The best place to be this morning is in the former Khmer Empire, modern Cambodia, in the center of one of the largest ancient cities in the world at the Buddhist-Hindu temple at the center of it, Angkor Wat. (Wat means monastery complex or vihara).
The second-best place to be is in the middle of New York City at the holy site of "Manhattanhenge" where signs of intelligent life must have built a megastructure aligned with the astronomical objects in the visible sky, possibly with extraterrestrial assistance.
Here Comes the Sun (The Beatles)
Some say massive structures like the "Empire State" Building were in fact pre-Mud Flood architectural feats being taken credit for by modern builders with widely circulated photos of men eating lunch in precarious worksites as if that were all the proof needed.
LONDON, England — As the sun rose Saturday on the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, a crowd erupted in cheers at Stonehenge where the ancient monument in southern England has clocked the summer solstice over thousands of years.
The orange ball crested the northeast horizon behind the Heel Stone, the entrance to the stone circle, and shone its beam of light into the center of one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments.
The solstice is one of the few occasions each year when visitors are allowed to walk among the stones, which are otherwise fenced off.
What did the ancients know and practice?
The miracle of Newgrange, Ireland, eclipses Stonehenge (likeAdam's Calendar, Africa)...so that's why we've never heard of it. Newgrange (Irish Sí an Bhrú [1]) is a prehistoric monument in County Meath, Ireland, placed on a rise overlooking the River Boyne, five miles (8 km) west of the town of Drogheda [2]. It is an exceptionally grand passage tomb built during the Neolithic Period, around 3100 BC [3], making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Newgrange is the main monument in the Brú na Bóinne complex, a World Heritage Site that also includes the passage tombs of Knowth and Dowth, as well as other henges, burial mounds [which are a kind of stupa], and standing stones [3]. Newgrange consists of a large circular mound with an inner stone passageway and cruciform chamber More
The crowd gathered before dawn at the World Heritage Site to mark the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, beating the heat during the U.K.'s first amber heat-health alert issued since September 2023.
Temperatures later topped 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) in Surrey, 80 miles (128 kilometers) east of Stonehenge, the hottest temperature recorded in the U.K. so far this year.
About 25,000 sun devotees (sun cult worshippers) and other revelers -- including Druids, pagans, hippies, locals, and tourists -- showed up, according to English Heritage which operates the site.
More than 400,000 others around the world watched a livestream. “This morning was a joyous and peaceful occasion with the most beautiful sunrise," said Richard Dewdney, head of operations at Stonehenge. “It is fantastic to see Stonehenge continuing to enchant and connect people.”
Stonehenge was built [and constantly re-adjusted] in stages 5,000 years ago on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain approximately 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of London.
The Sky People built mound-pyramids to the sun
[A few decades ago modern cranes and equipment were used to set up a pile of fallen stones, aligning them to their current positions; those photos were then forgotten, though they still exist, and everyone assumes ancient Druids built what is seen today 5,000 years ago before modern explorers stumbled onto the site. The walk from the carpark to the erected stones used to be lined with sandwich boards explaining the artificial evolution of the site with many adjustments over time, not one permanent setup millennia earlier.]
The Deeper, Spiritual Meaning of the Winter Solstice | Through Ancient History
(Sakro Sawel) This is a stunning visual journey through the ancient multicultural sites, traditions, and myths of the winter solstice to discover their deeper spiritual meaning and their relevance today.
Did you know that winter solstice was the most celebrated religious occasion in ancient history and still is even today?
This video explores the celebration of the sun and the winter solstice throughout history. Watch the winter solstice sun rise along the grand avenue of Karnak in Egypt, the largest temple complex in the world.
CONTENTS
00:00 – Introduction
01:45 – What is the Winter Solstice?
02:35 – Spirituality in Nature
03:31 – Journey of the Sun God
04:37 – Winter Solstice Celebrations
07:38 – Winter Solstice Alignments
10:07 – Karnak Temple Alignment
12:58 – The Principles of Creation
15:19 – Luxor Temple Symbolism
16:09 – Glastonbury Tor Meaning
17:33 – Newgrange Symbolism
18:53 – Great Pyramids Solstice Alignment
19:28 – Tiwanaku Symbolism
20:42 – The Dark Half of Duality
21:31 – Birth of the Hero Savior
22:35 – Jesus and the Hidden Meaning of Christmas
26:01 – Conclusion
27:31 – Where to Learn More
27:57 – Image and Video Credits
View a beam of solstice sunlight enter the hidden inner chamber of the giant megalithic mound site of Newgrange in Ireland.
Travel through these and tens of other ancient sites from around the world, some Buddhist, others American, while learning about the ancient symbolic meaning they had to their builders.
We also look at the deeper spiritual meaning of Xmas, the world’s biggest celebration held around the winter solstice as Christ-mass.
