From Giza to Orkney: Tracing the Blueprint of the Gods
- Ruben Flores
- Apr 17
- 8 min read
Updated: May 29
As soon as we touched down at Kirkwall Airport, time shifted. The clock began ticking—not with urgency, but with an ancient rhythm. We had just three days to chase whispers across the wind-swept Orkney Isles. Cindy and I weren’t here for sightseeing. We were following a thread spun across time and space—woven through stone circles, starlight, and ancestral memory.
What drew us to Orkney wasn’t wanderlust. It was a calling—a shared fascination with the world’s megalithic mysteries. Across continents and cultures, ancient architects raised sacred structures—pyramids, mounds, and monoliths—each echoing a celestial story. Many of them pointed to one constellation: Orion.
Orkney hums with that ancient resonance. Beneath its brooding skies and Viking tales lie some of Europe’s most powerful Neolithic sites: the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness, Skara Brae, and the elusive Ring of Bookan. These aren't just remnants of the past—they're messages, etched into earth and time, awaiting remembrance.
Genetic and linguistic clues hint that Scotland’s deep past stretches back to ancient Armenia, Egypt, and Scythia—lands of stargazers and seers. Their myths speak of the Shining Ones: white-robed priest-scientists, master astronomers, keepers of forgotten tongues. When they reached Orkney, they built in stone, lived apart, and faded into legend. In Celtic memory, they became known as the Tuatha Dé Danann—gods, ancestors, and bringers of light.
In Scotland’s Hidden Sacred Past, researcher Freddy Silva proposes that the layout of the Ring of Bookan, the Ring of Brodgar, and the Stones of Stenness mirrors the stars of Orion’s Belt—just like the Giza pyramids in Egypt and the pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico. These sites, oceans apart, were united by a sky-map... by Orion.
Even the name “Hebrides” may conceal deeper truths. Silva suggests it may derive from Hy Bridhe, the realm of the Gaelic goddess Bridhe—or perhaps from the Armenian Hye Bryges. In Armenian, bryge referred to a noble class, and hye means “Armenian”—but symbolically, it also points to Orion, through Hayk, the mythic patriarch said to have battled under that very constellation. Together, Hye Bryges might be read as: “Domain of the noble people of Orion.”
Years ago, Cindy and I stood beneath the pyramids of Giza and Teotihuacan—temples aligned not to whim, but to the heavens. Now we stood beneath Orkney’s stones, worlds apart yet bound by the same stellar code.
To our ancestors, the sky was no mere canvas. It was a mirror. Astrology wasn’t myth—it was mathematics, memory, and mystery. They saw the cosmos as a living force, a celestial script whose rhythm shaped life on Earth.
By aligning temples with the stars, they were anchoring sacred moments—fixing them in stone to be remembered for millennia. Each alignment was a declaration: "as above, so below as within so without". The sky wasn't watched. It was honored. It was the eternal heart of the world. And so, Cindy and I came here—not just to see Orkney, but to feel it. To walk its stone paths, listen to the winds, and remember something ancient. Something written in stars.
The Ring of Stenness
With the keys to our rental car in hand and a whisper of destiny in the air, we set off into the open arms of Orkney. Before us stretched a landscape both stark and sublime—flat, treeless, and infinite, like a dream etched in sky and stone. It was a living canvas of wind, water, and shifting light, untouched by time.
Our first destination was the Ring of Stenness, perhaps the most enigmatic of Orkney’s sacred circles. Towering stones pierced the heavens like ancient sentinels, standing in solemn formation on the banks of the Loch of Harray. As we walked the circle, we felt the weight of time. Weather, religion, ignorance or necessity—had all taken their toll. Only three-and-a-half out of 12 monoliths still stand, yet still humming with quiet power.
According to recent archaeological research, these towering stones may have functioned as an astronomical observatory or a kind of celestial calendar, tracking solstices, lunar extremes, and seasonal changes. But there was something otherworldly in the air—an invisible charge, as if the veil between worlds had thinned. Here, the Earth felt like a vessel for something greater, as though each stone was an antenna, tuning into forgotten frequencies from the stars. They say this is the oldest henge in the British Isles. But to us, it felt like a doorway.
The circle is encircled by a 144-foot-wide ditch, and as I stood before a 16-foot-tall slab looming over me like a guardian, I felt a pull I couldn’t explain. No thoughts—just reverence. All I could do was bow.
Locals say the name Stenness comes from the nearby parish, but the parish itself took its name from the stones. In Old Norse, Stein-nes means “headland of the stones.” And in Armenian, Stennis translates poetically as “seat of ritual.”
We spent the rest of the day there, soaking it in. By 5 p.m., we were starving, tired, and ready for warmth. Princess Cindy issued her final order of the day: retreat to her chambers. And so, we did.
