Cathedrals As Time Machines

In Peter Lancaster Brown's, Megaliths, Myths and Men, written in 1976, he repeats the common misconception that English churches are often aligned with the sunrise of their saint. Allegedly, on the feast day or patronal saint day that a church was dedicated, the rise of the sun was aligned with the building. During that morning's mass the sun would shine evenly through the window over the apse and onto the nave. In reality, most cathedrals face generally eastwards but in very few cases towards the actual saint to which the church is dedicated. No amount of fiddling with details of local topography and calendar shift are able to explain the lack of alignments. The wishful thinking of antiquarians and archaeologists of the past has been debunked by more detailed surveys.

At the Edge, a now defunct magazine about "new interpretations of past and place in archaeology, folklore and mythology, talks more on church orientation here.

British Archaeology, "The voice of archaeology in Britain and beyond", says the same.


There are some notable exceptions, such as Rosslyn Chapel, above, in Roslin Scotland. Light shines through a passage on the day of St. Matthew. The Scotsman, an news service, details the "pagan" connections that this supposedly Christian church has in this article.

Churches which are aligned to their saint day are of interest to my profession. Many of these churches were built on top of or near the sites of henges, megalithic celestial calendars. Interestingly, this was suggested by multiple Popes as a way of converting and subduing pagans and their rituals. These henges are used by inter dimensional time travelers (IDTTers), such as myself, to move through time and dimensional space. Churches could have the proper alignments and components needed for IDTT. It appears that most of these British cathedrals do not. More on that later.