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Introduction and Background

"Writers of good antiquity and able judgement have been persuaded that even the School of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took their beginning from the old Philosophy of Britain."
MILTON, THE BARD

The Morien Institute was conceived in early 1996 by John Michael, and officially came into being with the first sunrise following Alban Arthan - the Winter Solstice - that year. It is a non-profit research and education 'network' which is run by people with a wide range of disabilities who focus on activities for people wanting to explore their wide range of abilities.

The Morien Institute developed as a natural progression of the growing interest over the past 30 years or more in the many mysteries of the ancient world in general, and the growing appreciation of the highly sophisticated natural science practiced and taught by the ancient Celtic Druids in particular.

Taking initial inspiration from the writings of Owen 'Morien' Morgan, and the pioneering approach he used to decipher the astronomical data he found encoded in many Welsh oral traditions, the Morien Institute Network has been developed by John Michael with the help and advice of friends and research associates in many parts of the world.

Born in the Rhondda (Fawr) Valley, South Wales,in 1836, Owen 'Morien' Morgan became intrigued by these oral traditions which he gathered and studied, comparing them to similar traditions from many other cultures around the world. A journalist with the Cardiff-based "Western Mail" newspaper, he wrote from 1870 until his death in 1921 about the traditions of druidism, the remnants of which he found in the folklore of the South Wales valleys. Traditions that focussed on the safe haven at Dinas, Rhondda, the ancient druid centre to which many now believe the surviving druids fled, secretly regrouping again after their dramatically tragic massacre by the Romans on Ynys Môn (Anglesey), North Wales, around AD 78.

In particular Morien focused his researches on the oral traditions of what he termed the sacred mountain of the druids of Morganwg (the Siluria of the Romans). This, according to Morien's interpretation of the oral traditions of the South Wales valleys, was 'Mynydd Dinas' in the Rhondda Valley - the focal point of the area, rising steeply from the ancient druid city of Dinas, Rhondda, which was entered via the gate to the city at Porth, Rhondda. From the summit of Mynydd Dinas, Morien discovered that local tradition maintained that in ancient times the druids gathered on the winter solstice eve to observe the death of the old sun (representing the death of the old year) as it set over Gilfach Goch.

The next day, the Winter Solstice, when the sun stands still - rising no higher nor sinking any lower in the sky - the druids of Morganwg are said to have maintained a vigil until the dawn of the following morning some 40 hours later.

At sunrise Morien claims local tradition told that the sun was regarded as a new-born sun, the son of the old sun, the 'Mabyn', whose rising marked the turning of the solar year. With this rising the sun, depicted as a new-born baby boy, starting to rise higher again each day until the summer solstice. Local traditions collected by Morien spoke of a time when the whole community would observe these marker points of the natural solar year, the extreme positions of the sun as it moved back and forth along the horizon, marking the seasons and governing the local calendar of festivities.

the new-born sun rising over Mynydd Dinas, Rhondda
as seen from Nant y Gwyddon, Llwynypia, Rhondda, on December 22nd 1998

Copyright © December 1998 John Michael, Morien Institute

according to local tradition this was the ancient druidic sacred centre of Morganwg, South Wales, and Morien maintained that in those ancient traditions the new-born sun was represented as the sacred
"Mabyn of the Mabynogion"

As with many ancient peoples the celtic druids were renowned for their knowledge of the movements of the stars, and several classical writers referred to their teaching of natural philosophy and astronomy in their open-air universities and hedge schools. At that time the celtic druids controlled all of the islands of Prydain, which they shared with the Picts and pre-celtic hyperboreans, who were likely the direct descendents of the megalith builders.

Morien spent many years decoding the local druidic oral traditions into a clear account of the solar year, and the associated seasonal activities of the local communities, whose science and religion appears like that of many ancient societies to have been one and the same. Carefully, during the course of his studies, he pieced together the remnants of both re-enactments on the ground of past celestial events, and simultaneous enactments of live-sky celestial phenomena, ritual activities that according to local tradition were once practiced by the peoples of South Wales.

