3. Stonehenge, Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel
Updated: Aug 14, 2020
Stonehenge is the same distance from Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall as it is from the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy
Thanks to Google Earth, you can measure distances pretty accurately. When I first downloaded the program onto my laptop, I spent some time measuring distances between places, I'm not sure why and I'm not sure what I was hoping to find. At first I found that various cathedrals were equidistant from Stonehenge, then that other religious and natural features of historical significance around Britain and Ireland were equidistant. I'll get round to writing about them soon. When I found that the two Michael Mounts were exactly the same number of miles from Stonehenge, my first thought was that this was just another coincidence. But then it occurred to me that if a man-made place on a seemingly random plain (Stonehenge) is the same distance from two sacred hills / rocks that themselves are part of an alignment and dedicated to a figure, maybe that man-made place was put there in relation to those natural features.
From the centre of the stone circle to the approximate centres of the islands, these are the measurements I have:
Saint Michael’s Mount -Stonehenge : 176.45 miles/ 283.97 km/ 931,659.10 feet / azimuth 246.79 degrees
Mont Saint Michel - Stonehenge : 176.3 miles / 283.73 km / 930,930 feet / azimuth 175.3 degrees
Saint Michael’s Mount – Mont Saint Michel: 206.14 miles / 331.75 km / 1,088,410.34 feet / azimuth 118.32 degrees
There is a difference of approximately (depending on which starting and ending points you take in your measurement) 729 feet / 222 metres between the distances from the Mont Saint-Michel to Stonehenge and Saint Michael’s Mount to Stonehenge. That’s 0.0078 % of the total distance. And it’s possible to take a measurement of 176.34 miles from Stonehenge to Saint Michael’s Mount (so as to match exactly the Stonehenge - Mont Saint-Michel distance) if you measure to the shore of the island rather than to the centre. The distances are remarkably similar.
So, is it worth considering the location of Stonehenge specifically in relation to these two islands? Not forgetting, of course, the link with the island of Lundy...
Firstly, let’s look at the measurements.
176.45 miles and 176.3 miles from the two mounts to Stonehenge. 206.14 miles between the two mounts. Are these figures significant in any way?
Robin Heath is the man to turn to here. He has not only found a strong link between the location of Stonehenge and the island of Lundy, but also come up with some amazing figures and units of measurement, connecting time and space. He has found that the distance between Stonehenge and the island of Lundy, which is 123.429 miles, is significant because, as John Michell points out in The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth (page viii) this is also 864/7 miles. He writes: "That identifies the common unit in Heath's lunation triangle as 36/7 miles. In terms of this unit, the sides of the lunation triangle are 10, 24 and 26. It is the same triangle as in the Stonehenge station rectangle but 2,500 times bigger."
So there are 24 units of 36/7 miles, or 5.142857 miles between Stonehenge and Lundy. Let's refer to this unit as a Lunation Triangle Unit, or LTU. This unit is directly linked to the Astronomical Megalithic Yard, which Robin Heath defines as 19.008/7 feet, or 2.71542857 feet. If you convert 36/7 miles, or 5.142857 miles into feet, that gives you:
35 / 7 x 660 x 8 = 27,154.285714285 feet.
That's exactly 10,000 Megalithic Astronomical Yards. So 1 LTU = 10,000 AMY
So how many of these ltu units are there between the Michael Mounts, and between each of the mounts and Stonehenge?
The distance in LTU between the Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Michael's Mount is:
206.14 / 36 x 7 = 40.082778
This is quite close to 40 LTU
The distance in ltu between Stonehenge and Mont-Saint Michel:
176.3 x 7 / 36 = 34.280556
This isn’t as interesting a number... until you think of it as a fraction....
34.285714 is 24/7.
36 / 7 x 240 / 7 = 176.326531
There are 36 / 7 x 240 / 7 miles (or 36 x 240 / 49 miles) between Stonehenge and Mont Saint Michel, or 240/7 LTU.
The Stonehenge - Saint Michael’s Mount distance produces a similar figure:
176.45 x 7 / 36 = 34.309722 and 34.309722 x 7 = 240.168056
So there are 240.168056 / 7 or 34.309722 LTU between Stonehenge and Saint Michael’s Mount.
So in LTU, the distances between Stonehenge and the two Michael Mounts are quite interesting: close to 40 and 240/7.
As there is no reference online or in any books that I know to a link between Stonehenge and the Mont Saint Michel and Saint Michael’s Mount, I wondered what to make of these numerical connections. These places are all the product of lost civilisations. What they have in common is that that were pretty good at astronomy, as well as surveying and navigation, which depend on star charts, observation and obsessive measuring over vast stretches of time an space. But what are we getting into here? If Stonehenge is linked with the two Michael mounts, then it must be linked to the entire line which runs from Skellig Michael to Israel, and Stonehenge must be somehow linked to the temple of Delphi itself.... The southern half of the European Michael line is peppered with temples dedicated to the sun and moon deities Apollo and Artemis, so it seems reasonable to think that the Northern part is equally old, pre-dating Christianity by a good couple of thousand years at least. Stonehenge is of course set out in such a way as to facilitate the observation of the sun and moon over the course of a year and over the course of many years, it's possible that it too was once the playground of sun and moon gods. So what links do we have here between the two Michael Mounts and Stonehenge? Thanks to the destructive powers of Christianity, we've only a few old stones to go by now, stones and mercurial pathways.
