The New Scientist article, Echoes of the past: The sites and sounds of prehistory, reviews evidence from the emerging field of acoustical archeology. Do stone circles, dolmens, ancient temples and earthworks amplify sound in ways that are of intentional design and if so, are those amplifications effective or beneficial?
Bruno Fazenda at the University of Salford, UK., studied a concrete reconstruction of the Stonehenge monument at Maryhill, Washington state:
“What Fazenda measured was impressive. “It’s actually like walking into an enclosed space with a lively acoustic,” he says. “It is a really good space for speech because reflections from the stones mean you can be heard everywhere within it, even if you’re hidden behind a stone.” Clap your hands in the space and the sound reverberates around the monument as it reflects from stone to stone. The reverberation takes about 1.2 seconds to die down- typical for an opera house or school hall but astoundingly long for a space with no ceiling.”
Although the original purpose of the site is unclear, the resonating qualities of the megalithic stone circle may have been to assist ceremonial gatherings, perhaps to allow participants to hear easily within the large space. Sound amplification in the space is revealed in this study, yet intentionality or usefulness remain unclear.
Roman engineer Vitruvius suggested placing resonating bronze vases in theaters with the intention of amplifying actors’ voices. In other parts of the ancient world, vases were installed under seats in churches (“lydpotter” in Denmark) to purportedly dampen sound.
“Various scientists have examined vases found in about 200 churches and mosques built between the 11th and 16th centuries in many parts of Europe. Measurements have shown that the vases do very little for the acoustics of the churches: there are usually not enough of them, or they resonate at frequencies different from those needed to support the human voice. Why they were put there remains a mystery (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol 112, p 2333).”
Current research suggests neither vase placement practice had much of an effect on audible sound. Perhaps another kind of frequency was intended to be manipulated by the vases?
Omphalos comes to mind. In Greece, omphalos were used in divination at Delphi and other oracles in the ancient world. Apollo is shown seated on an omphalos in coins and sculpture. Does the omphalos direct energy of the earth through the human chakra system and into the heavens? (Apollo is, after all, a sun god.) Clues to the process of divination exist in Helena Blavatsky’s esoteric description of a typical Delphi seeress in “Isis Unveiled:”
“A Pythia, upon the authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and others, was a nervous sensitive; she was chosen from among the poorest class, young and pure. Attached to the temple, within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which no one but the priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with the outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean exhalations penetrating her whole system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state she delivered oracles. She was sometimes called ventriloqua vates,* the ventriloquist‐prophetess.”
But I digress, we’re taking acoustics here, not metaphysics. My mind glances on Johannes Kepler’s music of the spheres theory, where planets all emit a sound frequency, and a BBC article I read on solar flares a while back:
“Immense coils of hot, electrified gas in the Sun’s atmosphere behave like a musical instrument, scientists say. These “coronal loops” carry acoustic waves in much the same way that sound is carried through a pipe organ. Solar explosions called micro-flares generate sound booms which are then propagated along the coronal loops.
“The effect is much like plucking a guitar string,” Professor Robert von Fay-Siebenbuergen told BBC News at the National Astronomy Meeting in Preston.”
Maybe Kepler was on to something when he wrote Harmonices Mundi in 1619, five books promoting the idea of earthly harmony as a facet of geometry and a reflection of musical harmony. That’s a topic for another day.
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Afterthought and speculation: What OBEs speak to this these findings? Could amplified sound waves in megalithic stone circles be generated and harnessed for locomotion or energetic healing? Was Stonehenge a facility in the ancient global society that Michael Tellinger proposes and if so, and was sound amplification a key facet of that society?
was required reading. I had already discovered the work of Louise Hay and Joan Borysenko, offering mind-body-spirit approaches to healing and wellness. In Capra’s exposition, I found information which shifted my world view in the direction of my soul’s longing— that of the esoteric, of the seemingly hidden forces of the intangible on the tangible.
