4. Gold: Michaelmas, Phi Days and the Milky Way
Updated: Jul 22, 2020
We've looked at the links between the Mont Saint-Michel, Saint Michael's Mount and Stonehenge. How do these relate to the other places on the Michael alignment, such as Skellig Michael, Sacra di San Michele, Monte Sant' Angelo, and the others on the way to Israel? What about the English Michael alignment? What can we learn from the various orientations of these lines?
Skellig Michael
Another rock surrounded by sea, named after the archangel... yawn. Except, it's also another amazing place! The waiting list for tickets to get there is pretty long, especially after Luke Skywalker spent some time there.
But it's not just the physical similarity to the other two Michael places we've looked at so far that makes it special, nor the fact that it is roughly aligned to them, nor even its amazing bee-hive huts. All of these things put together, its remoteness, its starkness, its history have to be considered with the fact that it's the beginning of the famous Michael - Apollo - Artemis line that stretches from the most westerly part of Europe to the middle East, at Mount Carmel. And the distance between the Mont Saint-Michel and Skellig Michael is 454.95 miles. That's the distance between Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel divided by ten and then squared. It's also the distance between the Mont-Saint Michel and Saint Michael's Mount plus 248.83 miles, which is 1/100th of the meridian circumference of the Earth (24,883.2 miles).
The neighbouring island, Little Skellig, is home to thousands of puffins. You can just about see on the photo here the mainland in the distance behind it. There are plenty of other islands around here, Puffin Island, Scarriff, Deenish, Horse Island, some of these are just as dramatic looking, jagged, sharp, threatening even, like the heads of sea dinosaurs that have swum up for air. There was once an oratory and a church on Scarriff Island. So why is Skellig Michael the one that has been considered so special for centuries?
For one thing, it is the furthest to the westerly places in Europe, second only to the Blasket islands, 20 miles or so to the north, are slightly further west again. The next place after that is Newfoundland, almost 2,000 miles away. Being so remote, Skellig Michael could be the starting point (or the end) of a journey. I'm taking it as the starting point of the European Michael line.
The azimuth of the line linking this island to Saint Michael's Mount is 115.42 degrees. What is the significance of this? How exactly does it relate to the sun? Or to the moon? And is there a line with a similar azimuth to the English Michael line, crossing Ireland from Skellig?
I thought it best to start with trying to figure out the movements of the sun as seen from Skellig Michael, and I found a great website called www.sunearthtools.com. You put in the location and the date that you want and you can get the number of hours of daylight and the orientation of the rising and setting sun, amongst other things.
I wondered what date to pick first. I thought the most obvious would be to check the dates on which the feast of Saint Michael is celebrated, so 29th September, and in France, 8th May.
Skellig Michael
29 September Sunrise 05:39:03 Sunset 17:25:07 Azimuth sunrise 92.69° Azimuth Sunset 266.99°
Number of hours of daylight 11:46:04
8 May Sunrise 04:01:08 Sunset 19:17:18 Azimuth sunrise 60.57° Azimuth Sunset 299.73°
Number of hours of daylight 15:16:10
I wasn't really sure what to make of these figures, or what to do with them. So I decided to check to see on Google Earth what was 92.69° away from Skellig Michael, the line of the first point of sunrise on Michaelmas, 29th September.
I was very very surprised to find that it led straight to the Stonehenge area.
A Skellig Michael Michaelmas Line
Stonehenge
I just stared at the screen not knowing how to interpret this. The first moments of Michaelmas sunrise at Skellig Michael were linked with Stonehenge, all the way over in England? For some reason, it just seemed unlikely. And yet, why not? It seems clear to me now that people in the distant past were good astronomers and cartographers, the capability was there. And the will was there, plenty of structures from the Neolithic and Bronze Age are oriented to something or other in the night sky. And are not most churches, at least the ones built before the last century, aligned with the sunrise of the feast day of the saint they are supposed to be dedicated to? And aren't the Michael lines in England and Europe connected to the path of the sun, and directly linked to Stonehenge, as we've seen in earlier posts? It kind of made sense, but still, it was strange. Even with the connections I'd found between Stonehenge, the Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Michael's Mount, I hadn't expected this, perhaps I should have done.
The line I traced didn't actually go through the main part of Stonehenge, the famous ring of stones, but just under a mile to the north, between the Great Cursus and Durrington Walls. The line did go past or through some interesting shapes on the landscape, none of which I could identify, circular shapes, cigar shapes. I looked on the interactive map created by Historic England but none of the places I wanted to know about were labelled. (https://services.historicengland.org.uk/rrstonehenge/) I have marked them below with question marks.
The exact orientation of the line from Skellig to Stonehenge itself is 92.80° and the distance is 377.87 miles. From Skellig it runs through Kerry and Cork, through Kinsale before hitting the sea, then over the Cheddar Gorge, skirting a couple of very old churches on the way, such as St Mary's in Shrewton, St Mary's in Frome, St Andrew's Church in
Radstock, Holcombe, and St Andrew's in Compton Bishop. The line also passes close by the Giant's Grave Long Barrow in Southmead, Charmborough Hill Chambered Tomb, and Big Tree Long Barrow.
