Bryn Celli Ddu Solstice 2025 Part 5: Unearthing the Bear Shaped Capstone at Lligwy Neolithic Burial Chamber in the Sacred Landscape of Anglesey.
- apeach5
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Welcome back to Stone Temple Gardening, The sacred heart of Anglesey blogs: where we dig deep to unearth the ancient heart of Bryn Celli Ddu—the fifth chapter of my solstice journey through the sacred landscape of Neolithic and Bronze Age Anglesey.
In this series, I’ve been tracing the convergence of stone, light, and spirit at Bryn Celli Ddu, where the past speaks through sacred blueschist and quartz symbolism. From the solstice alignment illuminating the tomb’s chamber in Part 1, to uncovering a potential lost stone circle in Part 2, exploring the phenomenology of place in Part 3, and delving into the geological and mythic heart of blueschist and quartz in Part 4, each step has deepened my attunement to this ancient landscape.
Now, in this fifth instalment, I recount the transformative moments of the midsummer solstice 2025, when the sun’s golden beam in Bryn Celli Ddu and the haunting presence of the Gorsedd’s sacred blueschist opened my eyes to a living, animistic world. A spontaneous visit to the Lligwy Burial Chamber revealed a bear-like form in stone, while the Gorsedd and the quartz-rich Sun Stone unveiled their own enigmatic faces. These encounters, woven with the synchronicity of a carved river pebble unearthed that same day, dissolved the boundary between archaeology and intuition, inviting me to see the landscape as the Neolithic builders did—a place where the land harbours spirit, stones speak, and the sacred endures. Join me as I explore these moments of revelation, where solstice alignment, quartz symbolism, and the animate spirit of Neolithic Anglesey converge to reshape my understanding of Bryn Celli Ddu and its timeless dialogue with the divine.
The Astronomical Solstice: 21st of June 2025
As referred to in my previous essays, the summer and winter solstices are events that span roughly a week with the centre of this frame being what we, in our modern scientific paradigm of precision, call the solstice. It is actually a short period rather than one day. My 2025 summer solstice journey had begun the previous morning of the 20th of June, standing inside the chamber at Bryn Celli Ddu as the midsummer sun traced its line of gold to the rose-flecked stone. It ended, many hours later, after the day’s excavation, with a climb to the Gorsedd—its carved rock art warm beneath my hands, its quartz-studded ridge spilling out long views over the ceremonial landscape and towards the dark blue shoulders of Snowdonia. See here for the full story of that day.
The solstice alignment at Bryn Celli Ddu awakened something within me, a spark that had been smouldering for years. The golden beam on the sacred blueschist peeled back the veil of scholarship, revealing Neolithic Anglesey’s living pulse and preparing me to meet its sacred sites on their own terms.
I had been studying, reading, thinking, and writing in depth about Bryn Celli Ddu since the previous August—I had in the past journeyed there three or four times, each visit layering detail upon detail. This time, the scales had begun to fall from my eyes. I felt more attuned—ready to meet these places on their own terms. And now, standing here, it all began to make sense. I returned to my campsite with my imagination sparkling.
By nightfall I was still adrift in that reverie, my thoughts moving between the grounded precision of archaeology and the fluid, instinctive knowing of place. The visit had begun to dissolve the boundary between the two, letting the modern and the ancient worldviews flow into one another. This dialogue between precision and intuition drew me back to the Gorsedd the next day, its blueschist bulk calling like a beacon across the landscape. Having felt the land’s rhythm at Bryn Celli Ddu, I was ready to meet this primordial outcrop again on its own terms, to explore its forms and echoes as both an archaeological anchor and a sacred presence that had haunted my vision since arriving.
Back in Camp
That night, sleep came reluctantly. I stayed up late by the campfire, with Ursa Major wheeling slowly above my head, and mentally weighed my morning. I could rise early again, joining the hundreds who would drum the sun into its midsummer zenith at Bryn Celli Ddu—or I could stay in my camp, conserving my strength for the long day ahead. The previous 48 hours had been tiring, and I was exhausted physically and mentally, so I chose the latter. Let the celebrants keep their vigil; I had already seen the light walk down the chamber once, and the earth can contain only so many hearts, there would be no room for me among the hundreds attending. So, with a little regret, I went to bed for a proper sleep… and dreamed of stones and stars, of water running beneath the earth, and of crystals catching lightning in the dark.