Perhaps that's a little unfair: Christians have recycled many ancient pre-Christian sites of importance and built the most beautiful churches on them. Where they destroyed the structures and the believers of old, they at least sometimes preserved their GPS coordinates by marking the spot with something else, often something truly magnificent. There's no church at Stonehenge, but there was, an important cathedral two miles south, on an old mound, called Old Sarum. The Normans decided to move this cathedral and its town out of the harsh cold winds and into the valley further south again, where it is now called Salisbury. Curiously, one of the bishops involved in this move may have been the bishop of Avranches, the town closest to the Mont Saint-Michel, though another version of this story says it was the bishop of Salisbury. There's a story of a white deer being shot with an arrow from Old Sarum, and the new town and cathedral being built on the place where the injured deer finally fell.
To start with, there is an isoceles triangle, or a circle, linking these points: Stonehenge, Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel. What does this mean? Perhaps it is linked to the sun, since the two Michael lines (English and European) are said to be connected to its course. Of course, the distance between two natural features is what it is. But might they be considered special partly on the basis that the distance between them is close to 40 lunation triangle units? And what about its orientation: 118.32 degrees from the Cornish mount to the Norman one. There is also the question of their alignment with the rest of the European Michael line – Skellig, Sacra San Michele, etc, and in the case of the Cornwall mount, with the English Michael line too. Might these places have been considered special to a mathematical mind, concerned with number, geometry, measurement, surveying and astronomy, before they became purely sacred in a religious sense - be it pre-Christian or Christian? Might the sacred quality of these places be rooted in maths?
The best place to start is a closer look at Robin Heath’s AMY and his lunation triangle, thanks to which he demonstrates the link between solar and lunar cycles and the equatorial circumference of the Earth, time cycles equated to spatial measurement.
Robin Heath and the Lunation Triangle
A lot of amazing work has been done on ancient metrology, in particular by Robin Heath, Richard Heath, John Michell and John Neal. Amongst their fascinating findings is Robin Heath’s Lunation triangle. One significant island in particular has played an important role in understanding the probable reasons for locating Stonehenge where it is, and this is Lundy. Lundy, Robin Heath says, is named after the word for elbow in the local language, which is interesting as it forms the right angle of the triangle. It also sounds oddly like the French and Latin words for moon.
The lunation triangle is defined by Stonehenge, Lundy Island, Caldey Island, and the bluestone site, where some of the stones that make up Stonehenge are thought to have come from, in the Preseli hills in Wales. In his book The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth, (co-authored by John Michell), Robin Heath recalls three questions he asked himself in relation to the situation of Lundy, directly West of Stonehenge.
‘Was Lundy the starting point in this geomantic venture, or was Stonehenge, the location of Lundy then being a remarkable coincidence?
Was Stonehenge sited where it is in order to complete a geomantic statement about the calendar across the British landscape?
Does this triangle provide the reason as to why the bluestone site was so important as a source for Stonehenge? '
(Italics his own)
And his answer is:
‘Ever since this triangle was revealed to me, research has reinforced my belief that the answer to all three questions is yes. Stonehenge was most likely the final stage in a manifestation of astronomical, geodetic and geomantic wisdom, which predated the original siting of the monument, currently thought to be dated about 3,100 BC.’ (page 40)
The link to the site of some of the stones that make up Stonehenge was certainly compelling. Then there was the fact that this Lunation triangle was exactly 2,500 larger than the station stone rectangle at Stonehenge. The proportions of both the Lunation triangle and the station stone rectangle are 5:12:13.
Then there are the measurements themselves. The distance between Stonehenge and Lundy’s centre point is 123.4 miles. The foot itself is a very old measurement, a product of the measurement of the equatorial circumference of the earth. At some stage, this circumference was measured and reconfigured with a new unit, devised like this: the circumference was divided by the number of days in a solar year, and that figure was then divided by 360,000, to produce one small unit of measurement, the foot. Hence, the equatorial circumference of the earth is 365.24325 x 360,000 = 131,487,568.5 feet. Units of time (days) have been combined with the girth of the earth and used to produce units of space (feet).
The Lunation triangle is in fact linked both to sun and moon, not only by virtue of the unit of measurement, the mile and by extension the LTU, 36/7 miles, that define its length, but also by virtue of the proportions between its sides.
Robin Heath calls it a geometrical device for predicting the moon’s phases and eclipses, and in that respect, the unit of measurement it’s in is irrelevant, this is purely to do with the fact that it’s a 5:12:13 triangle.
Robin Heath came up with the idea of the lunation triangle whilst examining Stonehenge and the link he had made between Stonehenge and Lundy. Basically you can make a 5:12:13 triangle quite simply with a length of rope, marked at equal intervals to create thirty equal spaces. Then you can peg it down so as to have 5 on one length, 12 on the next, and 13 on the last. That last and longest length is key: pick it up again and bring it down to divide the triangle into two parts. If you position the third, longest length so that it bisects the shortest side at the 2/3 point, this creates a new smaller triangle, with a hypothenuse of 12.369 units. This represents the length of the solar year calibrated in lunations. The average number of lunations in a solar year is 12.368267. This set-up becomes a tool for predicting both solar and lunar eclipses.
