La Pierre aux Fees is a remarkable megalith located in a wide valley not far from Regnier in the Haute Savoie. It is about twenty miles from Geneva and well worth a visit.
Professor Hugh Nibley, a noted (pre) historian, tells us that while tradition has it that civilization began in the river valleys of the Indus, Euphrates, Huangho, or Nile, with their magnificent early structures -- with the sciences traveling westward to more primitive cultures, there is growing evidence that structures of gigantic proportions had already been created by people in Western Europe preceding the Pyramids or Hanging Gardens, thus presenting the possibility that the march of civilization was from west to east, not the reverse. Nibley further asserts that the first places of worship were no more than circles (or squares) oriented to the stars and marked out on the ground with a stick, within whose sacred confines priestly rites were carried out. These sacred spots were located by preference at points where the ancients believed the magnetic force lines of the earth intersected, creating an especially powerful interaction with the human psyche -- especially during the phases of the full moon. These sacred circles were later marked out more permanently with stone, as at Avesbury, Stonehenge, Carnac, and elsewhere. Eventually more elaborate open stone temples were built, as at Karnac in Egypt. And later still, covered temples were constructed in Greece and Rome.
Nibley goes on to say that all the branches of art and science took root from these early temples, which were the forerunners of the schools of Plato and Aristotle and the modern university: song and dance, instrumental music, drama, painting, sculpture, architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy can all be traced to temple worship by the ancients.
La Pierre aux Fees has to be one of the oldest universities in the world.
We visited the fairy house with Mack and Ingrid of the US Mission and Bill and Helen Tarpai (of UNHCR). Ingrid knew the way and the legends, so we naturally followed her suggestion to go on a night of the full moon.
The structure is imposing. Lola and I have seen Stonehenge, Carnac, Avesbury, Macchu :Picchu, Cuzco, the Mayan ruins of Copan and Tikal, the great pyramids of Egypt, the Aztec ruins of Teotihuacan, and the great sculpted caves of both the Huangho and Yangstze, and I must say that our first view of La Pierre aux Fees , which, while smaller than any of the foregoing, was as impressive as anything we have seen.
La Pierre aux Fees is located right on the roadside not five minutes from Regnier (its direction being marked on street signs in the village). With the moon at about ten o'clock, the megalith was beautifully lit as we approached. We could identify Orion, Cassiopeia, Venus, and Mars in the clear sky overhead to the south. The northern sky was hazy so we couldn't locate the dippers or Polaris.
The megalith consists of four immense granite blocks which had evidently been chiseled in rough fashion from the nearby Saleve and transported some distance (how? on log rollers?), then raised as perpendicular obelisks (again, how?) to providee support for a gigantic capstone. If it is hard to imagine how the obelisks were transported and erected, the capstone presents even more of a problem. It is some twenty-two feet in diameter and from a foot or so thick at the edges to perhaps six feet at its domed center, looking for all the world like a gigantic turtle on rather long legs (one is put in mind of the Chinese belief that the turtle is a symbol of longevity). There is space under the dome for a six footer with his head bowed (part of the symbolism?), while the top of the dome rises some thirteen feet above ground level. Other large stones lie about the structure, suggesting either that some of entrances had in the past been closed in, or that a former ceremonial circle around the structure was raided for moveable building stones over the five or six thousand years since its construction.
Ingrid lit a candle and placed it on the "alter stone" in the center of the temple. The rest of us sat on the stone "pews" near one of the several entrances to prepare ourselves to feel the gravitational force, or experience the enlightenment some have reported. As for your writer, he felt nothing but the nearness of good friends, a mild breeze, the grandeur of the stars overhead, and looking forward to the excellent meal to follow in the excellent small French restaurant just four miles from Regnier as we returned to Geneva. But is was well worth the trip. There is a nice picnic area with tables and benches just across the way, so the trip might be a nice weekend outing for families with children -- if you can't arrange to go on a moonlit night.
David Timmins
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