I wondered why the line between Skellig and Stonehenge wasn't more precise, why it didn't head for the henge itself. I drew the line from different parts of Skellig Michael, just to see if it made a difference, but it didn't much. But then I figured that the sunrise azimuth for the days before and after would have been way off the mark. If the intention of whoever designed this layout was to mark the Stonehenge - Skellig line exactly with this date, then actually the 29th September was the best you could do. The previous day, the 28th September, has a sunrise azimuth of 92.06, and the following day has an azimuth of 93.32 which are both way off. If you draw lines for both of these days, and measure the distance between them in the Stonehenge area, they are 8.3 miles apart. So each of these sunrise lines from Skellig, 28th, 29th and 30th September, projected all the way to Stonehenge is just over 4 miles apart from the next. So to have a sunrise line that is just under a mile off the main event in Stonehenge is probably as good as you can get.
What does this mean? Why the 29th September? Is it purely to mark the link between two already well established places? Already there are links between the positioning of Stonehenge with Lundy, the Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Michael's Mount. Now with Skellig too, there is a direct connection. Michaelmas is a famous religious feast day, it has been celebrated for centuries, though in recent decades perhaps less so.
Michaelmas is also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (depending on the religion).
It's not just a day of religious importance, it's also an important day in the calendar as it's one of the quarter days: even though it's a week after the autumn equinox, it's Michaelmas rather than the equinox which marks the beginning of this new quarter of the year. It is also one of the quarter days of the financial and legal year, and until a few decades ago it also gave it's name to the autumn term in schools and universities.
There's a flower associated with Michaelmas: the Michaelmas daisy. It's worth noting because the flower is associated with coastal salty places, just like the mounds associated with Michael in North West Europe, and is named after the Greek word for star. I was wondering about a connection with stars when I glanced over to my left and noticed something very like the Michaelmas daisies (as they are known) I was reading about on my computer screen in a vase right next to me: a mix of sunflower, aster and eucalyptus leaves. How strange that I've had these flowers for almost a week now and I never thought to wonder what the purple ones were.
Strange too that they go so well with sunflowers, which, like the Michael mounds, are connected to the path of the sun.
It occurred to me I hadn't checked what lay on the azimuths for Michaelmas sunrises from the other Michael places. Nor from Stonehenge itself. So here they are below.
Saint Michael's Mount 29 September sunrise azimuth 92.61°
I traced a line on Google Earth from Saint Michael's Mount with this azimuth. Nothing much, The English Channel. A bit of Northern France, but nothing of note.
Then I checked the same thing for the Mont Saint-Michel.
Mont Saint-Michel 29 September sunrise azimuth 92.55°.
I traced a line along this azimuth. Also nothing. Just north of Chartres, but not much else that I could see.
So it seems, for now, the Michaelmas date applies specifically to Skellig Michael.
And Stonehenge?
Stonehenge 29 September sunrise azimuth 92.65°
I drew a line from Stonehenge in that direction, on Google Earth, which brought me less than half a mile south of the famous Grand-Place in Brussels, and just south also of the Cathedral, dedicated to none other than Saint Michael, and to Saint Gudula, the two patron saints of the city.
Brussels
The azimuth from Stonehenge to the Grand-Place is in fact 92.47° and to the cathedral 92.45°. Sunrise azimuths for the previous and following days are 92.03° and 93.27°, so in fact the Michaelmas sunrise azimuth from Stonehenge is in fact the best fit for Brussels.
How odd to find a connection between England and Brussels just weeks before Brexit. And it's also a link with Ireland, and line drawn from Ireland, a line connecting the most complicated aspects of the Brexit conundrum. It's the opposite of a border, it's a line that brings places together, but I don't suppose it could ever hold much sway in resolving the impasse that is Brexit (or as it should properly be called, 'UK-exit', as Northern Ireland is forced to leave the EU too, together with Britain - perhaps if people had called it UK-exit from the start, they might have given the Irish border more thought). You can't help but notice sunrise in Ireland points to England, or that sunrise in England points to Brussels, and just as Ireland sought to escape England, England seeks to escape Brussels.
The distance in miles between the centre of Stonehenge and the cathedral is 270.64, and in feet you can measure exactly 1,429,000 - henge to cathedral. This is also close to 100 x (19.008 / 7), which is 271.542857. There are 19.008 / 7 feet in an Astronomical Megalithic Yard.
There's a public garden, a play area nearby, with paths in the shape of a cross and circle, and the distance to that from Stonehenge is exactly 270 miles, but it is entirely modern I think.
It's hard to make out from the pictures on Google Earth, and having never been, I didn't know that there was an island here, that, in fact, the original settlement of what was to become Brussels was on a small island in the river Senne. A chapel. And for a long time, just a chapel, before there was a town around it. And it seems this is apparently older then the first chapel on the Mont Saint-Michel, as the bishop of Avranches had his vision of the Archangel Michael, and from that the conviction that he must build a chapel, in the year 708. The chapel was first built on this island in Brussels in the year 580, by one of these awful Saint Martin of Tours types, who went around destroying pagan shrines and giving non-Christians a very hard time. Whether the chapel he built was in the place of one of these pagan shrines, I don't know.
In both the Mont Saint-Michel and Brussels, it seems, megaliths were there first anyway, but they are long gone now, all that's left is traces of the people associated with megalithic culture. Perhaps there was once a dolmen on the Grand-Place. The two World Wars left the city relatively unscathed, but the worst of the destruction has been since the sixties, with famous landmarks absorbed by relentless building. I tried to see if I could find my bearings on an old map of Brussels from 1574, but it's very hard, it is a completely different city.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b550051392/f1.item.zoom
This next map is interesting as you can see the fortifications. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53099632h/f1.item.zoom
What both of these maps fail to show is any sign of Saint Michael, which makes you wonder if the city's connection with the archangel remained constant throughout the middle ages, or if someone at some point in the last few hundred years decided to revive the status of Saint Michael and put him on the map. On the second map, the now cathedral (it was formerly just a magnificent church) is referred to simply as 'Templum S. Gudula'. The websites, however, all say that the church was dedicated to both saints from the start.