Links between the Stonehenge - Lundy Lunation Triangle and the Michael Mounts
The ‘12’ side of the lunation triangle is the one that links Stonehenge to Lundy. This distance, as we've seen, is 123.429 miles long, 24 LTU. If you divide it into 12, then each section is 10.2857 miles long (72/7 miles). Or if you divide it into 6, then each section is 20.5714 miles long. Times ten, this is very close to the distance between the two Michael mounts.
The distance between Saint Michael’s Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel is almost exactly 10 / 6 of the distance between Stonehenge and Lundy.
Now, if you divide the Stonehenge - Lundy line by 7, instead of 6, and multiply it by 10, you get the Stonehenge - Saint Michael Mount distance and the Stonehenge - Mont Saint-Michel distance.
The distance between each of the two Michael Mounts and Stonehenge is exactly 10 / 7 of the distance between Stonehenge and Lundy.
What does this mean? It seems to point to an intentional connection between Stonehenge, Lundy, Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel. Perhaps it is just a small part of a larger network of places linked to each other by number in this way, or perhaps by sun, moon or star.
If you multiply the number of miles between the Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Michael's Mount by 6, you get a number which is related to the golden ratio, 1.618.
2 / 1.618 x 1,000 = 1,236.09
206.14 x 6 = 1,236.84
This means that the number of miles between the two Michael Mounts is very close to
2,000 / 1.618 x 6 = 206.01.
There is a difference of 0.13 miles, centre to centre. This is also 0.3 miles more than 205.714 miles, which is 40 lunation triangle units.
You can in fact measure 123.6 miles between Stonehenge and Lundy.
The Lunar Cycle and the Astronomical Megalithic Yard (AMY)
One lunar month, or lunation, lasts on average 29.53059 days. How does this compare with the solar year? There are 12 and a bit lunations in a year, which varies from year to year. 12 lunations last 354.36708 days and 13 last 383.89767. One solar year is somewhere in the middle of these two figures, with of course 365.242199 days. On average there are 12.368267 lunations in one year. Robin Heath points out that that’s almost exactly 12 and 7/19 . (page 31, The Lost Science of Measuring The Earth)
As the solar and lunar calendars are not exactly aligned, it’s helpful to think in terms of average number of lunations per solar year. So, there are on average 12 lunations plus 7/19 of a lunation in a solar year.
Derived in another way again, you could say that the difference between the length of the solar and lunar years is 10.875199 days (365.242199 – 354.367 = 10.875199 ) and this can also be (just about) expressed as 7/19 of a lunation, or 29.53059 x 7/19 = 10.879691, which is very close to 10.875199.
Robin Heath points this out: 7/19 = 0.36842 and 19/7 is 2.7142857
So there are on average 12 lunations plus 7/19 in a year.
This fraction, 7/19, is significant in and of itself, as months in our solar calendar are divided into weeks of 7 days. Seven is a number that comes up time and time again, 7 colours of the rainbow, 7 notes in a musical scale, the storm ends on the seventh day in flood legends, etc. And 19 is significant because there is another cycle of the moon which lasts exactly 19 solar years. This is the shortest amount of time into which you can (pretty much) fit an integer number of lunations into an integer number of solar years. It’s called the Metonic cycle.
Also, Robin Heath points out that the two principle circles at Stonehenge have diameters that form a ratio of 7/19, or always very close to that (within 0.5%). (page 32, The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth)
These 12.368267 lunations per solar year (or 12 and 7/19 lunations) are the key here.
7/19 = 0.368421. This extra 0.368267 or 7/19 th part of a lunation is 10.875199 days.
7/19 x 29.53059 is only an average of course, but it is significant. What Robin Heath does next is very interesting. He asks himself how many 7/19 th parts of a lunation are there in one full (average) lunation cycle, and the answer is 19/7 ths. (or in decimals: 29.53059 / 0.368267), that is to say one average lunation period divided by the extra bit that doesn’t quite fit in a solar year after 12 lunations have elapsed. So the number of 0.368267 lunation periods in one lunation is 2.715429. In another way, without reference to any fractions of lunations, just decimals, and the number of days in solar and lunar cycles, 365.242199 – 354.367 = 10.875199 , so 29.53059 / 10.875199 = 2.715407. So a solar year can be expressed as, on average, 12 full lunations plus 29.53059 / 2.715407, which is 10.875199 days. The extra ten or so days that make up the difference in length of the solar year and lunar year can be related back to one lunar month of 29.53059 days. And 10.875199 / 29.53059 = 0.3682689. This figure is slightly different from Robin Heath’s fraction derived 0.368267. Still, it helps to think of it as 19 / 7ths of a lunation period. Robin Heath goes with the fractions method, as this is probably more in keeping with the pre-calculator mind.
As we have seen, the foot is a unit derived from the very proportions of the earth: the equatorial circumference in ancient geodesy (again, according to Heath) is 360,000 x 365.242 feet.
On page 32 of his book, The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth, Robin Heath writes:
'If the English Foot is made to represent the difference in time between the lunar and solar year (10.875119 days), then:-
The megalithic yard, based on the astronomy of the lunation cycles of 29.53059 days, becomes 2.71542857 feet in length.
And: foot : megalithic yard = differential : lunation period.'
