Institute is a non-profit research and education network

striving to make ancient astronomy, astro-arch?ology, and research into

the mysteries of the ancient world accessible to people with differing

abilities. We run various projects that are designed to make our

skywatching activities, our research into the celtic mysteries, and our

enquiries into the sunken remains of Ice Age civilisations around the

world, accessible and inclusive to everyone. This reflects the wide range

of abilities of those people involved, and the many ways we focus

on what can be achieved simply by trying.

projects concerns the compilation of an archive of all the ancient sacred

sites in Wales and beyond, detailing their accessibility or otherwise.

We will be publishing the details on these pages, with easy-to-follow

directions on how to get there, and with many photographs of the sites

that we visit. The picture below was taken at ‘first

light’ on the Vernal Equinox (Alban

Eilir to the ancient Britons) at Bryn Celli Ddu on Ynys

M?n.

mound can just about be seen from the road the site is not at all accessible

at present to wheelchair users, as the only access is via a stile, after

which a good fifteen minute walk through muddy lanes finally gets you

to one of the most mysterious sacred centres of the ancient inhabitants

of Anglesey – the sacred druid island of Ynys M?n.

theory about the possible original usage of this stone chamber is that

at various times of the year, including both solstices and equinoxes,

the layout of the chamber allows sunlight to be colimated into a narrow

beam, which, over a period of several hours on those days, highlights ancient carvings

on the interior of the chamber in a definite sequence. Was this a very

early form of writing? Did the ancient skywatchers who built the chamber

intend any significance in the order in which the various petroglyphs

are illuminated by the light of the sun? Further observations at the site

may one day tell.

similar ancient mysteries are the focal areas of the various Morien

Institute projects. Emphasis is put on discovery in the landscape

itself, especially the relationship between the ancient site, the horizon,

and the ever-changing backdrop of celestial events which extend out into

the cosmos. Most projects involve experiencing the ancient sacred places

in the ways their builders may have intended – with skywatching

as it was before the telescope, when ancient astronomers used stone chambers

with entrance tunnels built to control the amount of sunlight that enters

at given times of the year.

peoples spent much more time outside in the healthy fresh air than do

modern peoples, and consequently regarded the greater universe, especially

the immediate solar system, to be as much a part of their local environment

as anywhere inside the circle of the horizon on the Earth itself. Wherever

those ancient peoples were on the surface of our planet, the star-groups

at the background to the apparent path of the sun and planets, (the

zodiac, or ecliptic), were often regarded as defining the

‘adventures’ that the sun encountered

on its annual ‘journey’ through

the heavens.

this apparent path is really caused by the orbit of the Earth around the

sun, and the background stars along this path were grouped together into

different patterns, or constellations, by peoples of different cultures

and given different names. They all occupy a plane some ten or twelve

degrees either side of the ecliptic, and it is within this plane that

most of the ‘wandering’ stars

(the planets) also revolve

around the sun.

poetically expressed scientific language than modern societies use, the

dynamics of the immediate cosmic environment were explained to successive

generations in story form, where the celestial bodies and constellations

were often portrayed as animals, birds, or even people. Over the passage

of time these personifications became ‘the

Gods’, stories about which have survived to this day as

the myths and legends of various cultures around the world.

Interactions

between celestial bodies –

the accurate observations of ancient skywatchers – have been

passed down to us over millennia in this story form we call ‘myths’.

Regretably though, with a few notable exceptions, these ‘oral

traditions’ are often dismissed out-of-hand by scientists

trapped in their own narrow disciplines, who feel that the various mythologies

of ancient peoples have nothing to contribute to our understanding of

the past.

many of these ‘myths’ deal

with the apparent annual journey of the sun through the heavens, and it

was these ‘solar myths’ that

Morien Morgan gathered from the

remnants of the oral druidic traditions of the South Wales valleys, comparing

them to similar solar myths of other ancient cultures in his studies of

ancient Welsh druidism. But many of the world’s astro-myths also refer

to ‘dragons’ and ‘winged-serpents’.

‘Yellow Pestilence’, the ‘wastelands’ of the arthurian legends,

and the beginning of the European Dark Age?

not be forgotten that the oceans cover around 71% of the surface of our

planet. Asteroids and cometary debris from space impact in the sea more

often than on dry land. These impacts produce huge tidal waves, tsunami,

which cause devastating floods, and the folk memories of such deluges

that have occurred in the past remain not just in the tales of Noah’s

Ark and Atlantis, but in the legends of flooded kingdoms such as Lyonesse

that are found in many ancient cultures around the world. These inundations

are still spoken of today in the ‘living traditions’

of many non-industrialised peoples.

the ruins of ancient civilisations

are being discovered underwater on continental shelves all around the

world, academics with a vested interest in the erroneous views of prehistory

that are still being fed to unsuspecting students in schools and colleges

today, seem desperate to downplay the significance of discoveries such

as the enigmatic Yonaguni structure

found off the coast of the southernmost Japanese island of Yonaguni-jima.

Other ruins lie underwater off the coast of other Japanese islands, and

what they all have in common is that the

vast underwater world which they occupy was last above sea-level

some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. This was at the precise time when Plato

tells us that the lost continent/city of Atlantis sank beneath the waves

in a cataclysm that inundated the whole civilisation ” … in

one dreadful day and night … “.

high land, especially in what are now dry coastal areas, there is much

evidence of the hurried abandonment of previously settled communities,

mass migrations to higher ground, and new colonies showing the survivors

of those catastrophes attempting to rebuild their lives elsewhere. In

many of these discoveries there is increasing evidence of ‘astronomical’

considerations in the siting, layout, orientation and alignment of the

newer structures, indicating an important desire on behalf of the builders

to observe ‘live events’ in the

ancient skies. What were they looking for? What celestial phenomena did

they build these mysterious astronomically-oriented structures to predict?

Were they looking for comets, or the erratic fragments of a giant comet,

as many now believe?

Morien Institute projects are concerned

with the ancient traditions that have

been regarded as totally ‘mythological’

– the ‘lost continents’ and

‘Golden Ages’ of antiquity.

Is there any substance to these ‘myths’,

and if so, are we living amongst the remains of those civilisations inter-mingled

with the remnants of a post-deluvian science of megalithic observatories

built by the survivors to help predict

the periodic returns of comets in order to forewarn the peoples of further sky-born destruction?

This seems to have been the greatest of fears amongst ancient peoples

during the last twelve thousand years, and it is now believed by many

scientists that even into historical times peoples around the world may

well have witnessed cometary debris impacting the Moon

as well as the Earth.

So great

was the terror such events would have instilled in those who witnessed

them, that it gave rise to the concept of a ‘vengeful

sky god’ who had to be appeased. Many now believe that

‘blood sacrifice’ unfortunately

developed out of these understandable fears, and that it was instigated

by the

astronomer-priests of numerous ancient cultures. These astronomer-priests

abused their knowledge of the cyclical nature of temporary celestial events

in order to maintain their power over the survivors

of what seems to have been a series of cosmic catastrophes.

Ancient peoples who were arguably suffering from post-traumatic stress on a societal level, and so were easily manipulated by those who could predict future episodes of celestial bombardments using their megalithic observatories …

June 2002

Morien Institute

illustrated interview with

Dr Paul Weinzweig

of Advanced Digital Communications,

Havana, Cuba, regarding

the discovery of:

“Megalithic urban ruins discovered off the coast of Cuba”

October 2002

Morien Institute

illustrated interview with

Professor Masaaki Kimura

of the University of the Ruykyus,

Okinawa, Japan, regarding

the discovery of: