Yesterday was the winter solstice, the Druid's Christmas, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere with the sun tracing its lowest arc across the bleak winter sky, its life-giving energy at lowest ebb. But rather than being a time of despair, the solstice is a time of hope and new beginning because it only gets better from here on out for the next six months.
The festivities were festive, most impressive and ancient at Newgrange in Ireland:
- Over 24,000 people have sought a coveted ticket to allow them watch the phenomenon of the rays of the rising midwinter solstice sun beaming deep into Ireland's Stone Age burial mound this year.
But, as always, only 20 people were being allowed to witness the 17-minute phenomenon at the Newgrange tomb in County Meath on Tuesday — because that's the most the 30 metre long chamber can hold.
It is believed that Ireland's Stone Age ancestors built the tomb with an alignment so that the rising sun shines on the ashes of their dead deep in the tomb only around the time of the shortest day of the year.
....The recent surge in worldwide demand to witness Ireland oldest "calendar clock" in operation has astonished the government's Office of Public Works which cares for the country's heritage.
....Local schoolchildren pick 100 winners from the application list, and they are allowed in on five days either side of the solstice.
"Newgrange is now one of the most exclusive places to be in the world to witness a winter solstice sunrise," a spokeswoman said.
...."It is a wonderful feeling waiting in the dark of the chamber on a cold winter's morning for something that was planned 5,000 years ago."
Now one of Ireland's leading tourist attractions, Newgrange is believed to be the oldest continuously roofed building in the world. It was built 1,000 years before Britain's Stonehenge and 500 years before Egypt's pyramids.
The whole Boyne River valley area around Newgrange is rich in Ireland's ancient history. It is thought that the first people settled there 7,000 years ago [AFP]
But the New Agers gathered in NYC as well:
- The sunrise ceremony, .. held at Pier 16 at the South Street Seaport, .. [included] a crowd of 100-plus people pounding drums and chanting incantations such as "reverence, reverence, reverence."
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