What about the relation between 13 lunar months and a solar year? 13 lunations are 383.89767 days. ( 29.53059 x 13 = 383.89767) That's 18.655471 days more than a solar year. So 13 lunar months are the equivalent in days of one solar year plus 18.655471 days, or 1.58323 x 1 lunar month. (29.53059 / 18.655471 = 1.58323)
There are an average of 12.368267 lunations per solar year. You could say there are 13 lunations minus 0.631733 of a lunation each solar year, as 13 – 12.368267 is 0.631733. This number, 0.631733, can be (almost) expressed as a fraction: 12.02927 / 19, or perhaps as 12.008 / 19.008.
So there are 13 lunations minus (12.008/19.008 of a lunation) in a year.
(12.008 / 19.008 x 29.53059) + 365.242199 = 383.897677
How many 12.008 / 19.008 of a lunation in a lunation? 1.58266
That's almost 19.008 / 12.008
(19.008 / 12.008 = 1.58294)
We've come across the number 19.008 already. The AMY is defined by Heath as 19.008 / 7 feet, or 2.71542857 feet, and he also points out that 19.008 is 6 x 3.168, which is a number that comes up at Stonehenge and other stone circles. (see page 33 in The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth)
Also, (19.008 / 7 ) - (12.008 / 7) = 1
19.008 / 12.008 x 13 = 20.578281
and 19.008 / 12.008 x 130 = 205.78281
This number, 205.78281, is close to the value in miles of the distance between the two Michael Mounts (206.14), and it's very close to 205.7142857, which is 40 LTU. Perhaps there is a link here with 13 lunations and the fraction 19.008 / 12.008. You could say there are 10 units of 13 x 19.008 / 12.008 miles between the two Michael mounts, corresponding to 13 lunations and the reverse of the fraction 12.008 / 19.008. (there are 13 lunations minus (12.008/19.008 of a lunation) in a solar year.) This unit of 13 x 19.008 / 12.008 miles would be worth 20.57828 miles. There are close to 6 such units between Stonehenge and Lundy.
123.412857 / 20.57828 = 5.998
And this number squared gives something very close to the distance between the Mont Saint Michel and Durham Cathedral, and between Durham Cathedral and Skellig Michael, as we shall see later.
20.57828 x 20.57828 = 423.465608
Distance Mont Saint-Michel - Durham Cathedral: 424.31 miles
Distance Durham Cathedral - Skellig Michael : 425.10 miles
(As a matter of fact, taking 1/10th of the exact actual distance between the two Michael Mounts, centre to centre, is more exact: 20.614 squared is 424.936996, closer to the actual distances mentioned above. Also, 20.614 x 6 = 123.684, a number even more compatible with the distance in miles between Stonehenge and Lundy, with the added benefit of being also very close to 200 / 1.618 = 123.60939)
So perhaps where distances are nice multiples of this unit, 20.57828 miles, let's call it the Michael Unit, (13 x 19.008 / 12.008 miles), or its close cousin 20.614 miles, there is a soli - lunar connection.
Basically, what Robin Heath shows is that the solar and lunar cycles can be represented in units of length, such as the foot and the Astronomical Megalithic Yard. Not only that, he shows that the solar and lunar cycles most probably were used to calibrate units of length. So it follows that placing sites at certain distances from each other, according to these units of measurement and certain lunar and solar friendly numbers, might seem a good idea to people who really value and know their astronomy, and the link between space and time. Perhaps parts of the Michael alignments, such as the distance between Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel were thought of as special because of the number of Lunation Triangle Units between them. Perhaps sites were placed in relation to these two mounts, as a nod to the beauty of numbers and an awareness of the measuring of time cycles and the Earth's dimensions.
The full moon cycle, the time it takes the sun, as seen from Earth, to complete one revolution with respect to the perigee of the moon’s orbit, is 411.784 430 29 days.
Divide this figure by two and you get 205.8922. This figure can be measured in miles between the Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Michael’s Mount. It is close to 40 ltu.
So, how many AMY between the two Michael Mounts?
206.14 x 8 x 660 x (19.008/7) = 2,955,524.593
If you divide that by 100,000, you get a number that's close to the number of days in a lunar month: 29.555 (In fact a lunar month is 29.53059 days)
If you were to take a unit of 29.53059 AMY and multiply it by 100,000 you get 2,953,059 AMY, which converted to miles is 205.968 miles, which can in fact be measured between the two Michael Mounts. (It's just 0.172 miles off the centre to centre measurement)
So it seems that the distance between the two Michael Mounts can be understood as the number of days in a lunation times 100,000 AMY, the AMY being already a lunar derived unit.
Representing Space and Time
This meshing of spatial and temporal measurements comes up again and again. After all, things can only move in both space and time, not just space. And not only are space and time inexorably linked, but representations of space and time are crucial to our understanding of them. As Kant put it, space and time are a priori to our experience of them, they are, together, the conditions for the existence of everything else. You might say that devising units of measurement derived from sun and moon cycles, and then using them to places important sites on land, might demonstrate in itself a certain awareness of the linked natures of space and time, and our place within them.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote in the Critique of Pure Reason:
'Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outer experiences. For in order that certain sensations be referred to something outside me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in which I find myself), and similarly in order that I may be able to represent them as outside and alongside one another, and accordingly as not only different but as in different places, the representation of space must already underlie them [dazu muß die Vorstellung des Raumes schon zum Grunde liegen]. Therefore, the representation of space cannot be obtained through experience from the relations of outer appearance; this outer experience is itself possible at all only through that representation.' (A23/B38). Kant.
