Four rows of stones, the northern one double, point outward from the central circle. The central circle is 13 stones, ranging up to 11.5 feet tall; a single central stone stands more than 15 feet tall. The longest line of stones now standing is the avenue pointing north, 19 stones. I counted 48 stones total.
The central circle is not quite true, being flattened to the east. The eastern line of stones runs slightly north of due east, the long avenue north angles slightly east. Only the southern line points absolutely true.
Excavators have determined the central circle and the line south to be the oldest, a burial cairn set in the circle's center next, the other rungs later, but the circle has never been exactly dated. A pollen column dug near the site says that an extraordinary amount of human activity occurred at Calanais around 3000 B.C.
It still occurs -- much of it around the visitor center, the most recent building onsite and the only one selling hot coffee and sandwiches.
We went to Scotland this July on my partner's whim, and the only thing I insisted on seeing was Calanais. It rained every day of our visit; locals said it was the worst summer in years. But the rain wasn't constant; rather, the weather was some of the least constant I've seen, moody as a fractious child. Overcast, heavy rain, light rain, sun break, mist -- all in an hour, sometimes.
So I sat with Calanais in the rain, which stopped, and under overcast, and in the sparkle of sun. (I speak of Calanais I; there are 12 sites called Calanais on Lewis, of which we saw five.) The sign said to stay on the perimeter path, but luckily or unluckily I'd inspected the site thoroughly before an apologetic Britisher called the sign to my attention. As soon as he was gone, everyone homed in again on the stones.
They do call you. You don't have to be pagan. They call up ritual. As I stood staring at the cairn in the center (inset why? as a sign of respect? as a way of taking over the site?) a mother told her children the Druids had sacrificed humans on the stones. "The signs used to say that," she said. "I don't know why they don't say it anymore." Probably, I thought, because the sign makers don't know it's true.
No one knows for certain how Calanais was used.
Stone Temple Rising
From 4000 to 3000 B.C., the climate of the Hebrides was warmer than now. Peat moss didn't blanket the ground; instead grass grew, and in the valleys scrubby woods -- the land now is almost empty of trees. I thought when I came to Lewis, Why so many ritual sites? Why so many people in this beautiful but windy, rocky, barren place? But it was different then.
A few generations before the stones were raised, farmers on the ridge of Calanais grew a cereal crop, possibly barley. The land was soil over thick clay, with some outcrops of stone; the farmers piled the earth into long parallel heaps, which the sun could warm more easily, adding a few days to the growing season. Then cereal cropping stopped, and for the years prior to Calanais's raising, the land lay fallow, given over to grass and herbs.
Then, about 3000 B.C., a new custom swept Britain and Scotland: the raising of earthworks and standing circles, first of timber, then of stone. At the same time, society seems to have become more stratified, more differences appearing between the leaders and the led. Calanais was part of this trend, which possibly reflected customs of a new tribe, possibly a change among the existing populace; possibly a new religion, perhaps a revisioning of the old. An early structure found at Calanais under the burial cairn, of a kind associated with groove-patterned pottery, links Calanais with great ritual centers such as Stonehenge. Calanais too was likely part of a large ritual complex, drawing worshippers or festival-goers from all over Lewis, possibly from further -- not only to the largest site, Calanais I, but to the other eleven sites scattered nearby.
At Calanais I, around 3000 B.C., people built the first light structure associated with grooved ware in the eastern part of the site, then encircled it with standing stones. The circle of 13 stones, the central tall stone and the southern row of stones were all probably raised at this time. To hold the stones' bases, the circle's creators dug shallow holes in the stiff green clay, then levered the stones into place. The builders piled the dug-up clay and field stones around the standing stones' bases to help stabilize them.
Generations passed -- it's hard to say how many, but a layer of new soil formed -- then site users built a burial cairn in the center of the circle. To do so, they first dug new clay and spread it in the ring's eastern side, up to the tall central monolith. Then they laid out the burial chamber at the monolith's base, dividing the interior using vertical slabs. Once the walls were a yard or so high, the builders laid the higher stones so they overlapped and projected inward, making the required roof space smaller. The small size of the cairn actually made this technique unnecessary; the builders seem to have imitated techniques used in larger cairns. The builders stopped the chamber walls from tipping inward by building a cairn of rocks around them, propping the wall stones on their outer sides.
The final cairn was horseshoe-shaped. Little remains now, so it's hard to say how tall it stood; the interior chamber rose perhaps five feet. The first excavators found two fragments of bone in it, probably human, and a black greasy substance, perhaps the residue of decomposition.
Later still, the east and west rows of stones and the long northern avenue were probably added, possibly a few stones at a time. At similar sites, stones were raised as late as 1000 B.C. Stone holes at Calanais show that more stones were placed than now stand. The original setting probably had five stones each to the east, south, and west, and 16 plus on either side of the northern stone avenue. Pits excavated to the south may have held additional stones, or possibly a structure. However, the holes show that the stone rows never crossed the inner circle.
In the end, the site of Calanais seems to have been ritually demolished, harrowed with a single-pronged harrow that left grooves inside the circle and out. Excavators interpret this as a ritual cleansing, perhaps to make sure ancestors could no longer come back to haunt the living. The site was abandoned entirely around 800 B.C., and not long afterward peat began to grow over it, encouraged by colder, wetter conditions. In 1857, when the site was cleared by workers for Sir James Matheson, the peat averaged five feet deep around the stones.