The idea I've been following so far is that many places associated with Saint Michael were of pre-Christian importance, possibly at least as old as Stonehenge, and that somehow, Christianity, though destructive and violent towards anything and anyone not in keeping with its ideas, somehow managed to absorb many pre-Christian symbols and beliefs. But perhaps the fortunes of many of the deities and ideas accepted or reinterpreted by Christianity were mixed, sometimes in favour, at other times not. This might explain why a chapel originally dedicated to Saint Michael in Brussels became a church primarily known as Saint Gudula, before finally becoming the church, and then cathedral, of Saints Michael and Gudula. Perhaps the pilgrims needed to be told about the saint whose relics they might actually see, Saint Gudula, as opposed to an archangel's. There is a legend attached to Saint Gudula: one night she was walking to the Saint-Sauveur chapel in the village of Moortsele when the devil blew out her lantern and started laughing. She was scared but she prayed, and who should come down and relight it but the Archangel Michael. She was never troubled again by the devil. Once again, the archangel is associated with light, and the defence of humans against evil and darkness.
The cathedral really is magnificent, a gigantic piece of filigree, every part of it pointing skywards. Inside, it is filled with statues and stained glass, many of them depicting Saint Michael, and there's a relic called the True Cross, apparently made in England a thousand years ago. There is also a reference to a meridian that goes right through the cathedral: on the solstices, a beam of sunlight shines through a hole in the window of the south transept, onto brass nails in a line in the floor representing this meridian.
This is quite enigmatic in that it's not an important meridian, being E 4° 21'34.56''. I was half expecting it to be a nice round figure. I had a look to see if anything of note was also on the same meridian, either North or South, but I found only the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor in Nîmes, the meridian running through the square in front of the church. It also runs right through the centre of the famous arena in the city, and not far from the Roman temple known as the Maison Carrée.
If anything, the latitude of the church seems more interesting: a line running just past Brussels Cathedral building is 50°50'50.50''N, and the centre of the building is 50°50'52.28''N. The 50°50'50.00''N parallel runs through the top North corner of the Grand-Place, through the Concept Hotel. I had a look for other places of interest on the same latitude, but I didn't find much. So if the longitude is significant, it must be by association with some other place I suppose, and any importance the latitude has must be because of its association with the number 5.
The Grand-Place is an enigmatic place; the square is important to alchemists, as I found out by watching a series called Le Voyage Alchimique, presented by an alchemist called Patrick Burensteinas. It's not on YouTube anymore, sadly, but this little free snipet is worth watching. https://www.filmsdocumentaires.com/films/388-le-voyage-alchimique (It's in French) or https://www.filmsdocumentaires.com/films/669-alchimical-voyage in English.
It shows Brussels, and in particular the Grand-Place, as good place to start a pilgrimage to Compostela, via such places as the Mont Saint-Michel, Chartres, Rocamadour, and Notre-Dame de Paris.
The Grand-Place seems to be full of symbolism, in its statues and ornamentations. It's on the UNESCO Heritage list, and yet most of it is quite new, bombed in 1695, defaced during the French Revolution, what is there now is what the XIXth century townspeople thought the city ought to look like. In the palace gardens, nearby, you can see the shape of what seems to be a gigantic compass, absent from the early maps above. As it is a masonic symbol, I had a look into it, and it seems that there may be a link with a masonic lodge called Minerva and the Three Palm Trees. Apparently, the person who's idea the park's design was, the prince of Stahemberg, was a member of the Loge Minerve aux Trois Palmiers de le Stricte Observance Templiere - a link with the Middle East, then, that is with the Knights Templar and Jerusalem. The main sculptor, Gilles-Lambert Godecharle, was also a Free-mason.
The link is interesting in two other ways, one that, if it is a masonic compass, then there may be some kind of connection with sacred geometry, and the other is that Minerva is associated with spears and snakes. Also, Minerva's Greek counterpart Athena gave her name to a city which is on the European Michael line: Athens.
Minerva was celebrated all over the Roman Empire, and is directly linked to the baths at a place near Stonehenge, in the city of Bath. Another possible connection here is that the Romans celebrated her festival from the 19th to the 23rd of March, Spring equinox, and very close to another figure associated with snakes, Saint Patrick, though he carries a staff instead of a spear.
Aachen
So is this a new Michael line? They seem to be multiplying. Skellig to Stonehenge, Stonehenge to Brussels? Where to next?
I had a look on sunearthtools.com for the sunrise azimuth for the 29th September in Brussels, which was 92.63°. I drew a line from the cathedral along this orientation which took me to Aachen, which also has a magnificent cathedral. I didn't realise till now, looking it up on Wikipedia, that Aachen was the same place as Aix-la-Chapelle, the burial place of Charlemagne, who began construction in about 796. I went to school in France and I remember learning all about Charlemagne, and how he split up the kingdom into three parts so each of his sons could inherit a nice chunk of it, which was, predictably, a disaster. I remember that he got the pope to crown him but recommended to his sons that they crown themselves. Not a man then, to pander to others, least of all the pope. And yet a man who took religion very seriously.
