The Lydenburg Stones DVD Video |
"An Introduction to the Orion Mysteries of Boomplaas"
No one knows who executed the many thousands of engravings on the granite boulders at Boomplaas, and when or why the first engravings were made. No one even goes there anymore, except for the farmer who occasionally checks on his grazing cattle. This is a very powerful place, where the rocks are so highly magnetized that a compass reads 45 degrees off-course. During the past 10 years I have studied the engraved boulders in this peaceful yet highly charged setting between the Drakensberg and Steenkampsberg Mountains, and the secrets of this place are slowly unfolding.
Join me in this exploratory walk as we discover the obtuse messages that the ancient Shamans engraved on key boulders, and uncover how they mirrored the Orion Constellation in this sacred place. This is one of three rock engraving sites in South Africa that has been laid out to reflect Orion, and links us with similar ancient layouts in different parts of the world. The ancient Egyptians did this at Giza; the Hopi in Arizona; and the Celts on the Peaks of Loughcrew in Ireland.
Prehistoric man had an affinity for the stars – they were his nightly entertainment, predictor of the seasons, and his connection with the Creator. The Orion Constellation is dominant in the summer night sky in South Africa and the Namaqua people (who at one time most likely engraved some of the Lydenburg stones) saw a hunting scene in the night sky. The husband of the daughters of the Sky God, Aldeberan, shot his arrow (Orion’s sword) at three zebras (Orion’s belt) but it fell short. Afraid to retrieve his arrow because of the lion (Betelgueuse) and not wanting to go home empty-handed, the husband sits in the cold watching the zebra with his wives (the Pleiades) behind him.
There are two Orion’s belt alignments at Boomplaas: One reflects the belt as it appears overhead at midnight on 22nd December – the summer solstice. The engraved stones making up this alignment are Key Stone (Mintaka), Round /Tortoise Rock (Alnilam), and Kaalkop (Alnitak). In the second Orion’s belt alignment Round/Tortoise Rock becomes Alnitak, lining up with Simulacre (Alnilam) and Gary A. David Gateway (Mintaka). This mirrors the appearance of Orion’s belt as it rises just before sunrise at the winter solstice on 21st June.
Each of the engraved boulders in the two Orion’s belt alignments are unique in terms of size, shape, and engraved subjects. Key Stone is nearly 1.4 meters high, highly polished, and shaped along its east-west axis into a sharp ridge. It is covered with deeply pecked line engravings, at the centre of which is an engraving of a rock hydrax or tree mouse. Round (Tortoise) Rock is shaped like the shell of a tortoise or a plano-convex lens, and is covered with joined concentric circle engravings. Kaalkop (bald head) is less than a meter high, polished, and engraved with elongated cupules and joined concentric circles. Simulacre is the name that I have given to a huge (1.3 meter by 2.2 meter) polished boulder that looks very much like a giant carved face – in fact it looks remarkably like the profiled face of Pharaoh Tuthmosis I. The Gary A. David Gateway is a giant split boulder nearly a meter high, the gateway being nearly 4 meters long on a precise north-south line. It is covered with joined concentric circle engravings, as well as having two flat engraved basins running next to the gateway. The engravings on the eastern basin show Orion’s belt, the phases of the moon, and Sirius.
Also featured on the DVD are circles of giant engraved boulders, a stellar observatory, and a rare therianthrope (half man, half animal) engraving that bears a strong resemblance to one of the ceramic “Lydenburg” heads, which dates to the Early Iron Age. The site is littered with stone tools, suggesting that the engravings were started in the Stone Age, and continued for at least 2 000 years until historic times.