Codes and travelling for a purpose
It’s hardly time travel but the Newgrange mound outside Dublin is well worth the trip
When it comes to visiting sites, I’m a gal with a purpose. A few years back, a trip I took to Scotland revolved around my curious interest in the Knights Templar and their legacy involving Rosslyn Chapel outside Edinburgh. And just as well that I went then. Now with The Da Vinci Code out in both print and film, I expect there will be little elbow room in which to wield a camera properly within the walls of that chapel, intricately carved with effusive symbolism – far beyond the reach of any ‘Da Vinci Code’.
But it was a mysterious woman outside at the back, unheralded and not mentioned in anything I had read about Rosslyn, that for me was the real find. Carved in stone, an eagle at her feet, an open book in her left hand, and her right raised in a fist, this woman was awesome, even by our standards. Certainly for the 15th Century. Had she served as a prototype (albeit a far more forceful one) for the Statue of Liberty I wondered? If anything was a shrine for the feminine, this was it. And of course, despite all of Dan Brown’s waxing lyrical about the feminine principle, he gives her no mention at all at Rosslyn.
The Da Vinci Code made an impression on my travels to Scotland, England and Ireland (even in retrospect).
But Braveheart was there in Scotland and Ireland too. On a tour I went on in Scotland, I saw the site of the Sterling Bridge where ‘Mel Gibson’ (according to the tour guide) defeated the English. Braveheart preceded me to Scotland. But the The Da Vinci Code followed me to Rosslyn.
In San Francisco, there was no movie connection. Just a weird coincidence. Exiting a bookstore with a copy of Euclid’s Window by Leonard Mlodinow – The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace – in hand, I stopped to sketch a building that had always fascinated me. A passer-by stopped to look at my work. Embarrassed I said, hey, I’m just an amateur here. But he persisted. Had I noticed, he asked, if the building I was sketching and the one across from it jutted out in angles? Yes, I said, clutching the paper bag containing Euclid on which I was sketching. He then went on to tell me about a programme he had watched on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) about how that part of San Francisco was all laid out in triangles.
Was someone trying to tell me something? I had just bought a book on Euclid, and only a few days before had been to the Berkeley library to look up sacred geometry. But if some kind of puzzle pieces were supposed to fall into place, they didn’t. Obviously the heavens are hard task-masters.
Having said that, I’m a firm believer that we go around in circles until enlightenment hits us over the head. Something that I think is supposed to happen when you walk the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, barefoot, to gain all of the telluric energy from that powerful site. But I only walked it once. Maybe you are supposed to walk it more times.
My latest historical foray took me to Newgrange in Ireland’s County Meath. Not that there was anything to moan about staying in a hotel in the Temple Bar area of Dublin. Just about everything – entertainment, restaurants (in which I became a firm convert to Irish Boxties, especially of the corned beef and cabbage variety), shopping and sites – the Guinness factory included – were literally at my doorstep.
But was there a Templar connection to the name of the Temple Bar, I asked at the National Museum of Ireland? I asked that, as usually with Temple place names there is a Templar connection, as with the Temple Church in London which I had visited on another occasion. That round church also featured in the The Da Vinci Code. What I found fascinating there were not the effigies of knights lying on the floor. It was the Green Men plastered all over the walls and of which untold numbers exist on the walls of Rosslyn.
Someone at the museum in Dublin said he knew of no Templar connection with the Temple Bar area. But another man there butted in to say that they used to have a book in their bookstore about a Templar connection. Okay, I nodded. Not that the conversation had enlightened me further.
The Temple Bar was flooded with tourists and the chatter outside the pubs where the smokers generally congregated, drinks in hand, echoed into the wee hours of the morning. But Dublin was so laid back that it didn’t really matter.
In any case, Newgrange, the main purpose of that trip beckoned.
The weather, contrary to all predictions, was largely warm and sunny and even the cows were down at the river on that day.
Newgrange is described as a passage-tomb, though no one is buried there. One part of it is covered in gleaming white quartz. In Irish mythology it is known as a fairy mound, said to be the home of Oenghus, the god of love. (Any matchmakers around for Aphrodite?)
