Pierre with the nine steps

The stone with the nine steps is a site which is located on the commune of Soubrebost, near Pontarion, in the department of the Creuse, in France.

It is remarkable with many point of view and was studied relatively little (see bibliography at the end of the article). A panel at the entry of the site announces it like a “archaeological enigma”.

A rather stiff path goes up at the top of the hill where large blocks of Granite are. Although the site is entirely timbered, one realizes, in particular the winter, that one dominates the landscape with a panoramic sight with 360 degrees and, in certain directions, very wide.

The site, very oddly, does not profit from any protection to the title from the Loi of 1930 on the protection of the sites and landscapes. The development of timbering strongly harms its appreciation. It is about a spontaneous timbering of oaks, birches and beeches, due to the absence of maintenance and pasture, but also of plantations of coniferous tree, spruces (including a chaos) and, more recently, Douglas (already stopping the sight towards the North-East). The site was undoubtedly wooded in the past and the name of the commune, " Soubrebost" (super bosco) " means besides; with the top of wood ". This is an index moreover to think that the top of the hill, with value of Temple, was to probably be a clearing " with the top of the bois" , with a released sight, which it would be interesting to find today.

At the top, indeed, is an important granitic chaos, and at the highest point, famous “the stone with the nine steps”. It belongs to a whole of 3 cut stones which form a furnace bridge where some think that could be practiced human Sacrifices. The blocks of granite present many basins of erosion where the rainwater remains. The local tradition wants that the children reached of Méningite cure by drinking the water contained in the basin of the summit stone. There are perhaps a relation between this tradition and a distance memory of sacrifices of children.

Also, below a close hill, in the North-West, is a Gallo-Roman Nécropole with ballot boxes with incineration cut on the spot in the granite.

Departure of the path starting from the road of Pontarion…
One of chaos, in north, downwards…
Basin “with meningitides” on the stone with the nine steps

Geology and morphology of the site

It is about a high headland advancing between two wet small valleys. At the top the erosion released from the blocks of granite which present many commonly named circular basins " marmites" or " cauldrons of sorcières". These basins are themselves of the erosive forms formed by the chemical dissolution of the granite. It is necessary thus to imagine a true inversion of relief, i.e. the granite which is today at the high point of the landscape found at the low point.

The shapes of basin are sometimes very regular, until making believe that they are " of hand of homme" , but they can also be irregular, according to their situation on the block or their stepping. At the top of the stone to the nine steps two basins are which communicate between them what forms a small arch. Largest is a very beautiful oval. On the photograph of right-hand side, it is filled of sheets, mainly of oak, which give the scale. Water contained was cold (photograph taken on February 4th, 2006 with 15:00).

A double enclosure symbolic system and a clearing?

One does not perceive a continuous form today really being able to make speak about enclosure but the forms in place can let it suppose. When the path of access is borrowed, it is noticed very easily that one crosses two terraces successive apart 70 meters in straight line. The installation of the ground which was carried out, in particular for the highest terrace, is considerable.

At least one of these terraces is found clearly on the opposite side. It corresponds even to a nature very different from timbering, a strict limit for the extension of the houx, which lets think that with the top of the terrace the site was not formerly wooded. A thorough study of timbering could give a better appreciation of it.

Whatever the reality or not of the “clearing” at the top of timbering, the two successive stages that had to be crossed were to have a function symbolic system. It is the crowned perimeter, that which defines the “Temple”. (See also the article Sacrifice in paragraph 3.1 concerning crowned space)

Cut stones

They are located on the highest point of the site.

Let us say once again how much that seems important. When one is upright on the stone with the nine steps, not because it is largest of chaos, but well because of his position, one dominates the site and the whole of the landscape to kilometers with the round.

In an unquestionable way, 3 stones are cut. It is possible that one 4th is it also, but the forms can be natural there. The latter is that which one perceives in first, drawn up vis-a-vis us when one arrives by the path. Broad and narrow, high approximately, card-indexed vertically, but probably in a natural way, it 3 m presents like notches partly high, without one being able to undoubtedly say that they are artificial forms.

It masks the 3 other stones located behind:

a block rounded, high of 1 m approximately 50, where 3 forms of steps coarsely cut are seen clearly to go up on the top of the stone.
behind of this one, higher, approximately 2 m 50, the " hone with the nine gradins" ; it presents 3 forms cut in the rough rock: 9 steps, broad one meter at least and high 10 cm each one; a kind of gutter which goes down from the top, passes under the first walk and from goes away towards the back of the block; the top itself which was slightly cut to form a perfectly plane platform, without touching with the two natural basins.
a lengthened block, very obviously cut on its upper part, to form a lengthened platform, of trapezoidal form, with a broader part on the side of the stone to the steps and a lower notch in which is dug a concave form, size of a bowl, without having the depth of it.

The whole of these three stones seems to indicate a direct relationship between them.

