THE MEGALITHIC YARD
The Megalithic Yard is distilled from the Solar and Lunar Calendars.
The Megalithic Yard is distilled from the Solar and Lunar Calendars.
The builders of ancient monuments used a system of measure that not only allied with this planet, but also opened portals of communication with nature and the entire cosmos.
Throughout Europe and the western, Celtic lands, the temple builders settled for another profound unit of measure. It was re-discovered by an engineer named Alexander Thom after making hundreds of surveys of stone circles in Britain and the Carnac region of France.
Thom came to the conclusion that measuring the ancient temples using the Imperial measuring system (feet, inches) yielded awkward measurements. An ancient mind would have used a whole number unit for two reasons: simplicity and elegance, not to mention a reflection of the ratios found in the pure music scale— the diatonic— upon whose whole number fractions most temples of the ancient world are designed.
Thom eventually found this ancient unit of measure which he called the Megalithic Yard.
The measure of the diameters and placement of stones in such temples as Stonehenge, the stone circles of Avebury and Callanais, as well as the formidable stone rows of Carnac all proved to be based on this system of measure. And given its origins it’s hardly surprising.
Measuring precisely 2.72 ft, the Megalithic Yard is an extrapolation of the two fundamental building blocks of matter: the sphere and the tetrahedron. Everything that exists in the Universe is governed by the bonding patterns created by these two geometric solids. Now, when one is placed inside the other, it just happens that their surface areas are in a proportional ratio of 2.72.
This same ratio is found when observing the foundation of organic life— the water molecule— under the microscope. The distance between the bonds of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up this essential element measures precisely 2.72 angstroms
Thom’s Megalithic Yard applied to the stone circles of Woodhenge.
There is no question that our ancestors were keen observers of natural laws and to applied them in sacred sites so as to bestow the natural order of things upon everyday life. The idea was to allow this sacred order to influence the body of a person immersed in the temple, reminding the initiate that he or she is a perfect mirror image of creative forces.
The question is, how did they figure out the ratio of 2.72 exists in geometric solids, something that requires a complex mathematical formula!
©Freddy Silva. No unauthorized reproduction.
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The ratio of the surface area of the tetrahedron and its circumscribing sphere is 2.72.