Lligwy Burial Chamber: A Neolithic Shrine
I woke around 7am fully refreshed. Solstice dawn had passed, and the clouds were low, the air damp with that soft threat of summer Welsh rain. After breakfast I realised I had some time spare before the dig resumed. So, I decided to visit the nearby Lligwy Burial Chamber—a Neolithic burial tomb famed for its large capstone. I had long meant to see this site, and today was the perfect opportunity. This was a spur of the moment decision, but, after what I found there, I now ask myself whether something deeper was prompting me to explore. Anyway, off I set through the grey morning. I wound my way along leafy green single-track lanes with barely another soul on the road. The grey weather muted everything except the hum of my thoughts and the quiet breath of the land. At the sign for Lligwy, I stopped, parked and passed through a kissing gate to be greeted by a small committee of Welsh sheep, chewing the grass gravely and staring at me as if judging my purpose. But then I looked up—and saw it.
The famous capstone of Lligwy—huge, ancient, hunched like some crouching beast—balanced impossibly on eight upright limestone slabs. Built between 3500 and 3000 BCE, and reused for 1000 years well into the Bronze Age, it once held the remains of 15 to 20 individuals, along with flint and pottery (Lynch 1970). But what struck me wasn’t the archaeology—it was the presence.
I gazed at the pocked-marked lichen-flecked surface and there it was: so obvious, the perfect shape of a bear’s head staring eternally out across the land. Simulacrum? Pareidolia? Perhaps. But in that moment, it felt true. Not a trick of light, not a fancy of psychology, but a form the stone had always held. And I felt it looking back. Paul Devereux and others have written about the importance of natural forms at sacred sites—how ancient peoples saw in stone the spirits of beasts, gods, ancestors. Lligwy, I realised, wasn’t just a burial place—it was animate shrine.
But why a bear?
The bear, a potent symbol in Iron Age Celtic mythology and possibly linked to Ursa Major’s celestial arc around the North Pole, resonates with the animistic worldview that may have shaped Lligwy’s selection as a sacred site. The Greeks referred to Britain as Hyperborea—literally “beyond the North Wind”—while the Romans described the islands as lying “under the bear,” a clear allusion to Ursa Major. Bears did exist in Neolithic Britain, though their populations were dwindling, and they retained a legendary memory in Wales, preserved most strikingly in the name Arthur, which has a Celtic linguistic root in arto or artois, “bear.” In Welsh, arth (bear) and ur/gur (man) combine to form “bear-man.” Bears thus stand at a symbolic crossroads: embodiments of physical strength and protective nurturing, yet also markers of death, cyclical time, and spiritual transformation—qualities apt for a temple-tomb such as Lligwy.
While evidence for Neolithic bear cults in Europe remains sparse and debated, several findings suggest ritual significance. Bear teeth have been found in necklaces from the late Fat’yanovo culture (c. 1500 BC) in Russia, while rock carvings in northern Norway, dated to c. 5000 BC, depict bear hunting and possible ritual scenes (Mithen 2003, 238; Bradley 2020, 51–53). These finds resonate with ethnographic parallels: the Ainu of Japan and the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia both venerated the bear as a spiritual intermediary and a cyclical being whose death and rebirth sustained cosmic order (Hallowell 1926). Such analogies, while not conclusive, suggest that Britain’s Neolithic communities may also have understood the bear within a broader northern cosmology, where earth and sky, tomb and constellation, were joined in symbolic dialogue.
But, with all the caveats put to one side, there it was. As plain as day.
This encounter, at the time, felt uncanny. But, in retrospect, perhaps not. I had been pondering a shape, or form I thought I could see at the Gorsedd, and others at West Kennet and Uley long barrows that I have written about here. And landscape figures here .
The solstice alignment in the tomb and the sweeping vista from the Gorsedd had caught and crystallised a process that had been quietly unfolding in me for years: a slow attunement to the landscape itself, a widening of perception from the earth to the far horizon.
I had been studying, reading, thinking, and writing about Bryn Celli Ddu for decades and over the years I had visited the site four or five times, each visit layering detail upon detail. Yet before now, I had not seen with the eyes my recent studies had given me. To move beyond the focus of the tomb and into the greater landscape. This time, with all my preparation and permission to access all the monuments on private land, the scales were ready to fall from my eyes. I felt attuned—more prepared to meet these places on their own terms, without the unfinished charts of science to map the only way. And now, standing here in front of Lligwy, my mind feeling tentatively for tenuous lost links to a mythic past, it all began to make sense.