The palace he built is gone, but his chapel remains. You can see on the picture below how Byzantine it looks, and it is a reminder of how much early Christians were influenced by the East. I checked, out of interest, to see if the line from Skellig and Stonehenge via Brussels to Aachen was at all in the direction of Istanbul...., but no.
Was Charlemagne aware of a Michael line? Why did a king of France have his palace and final resting place built in what is now Germany, that is to say, right at the edge of his vast kingdom? The usual answer is that he went for the healing waters, Aachen being a spa city. What was the significance of the place to him? Are there any links to Brussels?
Brussels Cathedral - Aachen Cathedral is in fact 93.16° and 75.68 miles.
The sunrise azimuths for the previous day is 92.01°, and the following day, 30 September, is 93.24°, so the 29th September is the best fit for a sunrise in Brussels to line up between the two cathedrals.
There's a chapel dedicated to St Nicolas and St Michael in the cathedral, so again the Michael connection remains. Perhaps the connection remains with Minerva too: Aachen was a Roman bath town, like Bath, and once had a football team named after Minerva.
The next thing was to see where the sunrise azimuth for Michaelmas in Aachen took me.
Bonn
To Bonn! Birthplace of Beethoven, and home of one of Germany's oldest churches, Bonn Minster.
The azimuth of Michaelmas sunrise in Aachen is 93.24°, which takes us pretty much to Bonn Minster, but the Michael connections are wearing thin here. I can't see anything much to do with Michael, apart from a statue of the archangel in the university. There is a church dedicated to Saint Michael, but it seems to be a modern structure.
Aachen Cathedral to Bonn Minster is 44.62 miles and 93.28°.
If nothing else, the link with Beethoven makes it a special one I guess.
After that I'm not sure if there any more connections to follow. The line goes through Germany, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Moldova. It kind of peters out. But then you have to wonder what kind of line it was in the first place, how did it ever peter in? After all, it was just a Michaelmas connection between Skellig Michael and Stonehenge in the beginning, a sunrise connection, held together by a thread, a beam. Then I'd follow a sunrise azimuth and find another Michael place at a random distance. Where is the logic in this line? First a stretch of 377.87 miles, then 270.64, then 75.68 and then 93.28 miles. Basically I've drawn a sunrise Michaelmas line and stopped when I found an interesting place with a Michael connection, then done the same thing again till I ran out of interesting places. It is like a sparrow hoping here and there.
1026.42 miles away from Bonn Minster is the cathedral of Saint Michael in Kiev. I looked to see if I could make it fit into the logic of my line so far, but I couldn't. The orientation of the line from Bonn to Kiev is 81.95°. It just doesn't work. I looked again at the places between Bonn and Kiev, I drew Michaelmas sunrise lines from Bonn to spots 75 or so miles away and drew another Michaelmas sunrise line from that point, and so on, but it came to nothing, or nowhere. It seemed like one big chapter of The Unconsoled, a vast central European space I knew nothing about, and I was like Ryder, trying to make sense of it all and failing. Had I found a Gustav or a Brodsky I might have stayed. On the plus side, though, I realised that if Kiev didn't fit with a Skellig Stonehenge Brussels line, then maybe there is a logic to this line after all.
So, is there a Michaelmas path from Skellig to Bonn, via Stonehenge, Brussels and Aachen? It's an odd one. Perhaps, like Brodsky, you'd need an ironing board as a crutch to walk along it. I'm inclined to keep it and put it in a cabinet of curiosities. Why this azimuth? Why this date? Does Michaelmas mark an important day thousands of years old?
What's the other time of year when the sun rises at this azimuth from Skellig Michael? I looked on www.sunearthtools.com, and the closest match in spring is the 15th March, with a sunrise azimuth of 92.53°. (It's 92.69°on the 29th September.) That's just two days before St Patrick's day, and close to the spring equinox, but not close enough to really make a connection. And for that matter, the 29th September is very close to the Autumn equinox, but not close enough. So perhaps the Skellig - Stonehenge line marks the geographical link between two already established places, or there is some other thing, perhaps something like a star rising, that Skellig and Stonehenge mark in their relationship with each other.
Back West again. What about that other feast day for Michael, the 8th May?
A 7th- 8th May Michael Alignment
I checked the Mont Saint-Michel, in Normandy, as it's there really, not in Kerry, that the 8th May is the Saint Michel feast day. I had a look at the figures.
Mont Saint-Michel
Date Hours of daylight Azimuth sunrise Azimuth sunset
8 May 14:54:47 62.67° 297.6°
For some reason, before I checked the sunrise azimuths, I had a look at the number of daylight hours there were. I'd been reading the Book of Enoch (don't ask...) and there's a bit when they discuss the ratios of day to night, 7 parts to 11 parts, or 9 to 9 parts, always a total of 18 parts. I thought that was an unusual way of looking at time, and that it may have been commonplace a long time ago. So I checked the ratio of day to night at the Mont Saint-Michel on the Saint Michel day.
14 hours 54 minutes and 47 seconds are 14.913 hours and 24 is 1.60933. Surprisingly close to phi! I was not expecting that. There's a golden ratio between daylight and darkness on the feast day of Saint-Michel in Normandy?
