According to The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language (1972), mystery is anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown; anything not fully explained and therefore arousing curiosity.
Mystery.
I came across the word again and again while researching stones and stone circles. I have heard the word used to describe sandplay therapy. The mystery of stone circles and archetypal monolithic structures and the mystery of sandplay and archetypal images; both engaging and arousing curiosity.
Stonehenge
The most famous stone circle and the one I find most engaging is Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain in England. The site has been built and rebuilt over time and now consists of a bluestone horseshoe with an opening at the northeast, surrounded by a circle of five independent bluestone trilithons, with three lintels intact. The larger stones act as markers of the moon and sun as they cross the horizon. A larger connected ring of stones consists of 60 megaliths and lintels; now only 32 stones are intact. The perimeter consists of a circular ditch with 56 shallow pits, two opposing mounds, and solar and lunar stones, planned around a symmetrical axis that points toward the direction of the summer sunrise.
Who built the monument and when it was built is known, but why the henge was built remains a mystery. The site is believed to have been used for religious ceremonies, funerary rituals, and astronomical purposes. Stonehenge may also have been used for rituals of regeneration during the winter solstice when the sun was at its weakest and seen as dying. Energetic ring dances were performed during seasonal and lunar ceremonies.
(continued in Mystery Part 2)