Ancient Mysteries no. 17, October 1980 (continuation of Journal of Geomancy)
{45}
translated by Michael Behrend, originally published in Der Grafschafter 23 November 1935
Owing to the official policy of reafforestation of unproductive waste land, the countryside round the Heiligenberg in Schwafheim near Asberg (Moers District) is to be redeveloped as a plantation and a public recreation area. Now is the time to draw proper attention to the supreme importance of this ancient central holy place in prehistoric times, so that the landscape in the immediate neighbourhood can be developed in a form worthy of the sacred character of this mountain peak.
The peak of the Heiligenberg was for our national ancestors in prehistoric and pre-Christian times the “hill of the gods” –Askiburg, Asberg – and the main sanctuary in the southern part of the present Moers district. Just as further north on the lower Rhine, near the region’s main religious and cultural centre “Sancta Troia” which – as reported in Otto von Freysing (died 1158) – “is now called Xanten”, the Romans laid out their colony “vetera castra” on the slopes of the Furstenberg not far from the Rhine, so in general the conquered or “pacified” peoples were held in check by military occupation of their principal sanctuaries, in whose neighbourhood the centres of government and commerce were naturally located and developed at the same time.
Clearly then, in the neighbourhood of the Roman “asciburgium castrum” we should look for an old religious centre of the native inhabitants, particularly as Roman historians lay great stress on the importance of this particular place. In fact the “castle meadow” {46} lies in the present village of Asberg, the site of the earlier Roman layout by the old bed of the Rhine (abandoned by the river centuries ago), scarcely 1.5 km east of the peak of the Heiligenberg; which today, as formerly, affords a splendid panorama over the breadth of the lower Rhine landscape, whose preservation ought to be taken into account in the proposed reafforestation.
That the Heiligenberg was formerly precisely what folk traditions say it was, an ancient and venerable hill of the gods, is clearly proved by the latest investigations into the regular sacred-geographical angular relationships between such ritual centres and ancient sacred sites in. the surrounding landscape.
As I explained several years ago now, the main holy hill on the left lower Rhine is to be found on the summit of the
Haagscher Berg on the Bönninghardt, 8.4 km south of the choir of Xanten Cathedral. Crossing over it, in the
form of an N-rune
(
),
are the two main alinements in this district’s landscape geometry:
(1) the NS axis, passing through Haffen Church, St Victor’s Cathedral in Xanten, the Quirinus Chapel on the
Finkenberg, and the minster church in Gladbach (Rheydt), and (2) at an angle of exactly 45°, the diagonal running
across Hasenacker at the foot of the Balberg and the Paulsberg near Uedem to the Schwanenburg in Cleves and SE to the
ancient church in Kepelen and the Galgenberg in Meerbeck.
Precisely south of this Galgenberg at a distance of 3.6 km lies the highest point of the Heiligenberg near Asberg, and this turns out – like all the above locations – to have regular orientations in various other directions.
As I have shown in following up Schmidt’s discovery of a 16-rayed pattern of old sacred {47} sites around St Mary’s Cathedral in Munich (The Temple – the 16-fold division of the heavens – in the German landscape, Hagal, Munich, February 1935) all civilizations – and especially the Indian cosmography of the Holy Hill – have long attached importance to the 8-, 16-, or 32-fold division of the earth’s circle and the sky. Thus it is not by chance that the old churches in Kapellen (Moers District) and Hochemmerich turn out to be built at 22.5° – as measured southwards from a line drawn EW through the Heiligenberg – to the ancient “Asberg”.
Particularly indicative of the ‘holy hill’ quality of an old sacred site are the 66° lines which regularly cross at such centres. In our case this type of orientation has been unmistakeably retained after the Christian conversion in the church at Neunkirchen (Moers District) which at the same time is oriented exactly east from the above-mentioned Quirinus Chapel.
The general validity of the 66° angle can also be demonstrated at various other sites in the Moers region: (1) from the same Quirinus Chapel in a south-easterly direction to Schaephuysen church; (2) going NW from the Haagscher Berg to Sonsbeck church and SE to Budberg church, to which in turn the monastery church at Kamp is oriented at 66° in a SW direction; (3) going SW from St Victor’s Cathedral at Xanten to the sacred stone at the forester’s house at Hasenacker (see above), and NE to Brunen and Raesfeld churches.