The winter solstice was the largest religious occasion in ancient times and remains so. Many ancient cultures throughout the world venerated the sun at the winter solstice. Millions still honor it according to their ancient traditions, and billions celebrate Christmas at the time of winter solstice, although its deeper significance has largely been lost.
Why is the winter solstice such an important event and what is its spiritual meaning? We explain how winter solstice was an important part of an ancient religion of the sun that spread to different parts of the world in prehistory.
NOTE ABOUT ATTRIBUTING THIS WORK: The information in this video is the culmination of years of work and research. It contains Sakro Sawell's unique interpretations of ancient sites and traditions. If you like it and want to share it, do not plagiarize it! Please share the video with due credit as the source.
This video is part of a series about the spiritual meaning of the solstices and equinoxes. Watch the other videos in this series here:
Website: sakrosawel.com. Book (co-authored by husband and wife) discusses the spiritual meaning of the winter solstice and ancient sites aligned to it in detail, as well as how to celebrate it: Ancient Solsticesakrosawel.com/ancient-solstice.
To make sure to keep receiving content from Sakro Sawel, sign up for the free newsletter at sakrosawel.com/newsletter. X/Twitter: sakrosawel.
It's interesting that the most recent full moon was the most northerly Luna (Soma, Chandra) ever gets and that at this time it seems to pause in the sky, beckoning us to pause and reflect. Winter is like that, a time for rest and wise reflection. The light is reborn and continues to increase throughout the year. Urth (Bhumi, Tierra, Earth) has rhythms that though the Church has tried to obscure them are still there to notice and sync up with. The Moon is a clock and a calendar, the Sun a guide. There is rhythm to the seasons and an orderliness to Nature. If we ever pause to notice, we may see that things are okay. We have been made to worry by thinking and fretting, projecting into the future, but when we reflect on the now, everything is instantly okay. This is the meaning of mindfulness, to bring ourselves fully into the present. Things unfold. They work themselves out. We have our duties. And why would we be anywhere when we can be here now?
Ceremony takes place at Stonehenge to mark winter solstice 2024: Watch live
(Sky News) Streamed live. Happy first day of winter. Thousands of people are celebrating the winter solstice, one of the rare occasions visitors can touch the great stones, at Stonehenge.
It means from tomorrow (Dec. 22), days will start to get a little longer again. #Stonehenge #Winter #Sunrise
The Irish Winter Solstice: A Journey through Time and Spirituality
(𝕴𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖍 𝕻𝖆𝖌𝖆𝖓 𝕮𝖔𝖗𝕶) Premiered Dec. 7, 2024: BLARNEY ROAD The Winter Solstice, marking the shortest day and longest night of the year, has held profound significance for the people of Ireland for millennia. This pivotal moment in the solar calendar was a time of great anticipation and reverence for early societies who lived in harmony with the natural world. In Ireland, this relationship with the solstice is perhaps most vividly preserved in the ancient monuments built to honor it, such as Newgrange in the Boyne Valley. These structures, with their precise alignments to the sun, reveal the extraordinary astronomical knowledge and spiritual depth of Ireland’s early inhabitants. For these ancient communities, the solstice symbolized the cyclical nature of life, marking the transition from darkness to light and the promise of renewal in the year ahead. Over time, this observance evolved, with Bronze Age and Iron Age societies incorporating the event into their spiritual and agricultural practices, while stone circles like Drombeg in County Cork and Dromnagorteen at the Cork/Kerry border continued to highlight the connection between humanity and the cosmos. The Winter Solstice is not just an ancient relic of the past; it is a living tradition that has woven itself into the fabric of Irish culture, spirituality, and identity, remaining an awe-inspiring moment of cosmic alignment and human reflection.
Most depressing island! (24 hours of darkness) Svalbard
(Joe HaTTab) ● Svalbard: The Northernmost Town on Earth
● Come take a walk with me (Joe Hattab) around Longyearbyen, the largest town on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard.
Parts of it look familiar, but make no mistake. This place is different.
At 78 degrees north, it lies just 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from the North Pole. And with over 2,000 permanent inhabitants, it is the northernmost real town on Earth.
There are only 50 km of road, including the small streets between houses, so people mainly get around the island on snowmobile.
In fact, there are more registered snowmobiles than residents.
Anyone leaving town is required to travel with a gun and someone who knows how to use it because the islands are also home to polar bears.
The average daytime high is below freezing for all but four months of the year, and from the end of October to mid-February, the sun doesn’t rise at all. This is the long polar night.
Perfectly aligned temple casts no shadow on solstice: Modhera Sun Temple, India
(PraveenMohan) March 1, 2023. A strange Hindu temple in India dedicated to the Sun (Surya, Sol) is hiding some unbelievable secrets. When one enters the Modhera Temple in Gujarat, India, one's shadow might disappear. How is that possible? Ancient science of a Hindu temple can be confirmed one day of the year, on the summer solstice under the sun along the Tropic of Cancer.