Later, that same day, I would stand atop the Gorsedd outcrop and face the Sunstone—another enigma staring out from quartz-flecked rock. I would see more signs and signals. Each place seemed to echo the last. Each revealed a form—unbidden, unrecorded, yet powerfully present. Lligwy was the first pulse in a current I didn’t yet know I was following.
In hindsight, it was the clearest sign yet of the animism I had long suspected lay within Neolithic landscape. I had first be introduced to this animist view of sites through the work of Professor Terence Meaden at Avebury and elsewhere. The work of Paul Devereux was also an important influence on my thoughts too having read many of his works over the decades. I found it intriguing, but once I started stone Temple Gardening, my thoughts and reading led me inevitably down this path. For months I’d been thinking about simulacra—about the bull I saw on the capstone at Uley Long Barrow, the fish-like form above the entrance to Bryn Celli Ddu and others at Carnac, the faces in so many stones around Europe. I had started looking more actively, deeply for symbolic simulacra in the stones. But this was something more than reading, thinking and looking at pictures. This was more direct, vivid. And what was waiting for me later that day would deepen this connection even further.
Still humming with the strangeness of Lligwy, I returned to the dig site. But something drew me back—not to the trench on the ridge, but the outcrop below. The Gorsedd. And I had not yet visited the nearby solstice aligned Sun Stone. Alone now, with time to truly look, I turned once more toward the outcrop that had haunted the edge of my vision since arrival.
The Gorsedd: Echoes of an Earth God
I approached the Blueschist crag, crouched like a question in its field. A surfacing leviathan of stone, its authority now more personal. More present. And being on my own, I had time to look. Circling lazily around its form, I took in its crevices and cracks, mounded pate and rocky fissures. Soaking up its presence.
There is a reason the Gorsedd is so important to this ritual landscape. It possesses all the features Paul Devereux (2000) identifies as markers of sacred geography and natural temples: prominence, unusual geology, wide landscape views, acoustic resonance, and, as we shall see, simulacra.
The Gorsedd’s possession of an echo is particularly notable, audible from Bryn Celli Ddu. (Devereux & Nash. 2006). It links the site to a global pattern where rock art is found in reverberant places—from the painted caves of France to Neolithic sites across Europe and beyond (Reznikoff, 1987). On its summit are four cup-marks, arranged in a subtle arc. These marks are echoed at Bedd y Foel and other nearby sites. Mike Woods communicated to me that there are other possible examples rock art in the area that may also be linked to ringing rocks or lithophones.
Clive Ruggles (1999) argues that Neolithic carvings, such as those at Newgrange, may reflect celestial movements like solar or lunar cycles. Other scholars share this view on rock art. Martin Sweatman and Alistair Coombs (2018) interpret Palaeolithic art at Lascaux as depicting constellations like Taurus (Athens Journal of History). These studies collectively suggest rock art may encode astronomical knowledge. Closer to hand, Dr. Woods has noted that the cup-marks at Bedd y Foel face the solstice sunrise. As for the arc of four cup marks on the Gorsedd, to my eye, they evoked the curved tail of Ursa Major as it endlessly circles and points to the north pole. The Great Bear pointing north with its great tail. As Dr. Woods has warned however, this sort of projection is full of problems. It is highly speculative. Bears again though, but that must be coincidence, mustn’t it?
This was all hovering just beneath conscious thought as I tuned my perception into the broader cast of the landscape. Circling the outcrop, viewing it from all angles I began to realise the more I moved, the more it seemed to shift. The light and shadow played tricks—or truths. I mused upon the wonderful views over Snowdonia, another sacred sign according to Devereux. Places of seeing were important and marked as such by prehistoric cultures from Lapland to the Americas. As if to see was to bring into being the herds to hunt as the eye travelled through the sacred geography of the tribe.