Stone Temple Rites
When the builders raised the stones, what did they do there? Related sites at Fife and Balfarg Riding School in Scotland, and in continental Europe, reveal hoards of henbane and fungi and pottery with henbane traces, pointing to the use of hallucinogens. Similar sites are also connected with burials and cremations, and Calanais had its own burial cairn. Perhaps worship at Calanais included honoring the ancestors at death, and moving among the ancestors in the spirit world by means of hallucinogenic trance.
Archaeoastronomers have also advanced theories about Calanais, as about Stonehenge and other sites. We should take these claims with a grain of salt, however -- recent studies demonstrate that assertions that sites precisely align to celestial events cannot be proven. Some archaeoastronomical theories about Calanais orient the site to midwinter sunrise and sunset. The most interesting theory, and the most peculiar to Calanais, has to do with the setting of the moon. Every 18.6 years, as viewed from the northern avenue, the moon swings very low over the southern hills and sets. Then it appears again, winking within the stone circle's silhouette as it passes a notch in the horizon. The Gaelic for this southern profile of hills, shaped like the contours of a body, is "Cailleach na mòintich" -- the old woman of the moors.
Calanais to me feels lunar, so for me the moon-theory chimes best. The circle numbers 13 stones, like the 13 moons in a year. Meditating at Calanais, I saw white-robed figures carrying silver-shining flat bowls, walking from north to south. My sense is that you drew the power starting at the long, northern end either into the circle or across to the southern end, shooting the energy like an arrow. If you did this when the moon swung low over the southern hills, you'd aim at the moon.
I couldn't resist using the energy to do a small ritual for the completion of projects, albeit quietly and without many gestures, as befits a ritual done among fellow tourists. I can attest there's still power among the stones.
Stone Temples Related
On the same day as we visited the main site, we saw also Calanais II and III, more usually called Cnoc Ceann á Ghàrraidh and Cnoc Fillibhir Bheag, both stone rings. Archaeologists usually interpret these smaller sites as having been raised later than Calanais I. If groups dedicated to different practices or deities converged on Calanais, perhaps each group used its own site and shared or came together in the largest.
Cnoc Fillibhir Bheag is a setting now containing 12 stones up to 10 feet tall. You can see it as eight stones around a ring perimeter and four within, or as two ellipses of stone -- not all gneiss, in this case, but also sandstone. If you figure the spacing of stones in the outer circle, the original would have fit 13.
Three stones within the circle stand in a line, and the site's tourist board notice says scholars connect these with the Celtic Triple Goddess. To me, these stones felt very much like the Maiden, Mother and Crone. The tall pale grey-white Maiden seemed shy, the warm red sandstone Mother comforting, the mottled lichen-covered Crone severe. The fourth inner stone, facing the others across the circle, felt male.
If Cnoc Fillibhir Bheag is about the Triple Goddess, Cnoc Ceann á Ghàrraidh, ragged as a row of broken arrows, felt about warrior energy. Its eight remaining stones -- five standing, three fallen -- range from 8 to 11.5 feet tall and vary in shape more than the other rings': some square and broad-shouldered, some pointy as wolves' teeth. Again, if you look at the spacing of remaining stones, there is room for 13. Cnoc Ceann á Ghàrraidh may also once have had wooden uprights; when it was cleared of peat, about the same time as Calanais I, at least five holes were discovered, lined with seashore pebbles and bits of charcoal. Mottled with lichen, its stones felt cheerful and feisty.
At Cleitir, in a leveled area on a cliff, four standing stones overlook the channel between Lewis and the smaller island Great Bernera. You see them right as you cross the one-lane bridge. We pulled into a turnoff and greeted them briefly, fighting a wind propelling rain into our coats.
On our way off Lewis, we stopped at Ceann Thulabhaig, a stone ring now containing five standing stones and one fallen, with a small central cairn hosting its own little standing stone. Remains of an oval ring, again spaced such that the original might have held 13, the stones stand up to nine feet tall.
Reached by clambering over a broken fence and fording wet peat, Ceann Thulabhaig gave us a proper Hebridean goodbye. We found a ram's skull, curling insolent horns still attached; my stepson after some consultation decided it would not fit into our luggage. Nor could we pull off a horn. We left the skull mounted on a stone, neither the first nor probably the last bone on the site.
No one can know exactly what ritualists did at Calanais, at Cnoc Ceann á Ghàrraidh, at Cnoc Fillibhir Bheag, at Cleitir, at Ceann Thulabhaig. Five thousand years ago, the first stones were raised; people worked in gneiss and sandstone and wood, used and broke pottery, fashioned arrows of quartz, possibly took mushrooms and henbane, definitely buried and honored their dead. But how exactly did they do so, and what did they think about it? Did they honor the moon, female or male, dancing low over the old-woman hills? Did they honor the Triple Goddess? Did they perform blood sacrifice? We cannot know.
We can know this: The old sites speak to us. Touch the gneiss, and it hums with life. We can take the energy and weave it into ritual, continuing onward the chain of human and stone.
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Sources for this article include Calanais: The Standing Stones, by Patrick Ashmore; Neolithic and Bronze Age Scotland, by Patrick Ashmore; and The Ancient Monuments of the Western Isles, by Noel Fojut, Denys Pringle and Bruce Walker.
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