In the field of physics, time and space are viewed as inseparable. The first proponent of space-time continuum, Hermann Minkowsk, wishing to emphasize the geometric qualities of space and time, said in 1906:
"The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality."
I don’t want to discuss Kant or Minkowsk in any detail, just to point out that an understanding of the peculiar nature of space and time has been central to the most profound shifts in philosophy and physics since the enlightenment. Once the importance of the representation and interdependence of time and space have been grasped, it is essential to come up with a system of measurement of time and space which reflects this. I think it would be inconceivable for a culture that had understood that cycles of time are already the motions of bodies in space, not to want to convey cycles of time in units of measurement of space, even down to units as small as the foot and the inch. I think that we should recognise that the units of measurement that have come down to us, or that have been derived from measuring ancient sites, are the product of great minds, possibly thousands of years ago.
I also think the great antiquity of the foot and the mile and lines of longitude and latitude and the way we divided the day into 24 hours and the year into 12 months carry so much meaning. We can infer from it something of the minds that produced it, that needed a system of measurement in which time cycles could be reflected spatially.
Because the foot itself is a product of temporal and spatial measurements - the girth of the Earth and it's path round the sun - it reveals an understanding of the interdependence of space and time on behalf of its creators.
Robin Heath describes the foot as ‘an astonishing enduring artefact bequeathed to us from the prehistoric world.’ (page 43, The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth)
While the connection between the foot and the equatorial circumference of the earth is undeniable, it does not necessarily prove that the foot was used in ancient times. But it is a fair assumption that the foot goes back to a time when it was possible to measure the equatorial circumference of the earth very accurately. Since the foot is, historically, older than recent accurate measurements of earth (since Copernicus), it must be true to say that there was a time before recorded history when it was possible to make precise measurements of time and space in order to conjure up a unit that was devised from precise measurements of the Earth and its cycles.
As a result I think it is not an anachronism to talk about the positioning of Stonehenge by its builders in units of feet, and by extension, in miles, and other multiples of the foot too.
So how can it shed light on the Stonehenge - Michael triangle?
The number 17.632653 (or 24/7 x 36/7)
If you double the distance between Stonehenge and the Mont Saint Michel (176.3 miles), you get 352.6 miles, or if you add the length that separates the Mont Saint-Michel from Stonehenge (176.3 miles), to the Stonehenge - Saint Michael's Mount distance (176.4 miles) and consider them as one length, you have 352.7 miles. Or if we take the distances between each Michael Mount and Stonehenge to be both a nice 240 x 36 / 49 miles long, that is 176.3265 miles, then we have a total of 2 x 240 x 36 / 49 miles, or 352.65306 miles. So, depending on how you measure it, the Mont Saint-Michel - Stonehenge - Saint Michael's Mount distance is between 352.6 and 352.7 miles long.
This number is not a million miles off the number of days in a lunar year, 354.36708 days. In days, this number 352.653 is 12.589 days short of a full solar year, and 1.71408 days less than a lunar year. Is there a link, or is a miss as good as a mile?
The number 352.65306 is 6.05306 short of the number of days in an eclipse year. Half an eclipse year is 173.31 days long, which is roughly three less than 176.3265. Six lunar months are 177.18 days.
All of these are close but not exact fits though. What about on the ground at Stonehenge?
At Stonehenge itself, on Google Earth, it’s possible to trace a circle of 1,763.74 feet around the outer edge of the henge, to a radius of 281.14 feet from the centre. I don't know how exact this is.
If you divide the Mont Saint-Michel – Saint Michael’s Mount distance in miles by 7 you get segments of 29.448571 miles. This is quite close to the value of one lunation in days, 29.53. Again, it's not an exact fit, but close.
Six of those segments of 29.44 miles make 176.691429, which is very close to the 176.36 miles we have seen already.
So the Mont Saint-Michel-Saint Michael’s Mount-Stonehenge triangle has sides worth close to 6 and 7.
If we divide the longer side of the Michael-Stonehenge triangle by 7, and multiply that section by 6, we get something close to the value of the shorter side of the triangle.
206.14 / 7 = 29.44857 miles
29.44857 x 6 = 176.69143 miles
That's 0.36 miles off being a precise match.
There is a further possible connection to the lunar cycle: just now we divided the Stonehenge - Michael line into seven parts. If you also divide the Stonehenge - Lundy line, the East-West part of the Lunation triangle, by seven, as we've seen, you get segments of 17.632653 miles:
Stonehenge - Lundy = 24 x 36 / 7 miles, or 123.42857 miles.
24 x 36 / (7 x 7) = 17.632653
Stonehenge - Saint Michael's Mount and Stonehenge - Mont Saint-Michel = 176.32653 miles
17.632653 x 10 = 176.32653
So the Stonehenge - Michael triangle has two sides worth precisely 10 / 7 of the Stonehenge – Lundy side of the lunation triangle.
176.363 is also 36 x √24 or 62 x √(6x4)
or 240 / 49 x 36 = 176.3265
or even 63x4x10/7x7 = 176.3265
63x4/7=123.42857
24/7x36/7= 17.632653
There are 7 segments of 24 x 36 /49 miles , or 17.632653 miles between Stonehenge and Lundy, and 10 of them between Stonehenge and the Mont Saint-Michel, and Stonehenge and Saint Michael's Mount. There are 24 / 7 Lunation Triangle Units or LTU between Stonehenge and Saint Michael's Mount, and Stonehenge and the Mont Saint-Michel. The fraction 24 / 7 is familiar to us today in terms of time measurement, merging a solar time framework (1 day or 24 hours) with a lunar time framework (one quarter of a lunar month, or a week of 7 days) .
