Large perforated stones standing upright; left one locally known as “Menetol”, polygonal in form, pierced by circular hole sculpted through center; right one known as “Tolven”, similarly pierced; b) drawing showing outlines of stones and perforations at “centers.Giedion observes that the perforations appear to have been shaped by sculpting from both sides as in countersinking so that the center of the hole is also the center of the stone. He writes that these megaliths are believed to have possessed magic properties of healing and rebirth. As ritual objects it is thought that they may have been early sacrificial stones or altars. According to Neumann, the feminine symbol of the dolmen and gate is always connected with rebirth through the woman’s womb, thus the act of passing through signifies a journey to renewal. Giedion states that within memory Menetol has been used for curing infirm children by passing them through the aperture and for healing lame people by lifting them sunward through Menetol’s ring. According to Levy the anointing and circumambulation of monolithic stones has been practiced until recent times. this leads to the belief that they were endowed with sacred meaning from earliest times, when the setting up of a stone for the habitation of a spirit, as a place kept sacred to him, to which be could be summoned by rites, was practiced. Layard Cn writes that the rough-worked stone, or the stone "cut out without hands” of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, carries with it the meaning of the immanence of the spirit which fills the whole earth like a great mountain. Stones carry within them the spirit of the living men who erect them and their contact with the earth kept them within holy ground. [- - Levy.]
A long time fan of Julian Cope’s two volumes on the Standing Stones of Britain and Europe this caught my eye . . . down in Cornwall . . . .
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