Temple of the Stars - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Temple of the Stars is an alleged ancient temple claimed to be situated around Glastonbury

Glastonbury

Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,784 in the 2001 census...

in Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

Origin

The temple is claimed by some to depict a colossal landscape zodiac

Landscape zodiac

A landscape zodiac is a map of the stars on a gigantic scale, formed by features in the landscape, such as roads, streams and field boundaries. Perhaps the best known alleged example is the Glastonbury Temple of the Stars, situated around Glastonbury in Somerset, England...

, a map of the stars on a gigantic scale, formed by features in the landscape (roads, streams, field boundaries, etc). The theory was first put forward in 1934 by Katherine Maltwood

Katherine Maltwood

Spelled Katharine Emma MaltwoodBirth: London, England, 1878Death: Victoria, Canada, 1961Throughout her childhood, Maltwood was reared to be an artist. Her parents were progressive, and they pushed each of their children equally to achieve their potential...

, an artist who "discovered" the zodiac in a vision, and held that the "temple" was created by Sumer

Sumer

Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....

ians in about 2700 BC. The idea was revived in 1969 by Mary Caine in an article in the magazine Gandalf's Garden (number 4). Compared to Maltwood's version, she turned Scorpio upside down, added a monk to Gemini, and altered the outlines of Capricorn, Libra, and Leo.

The temple plays an important role in many occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

theories. It has been associated with the Grail legend, Uther Pendragon

Uther Pendragon

Uther Pendragon is a legendary king of sub-Roman Britain and the father of King Arthur.A few minor references to Uther appear in Old Welsh poems, but his biography was first written down by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae , and Geoffrey's account of the character was used in...

, and King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

(according to some legends buried in Glastonbury).

Criticisms

The idea was examined by two independent studies, one by Ian Burrow in 1975 and the other in 1983 by Tom Williamson and Liz Bellamy, using the standard methods of landscape historical research. Both studies concluded that the evidence contradicted the idea. The eye of Capricorn identified by Maltwood was a haystack. The western wing of the Aquarius phoenix was a road laid in 1782 to run around Glastonbury, and older maps dating back to the 1620s show the road had no predecessors. The Cancer boat (not a crab as would be expected) is made up of a network of eighteenth century drainage ditches and paths. There are some Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

paths preserved in the peat of the bog formerly comprising most of the area, but none of the known paths match the lines of the zodiac features.

Glastonbury historian Geoffrey Ashe

Geoffrey Ashe

Geoffrey Ashe is a British cultural historian, a writer of non-fiction books and novels.-Early life:Born in London, Ashe spent several years in Canada growing up, graduating from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, before continuing at Cambridge.-Work:Many of his historical books are...

commented, "The phenomenon is akin to the Rorschach

Rorschach test

The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning...

ink-blot test, or to seeing pictures in a fire", and "Zodiac-finders do not themselves agree on these 'obvious figures'. I have studied these photographs; I know what I am meant to see; I honestly try to see, and I simply do not."

There is no support for this theory, or for the existence of the "temple" in any form, from conventional archaeologists or mainstream historians.

Origin

Criticisms

Further reading