Lundy, Isle of Avalon

Trans-Europe St. Michael Line

Trans- Europe St. Michael Line

In the late 1950's Jean Richer publicized the existence of a main axis of sacred sites in Greece through Delphi, Athens, Delos, Camiros, Prasaias [Apollo's Temple], the Temple of Artemis at Agra, Eleusis and other sites. The line links not only Temples and sanctuaries of the god Apollo but also sites earlier dedicated to the goddess Artemis / Diana. His brother Lucien followed this up in 1977 in an article entitled 'The Saint Michael and Apollo axis' in which he extended his brother's line north-west where it passes through the holy island of Skellig Michael on the south-western coast of Ireland, after crossing several of  the most important sites in Europe dedicated to St. Michael, the archangel.  

There are at least three legends concerning Apollo that seem to refer to this line.

One legend recalls how Abaris, a druidic British priest of Apollo, travelled on the god's golden arrow from the British Isles to Greece to visit Pythagoras. ( Pythagoras is also said to have lived for a time on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land another site on this line.)

Another legend describes the return of Apollo from the land of The Hyperboreans to Delphi in a chariot drawn by swans.

The third concerns what are known as the 'Hyperborean Gifts.' These, packed in straw, were sent from Hyperboreans (British?) to Delos as gifts ( tributes) to Apollo.

'These first fruits, it is said, are hidden in wheaten straw, and no one knows what they are.' - Pausanius 

From northeast to southwest:-

Skellig Michael

St. Michael's chapel on Carn Brea in Cornwall

St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall

Mont St. Michel in Brittany

Bourges

Sagra di San Michele in Piedmont

San Michele at Castiglione di Garfagna

Perugia

Monte Sant' Angelo, Monte Gargano, the site of the first recorded appearance of the Archangel Michael.

Kerkyas

Delphi

Athens

Delos

Lindos

Mount Carmel in the Holy Land.

The line follows a bearing of 60*11' from Mount Carmel to Skellig Michael.  

Skellig Michael

Aerial View of Great Skellig Michael and Little Skellig Island

  'Skellig Michael consists of six stone beehive cells and a small oratory, set on a 700-foot pyramid of rock seven miles into the Atlantic off south-west Ireland.' Paul Johnson - A History of Christianity

Ancient Monastic Settlement in Skellig Michael, County Kerry, Munster, Republic of Ireland
 

The connection of the island with St. Michael is recorded from as early as the sixth century. from the ninth century the rock was subjected to the ravages of the Vikings. The Church suppressed the religious festivals at Skellig Michael during the nineteenth century. The rock has caverns and fissure caused by geological faults. There is a legend of an underground tunnel rediscovered and the blocked again in the nineteenth century. Three wells provide a water supply.

St. Michael's Carn Brea, Penwith

  Until the late nineteenth century a chapel to St. Michael stood on this prominent hilltop, surmounting a prehistoric chambered burial mound.  

St. Michael's Mount, Mounts Bay, Cornwall.

solitary hill - St. Michael chapel - iron age fortification / settlement.- beacon - giant legend

 A legend tells how St. Michael appeared to local fisherman in a vision in 495. Giant's Well on the Mount commemorates the Cornish legend of the giant Cormoran who apparently piled the rocks to form the original mount.  

Beacon fires were lit in an iron basket set on top of an angle turret. On a rock beside the causeway there was a chapel dedicated to St. Katherine. 

However, St. Michaels' Mount was not always the island we see today. The Domesday Book invariably recorded islands as such. However in the Domesday Book there is no reference to the 'Land of St. Michael' being an island. The territory is also in the region of thirty times its present size.

The chronicler William of Malmesbury recorded that the Mount was formerly surrounded by a very dense wood, and was five or six miles from the sea . Remains of a submerged forest can still be seen in Mount's Bay recalling a time before the sea level rose. 

"An old legend of St Michael speaketh of a tounelet in this part (between Pensandes and Mousehole), now defaced, and lying under the water." .Leland's Itinerary.The Cornish name for St. Michael's Mount was- 'the Grey Rock in the Wood'.

 The Saxon Chronicle says that Lyonesse was destroyed on the 11th of November 1099 and St. Michael's Mount may have become isolated at that time.

"On the third of the Nones of November (1099) the sea overflowed the shore, destroying towns and drowning many persons and innumerable oxen and sheep."--The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, translated by Thomas Forester, A.M. Bohn, 1854.

St Michael’s Mount is first mentioned as a church in the 11th century but may be older, since the church’s manor of Truthwall in Ludgvan was exempt from paying royal tax by 1086—a privilege characteristic of ancient

Mont St. Michel in Brittany. 

solitary hill - St. Michael chapel - iron age fortification / settlement.- beacon - giant legend

Legend tells how in, 707 AD, when Bishop Aubert D' Avranches fell asleep on top of the 'Rocher de la Tombe' St. Michael visited him and instructed him to build a church there in the form of a circle. This necessitated the removal of two large rocks. The giant Gargantua is linked to this site, as is the legend of Arthur killing the giant of Mont St. Michel. The inundation of the sea around Mont St. Michel is recorded as happening in 709 AD. In Roman times one of the gods worshipped at this site was Belinus, the Celtic Apollo.  

The inundation of the sea around Mont St. Michel is recorded as happening in 709 AD.

Sagra di San Michele in Piedmont

 visions of the Archangel and also stones moving miraculously overnight.   

San Michele at Castiglione di Garfagna

 a vision of the Archangel.   

Monte Sant' Angelo, Monte Gargano

  the site of the first recorded appearance of the Archangel Michael, either in 390 AD, or in another version 490 AD. The name derives from Gargantua, the giant.  

Kerkyas

  site of a temple to Artemis.  

Delphi

 When Apollo came to Mount Parnassus, at Delphi, he killed the previous occupant, Pythos, the earth- serpent . Nearby is the Castalian Spring and the Corycian cave.

It was an oracle of Delphi which stated the golden fleece would have to be brought back from Colchis  

Delos

The smallest of the Cyclades group of Islands in the South Aegean Sea sometimes called 'the sacred Isle'. Delos was renowned in the ancient world both as a trading centre and as a temple of Apollo. 

After a brief liason with Jupiter, latona fled from the wrath of his wife, Juno. She took refuge on the tiny island of Delos, which became the birthplace of the deities Apollo and his sister Diane /Artemis. A giant statue of Apollo towered over his temple. Nearby Mount Cynthus, crowned by another temple, is home to one of the oldest sacred sites on the island, a holy cave. A spring festival was held at Apollo's shrine on Delos.  

Lindos

  The sea around the Island of Rhodes is overlooked by a temple to Artemis at Lindos. 

Mount Carmel 

Caiphas Looking Towards Mount Carmel 1839, Volume II The Holy Land, Engraved by L.Haghe