His pioneering approach to what is now termed astro-mythology was not limited to local traditions, and he compared the astro-mythology of the druids of Morganwg to those of the many other ancient cultures in which he discovered similar themes. Students of comparative mythology will find his books a treasure trove. Others may become confused at the wealth of material he covers, and the similar 'patterns of the solar year' he found in mythologies worldwide.

The main focus of the Morien Institute is the building of an Ancient Mysteries Archive - an online information resource, providing links to, and accounts of, the activities of the many organisations and individuals that, like Morien before them, either have been or are currently engaged in studying the pre-occupation that ancient peoples had with the skies.

The total dread of death and destruction coming from the skies is a common theme in the mythologies and oral traditions of many cultures, and the true extent of sky-watching activities in ancient times has only recently become more fully appreciated as a modern interdisciplinary approach finds astronomers, archæologists, climatologists and astro-mythologists working together and comparing notes to glean a clearer view of prehistory.

There are simply too many archæological anomalies which don't fit in with the currently prevailing 'gradualist' paradigm that passes for our present mis-understanding of prehistory, and the recent moves towards an interdisiciplinary approach to the study of these ancient mysteries offers a most welcome potential for progress.

Open-minded research is increasingly showing evidence of sophisticated skywatching by ancient peoples several millennia before it appears to have deteriorated into a fragmented mish-mash of superstitious religious practices centred on appeasing the various 'sky gods' of the ancient world. What caused this decline is a matter of contention within the historical sciences generally, but the recent trend towards the re-evaluation of astro-mythologies is proving their true worth as an archive of oral tradition within which the accurate observations of ancient skywatchers has been recorded, and in many cases encoded by astonomer-priests for access only by their elite initiates.

The Morien Institute takes the view that the inhabitants of modern industrialised societies spend so little time out in the open air, especially at night, that they rarely consider the visible universe as part of their greater environment. Even today, the peoples of many non-industrialised societies regard the night sky with the same awe as did those in ancient times. They see the cycles of the sun, moon, planets and stars and regard them as a normal part of their environment. One which they can see with their own eyes to extend beyond the circle of the horizon out into the plane of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the sun in it's annual journey through the background of stars we call today the Zodiac.

This was the Caer Sidi of the ancient celtic druids, which was a model for the open-air temples of many ancient cultures.

Because of this world-view they were alert to all unusual and temporary celestial phenomena such as meteors (which manifest as shooting-stars), comets, and the unpredictable rogue asteroids that make up a significant part of the family of celestial bodies in the visible and invisible universe. Occasionally, wandering celestial bodies in orbits that intersect the plane of the earth's orbital path have collided with this planet. Modern researchers focussing on this are beginning to piece together a more accurate history of the past several millennia, simply by moving their perspectives to the study of the dynamic recent history of the solar system in which our resilient planet exists.

Only in this wider cosmic context can we ever hope to understand the true history of human civilisation.

Previous mysteries regarding the collapse of ancient civilisations in the first, second and third millennia BC, are beginning to be explained as climatologists and geologists find more and more evidence that abrupt climate changes seem to have been the main determining factor. But it is the contribution of astronomers, especially those involved with the study of potentially hazardous earth-crossing objects such as asteroids, comets, and their associated meteor streams, that is beginning to offer more credible explanations for the causes of the abrupt climate changes that were responsible for the collapse of so many civilisations in remote antiquity.