Previously I sought to explain these 66° directional relationships, which appear consistently in all districts of Germany, by referring them to the inclination of the ecliptic around 2200 BC, the hypothetical period of construction for the landscape orientations in question. According to my more recent researches and findings on ancient sacred measures and angles, based upon the Pythagorean and the Platonic theory of the {48} cosmic meaning of numbers and numerical ratios, through which God works by ‘calculation’, this angle of 66° can be explained even more simply by its tangent ratio 4:9 or 22:32. The sum of the squares of these sides, i.e. 16 + 81, gives the prime number 97, whose meaning in the old language of symbolism Prof. Oskar Fischer explains as “the equilibrium of forces”. In addition one should bear in mind that – as we know from Egyptian traditions – the ritual survey of eg. a temple layout was carried out under the direction of the priest-king by the harpedonapts or ‘rope stretchers’ in such a way that the measuring-cord, divided by knots into integral lengths, was laid down at an exact right-angle by following certain prescribed ratios of length.
While in this instance the axial direction of buildings was determined by sunrise on the main festival day, there was elsewhere – especially in landscape surveying – a strong tendency to work from the fundamental NS or EW axis. In particular this was required for astronomical observations according to the philosophy of macrocosm–microcosm which decisively influenced all aspects of life in antiquity, and which understood and organized mundane affairs in a divine context. Only if the movements of the stars were observed, with great skill and amazing knowledge and ability, by referring them everywhere to the constant NS axis, was it possible to make a practical and useful comparison between observational results from different times and places.
This simple consideration also explains why the efforts of our professional astronomers to verify Teudt’s rediscovery of an observatory at Oesterholz, by assuming that six surrounding walls of the farmyard in question were alined upon certain constellations, do not lead to any satisfactory conclusions. Although Professors Neugebauer and Riem found the rampart at the edge suitable for a constellation around 1850 BC, recently Prof. Hopmann of Leipzig has {49} taken one around 1500 BC or one around 600 BC to be more likely; and the latest news is that Prof. Reinerth, whose excavations indicate that a massive entrenchment surrounding the eastern wall formed the original layout, would question its astronomical nature altogether.
In reality the layout of the ramparts in question was originally decided by the builders in the way customary in ancient times and still today, by using the measuring-cord and following the rules of measure and angle . At any rate the azimuths (angles measured from the north line) of the surrounding walls can be explained throughout in terms of simple ratios of length, involving whole numbers (the ancients calculated in a sensible and graphical way, using only whole numbers or their ratios) which, according to admittedly problematical traditions, were of particular cosmic significance. Thus eg. the 59° wall, supposedly alined upon Sirius in 1850 BC, when interpreted within a right-angled triangle, gives the tangent ratio 5:3; the 28.5° of the ‘Capella’ rampart gives 7:13; and the 72.5° ascribed to Delta Orionis works out to 22:7, which according to consistent traditions is the exact value ascribed to the cosmic number <π> = 3.14 in Greece and Egypt at the time of Pythagoras – and to all appearances among us in Germany also.
Now whether the Eastern walls of Oesterholz were re-erected, or even newly built, after the Thirty Years’ War, it is certain that ancient sacred sites in the German landscape are consistently found to be oriented according to the same angular measures; after which it is only reasonable to assume that the builders or renovators still had a sound knowledge of the original sacred meaning of the constant angles and measures, for it would be difficult to find any other rational explanation for these surrounding ramparts and walls, so impractical from an economic or strategic viewpoint; quite apart from the fact that local traditions (basically reliable as a {50} rule), quoted by Teudt to support his hypothesis of an Oesterholz “observatory”, still speak of the original religious significance of this ‘‘sanctuary of Ostara”.
The 59° azimuth of the rampart running NE from the western corner of the Oesterholz structure is also found going in the same direction from the Heilgenberg near Asberg, marked at a distance of about 6.5 km by a Christian church now on the right bank of the Rhine at Laar, whose name alone has an old prechristian meaning. “Lar” names are often found in German districts, usually connected with the tradition of an ancient judgement place. On the Lower Rhine for example we have Kevelaer, while Kepelen in ancient documents is still known as Kepelaer.
The constantly recurring line at 28.5° from the old holy hill (as from the western corner of Oesterholz to the SE), when drawn from the Heiligenberg near Moers, no longer has any definite marker in the heavily industrialized landscape. Possibly it might have been situated “in the Colve”, the region around the present-day Trompet railway station.
