An Interesting Article: Wairarapa: Power of the Circle

The big day is coming and I want to be ready. No, it's not Christmas. It's not the Boxing Day sales. This is a really big day.

I mean the summer solstice, which will be celebrated in New Zealand on December 21 and 22. It's the longest day of the year, when we will be blessed with 15 hours of daylight. The summer solstice was once a magical, mystical and memorable time. Our Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ancestors gathered in their thousands at dawn to welcome the rising sun and embrace it with genuine affection. It was a time for expressing love, plighting troths, committing to marriage, making pledges and worshipping gods. People felt genuine gratitude for the sun, which provided warmth and light, and made the crops grow.

This summer, 5000 people will make the pilgrimage to Stonehenge Aotearoa, a modern henge built by the Phoenix Astronomical Society in Ahiaruhe Rd, Carterton, among the golden downs of the Wairarapa. The henge is not just the biggest garden ornament in New Zealand, its purpose is seriously scientific - to make astronomy accessible to everyone. Stonehenge Aotearoa enables basic astronomical ideas to be easily understood. The moment I meet organiser, Richard Hall and see the standing stones, I sense the mystery and fascination and feel inspired to learn more. Their sheer physicality and presence is unnerving.

"We have created a full-scale working adaptation of England's Stonehenge, aligned for the Southern Hemisphere at this particular latitude and longitude," Hall says with passion. "We built the henge in prefabricated carbon-fibre concrete, but initially toyed with the idea of real stone, thinking that every student in the Wairarapa could put one stone in place. It would, however, have added $10 million to the cost."

Hall explains how the Wairarapa henge is a practical, open-sky observatory, incorporating ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and Celtic astronomy, Polynesian navigation and Maori star lore. The structure has 24 upright pillars connected by lintels, forming a circle 30m in diameter. Six heel stones stand outside the circle to show the position of the sun at the summer and winter solstices, and the equinoxes (when day and night are equal). Near the centre of the henge stands an obelisk, which casts shadows along a tiled area called an analemma. This shows how the sun's position changes through the year relative to the stars. An elongated figure-of-eight is laid into the tiles to trace the path of the sun and denotes its position at the same time each day.

The stars marked out along the sun's path form the 12 traditional constellations of the zodiac. The obelisk's shadow points to the zodiac sign through which the sun is passing. Hall's enthusiasm builds as he describes the power of the circle: "When we have 12 people chanting, the circle's acoustic properties amplify the sound so it seems like there are 50. At the height of the chant any person entering the circle automatically falls into a trance-like state."

The circle has been visited by rock stars, opera singers, a choir performing a Gregorian chant, and even Britain's High Druid.

"At twilight you get eerie, disembodied voices when someone is speaking across the other side of the circle," Hall says. "It feels like they're right beside you. Some photographers were setting up one evening and heard a low roaring noise like a wild pig. It was actually a hedgehog snuffling in the middle of the circle where the sound was amplified to a roar. We call him our hengehog now."

Like Stonehenge on England's Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge Aotearoa is used primarily for navigation and timekeeping. Our Celtic forbears of 5000 years ago had no written language, no roads and no maps. Stars were their only means of navigation. Timekeeping was equally important. When the sun sat on the spring equinox heel stone, the peasant farmers could plan crop planting, and hunter-gatherers could predict when migrating deer would arrive at their summer feeding grounds and intercept them.

I look forward to December 21 and 22, when modern astronomers will rise at dawn in the Age of Aquarius. With many of the 600 Phoenix Society members present, I imagine there will be enough cosmic energy and enthusiasm to launch a space shuttle.

The obelisk will cast a short shadow along the analemma on that day. The sun will be at its zenith, infusing goodness and intense flavour into the pinot noir grapes in Martinborough's nearby vineyards.

Our ancestors stood beneath Salisbury's famous megalith and gave thanks for the sun every year. Perhaps we should do the same in 2008. The stones will reveal their secrets and it could well brighten our day.