Furthermore, something close to 1 / 7 of the Stonehenge- Lundy distance separates Stonehenge from Avebury: 17.36 miles.
123.4 / 7 = 17.62857
The two inner circles within the great circle at Avebury are each 340ft in diameter. The circle of the twelve surviving standing-stones at Newgrange in Ireland is also 340 in average diameter. That's 103.6 meters. 103.6 is half of 206.12. This last figure is the number of miles between Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel. Perhaps you can't compare a number of meters with a number of miles, but after all meter and mile are related to each other by a number very close to the golden ratio (1.618) which is 1.609.
A line can be drawn linking the two, from Avebury all the way south to Stonehenge, to the southern perimeter of the henge itself, that’s 17.36 miles long, and amazingly, the azimuth is 176.3 degrees. (distance Stonehenge - Mont Saint-Michel: 176.3 miles)
This is part of an established ley line, which takes in a tumulus north of Stonehenge, Clearbury Ring, South of Salisbury Cathedral, and another structure further south, Frantenbury Camp. The length of the line from Stonehenge to the last camp is 19,800 yards, as observed by John Michell. We've come across this number before, as 1 AMY is 19,0008 / 7 feet. And there are 13 lunations minus 0.631733 of a lunation each solar year, as 13 – 12.368267 is 0.631733. This number, 0.631733, can be expressed as a fraction: 12.00363 / 19, or perhaps as 12.008 / 19.008.
So there are 13 lunations minus (12.008/19.008 of a lunation) in a year. Also, we saw earlier that there are 13 lunations minus 0.631733 of a lunation each solar year, 13 – 12.368267 is 0.631733 or 12.008 / 19.008.
For some reason, I can't find any connection made previously between this line and the Mont Saint-Michel, which is on a similar alignment, from Avebury, the vicinity of Stonehenge, through Old Sarum, etc.
The distance between Stonehenge and Avebury henge from centre to centre is in fact 17.31 miles. John Michell points out in the book ‘The Lost Art of Measuring the Earth’ (page 105) that this number is virtually the square root of 300, which is 17.320508.
And, Michell points out (page 72) that Avebury is situated on the latitude 360/7 degrees. So to go back to our 24/7 and 36/7 fractions, you can say that Stonehenge (the southern part of the henge) is 24/7 x 36/7 miles south of that point latitude 36/7.
Michell also points out that the distance between Stonehenge and the 51st line of latitude just south of it is 12.342857 miles. That’s exactly 1/10th of the distance between Stonehenge and Lundy, 123.4 miles, or 24 x 36 / 7 miles, or 24 AMY (see pages 72 and 104).
24/7x36/7= 17.632653
Michell and Heath link the positions of Avebury and Stonehenge in between the 52nd and 51st parallels to the very dimensions of the earth.
The distance between Avebury and the 52nd parallel to the north is exactly 1/100th part of the earth’s polar radius. The polar radius is 3950.076 miles, and an ancient figure is given for this measurement in Heath and Michell’s book, of 3949 and 5/7 miles (see page 10, The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth). Stonehenge to the 52nd parallel is 39.497 miles. If you run a line between Stonehenge and the 52nd parallel through the centre of Avebury, instead of just directly north, the line is 39.58691 miles long, which is 1/100th of the mean radius of the earth. And if you run the line from Stonehenge through the side of the henge at Avebury to the 52nd parallel, the line is 39.62425 miles long, which is 1/100th of the equatorial radius. So the size and location of the henge at Avebury, in relation to Stonehenge and the 51st and 52nd parallels, seems to be placed in such a way as to express these three earth measurements, on a scale of 1/100.
Also, Avebury-Stonehenge is exactly ¼ of the distance between parallels 51 and 52. This is all explained in Heath and Michell’s book.
So the distance from Stonehenge to the two Michael Mounts in Normandy and Cornwall (176.3 miles and 176.4 miles) is just under three miles short of being ten times the Stonehenge - Avebury distance, if taken to be 17.36 miles.
How many Lunation Triangle Units or LTU are there between the two Michael Mounts? We divided the Stonehenge Lundy line into 7 parts and found that these segments multiplied by 10 gave the length of the Stonehenge - Michael line. If we in turn divide the Stonehenge - Michael line by 6, we get segments of 29.38776 miles. Multiply this by 7 and we get a figure close to the value in miles between the two Michael Mounts: 205.7142857. And the distance between Stonehenge and Lundy, 24 x 36/7 miles or 24 LTU, multiplied by 10/6 gives the same figure, a distance which is less than half a mile short of the distance between the two Michael Mounts, 206.14 miles.
24 x 36 / (7 x 7) x 10 / 6 x 7 = 24 x 36 / (7 x 6) x 10 = 24 ltu x 10 / 6 = = 40 ltu = 205.7142857
So there are (just under) 40 Lunation triangle units between the two Michael Mounts.
