| English Page |
Domus de Jana |
 |
| 31 May 2011 | ||||||||
The hole in the stone
As we were travelling one evening in Sardinia, (in an area of amazing natural beauty known as Barbagia), we drove past a ‘Historic Monuments’ sign advertising a ‘Domus de Jana’, a type of mysterious phenomenon quite common in Sardinia, which is acknowledged as a ‘fairy home’. It was growing dark on a November evening but we were curious and stopped the car to venture into the open field next to the road and roam around the trees and woodland looking for the monument, which refused to reveal itself in any obvious way. After some roaming and shoulder shrugging we began to abandon research into the unusual and return to the banal safety of our car. But then some extra intuition brought its reward – in the dusky light somehow a path offered itself and led to a low rock face set into a slight rise in the ground. Indeed there was an opening into the rock, not more than 20cms high or wide, rectangular and as perfectly sculptured as any main entrance to a Gothic Cathedral. OK, what’s the story? There’s a hole in a rock in a field in Sardinia? Let’s get back to the hotel for dinner. Yet something preyed on my mind even as we returned to the hotel. The hole didn’t go away. I was asking myself in continuation: what the hell was a hole doing in that rock? Not just a hole worn away by water erosion over time or blown away by dynamiting by some crazy shepherd – this was a hole deliberately sculptured by someone or something. It is a work of architecture. A statement that raises questions: who, why, how and when?????? Big questions!!! Questions with no rational or logical answers, at least not using the kind of rational logic that underlies our modern productive society.
A further paradoxical observation takes us down a curious line of thought. This particular ‘monument’, like so many others here in Sardinia or in Europe or even all over the world is actually physically inserted into our everyday, rational, surroundings. Normal people pass by it every day. It is a thing of interest, for which some authority has even deemed it useful or necessary to put an indication. People are invited to stop and look at it. But those same authorities are incapable of or unwilling to give a satisfactory explanation of it. We are not encouraged to believe in fairies, but this thing here is labelled as a fairy home. “Well it’s really just a sort of museum piece, something from our history, it’s not really important now because we have evolved, our life is different. Let’s not waste too much time thinking about it, better to get on with our real lives and work.” Over the last 20 years or so, I personally have made an extensive search for ‘unusual’ monuments, from the far North of Scotland, through Europe, right down to the far South of Sardinia. Beyond that I have also made a highly fascinating tour of Perù. The sites I have experienced range from Stonehenge, Carnac and Macchu Picchu, on a world-famous level, down to simple standing stones in an English field or a fairy home in Sardinia. Not one single one of them has ever failed to leave me with some deep impression upon my own personal philosophy of life. I realise that stone mysteries exist all over the world and, if they are there, then they are there to tell us something. What can they tell us? What have I learned from them? For a start, I have learned to look for and listen to alternative solutions to those generally presented to us by various historians, guides, journalists or whatever ‘official’ commentators. The official guide book doesn’t try to convince me that fairies actually constructed the hole in the Sardinian rock, nor does it give reliable, irrefutable evidence regarding possible human intervention. Honestly, though, these are not the kind of questions to which I need answers. Anyone can look at these things and say, “Well, I still prefer to think that fairies may have made that.”, or “Well, of course I never believed in fairies, but it’s incredible how primitive ancient people managed to make that without our modern tools.” And that is exactly where the point gets missed. We are all educated to look for safe, rational, logical explanations to everything or to unconditionally accept the official, scientific or historical versions, presented as absolute truths. If we want to take risks, we can believe in fairies – but everyone will make fun of us unless we can actually produce one! On the other hand, we seem to be actively discouraged, sometimes even violently prevented, from questioning the available versions and pursuing alternative lines of thought. My question in these situations is this: The mystery is here in front of me in hard, living rock and yet it seems there is no clear description as to how, why and when it got here. So why and how have we lost, destroyed or covered up the contact with the reality that left it here?
Strangely, this question has led me into discovering a whole series of revelations and discoveries about the world, the universe and how we live in it. I have found out so many new ideas concerning life, nature, existence and myself. Visiting South America, for instance, stimulated me to read recently published books on historical/anthropological/archaeological matters concerning the civilizations living there before the arrival of the Europeans. The books I read have sold millions of copies around the world, but they differ widely from what has until recently been accepted as the true and accurate history of that region. The deeper I delve into documentary evidence on many of the subjects that interest me, the more I tend to come across challenges to and contradictions of official points of view. The books I am referring to are not works of fiction or imaginary hypotheses of eccentrics, they are carefully researched works, based on personal experience and backed up with documented evidence from various reliable sources around the world. There seems to be an enormous amount of very reliable documented evidence around the world that tends to get lost, covered up, ignored or deliberately destroyed by various interest groups who simply do not agree with it. This would appear to be a human tendency starting around the middle ages, when Man began to put his faith in the written word as being the only reliable version of events in the world. But this gives immense power to those in control of what is written, published, distributed and read! Are we really free to read, write, say and think what we want? Another thing I have noticed during my reflections and studies, is an apparent clash of culture between ‘official’ written history and legend. Legend is simply long-term history passed down to us in a direct verbal form from generation to generation. Most people in the modern world dismiss legend as some kind of ‘fairy tale’ (striking the use of the word fairy in this context in English). In other words legend is less reliable than written history and therefore less likely to be true. Yet, the works that I have recently studied all demonstrate an amazing amount of authoritative correspondence throughout legends all over the world. Legends of virtually all surviving ancient civilizations on this planet refer to the same events, places and characters with remarkable consistency. Who are the guardians or librarians of this ‘unofficial’ world history? None other than the Natural Peoples of the world, the remaining few of all those indigenous populations who once lived happily, peacefully and prosperously on the continents of this planet.
These remaining descendants of the North American Indians, the Maya, the Inca, the Aborigine of Australia, the Tuareg or the Marsh Arabs of Africa, the Sami of Finland, the Celts of Europe, to name but a few, are all populations that have been condemned as uncivilized or even a threat to civilized humanity and have therefore been systematically crushed and exterminated. What remains of them is now preserved by modern society in ‘safe’ areas where they are ‘free’ to live their lives – as long as they behave like museum exhibits and don’t try to cause too much trouble. But these people have an incredible amount of knowledge at their disposal, which could also be at our disposal. Only we don’t want to know!! Well that’s not exactly true, because some people do want to know. I certainly want to know and I now believe there is a growing number of others who also want to know. This is the point of my reflection on the Domus de Jana. When I saw the hole in the rock in Sardinia I felt exactly the same thing that I feel when I stand in front of Stonehenge. I feel something that lifts me, that transports me; something that takes me into a different dimension. I come into contact with the mystery of existence. I feel alive and free, unburdened by the preoccupations of daily life because I know they are all relative to something else which is far more grandiose and important. Obviously I cannot interpret or explain this extra dimension with the power of thought or the rational processes of my mind, but I experience something extra! I will continue to research this extra experience whenever I get a whiff of something out of the ordinary to look at. |
