More on the Lunation Triangle

Thanks to Tony H for reminding me of this contribution from the late Alex Down on the Eternal Idol site.  I had read it back in 20090 but had forgotten about it.  Alex's comments are eminently sensible, as usual.  Read on, dear reader.........

With acknowledgement to Dennis Price's ETERNAL IDOL site:

http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=2761

Alex Down April 28, 2009 at 12:06 am

The Stonehenge Lunation Triangle sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? A 5-12-13 Pythagorean triangle, poised perfectly between Stonehenge, Lundy and the “quarries” at Carn Meini – a triumph of long-range Megalithic geometry. Obviously I had to try it for myself. And did it work? Nope. Or at least, it only works if you select a point in Wales that is nowhere near Carn Meini. Robin Heath specifies 10,000 megalithic yards north of the centre of Lundy, which happens to be on the top of a flat-topped hill in Pembrokeshire called Carn Wen – White Cairn, a name which may, or may not, have something to do with quartz. There’s none there now. And indeed, Stonehenge – Lundy – Carn Wen makes a pretty good 5-12-13 triangle. Unfortunately, Carn Wen is about 3km away from Carn Meini, which completely blows the accuracy of the Pythagorean set. It seems it’s just another case of a numerologist picking his points to fit his conception of a perfectly numbered world. My calculations were done using the ruler facility on Google Earth. I’d welcome anyone checking my calculations. But I’d back the accuracy of Google Earth against most other methods available to the public. It’s a shame, because it would make a very neat story if a perfect triangle could be fitted connecting the bluestone quarries, the “right angle island” and Stonehenge. But, according to Robin Heath’s book, the triangle does not include the quarries – he’s quite specific about Carn Wen. In fact, quoting from his book in Google Book Search, he says ” … Carn Meini is strongly and prominantly [sic] visible from Carn Besi, just down the modern A478 road from Carn Wen.” The two hills are not even intervisible. So in answer to Frank’s question above “This surely cannot be an accident??”, I’m afraid that it almost certainly is. Relatively close numerical coincidences abound in the real world, and this looks just like another one. The figures can’t be tortured into the shape that the numerologists would like without invoking a new entity, Carn Wen. We all have to make up our own minds about how significant this is.