So to come back to the number 17.63, or 24/7 x 36/7, it is already part of Robin Heath’s lunation triangle, in that 17.63 miles are 1/7th of the distance between Stonehenge and Lundy. 17.63 miles are also 1/10th of the distance between Stonehenge and the two Michael Mounts, and the distance between the two Michael Mounts is very close to 10 / 6 of the Lundy - Stonehenge distance. 17.63 x 10 x 7 / 6.
The number 176 is important too.
It seems to be connected to metrology, as well as lots of prehistoric places, such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza. As it’s quite close to 176.3, it's worth taking a look at some places where it comes up here.
The fraction 176/175 (or 22/7 x 8/25) is significant, as noted in John Michell and Robin Heath's book, The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth, page 13. This is the link between certain units of measurement to make up for errors in pi derived lengths. 175/176 is used as a link between long and short version of Greek foot, eg 1.008 to 1.01376
And 1.76 x 180 = 316.8.
I mentioned earlier that 3168 is a number identified with the circumference of sacred temples, featured at Stonehenge, and Glastonbury also. And if you have a circle with a perimeter of 316.8 feet, such as the sarsen circle at Stonehenge, marked out regularly every two degrees of the circle, then the space between each marker point would be 316.8 / 18 = 17.6 feet.
Robin Heath, in The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth, mentions this 3168 number. At Stonehenge, each pair of Aubrey holes is separated by 31.68 feet. One AMY is 2.71542857 feet and Robin Heath writes: '2.71542857 feet is 6/7 of 3.168 feet, demonstrating the AMY’s connection with sacred geometry.’
Also, the embankment circle at Stonehenge is 1056 feet in circumference, and 1,056 / 6 = 176.
So the number 316.8 is connected to the Astronomical Megalithic Yard:
1 AMY = 2.71542857 feet = 6/7 of 3.168 feet.
19.008 is 6 x 3.168 and 1 AMY is 19.008/7 feet so it follows that 1 AMY is 6 X 3.168 / 7 feet, or 3.168 x 6/7 feet.
And, since 3.168 = 176 x 18 / 1,000, then 1 AMY = 176 x 18 x 6/7,000 feet
1 AMY in feet is also 176 x 12 x 15 x 6 x 70,000
The number 176 is also connect to pi and the number 56, which is the number of post hole marks at Stonehenge. 56 is an interesting number as it’s the number of makers needed to create a system for predicting eclipses (56 or 28).
176 / π = 56.022, or 176 / (864 / 275) = 56.0185
So if a circle had a diameter of 56.022 units, it would have a circumference of 176.
There’s a stone circle in New Zealand with these dimensions, called Miringa Te Kakara.
That makes it 1/6 of the embankment circle at Stonehenge.
I read that the distance in miles between old churches is often 21.12 miles, and this is 12 x 1.76.
1.76 feet are 21.12 inches.
2.112 x 9 = 19.008, which brings us back to the AMY, as 1 AMY is 19.008 / 7 feet, or 2.71542857 feet. So 10 x 19.008 / 9 inches are 1.76 feet and 19.008 / 9 / 17.6 = 1.2
so in fact when you are converting feet to inches, multiplying by twelve, you are also multiplying by (19.008 / 9 / 0.176), and 0.176 itself is 19.008 / 6 / 18...
So another way of seeing 1.76 is 19.008 / 9 / 1.2 or 19.008 / 9 / 6 x5 or 19.008 / 54 x 5, which links it to precessional numbers, of which 54 is one. (see Santilana and Von Dechend, and Graham Hancock). 54 is also 6 x 9.
You could say that any of these figures connected to the number 19.008 is ultimately derived from the difference between the length in days between the solar and lunar years.
Here is a list of places I have found that are approximately 176 miles part.
Skellig Michael - Hill of Uisneach Cat Stone 172.33 miles
Saint Michael's Mount - Stonehenge 176.45 miles
Mont Saint-Michel - Stonehenge 176.35
Stonehenge - Rouen Cathedral 176.5 miles
Mont Saint-Michel - Montmartre: 176.92 miles
Montmarte - Nancy 175.96 miles
Nancy - Saint-Denis Cathedral 175.43
Nancy Cathedral - Notre-Dame-de-Paris 175.54 miles
Montmartre - Canterbury Abbey 174.49 miles
Brussels Cathedral - Rouen Cathedral - 174.60 miles
Is there a connection?
Lastly, to Egypt: the altar in the Great Pyramid at Giza is 44 feet per side, which is 176 feet for the perimeter. And an Egyptian cubit is 20.61818 inches, and this last figure is close in number to the distance in miles between the two Michael Mounts (206.14 miles - in fact you can measure 206.18 miles between the two mounts). A 10.56 foot reed has a cubit measure of 1.76 feet x 6
And 176 feet is 1/30th of a mile. (5280 feet in a mile) there are 1760 yards in a mile.
Northern alignments with the Mont Saint-Michel : Durham and Avebury
I've found two main alignments heading north from the Mont Saint-Michel through Britain, one slightly to the West of North, and one almost exactly North.
The Mont Saint-Michel to Avebury Line
The eastern side of the Avebury henge is precisely aligned with Old Sarum, Salisbury and the Mont Saint Michel, on a line with an azimuth of 175.41.This line runs very close to the Avebury Stonehenge line, azimuth 176.32.
The line from the eastern side of the Old Sarum henge to the Mont Saint Michel runs straight through the cathedral in Salisbury, which was moved from Old Sarum to Salisbury.