Date Hours of daylight Azimuth sunrise Azimuth sunset
7 May 14:51:51 63.11° 297.16°
6 May 14:48:52 63.57° 296.71°
The 7th May was an even better match, with, in decimals, 14.864167 hours, and 24 / 14.864167 is 1.61462. The 6 May has 14.8144 hours of daylight and 24 / 14.8144 is 1.620045. An exact match would be 14.833127 hours (24 / 1.618 = 14.833127). If you were to pick a day that had a phi ratio of light to darkness, then these two days would be it: not exact matches, but as good as you'll get, except perhaps some years, either one of these dates might have an exact match. Divide 24 hours by 1.618, you get 14.833127. That's 14 hours, 49 minutes and 59.26 seconds. So a phi day would have a day or a night that's 14 hours, 49 minutes and 59.26 seconds long. (That leaves 9 hours 10 mins and 0.74 seconds for the other 'half')
So these dates are phi dates, the 7th May being the best, on sunearthtools.com, for 2019.
It's hard not to notice that the azimuths here point to familiar vanishing lines. The orientation of the sunrise on these dates is very close to the orientation of a Normandy alignment (already well established) that runs close by the Mont Saint-Michel, from the Mont-Dol to Avranches: azimuth roughly 67°. Mont-Dol to the Basilica in Avranches is in fact 66.78° and 20.40 miles, and Mont-Dol to the Eglise Notre-Dame is 66.87° and 20.14 miles, both of these churches being exactly on an alignment with the Mont-Dol.
Mont-Dol to Mont Saint-Michel is a little different, azimuth 68.99°, and 12.60 miles, the line passes half a miles north of the island. The line from Mont Saint-Michel to both churches in Avranches is 63.49°, which is pretty much the azimuth of the rising sun on 6 - 7 May (this year, sun rise azimuths being 62.11° and 63.57° for these two dates.) And as we've seen, the 6 - 7 May have close to a phi ratio of daylight to night time hours.
Is it significant that the Mont Saint-Michel is situated very close to a phi point in the Mont-Dol - Avranches line? 20.4 / 12.6 = 1.619. Perhaps I'm just seeing golden ratios everywhere now.
In any case, Mont Saint-Michel - Avranches has almost the same orientation (with a difference of 0.08°) as sunrise on the 7th May, which is the day with a phi ratio between daylight and darkness. The 7th, more than the 8th, of May defines this sun path. Does this explain the importance of these places?
The Mont Saint-Michel to Avranches Basilica line extends all the way to Rouen. We've seen that Rouen Cathedral and Abbey are exactly the same distance from Stonehenge as are Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel.
Mont Saint-Michel - Rouen Cathedral: 63.80° , 130.76 miles. Mont Saint-Michel to Avranches Notre-Dame church and Basilica: 63.39°.
I think the connection between the Mont Saint-Michel and the golden number phi is intriguing. If I can find similar connections in other Michael places, then perhaps it's not just a fluke. Are there any other sunrise paths? It's a path that can be seen for only a few minutes at sunrise, only twice a year, as it depends on the sun being in exactly the right place in order to guide you. In his poem 'The Path', Edward Thomas wrote: 'The path, winding like silver, trickles on'. The watery landscape around the Mont-Saint Michel is silvery and sinuous, but this kind path is made of light beams, straight and focused, more like gold than silver.
Golden Lines and Phi Days
The 7th May at the Mont Saint-Michel has close to a phi ratio between day and night. It's a 'phi day'. So what are the other phi days at the Mont Saint-Michel? I had another look at sunearthtools.com...
Mont Saint-Michel
Number of hours of sunlight Azimuth of sunrise
26 January 09:10:38 118.04°
7 May 14:51:51 63.11°
6 August 14:50:29 63.04°
15 November 09:13:03 117.5°
You could say the 63° azimuth is for a summer phi day sunrise, what about the winter sunrise on phi days? Their azimuth is quite close to the azimuth of the Mont Saint-Michel - Sacra di San Michele line, the Sacra being the next official point on the European Michael line.
Mont Saint-Michel - Sacra di San Michele: 117.03°
It's close enough, I think, to make a connection between sunrise at the Mont Saint-Michel on a phi day and the direction of the Sacra di San Michele from the Norman mount.
Also, Le Mans is sometimes considered a contender for being on the Michael line. Mont Saint-Michael to Le Mans Cathedral is 89.90 miles and 118.24°. That's just 0.20° off the 26th January sunrise azimuth - a phi day sunrise.
If you wanted to mark the sunrise azimuth for a winter phi day from the Mont Saint-Michel with a cathedral, you couldnt get much more exact than the location of Le Mans cathedral.
So it seems that on the date where there is a phi ratio between daylight and darkness at the Mont Saint-Michel, the first moment of sunrise points to the nearest basilica, at Avranches, or to the Michael line itself, via Le Mans cathedral.
What about the other places dedicated to Saint Michael, do the phi days there, when daylight and darkness are in phi ratio, have any interesting alignments attached to their sunrises?
I found that at Skellig Michael, the phi dates were: 1st / 2nd February, 1st May, 12th August, 9 November. (There is never a day with an exact match, you have to pick the closest, every day has about five minutes more or less daylight than the previous)
Skellig Michael
Number of hours of daylight Azimuth sunrise
2nd February 9:11:54 116.75°
1st February 9:08:30 117.25°
1st May 14:51:57 64.11°
12th August 14:50:24 64.01°
9 November 09:11:11 116.66°
The line running from Skellig Michael to Saint Michael's Mount is 115.42°. The closest of these days to a winter phi day is the 9th of November, and the sunrise azimuth is 1.24° more than the Skellig Michael Mount line. It's close, but not perfect. Still, I think it's close enough to consider a connection between the two. A closer match would be the 7th of November, with a sunrise azimuth of 115.65°. There are 9 hours, 18 minutes and 01 seconds of daylight on that day at Skellig.