In a remote village called Modhera, there is a very advanced temple built with incredible geometric architecture built to perfection.
The main structure, when a compass is placed at the entrance, exactly on a line between the rocks, it is perfectly aligned to the east–west direction, without so much as a decimal error. How was this perfection possible to achieve in ancient times? This temple is said to be at least 1,000 years old.
There are three main structures. Let us check the second structure. It is interesting because the ancient builders made specific notches at the entrances. When one puts a compass on top of them, the alignment is perfect. There is no error. This is 0 degrees north, perfect north. I have checked the entire temple’s structure everywhere, and it is flawless, no errors.
Today this kind of precision can be achieved only with advanced technology. This may seem easy if we don’t understand the history of the compass.
Today, we are able to measure the alignment with perfection using electronic devices. But going back a thousand years, archeologists and historians say humans only had primitive compasses, using loadstones or crude magnetized needles floating in liquid.
How could ancient builders achieve this level of precision without so much as a 0.01% of error?
There is an even bigger question. Not how they did it but why? Why was such a precise alignment necessary?
Why should the main chamber point exactly due east? Look at this picture taken on March 21, 2022, at sunrise. The first rays of the sun pass through the center of the entrances and shine on the main chamber altar. This phenomenon happens only twice a year, on March 21st and September 23rd. Why? What is special about these days? They are the equinoxes, the only two days when day and night are exactly equal.
They are the only two days when the sun rises exactly due east. This may be news, because we may have previously thought that the sun always rises in the east. But it does not. It keeps rising left and right, but only on these two days does it rise at zero degree east.
This is why perfect alignment to east is also called equinoctial east. What was originally inside the main chamber? There was an idol of the sun god Surya (Sol). A giant statue made of pure gold studded with diamonds once stood inside the main chamber's altar. So when the first rays of the sun fell on the idol of Surya, the entire chamber would have produced a dazzling light show.
Joe Scott, Feb. 20, 2023; Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
This South American sun cult looked a lot like ancient Egyptians
(Joe Scott) The ChanquilloArcheo-astronomical Complex is an ancient solar observatory in the coastal desert of Peru that was built thousands of years before the Inca civilization ruled the area. Very little is known about the actual culture who built this ingenious structure, but we know they were far more advanced than we ever expected.
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The Ancient Egyptians speak of Nephilim meeting Ramses. Pharaoh Sa-Nakht may have been a giant (Nephilim), new study suggests. Unfolding discoveries reported in America and other parts of the world have revealed a lost legacy of a race (or races) of giants who are now slowly starting to be included in the historical and archaeological record. Subscribe
Rebirth in Ancient Egypt: Book of the Dead
Section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Book of Coming Forth by Day or Book of Emerging Forth into the Light) written on papyrus, showing the Weighing of the Heart in the Duat (Underworld), where Anubis is seen on the far right. The scales are shown with the feather balance, and Ammit awaits hearts that she must devour. The presence of Osiris at the gateway to the paradise of Aaru dates the papyrus to a late tradition of the myth (wiki).
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Duat ("do-aht," Tuat, Tuaut, or Akert, Amenthes, Amenti, or Neter-khertet) is the Realm of the Dead in ancient Egyptian mythology. It has been represented in hieroglyphs as a star-in-circle: 𓇽.
The Egyptian god Osiris was believed to be the lord of the underworld [like the Buddhist afterlife "god" Yama]. He was the first mummy, as depicted in the Osiris myth, and he personified rebirth and life after death.
The underworld was also the residence of various other gods along with Osiris. The Duat was the region through which the sun god Ra traveled from west to east each night, and it was where he battled Apophis (Apep), who embodied the primordial chaos the sun had to defeat in order to rise each morning and restore order to the earth.
Visitors set up an earth colony.
It was also the place where people's "souls" [rebirth continuum, gandhabba, continuation of the impersonal process of consciousness and the reappearance of the other ancillary aggregates clung to as a "self"] went after death for judgement, though that was not the full extent of the afterlife (Faulkner, p. 143).
Burial chambers formed touching-points between the mundane world and the Duat, and the ꜣḫ ("akh") "the effectiveness of the dead," could use tombs to travel back and forth from the Duat (Pinch, pp. 33-35).
Why do we feel it "natural" to follow tall people? Might remnant memories of their offspring, hybrids, were children of severe rulers that demanded to be obeyed (ancient-origins.net).
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Each night through the Duat the sun god Ra travelled, signifying revivification [rebirth, re-becoming, reappearance] as the main goal of the dead. Ra travelled under the world upon his Atet barge from west to east. He was transformed from its aged Atum form into Khepri, the new dawning sun.
The dead king, worshipped as a god, was also central to the mythology surrounding the concept of Duat, often depicted as being one with Ra (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome Weigal, A Guide to the Antiquities of Upper Egypt from Abydos to the Sudan Frontier, Taylor & Francis, p. 199). More
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