Why was the cathedral moved? What did the Norman bishops know about this alignment? Did they try to preserve it by placing the new cathedral on it? Was the move entirely to do with getting out of the cold winds on Old Sarum? What was the point of that story about the white deer that was shot and finally fell on the spot of what is now Salisbury Cathedral?
They must have done, or they wouldn't have moved it to somewhere else on the line. Surely this must mean that this alignment was known to them and was important to them.
You can see below that the new cathedral is clearly placed on the Mont Saint-Michel - Old Sarum line.
Durham Cathedral to the Mont Saint-Michael: a North-South line
Now to the second line from the Mont Saint-Michel through England.
Almost directly north of the Mont Saint-Michel runs a line with an azimuth of 359.65 to Durham Cathedral, which goes straight through the northernmost henge at Thornborough, in Yorkshire. This could mean that the Thornborough henges were placed partly in relation to Durham and the Mont Saint-Michel. This azimuth is so close to zero that you could describe the line between Durham Cathedral and the Mont Saint-Michel as a meridian.
The Thornborough henges are in Yorkshire, and are pretty big. The cursus itself is almost a mile long. They are thought to date from 3,500 and 2,500 BCE. Like the stars of Orion's belt, and the pyramids at Giza, the three henges are arranged in an almost but not quite straight line. Everyone knows about about Robert Bauval and his brilliant work: the pyramids at Giza represent the stars of Orion's belt on earth. And Christopher Knight and Alan Butler have shown these links at Thornborough in their amazing book Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery.
Here are some of the reasons given by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler as to why the location of the Thornborough henges are very intriguing.
Thornborough is 2480.95 miles from the North Pole. This is close to 1 / 10th of the earth's meridional circumference, which is 24,883.2 miles. Robin Heath shows that 24,883.2 miles = 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 x 12 / 10 miles (page 11, The Lost Science of Measuring the Earth)
(Incidentally, a few other very old sites are also at a similar distance from the pole, such as Knocknarea in Sligo, Annaghmare court tomb and Slieve Guliion in Newry and Mourne, Ireland, Birkrigg and Swinside stone circles in England)
Christopher Knight and Alan Butler also show that 'the north and south henges are latitudinally exactly four seconds of arc (4 x 366 MY), centre to centre', and 'a second of polar arc in the 366-system is exactly 366 MY long on the ground.' (Chapter 8, 'Squaring the Circle', in Before the Pyramids, by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler)
MY stands for Megalithic Yard, a unit devised by extensive surveying and measuring by Alexander Thom.
Also, 'the southern Thornborough henge and Lincoln mount are precisely one Megalithic Degree apart north to south, and one modern degree east to west'.
One modern degree of the Earth's revolution on its own axis takes four minutes. A Megalithic Degree is the Earth's revolution on its axis divided by 366 instead of 360. 366 is a very interesting number, as the authors show. For example:
'The ratio of the size of the Earth to the Moon is 366:100. Given that the Earth makes that number [366] of sidereal spins in a year (to the nearest integer) you might think that is a nice number. Or days in a leap year.' (in Chapter 7. Overturning Old Ideas)
'There are 365 sunrises in a year but 366 star rises' (in Chapter 6. Searching for Sirius)
Not only that, but they write that every 10,000 days the Moon turns 366 times in relation to the stars, that if water's freezing point is defined as zero degrees and its boiling point as 366 degrees, the absolute zero is - 1,000 degrees.
Just over a mile away from the Mont Saint-Michel - Durham line are the Rollright Stones, right on the border between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. There are three monuments, The King's Men, the Whispering Knights and the King Stone. A legend says that on the stroke of midnight, the King Stone and the Whispering Knights come alive again, on certain saint days. (Which saint days I don't know, but where there is a saint day marked on the calendar there must be star or sun alignments) The church at Little Rollright is dedicated to Saint Phillip, the earliest parts are 13th century, the feast day of St Phillip is May 3, and the orientation of the church is, as far as I can make out on Google Earth, 83.10 degrees.
Arbour Low is also close to this line. Arbor Low is a neolithic stone circle Derbyshire, not too far from the lovely little town of Bakewell. There are about 50 stones, and some are arranged in an egg-shaped circle, like at Carnac. The Nine Ladies stone circle is made up of nine stones in a circle.
This line also goes through the little island of Tombelaine, where in the story told by Wace, the lady Helen was killed by the giant, and which also features in the painting of the Mont Saint Michel by the Freres Limbourg in the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. The island may also get its name from the god Bellenus, a Celtic Apollo.
This line extended northwards goes all the way to the Shetland Islands, crossing the Tyne very close to Gateshead and Newcastle city centre, skirts the Farne islands, and then goes through Fair Isle.
Durham Cathedral must be connected to the Skellig Michael, Saint Michael's Mount and Mont Saint-Michel alignment, especially as it is almost exactly the same distance from the Mont Saint-Michel as it is from Skellig Michael, 424.33 miles and 425.11 miles respectively.. The mound it is built on is probably natural, and by coincidence it too, like its Michael cousins, is surrounded by water, only it is by a river not the sea, the river Wear. The distance between Stonehenge and Durham cathedral is 248.83 miles, which is 1/100th of the meridian circumference of the Earth (24,883.2 miles). Add these 248.83 miles to the distance between the Mont-Saint Michel and Saint Michael's Mount and you get the distance between the Mont Saint-Michel and Skellig Michael.
