the builders that their monument has stood for more than 5,000 years. What is even more remarkable is that information about the cosmic significance of these monuments comes to us through the stories associated with them. We have no doubt that some of these stories have been passed down, through countless generations, since the time they were formulated.