I don't know how much all these figures might have changed by, over the centuries. I know that the angle of the tilt of the earth's axis has changed, it could have been half a degree greater apparently. It's now 23.5°, and it may have been 24° degrees in the Bronze age or late Neolithic. It may be that, with a change in the obliquity of the earth, the phi days would occur on different dates, maybe a day or two earlier or later, but I think that the azimuth of the rising sun would still stay the same relative to the number of hours of daylight on a particular day, regardless of the calendar day, at the same latitude.
What about the daylight hours ratio for Skellig Michael for the 29th May, Michaelmas?
There are 11:46:04 hours of daylight, which is 11.76778 hours. That leaves 12.23222 hours of darkness, or vice versa.
The daylight to darkness ratio is: 24 / 11.76778 = 2.039467 (or 24 / 12.23222 = 1.962031)
Or divide the 24 hours into 18 parts, as they do in the book of Enoch, and you get 8.825835 parts daylight to 9.174165 parts darkness.
The numbers don't stand out stand out as being very interesting.
Saint Michael's Mount
There are four phi days at Saint Michael's Mount: 4 May, 8 August, 12 November and 29 January.
Number of hours of daylight Azimuth sunrise
29 January 09:09:28 117.66°
4 May 14:51:45 63.63°
8 August 14:53:31 63.06°
12 November 09:12:19 117.07°
13 November 09:09:17 117.52°
The winter Phi Day in November is in fact somewhere in between the 12th and 13th November.
These orientations are very close to both Michael lines:
Saint Michael's Mount - Glastonbury Tor: 58.70°, to Avebury: 58.82°
Saint Michael's Mount to Mont Saint-Michel: 118.32°.
And to Saint Michael's Mount - Stonehenge: 63.96°.
That's even closer.
(For Star Wars fans: 4 May, may the fourth be with you - first, a Skellig Michael connection and now a Michael Mount connection!!)
So are these phi day sunrises the explanation for the alignments running from Saint Michael's Mount?
Take the 29th January, the closest to a winter phi day. The sunrise azimuth is 0.66° off the actual line running from Saint Michael's Mount and the Mont Saint-Michel.
And the sunrise azimuth for the 4th May is 0.33° off the actual azimuth of the line running from Saint Michael's Mount to Stonehenge.
I think that if you envisage the Michael alignments as curved lines, as a series of sunrise lines from one place to the next, they make more sense. Detractors of the whole Michael line idea have said it can't exist because it's not even straight. Or that if it's straight, how come people had maps with a Mercator projection five thousand years ago to make it straight on such a projection? Thinking of the line as a series of sunrise sighting lines on specific days, chosen for example for their sunlight to darkness ratio (being as close to phi as possible) makes sense of the Michael lines, I think. It doesn't explain the criteria for the distances between these places. Nor does it explain how a great level of accuracy was achieved over long distances, but I have a feeling it's to do with star charts designed for navigation purposes (such as are mentioned in the book 1434 by Gavin Menzies - a very interesting book).
So what day of the year does the sun (currently) rise at the Mount at an azimuth that matches the orientation of the line from Saint Michael's Mount to Stonehenge, 63.96°?
5 May: 63.12°
4 May : 63.63°
3 May 64.09°
So the 4th May is the best fit. And it's also a phi day, with 14:51:45 daylight hours - very close to 14 hours, 49 minutes and 59.26 seconds, which would be exactly the amount of daylight to be phi more than darkness.
So the Saint Michael Mount - Stonehenge line is oriented to a phi day sunrise as seen from the Mount.
What sunrise date fits best with the Michael Mount - Glastonbury - Avebury line, azimuth 58.70°?
15 May 58.64°
14 May 59.06°
The best fit is the 15th May.
The 15th May comes up at Skellig Michael - see below. The Skellig - Dublin - Durham line is oriented to sunrise on the 15th May. Here we have another important alignment on a 15th May sunrise. What's the significance of the 15th May?
I looked up feast days for the 15th May. I got this:
St. Achillas, St. Andrew, St. Bertha, St. Britwin, St. Caesarea, St. Caesarn, St. Cassius of Clermont, St. Dionysia, St. Dymphna, St. Gerebrand, St. Hallvard, St. Hilary of Galeata
St. Isidore, the Farmer, St. Jeanne de Lestonnac, St. Nicholas the Mystic, St. Peter and St. Waldalenus.
All I could see was plenty of no Michaels or Marys. Interesting names though. At a pinch, Saint Peter could be loosely compared to Michael in his role as keeper of keys to heaven: after all the archangel Michael is a psychopomp, who helps the souls of dead get to where they want to go (or where they deserve to go...).
So if the 15th May is significant, then maybe it is for reasons lost to the existing religious groups. But what?
One possible reason is that it's kind of a phi day in that if you divide the number of days between the summer solstice and the spring equinox by phi, you get a date close to this. Spring Equinox at Saint Michael's Mount seems to be, according to Sunearthtools.com, on the 18th March, when you get 12:01:14 hours daylight. Summer Solstice at the same latitude seems to be on the 21st June, with 16:23:34 hours sunlight. That's a period of 95 days. Divide that by 1.618 and you get 58.714, which, from the 18th of March, brings us up to the 15th day of May (or the 15.714th to be exact!). So the 15th May marks a phi point between equinox and solstice, perhaps that's the reason for it's importance.
