Landscape zodiac - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A landscape zodiac is a map of the stars on a gigantic scale, formed by features in the landscape, such as roads, streams and field boundaries. Perhaps the best known alleged example is the Glastonbury Temple of the Stars

Temple of the Stars

The Temple of the Stars is an alleged ancient temple claimed to be situated around Glastonbury in Somerset, England.-Origin:The temple is claimed by some to depict a colossal landscape zodiac, a map of the stars on a gigantic scale, formed by features in the landscape...

, situated around Glastonbury

Glastonbury

Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,784 in the 2001 census...

in Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, England. The temple is thought by some to depict a colossal zodiac

Zodiac

In astronomy, the zodiac is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude which are centred upon the ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year...

.

The theory was first put forward in 1935 by Katherine Maltwood

Katherine Maltwood

Spelled Katharine Emma MaltwoodBirth: London, England, 1878Death: Victoria, Canada, 1961Throughout her childhood, Maltwood was reared to be an artist. Her parents were progressive, and they pushed each of their children equally to achieve their potential...

, an artist who "discovered" the zodiac in a vision, and held that the "temple" was created by Sumerians about 2700 BC. Interest was re-ignited in 1969 by Mary Caine in an article in the magazine Gandalf's Garden
Gandalf's Garden
Gandalf's Garden was a mystical community which flourished at the end of the 1960s as part of the London hippie/underground movement, running a shop and a magazine of the same name. It emphasised the mystical interests of the period, and advocated meditation in preference to drugs...

.

The landscape zodiac plays an important role in many occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

theories. It has been associated with the Celtic Saints, Grail legend and King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

(according to some legends buried in Glastonbury).

Criticism

The idea was examined by two independent studies, one by Ian Burrow in 1975 and the other in 1983 by Tom Williamson and Liz Bellamy, using the standard methods of landscape historical research. Both studies concluded that the evidence contradicted the idea. The eye of Capricorn identified by Maltwood was a haystack. The western wing of the Aquarius phoenix was a road laid in 1782 to run around Glastonbury, and older maps dating back to the 1620s show the road had no predecessors. The Cancer boat (not a crab as would be expected) is made up of a network of eighteenth century drainage ditches and paths. There are some Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

paths preserved in the peat of the bog formerly comprising most of the area, but none of the known paths match the lines of the zodiac features. There is no support for this theory, or for the existence of the "temple" in any form, from conventional archaeologists or mainstream historians.

Other landscape zodiacs

Despite scientific scepticism, further zodiacs have been "discovered" in Britain in following years including:

Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...

Zodiac
The Lizard
Lizard
Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 3800 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...

Zodiac, Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
Bodmin Moor Zodiac
The Pumpsaint Zodiac
Nuthampstead
Nuthampstead
Nuthampstead is a small village and civil parish in North East Hertfordshire located a few miles south of the town of Royston. In the 2001 census the parish had 139 residents....

Terrestrial Zodiac
The Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

Zodiac, South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...

There is rarely a strong scientific case for these discoveries. Their nebulous existence is in many ways similar to urban myths, ufology

Ufology

Ufology is a neologism coined to describe the collective efforts of those who study reports and associated evidence of unidentified flying objects . UFOs have been subject to various investigations over the years by governments, independent groups, and scientists...

, or ley lines. They seem to play a part in personal belief systems, possibly as fictional devices; for example "The Brighton Zodiac" - created by Sally Hurst, based on the streets of that town - features as a plot device in Robert Rankin

Robert Rankin

Robert Fleming Rankin is a prolific British humorous novelist. Born in Parsons Green, London, he started writing in the late 1970s, and first entered the bestsellers lists with Snuff Fiction in 1999, by which time his previous eighteen books had sold around one million copies...

's novel "The Brightonomicon

The Brightonomicon

The Brightonomicon is a novel by British Fantasy author Robert Rankin, the title parodying that of the fictional grimoire the Necronomicon from the Cthulhu Mythos. The author lives in Brighton and the book is set in an accurate depiction of the city...

" .

Landscape zodiacs and psychogeography

In the walks around the M25 motorway documented in psychogeographer Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...

's 2003 novel London Orbital, the walkers trace the mythical Kingston upon Thames Zodiac.

In 2006, artist Nigel Ayers

Nigel Ayers

Nigel Ayers is a multimedia artist born in Tideswell, Derbyshire, England, in 1957.His sound art has included numerous audio releases and live performances through his genre-busting group Nocturnal Emissions....

began to develop the idea of the Bodmin Moor Zodiac as a form of spatial detournement

Detournement

A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and consist in "turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself." Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was...

. This was an idea derived from developments in Land Art

Land art

Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...

and Locational Media, influenced however by urban-based Situationist and Letterist theory. Over the course of a year, Ayers carefully explored the outlines of zodiac figures perceived and plotted on large-scale maps and aerial photographs of the moor. The newly-drawn 2006 figures are remarkable and make a break from earlier mooted terrestrial zodiacs on Bodmin Moor

Bodmin Moor

Bodmin Moor is a granite moorland in northeastern Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is in size, and originally dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history....

and elsewhere as they actually resemble a conventional zodiac as outlined on a star map.

Criticism

Other landscape zodiacs

Landscape zodiacs and psychogeography

Further reading