A cruciform chamber is built into the man-made mound with a corbelled roof and a capstone above it. In total, the mound contains 200,000 tonnes of material, and has been waterproof since it was built in Neolithic times, predating the Giza pyramids. (Does this raise some questions about the paradigm concerning civilisation having travelled from East to West?)
Once a year, for a few days at the Winter Solstice, rays from the rising sun enter a light box above the entrance to the Newgrange mound and creep up and along an inclined, winding passageway to bathe an otherwise pitch dark interior in glowing light.
Having just visited at the beginning of June, and not in a deep and dark December, I unfortunately could not witness this event. But knowledge of it existed in folklore even though the Winter Solstice alignment was only rediscovered in 1967.
Anyway, if you are thinking of going to see the light show, stop thinking. The tours are booked solid for years and no more bookings are currently being accepted.
The driving in County Meath – just a stone’s throw from Dublin – is easy. Before you know it, you’ve walked on the Hill of Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland and rested your hand on the on the monolithic type Lia F?il, the Stone of Destiny or the Stone of Scone.
The woman manning a post at the entrance said there was no charge to visit the hill. I asked her. “Isn’t the Stone of Scone supposed to be in Scotland. I saw it there in Edinburgh Castle. And don’t the British borrow it for coronations in Westminster Abbey?”
I was quickly assured that the King-making stone (Queen-making too) that Elizabeth II sat on to be crowned was not the real Stone of Destiny. The real one was on the Hill of Tara.
Google kind of sorted this out for me when I was back at my computer. Two stones are known as the Stone of Destiny. One is the flat Stone of Scone, formerly the coronation stone of the Monarchs of Scotland, the Monarchs of England, and more recently the Monarchs of Britain. The other is the phallic-looking Lia F?il at Tara.
To complicate matters, the Stone of Scone has also been referred to as Jacob’s Pillow Stone.
Enough confusion? No.
There is some doubt as to whether in 1296, the English got the real Stone of Scone from Scotland in the first place. Further, when four Scottish students took it from Westminster Abbey in 1950, it was rumoured that the stone the London police located – whereupon it was taken back to Westminster – was not the real stone. (Later, in 1996, it was returned to Scotland where it is kept when not in use for coronations).
Anyway, when I got to the Lia F?il, I laid my hand on it, and felt the weight of destiny on my shoulders.
Not far away was Trim Castle. The tour guide said that the castle had featured in Braveheart and pointed to the window out of which in the movie, Long-Shanks, the English king, threw his son’s mal
e lover to his death below. An open area outside the castle had also served as the place in the movie where William Wallace (Mel Gibson) was tortured to death.
Okay. Braveheart again.
Not to mention that in Dublin a ‘Da Vinci Code’ mural along a busy street depicted a version of the Last Supper with a clearly feminine, and obviously a very Mary Magdalene figure, sitting at an angle to the right of Jesus.
I left Dublin airport having driven a short distance from County Meath way too early one morning to catch my flight. Not that I was by any means done with Ireland. Just the end of my trip.
A day’s stop-over in Prague provided some compensation. But there was way too much to see and not enough time. So I opted for a guided city tour, as the sites I could see perched above and around me were way too far away.
The tour guide was more than pleasant, which made up for some difficult pronunciation and his keen interest in imparting the names of masses of historically prominent Czechs, of which I cannot remember one. There was also no time allowed on the two-hour tour for independent wandering, which I did anyway, stealthily and in great haste.
But the guy was an ace when it came to pointing out various architectural styles. In Prague, Gothic mixes effortlessly with Romanesque, Baroque and Rococo. Gothic for me is a must, and the Cathedral of St Vitus in Prague Castle that towers over the city was no let-down. There is nothing like Gothic architecture, in my mind, to set your sights soaring.
Returning downtown near Wensceslas Square surrounded by the city bustle and avenues of shops of that vibrant city, the only dilemma that faced me after a leisurely meal was whether or not to buy a very expensive, but adorable, pink pair of shoes. Reluctantly, I decided against the purchase.
Now that’s the kind of problem I have difficulty dealing with. Bring on the ‘Da Vinci Code’ any day.