Even the important solar site normally to be found east of the holy hill with a deviation of 6°, i.e. on 84° or 96° azimuth (in Indian symbolism the second peak of the holy mountain, the paradise of mankind), is today no longer recognizable at first glance. But now that our knowledge of cosmic-sacred geography has advanced to include landscape geometry, it is possible to make a reliable estimate of its position. As I have shown in my essay “On the rediscovery of prechristian sacred geography” (Hagal, May 1935; trans. JOG vol 3/2, still available from IGR @ 75p) with reference to the 8.4 km distances from the choir of Xanten Cathedral to Haffen church in the {51} north and to the summit of the Haagscher Berg in the south, and Professor Kirfel’s Kosmographie der Inder, the number, 84 000 = 12 × 7 × 1000 is associated with the peak of the holy hill. Furthermore, the distances 4.2 and 2.1 km, in agreement with the research into symbolism by J. Jeremias (Der Gottesberg, Gutersloh 1919), are repeatedly found laid out from the holy hill in various districts of Germany as lengths of 6 × 700 and 3 × 700 metres; and the metre, reintroduced in 1792, is recognized as a cosmic unit of length, and is a unifying basis for the Egyptian cubit of 0.525 m and the German rode (or foot) of 0.214 m.
The application of this “holy hill” unit of 3 × 700 m = 2.1 km and its multiples, when used to set out a distance of exactly 4.2 km along the 84° line from the Heiligenberg near Moers, leads to a significant point in the immediate neighbourhood of the Rhine at Essenberg, the place where during the Spanish occupation a fortified site ‘‘Modiliana” was built. If my information is correct, it appears that during the construction of the earthworks at that time finds were made that indicated beyond doubt the existence of a prechristian sacred site there.
This hypothesis is confirmed by further regular angular relationships to the point in Essenberg derived in the above manner from the Heiligenberg. As shown on the 1:25 000 map it lies exactly west of St Saviour’s church in Duisburg, which is proved by various orientations to be the old sacred centre of this historic town. This discovery appears to be particularly important, in that – like the obvious EW orientation of the monastery church at Hamborn to the church at Kepelen, and of the old church at Meiderich to the Galgenberg in Meerbeck – it clearly illustrates a systematic linking of the right and left districts of the Rhine from the earliest times. {52}
For the “solar site” character of this old imperial property, mentioned in the oldest documents of Werden Abbey under the names Ascmeri, Escmere, and Eschmere, and first referred to as the village of Essenberg in the 16th century, the strongest evidence is the equally clear orientation at an angle of 25° (often found set out from the solar site) going NE to the church at Laar, which as noted above is on a regular orientation of 59° from the Heiligenberg itself.
Following the prototype of the massive stone circle and sun temple in Southern England, Stonehenge of Salisbury, whose remarkable angular relationships with nearby ancient sacred sites were first noted in print around the turn of the century by the great astrophysicist Lockyer, pointing the way to our rediscovery of prehistoric sacred landscape surveys with constant angles and a uniform system of measures, one may go on to look for lines set out on azimuths of 49.5° and 10.5° towards outlying sanctuaries belonging to the central solar site. These lines from the old solar site Esmere are admittedly no longer marked by ancient Christian churches or chapels, unless there should be a tradition that the chapel lying 49.5° to the NW in the miners’ settlement Hochheide is such. But it is certainly remarkable that the same angle in a southwesterly direction points to the centre of the village of Asterlagen, where there formerly stood a monastery, no doubt with a church belonging to it; and the importance of the site at that time is illustrated by the fact that from the “Oberhof” there the abbey of Werden administered its widespread properties in that region.
The question whether the 10.5°-line running NNE from Esmere-Essenberg passed over the lost church of Halen near Haus {53} Knipp – it was submerged in the breakthrough of the Rhine in the 13th century that turned Homberg and Essenberg into riverside towns – must remain undecided, as I have not so far been able to ascertain the precise position of the church, which before its destruction by the waves was the main parish church of the Homberg region.
Nevertheless I hope that these pointers to the numerous angular relationships of the Heiligenberg and of the old sacred sites associated with it, and their methodical inclusion in a wide-ranging system of landscape surveying, will convince many skeptics of the high culture, the amazing cosmic knowledge, and the technical abilities of our national ancestors.
For die-hard unbelievers, who would rather cling to the hypothesis of primitive barbarism than accept such a comprehensive organization and such precise terrestrial and astronomical measurements by the aboriginal inhabitants, let me finally remark that I can now demonstrate similar angles and linear relationships between former holy hills and solar sites in at least three dozen districts in all parts of Germany; a fact against which the usual subterfuge of pointing to the blind working of chance will be futile, considering that this prehistoric land survey turns out to be so accurate, that misalinements of 1°, which our professional astronomers allow in their calculations and judgements upon old astronomical structures, are quite out of the question.