Sights of the " hone with the nine gradins" 1. Side view, towards the south, the long table vis-a-vis us 2. Front view where one sees the gutter intended to collect a liquid coming from the steps 3. Side view, towards north, since the long table, where the end of the gutter is seen, and behind the 3rd stone (its 3 “steps” are on the back, nonvisible here) and the top of 4th, with the background

Historical and religious assumptions

A crowned site of Celtic tradition

There is not a doubt that this site is a crowned site, a temple, a cathedral with open sky.

Several elements attach it to the Gallic worships of Celtic tradition. We take as reference work of Christian Guyonvarc' H and Francoise the Russet-red (see bibliography).

But mainly, here as with Tintignac close to Tulle, Corrèze, it is the geographical element: the high point and panoramic vision, that of the territory of which it is the center.

Because the Celtic Sanctuary, the Nemeton , if it does not need any construction, is a precise geographical place. It is the umbilical point, the Omphalos as in Delphes, the point of space where the sky and the ground, deaths and the alive ones meet, but also where time is destroyed. The ritual ones are practiced at the same time in precise geographical places and with exact dates. And at the time of the calendar festivals, that of Samain , on November 1st, which mark the beginning of the dark period and that of Beltaine , on May 1st, which marks the beginning of the clear period, time and space are abolished in the sanctuary where it is then allowed human to meet deaths, inhabitants of beyond, of the Sidh (étymologiquement “the world of peace”).

The stones are not the liturgical object, they are only elements of the ritual, certainly certainly crowned. The basin at the top of the stone to the nine steps is secondary in comparison with the high position of the stone which is fundamental. Of course it is one more, one natural gift, and could have a function in particular purification by the water of the sky. But basically the furnace bridge (étymologiquement, the “high place”) consisted the stone is the point of meeting between the ground and the sky. And the significance of the stone and granite chaos can be even underground. The Celts were people of blacksmiths accustomed to draw metal from the entrails of the ground where are born and grow the stones (see Mircea Eliade Forgerons and alchemists ).

Frequently the sanctuary is in the middle of a forest of oaks. It is well the case here, with the additional assumption of the two successive enclosures and the clearing within crowned wood.

But the Celtic worship clearly solar and is based on the alternation of the shade and the light. The staircase is vis-a-vis the West, vis-a-vis the setting sun. It is the starting point of the world of died in the Celtic crowned geography. But the Celts believing in the immortality of the heart, for them death is the beginning of eternal peace. It is night that is born the day. The dark side of space does not have the negative connotation which we could give him. And death itself is absolutely not feared.

Last nine steps… symbolic system of figure 9

All starts with… the figure of human gestation: 9 months. As an pre-indo-European, Me , at the origin of “month”, means the moon and this one is obviously closely related on maternity and femininity. At the Mayas, Déesse Last nines is the goddess of full moon. The Celtic calendar (see the Calendar of Coligny) is lunar. And the Celts count the nights.

It is the figure of the completion of a creation, the end, death, and new beginning, the rebirth. It is possible there that one finds the origin of the adoption of numeration bases 10 of them: 9 months of human gestation… The homonymy, in French, with the “new” adjective does not have anything a chance either.

It is found with a similar direction in a great quantity of traditions all over the world, associated with the sun and the light, or to the moon and darkness because it carries in him this duality. The Égyptiens named figure 9 " the Mountain of Soleil". At the Aztec , to gain the eternal rest the heart must traverse nine stages. King Nezahualcoyotl made build a temple of 9 stages.

The Neuvaine represents liturgiquement completion, full-time.

The nine is the whole.

That is appropriate perfectly with the Celtic tradition for which at the time of the ritual calendar festival time stops then starts again. One year being equivalent to eternity (see Mircea Eliade the Myth of the eternal return ). That indicates also the festival which was certainly celebrated on the sanctuary since they were not it at the same place according to a correspondence of time and space: the Samain , on November 1st, which gave, by the means of Ireland, modern Halloween, the day when the world of dead and that of alive communicate. However time stops and the two worlds communicate only in the space of the sanctuary and even more precisely at the central point of this one, as Delphes Omphalos, the navel of the world, represented by a stone or another Celtic Omphalos, the hole of the Youdig in the marsh of the Yeun Ellez, Brennilis, Finistere. Here, on the Celtic nemeton of Soubrebost, in fact the stone with the nine steps is the navel of the world.

It is normal that one reaches it by 9 stages, in fact the 9 stages lead of this world to dead and with the rebirth in the other world.