After my encounter at Lligwy I was not expecting anything better but looking intently I began to realise that the Gorsedd before me, from certain angles, resembled a reclining face, gazing skyward. Another also revealed itself, more subtle, but to my now attuned eye, present. Another warning must be mentioned, extensive quarrying in the Middle Ages has left scars, the rock has undoubtedly changed, yet the impression remains. One side has not been robbed out, and that is the more subtle form. Forever staring at the stars. A sleeping giant? A watcher of the heavens? Simulacra are yet another sign of natural sanctity in animist societies. Devereux notes that pareidolia- seeing familiar forms in random shapes- is a hallmark of sacred perception. Modern science may dismiss it as projection. A quirk of psychology waiting to trip up the credulous. But a phenomenologist knows that meaning is always filtered through cultural world views. Ours is a technical age where psychology is a science not an art, whereas theirs’ was holy and mythic. The sacred was seen, felt, lived—and perceived, in mind and place. Spirits inhabited their psychogeography, and revealed themselves in the landscape, imbued with myth and memory, speaking the stories of their cultural history. Voices in rocks, faces in nature, signs in the stars. All were part of the pantheon of belief, ready to be called upon to remember, enact and underline tribal memory through ritual use.
In this reading, the Gorsedd becomes an earth god, a face of rare, quartz-flecked stone. It rests beside the River Braint—whose name translates as “noble” or “privileged” both connoting royalty or sanctity, with etymological links to the Celtic water goddess Bridgit—and beneath the prominent sacred mountains of Snowdonia, dreaming in the clouds. It echoes when you speak. It bears ancient art. These are not imaginative. These are criteria of the sacred.
To stand there—to feel the breeze, hear the echoes, trace the cup-marks, listen to the land, and watch the face emerge from rock—is to understand something the archaeology alone cannot convey. The place is not just marked as special. It feels special. And that, in the end, is perhaps the strongest evidence of all.
The Sun Stone: A Final Threshold Awaits
Yet the Gorsedd was not the only stone to speak. Across the field, the Sun Stone stood waiting, its quartz-flecked form another thread in the landscape’s sacred weave. Drawn by the Gorsedd’s resonance and the faces I had seen in stone, I approached this enigmatic monolith, eager to discover what further secrets it might reveal in the light of my solstice awakening…
Conclusion
As I stood before the Gorsedd, its sacred blueschist form shaping of ancient faces and echoing with the pulse of Neolithic Anglesey, I felt the landscape shift beneath me—not in earth, but in perception. Over three days, I had crossed three thresholds: the solstice alignment of Bryn Celli Ddu, where sunlight kissed quartz symbolism into life; the Lligwy Burial Chamber, where a bear’s head gazed from stone; and now the Gorsedd, its reclining giant staring skyward, etched with cup-marks that might trace Ursa Major’s arc. Each encounter was a pulse in a deeper current, amplified by the synchronicity of a carved river pebble unearthed that same solstice day—a tangible bridge between the empirical and the mythic, confirming that the Neolithic builders saw, as I did, faces in the land.
These were not mere stones, but participants in a living dialogue, their quartz symbolism shimmering with intent, their forms resonating with the animistic spirit of a landscape that still speaks across five millennia. The Gorsedd, with its echo and art, was no passive outcrop; it was a sacred anchor, a face of the earth god dreaming beside the River Braint, beneath Snowdonia’s sacred peaks. Yet one final threshold awaited: the Sun Stone, its sacred blueschist streaked with quartz veins like frozen lightning, its faint profile gazing toward the Gorsedd and the solstice alignment. In the sixth and final chapter of this journey, I will step toward the Sun Stone, where a third face emerges—a form that binds Bryn Celli Ddu to its sacred landscape in a timeless choreography of light, stone, and spirit. Join me as we explore this last revelation, where three days, three thresholds, three faces and one bear in stone converge to unveil Neolithic Anglesey as a living landscape, its monuments not just relics, but active voices in a dialogue that continues to shape those who walk its paths.
Dr Alexander Peach
August 2025
Select Bibliography
Devereux, P. (2000) The Sacred Place: The Ancient Origins of Holy and Mystical Sites. London: Cassell.
Devereux, P. and Nash, G. (2006) ‘Echoes in stone: acoustic phenomena at prehistoric sites’, Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, 1(2), pp. 217–234.
Lynch, F. (1970) Prehistoric Anglesey: The Archaeology of the Island to the Roman Conquest. Anglesey: Anglesey Antiquarian Society.
Reznikoff, L. (1987) ‘On the sound dimension of prehistoric painted caves and rocks’, in Tarasti, E. (ed.) Musical Signification: Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 541–557.
Ruggles, C. (1999) Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sweatman, M.B. and Coombs, A. (2018) ‘Decoding European Palaeolithic art: the Lascaux Shaft Scene as a constellation’, Athens Journal of History, 4(3), pp. 171–190.
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