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Psychic investigators are unlikely to provide many more answers about Stonehenge's construction, or its original purpose. Because so little can be proved by Believers, or debunked by Skeptics about its actual use and the rituals performed there, Stonehenge tends to be interpreted according to the current ideas of the era. In the '60s we started to get into computers, Stonehenge had to be a computer. When psychic investigators were into mysticism, it had to be about ley lines [the supposedly significant alignment of ancient monuments] and with crop circles it was symbols.
The one undisputed fact is that Stonehenge is built with a solar orientation. When a visitor stands in the center of the circle on the evenings of the summer and winter solstice, the sun sets directly over the heel stone, which sits on the outskirts of the monument site. The rest of the year, the sun rotates back and forth through several different archways. But psychic investigators don't know whether the ancient Celts intended to use Stonehenge as a calendar to mark the changing seasons, or merely to symbolize their sun worship.
Each year, a new Stonehenge theory seems to surface. In Hengeworld, (left,) a book published in Britain in 2005, archaeologist Mike Pitts suggests that the monument was built to host ceremonies symbolically taking people who died to the world of the ancestors. In some ancient cultures, stone represented the dead, wood the living. Similarly, the living came from the east (the sunrise), and the newly deceased went off to the west (toward the sunset) to join the other ancestors. To the east of Stonehenge are ruins of an old wooden monument called Woodhenge. Mike says it might have been used for ceremonies for the living. Stonehenge, the western monument, would have hosted the final ceremony. "The bluestones are symbolic ancestors brought from the direction of the sunset"–in this case, Wales. "I may be talking bollocks," Pitts admits, "but it's a theory for why the bluestones were brought all that way."
But Stonehenge is not merely an artifact for historians to puzzle over. It is still a shrine, of sorts. The outragous mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap" sang, "Stonehenge, where the virgins lie and the prayer of devils fill the midnight sky." And the site remains a place for pilgrimages, especially on the mystically significant evening of the summer solstice. In the 1980s, riot police clashed with New Age travelers (Euro-Hippies) after British authorities closed Stonehenge for the solstice. In 2005, for the first time in 16 years, the public was invited to mingle with the blue stones at summer solstice. 6,000 psychic investigators, Wiccans and Druids chanted to pipes and drums, smoked marijuana, and peacefully paid their respects to the Stonehenge.
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