Human sacrifices among Gallic Celts

The ancient texts, which were used much as a basis, are certainly exaggerated. They especially sought to calumniate and make pass the druids for rough bloodthirsty men for purposes to draw aside them (Cicéron Pro Fonteio X, 21: “Which thus is unaware of indeed that they (the Gallic ones) kept so far the cruel and barbarian habit of immoler of the men? What do you think that can be the faith and the pity of those which believe that it is very easy to alleviate the immortal gods by the crime and human blood? ”). But they show nevertheless that these sacrifices existed well. Pomponius Mixed and Posidonios speaks about voluntary victims. But these writings of the Roman conquest, towards 50 after JC, often refer to old traditions: " There remain still traces of an abolished brutality, and although they abstain from extreme massacres, it does not remain about it less than they draw from the blood of the victims led to the autels." (Pomponius Mixed, III, 2,18).

The Irish texts, which date from the 7th century, at the time of christianization, speak pure young men, even of young princes (" first nés") whose blood was to sprinkle the ground to return its fertility to him. As in the bible, the son of Abraham, it is finally an animal which one sacrifices to the place of the young man. But it is, there still, the memory of the old traditions which evolved to the animal sacrifices. The bible devotes nevertheless the preeminence of blood. Caïn, the farmer, unlike Abraham wandering Pasteur, does not obtain anything God with vegetable offerings…

Concerning ritual decapitation, it was usually practiced by the Gallic Celts who exposed the heads of their enemies overcome on piles. It could thus also be practiced at the time of sacrifices of other but prisoners of war perhaps also. However, it is not made by it mention in the ritual sacrifices of fertility mentioned above.

Stone with the nine steps: a place of human sacrifices?

This assumption already “defrayed the chronicle” in the past and one will find of it no trace in the tourist documents which conceal the site besides as if it were somewhat undesirable or that one did not have anything to say some.

However it seems very probable altogether. These sacrifices very frequent, were perhaps not practiced only at the time of certain great calendar festivals or when the royal reason required it. But the structure of the pertaining to worship building corresponds perfectly to this possible use. It is at least the thesis defended here which is based on the analysis of the cut stones and of their operation together according to the assumption which follows.

the long stone forms a table of sacrifice where the lengthened person probably has the Artère distinct carotid, which facilitates the position of its behind leaning head on the part in lower notch thus offering its neck to the druid sacrificator. Its blood is collected in a cauldron which comes to place in the concave content envisaged for this purpose (see the Chaudron of Gundestrup which is probably a sacrificial cauldron intended to collect blood). This topic is found in Graal, the chalice which is known as to have collected the blood of Christ (Graal would mean " blood royal"). Blood is invaluable because it has a high value symbolic system: it is the vital force, the source of the rebirth and has a close relationship with the fertility. The unproductive land finds the fertility if it is watered blood.

the stone with the nine steps poses a problem: it is not doubted that figure 9 has a value symbolic system and nothing a chance (cf higher) has; but the first walk is well too high to be able to be reached directly. Does that give a possible explanation to the 3rd stone which presents notches, like very summary steps, intended to go up on its top… but why? To perhaps precisely be used as " crawl of accès". If one imagines a wood flooring, perhaps arranged inclined, being pressed on this stone and going down again towards the stone of the sacrifice, one can reach the level of the first walk without the intermediary of others " marches" who would modify the number of it.

the rise of the 9 steps is, the day of Samonios (Gallic name of Samain), the passage in the Other World .

It is interesting to note that the configuration of the stones respects the Celtic direction symbolic system (but not only, and it is besides the direction of the rolling up of alive nature, shells, climbing plants…) and that one finds in many Irish accounts: the alive ones turn towards the line, while those which will die turn towards the left.

One can then think that the “lucky one” - such at the same time because he believes in the immortality of his heart and because he sacrifices himself (literally “becomes crowned”) for the cause of his people - dies on the top of the stone while finishing losing its blood. This blood streams on the steps, joined the gutter and comes to be spread on the crowned ground of the sanctuary fertilizing the whole of the territory thus consequently annihilation of space that of time in this precise point.

Thus conceived, this rite of fertility is well a cosmic offering so that the ground bears its fruits again and that the sun sees its race again increasing. With the first access one could be astonished to locate this rite at the beginning of the winter. But among Celts it is the night which generates the day as the calendar of Coligny shows it clearly and thus, in the same way, the dark season which will give rise to the clear season.

Thus the black wild boar can represent to him also this dark side of the Other World which gives death but generates nevertheless the life. Perhaps does it represent a supernatural being transgressing the limits of the two worlds? When the druid indicates itself like wild boar, obviously, it belongs clearly to the world of the alive ones, and it is a white wild boar, as in the mythical hunting of the sow Twrch Trwyth by the King Arthur.

In the same way, in a form obviously as modified by Christianity as for the wild boar which was the object of such an amount of religious vindication, " dogs noirs" represent the damnées hearts which it is necessary to renew with the hole of the hell, at the point of communication between the two worlds in Youdig of the marsh of Yeun Ellez in Brennilis in the Monts of Arrée. There still, under the Christian dressing-up, one recognizes the symbols of the Celtic beliefs.

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