Whatever the reason, the English Michael line is oriented to a 15th May sunrise, and a 15th May sunrise as seen from Skellig Michael shares an azimuth with a line that runs through the heart of Dublin all the way to Durham Cathedral.
And to fit the line between the two Michael Mounts best?
On 27 January, the azimuth of sunrise from Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall is 118.52°, and on that date there are 09:03:43 hours of daylight. (The azimuth of the line running from Saint Michael's Mount to the Mont Saint-Michel is 118.32°.) This is quite close to the 9 hours 10 mins and 0.74 seconds of daylight needed for it to be a phi day.
And what about the line from Saint Michael's Mount to Durham Cathedral via Lundy? The azimuth is 25.52°. Could this correspond to the tilt of the earth at some remote date? That sounds a bit mad, as apparently the maximum angle of the earth's tilt is supposed to be 24.5°. However, there is some suggestion that an obliquity of 26.5° has occurred before. See the work of George Dodwell.
Stonehenge
Stonehenge isn't dedicated to any saint, obviously, never having had a cathedral or church built on it, but it's worth looking at phi dates and Michaelmas here, as well as the 15th May.
Number of hours of daylight Azimuth sunrise
31 January 09:09:01 117.37°
1 May 14:48:11 64.49°
2 May 14:51:39 63.98
11 August 14:50:16 63.86°
10 November 09:11:48 116.77°
15 May 15:33:35 57.86°
29 September 11:46:32 92.65°
It's interesting that here, at Stonehenge, the summer phi day is in fact the same as May Day. So this is the latitude at which the celebrated May Day has phi ratios of daylight to darkness.
Another thing to point out is that, according to a plan by C A Newham, and published in Robin Heath's book Stonehenge Temple of Britain, May 1st corresponds to the orientation of the station stone rectangle: the axis that runs diagonally across this rectangle in a roughly westerly direction corresponds to sunset on May Day and August 5th. The other end of this diagonal is said to correspond to sunrise on November 5th and February 5th. These dates are five days off the phi days.
I don't know how exact that is, as I can't place the station stone rectangle exactly on Google Earth, you can't see well enough to place the lines. But www.sunearthtools.com gives a value of 295.82° for sun set on the 1st May.
In the opposite direction, this same diagonal line has an azimuth of 115.82°, (if you subtract 180) which is close to the orientation of the line from Skellig Michael to Saint Michael's Mount. What I do know about this station stone rectangle is that it forms a 5 x 12 rectangle, is that the North-South line runs through the top corner and the middle of the longer side. If this is correct, then the North South line forms a 5 : 6 : 7.81 triangle, and in that case, the orientation of the diagonal running from the top left hand side of the station stone rectangle to the bottom right must be 117.574°, which is a bit different to the sunset figures I found for the dates said to match this line. This azimuth is in fact closer to the phi day sunrise values above.
In terms of the plan by C A Newham, it strikes me as odd though that the 1st May and the 5th August have different sunset azimuths anyway: the 1st of May is 295.82°, and the 5th is 298.77°. The best match to the 1st May in August is in fact the 11th August, with a sunset azimuth of 295.82°. The 1st May and the 11th August are both phi days at Stonehenge.
Similarly for November 5th and February 5th, the two other dates mentioned: November 5th has a sunrise azimuth of 114.28° at Stonehenge, and February 5th is a little different, 114.9°.
If the orientation of the diagonal that runs across the rectangle in a roughly westerly direction is 117.574°, then in the other direction, i.e. + 180°, this becomes 297.574°. That's quite close to the 295.82° of a May Day sunset, but is there a closer match? According to https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php?lang=en, the 4th May has the closest sunset azimuth with 297.35°, and in August, the 9th is the closest match with a sunset azimuth of 296.83°. But I guess that on the ground, being actually there at sunrise and sunset is a different matter. I'm only looking at a computer screen.
I had a look on Google Earth but couldn't see anything of interest for the phi day sunrise azimuths. However, on the 15th May line from Stonehenge is St Albans Cathedral (exact azimuth 57.69°, just 0.17° off). Saint Alban was executed on the hill where the cathedral and abbey now stand sometime in the IIIrd or early IVth century. The place was important to pre-Christians, and St Albans was the Roman city of Verulamium, built next to a celtic settlement.
Stonehenge - St Albans Cathedral: 75.28 miles, 57.69°.
Brussels
I think Brussels counts as a place dedicated to Saint Michael.
Number of hours of daylight Azimuth sunrise
31 January 09:11:08 117.17°
2 May 14:49:30 64.19°
10 August 14:51:37 63.56°
11 November 09:10:49 117.04°
15 May 15:30:52 58.13°
29 September 11:46:48 92.63°
The 31st January sunset takes you to Mount Carmel, via Munich. The other direction (+ 180°) takes you to the centre of Bruges, and then on through England via Colchester (another important Roman city), then Wales, to Holyhead, and to Mayo in Ireland.
The other dates: nothing. Except the 29 September, to Aachen.
Munich and Mount Carmel aren't bad though.
Brussels Cathedral - Munich Cathedral (Frauenkirche) - 374.59 milews 117.26°
the winter phi day sunrise line runs just half a mile to the North of this cathedral, and what's more, beside the cathedral there is a huge church dedicated to Saint Michael.
Munich is the capital of Bavaria, and the third largest city in Germany. The name comes from an old German word meaning "by the monks", as an order of Benedictine monks ran a monastery at the place that was later to become the Old Town of Munich. The cathedral is dedicated to Our Lady.