Even into historical times space-weather has had it's dramatic effects, and many open-minded scientists are coming to realise that the effects it has had on human civilisation stretches back even into remote antiquity - well before any form of sophisticated civilisation is generally accepted to have begun. One of the leading scientists in this new appreciation of prehistory is Victor Clube, an astro-physicist who believes that the history of human civilisation can only be understood in the context of the recent dynamic history of the solar system:

"The climatic evidence in other words is consistent with an underlying environmental influence in the form of high level submicron dust delivered by fragile meteoroids controlling mean temperature, which essentially dominates the late Upper Pleistocene (civilisation recession) and Holocene (civilisation advance)" [ 1 ]

The Akkadian empire of Mesopotamia, the early Bronze Age societies in Greece, Anatolia and Israel, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, and the Indus Valley civilisation in India, all collapsed within the same short period, as did the Chinese Hongshan culture. Evidence is now being pieced together from many different sources around the world of devastating abrupt climate changes that affected those areas, one of which appears to have begun very suddenly at around 2350 BC (± 200 yrs). Tree-ring evidence from the peat bogs of Ireland, ice-cores from Greenland and Antarctica, and marine sediments from the Gulf region and elsewhere, are each showing evidence of abrupt climate changes at several periods in the past few thousand years, and astronomers such as Victor Clube have been correlating these with periodically increased fluxes of activity from the Taurid complex of meteor streams - debris from the disintegrating comet Encke.

It is now believed that impacts by celestial bodies, and 'dust-loading' of the stratosphere from cometary dust (probably from the remnants of the suspected giant comet that was the progenitor of the Taurid-Arietid complex of meteor streams) triggered the abrupt climate changes that seem to have been responsible for the collapse of so many Bronze Age societies. And it is beginning to be appreciated that these catastrophes could well have happened in a similar, yet less dramatic, fashion to the impact in the Gulf of Mexico region 65 million years ago which seems to have been responsible for the final demise of the dinosaurs.

The Morien Institute takes the view that the builders of the great megalithic monuments, and the wooden and earthen structures that seem to have come before them, were motivated by their desire to predict the cycles of the various celestial phenomena that make up the immediate solar system, especially the occasional visitors such as the comets with their destructive meteoritic trails that had wreaked so much havoc in the past.

Most ancient mythologies and religious beliefs are steeped in celestial traditions, star myths and sky lore, often incorporating variations on the themes of 'angels that fell from heaven' and 'celestial battles between the Gods', whose favourite weapon - the thunderbolt - appears in the mythologies and oral traditions of many peoples. These mythologies also tell of 'golden ages', 'lost cities and continents' and 'inundated lands' that are consistent with Plato's writings about Atlantis - the rejection of which have turned many archæologists and historians into unfortunate apologists for a standard paradigm of prehistory that is itself sadly lacking in credibility.

Morien began the task of unravelling the complex web of druidic mysteries, clarifying their understanding of the cycles of the various heavenly bodies which brought them such reverance and power in the archaic world that even the might of the Roman Empire feared it enough to try to destroy it. The Morien Institute Network is continuing the work on druidic astro-mythology begun by Owen 'Morien' Morgan in the late 19th. century, with a focus on the comparative astro-mythology that he pioneered in his efforts to better understand the ancient mysteries of many peoples and cultures around the world. Practical astro-archæology and skywatching actvities compliment this research, which seeks simply to glean a better understanding of the skywatching activities of the peoples and cultures of antiquity.

As we enter the 21st century technological advances are coming to the aid of ocean scientists of all descriptions, though it will likely be the marine archæologists whose discoveries will change our picture of the past most significantly. We cannot go on thinking of the past from the scant knowledge available to us from excavations of the remains of ancient peoples discovered solely on the dry land we now live on. During the last Ice Age the sea-levels were some 300 feet lower than they are today, and a wide band either side of the equator enjoyed a pleasent enough climate for human civilisation to have flourished in many parts of the world.

Neither can we continue to look at the prehistory of human civilisation as if our planet somehow stands alone in empty space. Our immediate solar system environment is nothing short of a 'cosmic shooting gallery', and the environmental effects of encounters with comets, asteroids and cometary debris is something that will define and add detail to our picture of the past as research in many disciplines develop during the early decades of the 21st century ...

please take a look at our Ancient Mysteries Bookshoppe for a wide selection of books
that challenge orthodox views of prehistory on every continent

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