An Irish Michael line to mirror the English and French ones
So France has a Michael line, roughly parallel to the English one, from the Mont Saint-Michel to Avranches, loosely including the Mont-Dol, and reflecting a summer phi day sunrise. I wondered if Ireland had one too. I just checked again to see the orientation of the English Michael line (not starting from Land's End, but from St Michael's Mount).
St Michael's Mount - Glastonbury Tor: 58.70°
St Michael's Mount - Avebury 58.82°
St Michael's Mount- Burrow Bridge 58.64°
Saint Michael's Mount - The Hurlers stone circles: 58.31°
Since these figures are not too far off the phi day sunrise azimuths at Skellig Michael, I thought I'd have a look along some lines drawn from Skellig with orientations matching the various phi day sunrises. A sort of a mirror image of the English Michael line, but starting on Skellig Michael instead, and making its way through Ireland. I was surprised to see that the May and August phi day sunrises link Skellig Michael to the Rock of Cashel, and the line goes right over two of the highest peaks in Ireland. This line goes on to Anglesey.
So perhaps there is an Irish 'Michael' line too then.
In the image below, I included the Skellig Michael - Saint Michael's Mount line, as it's only a few days out from being a phi day sunrise.
I also included the Durham connection, azimuth 57.21°, which corresponds to a 15th May sunrise.
(For all the best research on Irish megalithic sites, go to: https://mythicalireland.com/ and http://megalithicireland.com/)
So is this line a significant one? Is it connected to the European Michael line and the azimuth of sunrise on a phi day? Perhaps.
The Rock of Cashel is dedicated to Saint Patrick. Wouldn't it be nice if it had been dedicated to Michael? But hang on, what was that thing I watched on YouTube one time, about a constellation being the possible source of the Patrick story, Sagittarius it was I think, slaying a dragon-like constellation on the 17th March. I remember thinking that it was pretty similar to the Michael story, that maybe they were two offshoots of the same primary story. And now I find that a major site dedicated to Patrick is on a line projected from a Michael site. Then there's those snakes Patrick gets rid of.... Is this a Michael line or a Patrick line?
Just in case anyone was wondering, it's impossible for reptiles to live in Ireland except in the Reptile House in Dublin zoo, or as pets, it's just too cold for them.
The many coats of Sagittarius (or Ophiuchus?)
I couldn't remember where exactly online I had found this blog. Then while I was driving it came back to me. Mathisen, was the name. David Warner Mathisen is a writer I'd come across a while back, and I remember being quite intrigued by this post, about Saint Patrick's Day:
http://mathisencorollary.blogspot.com/2018/03/saint-patricks-day-2018.html
In this post, Mathisen suggests that the constellation Sagittarius pursues the constellation Scorpio, and is finally victorious. Sagittarius the archer is to the left of the Scorpio creature, and as a result of the motion of the planet, and the sky seeming to turn clockwise night after night, the constellation of Scorpio appears to die when it is eventually driven below the horizon, pursued by Sagittarius. Mathisen says : 'As the earth rotates on its axis towards the east, the stars we see appear to rotate towards the west, which is why Scorpio (located to the west of Sagittarius) appears to be "driven out" by Sagittarius as the earth turns throughout each night -- and why Scorpio will eventually sink out of sight into the western horizon before Sagittarius follows later on.'
Sagittarius, the archer, the dragon slayer.
Mathisen makes some more very interesting comments, firstly that the archer associated with the constellation Sagittarius is not necessarily a centaur figure, but can be a man, perhaps a man like Saint Patrick.
Why not go further with the idea and say perhaps a man on horseback, like Saint George? In this way the horse connection is maintained, though it is a man with legs of his own, not a half man half horse creature.
In this painting, the way that Saint George is portrayed is strikingly similar to the usual way Michael is portrayed: the boyish face, the armour, the lance cutting across the scene from top left to bottom right and hitting the dragon right inside its open mouth. The main difference is that here the assailant is on horseback and has no wings. In the background you can see a princess, and at the very back the city of Mallorca. Perhaps the girl symbolises the Virgen Mary, I don't know, the page on Wikimedia I got this from says she is a princess ('En primer pla Sant Jordi matant el drac, en segon pla la princesa i al fons la Ciutat de Mallorca i la badia').
This brings to mind King Arthur and the the lady Helen on the Mont Saint Michel, the niece of Duc Hoel. Could King Arthur be a Sagittarius figure too?
David Mathisen shows how Sagittarius can be interpreted as a man with no horse or centaur connection at all, just standing, with a long tunic, in the way Saint Patrick is usually shown. He is inspired by H.E. Rey, who drew outlines to the constellations to try and make them more like the figures they are supposed to represent in the myths we know. I had a look at some of these drawings and I liked them so much I bought the book.
I wrote to David Mathisen asking him for his views - in particular, are Michael and Patrick potentially the same figure? My initial idea was that if Patrick could be considered as derived from Sagittarius, could Michael be too? Or could either one be considered as any of the constellations that routinely send Scorpio packing under the horizon... Hercules, Ophiuchus…? It seemed to me that the important thing was that someone was defeating Scorpio, someone was slaying the snake or dragon. The important thing was that Scorpio was disappearing from sight for a while.
David got back to me, with lots of helpful comments, and said that in his view Michael was more likely to correspond to the constellation Ophiuchus, not Sagittarius. He also said that maybe Patrick could be considered a