The Ring of Brodgar and the Comet Stone
The morning arrived quietly, wrapped in mist and promise. After a light breakfast, we resumed our journey, the narrow isthmus before us—like a bridge between worlds. It connected the twin sanctuaries of Stenness and Brodgar, and as we crossed, something in the air shifted. The wind grew still, the lochs shimmered with silence, and even the birds seemed to pause. It was as if the land itself was listening.
Then we saw it: the Ring of Brodgar.
Encircled by water and low, rolling hills, it rose like a temple etched into the living earth. Not built, but revealed. From a distance, it radiated presence—solemn, ancient, unshaken by time.
Over 5,000 years old, Brodgar remains one of the most magnificent megalithic circles on Earth. Twenty-seven of its original fifty-six stones still stand in formation, spanning an astonishing 338 feet. It is encircled by a massive henge nearly 400 feet wide, hewn from the land with sacred precision. This is not just the largest stone circle in the British Isles—it is the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, a World Heritage treasure and a cosmic riddle in stone.
Some locals say Brodgar was once a Temple of the Sun, while Stenness stood as its counterpart—a Temple of the Moon. An echo of Teotihuacan in distant Mexico, where the pyramids of the Sun and Moon rise in celestial harmony. Across oceans and ages, this duality emerges again—a sacred union etched into stone to mirror the heavens.
Others whisper that Brodgar was no mere temple, but a lunar observatory, its geometry aligned to the silent choreography of the cosmos—the eternal waltz of Sun and Moon, the marriage of light and shadow inscribed into the land.
Even its name conceals hidden meaning. In Armenian, barerq-kar translates to “dance song stones.” In ancient Egyptian, b-ra-gah means “shrine of the Sun god.” Whether from east or west, the echoes converge: rhythm, reverence, ritual.
Hours passed in quiet reflection among the stones. The silence there was different—dense, intentional, as if the stones themselves were dreaming.
As we made our way back to the car, Cindy suddenly halted. Her eyes were locked on a solitary stone standing alone to the east.
It stood apart.
She stared, motionless, as if it had whispered to her. Then, without a word, she began to sing—a soft, crystalline melody. Her voice danced on the wind. Then she turned to me, her finger pointing with gentle command.
Play the flute.
I did.
What unfolded next felt like ceremony—unspoken, unrehearsed, and yet older than memory.
Only later did we learn the stone had a name: The Comet Stone, also called Ulie Stane, meaning “oil stone” in the local dialect. In ancient times, it was anointed with oil, wax, or honey—believed to be a vessel of healing power. A living altar.
Local lore speaks of elves and hidden folk dwelling beneath such stones. They warn: disturb them, and you invite misfortune—sickness, madness, the unraveling of reason.
These were not just stones. They were sentinels.Thresholds. Keepers of the boundary between worlds.
Bookan and the Sky Mirror
On our final day, the mystery deepened.
We set out to find the elusive Ring of Bookan—a place whispered about in esoteric circles but absent from most tourist maps. There was no marked path, no welcome sign, no road leading the way. It felt less like a destination and more like a quest. Hidden. Waiting. Sacred.
Cindy, ever the fearless seeker, pointed toward a sheep fence bordering an open field and grinned, “What if we just hop it?” She was only half-joking. After all, Scotland’s Right to Roam law gives everyone the freedom to explore most land respectfully. But even so, we hesitated—honoring the energy of the land and the unseen presences that might dwell there.
Instead, we launched the drone—our eye in the sky.
And there it was.
Bookan revealed itself slowly, like an ancient being stirring from slumber. Official records label it a burial mound, but from above, it became clear: this was no ordinary monument. The shape, the orientation, the silence of the land around it—it all hinted at something deeper.
According to researcher Freddy Silva, the Ring of Bookan, when seen alongside Brodgar and Stenness, forms a mirror of Orion’s Belt—just like the pyramid complexes of Giza in Egypt and Teotihuacan in Mexico. Three sacred sites, across three continents, all echoing the same constellation. All watching the same stars.
Silva used archaeoastronomy software to peer into the sky of deep time. On the winter solstice of 5300 B.C., he discovered that the three stars of Orion’s Belt would have risen above the sky of Orkney for only —perfectly aligned with the three Neolithic rings on the ground as though the sky was mirrored in the Earth—a sacred correspondence between the cosmos and the land.
Bookan wasn’t hidden because it was lost.
It was hidden because it was sacred. A whisper from the stars, waiting for the right ears.
Brodgar through Stenness at a 126° angle points straight to Giza.
The Stars We Came From
As the sun slipped below the horizon and shadows lengthened across the ancient hills, our journey into Orion’s mystery drew to a quiet, golden close.
We were not the same as when we first arrived.
We had walked among giants—circles of stone that hum with forgotten memory. We had stood where sky and earth embrace, where time folds in on itself, and where the breath of ancestors still lingers in the wind. These weren’t just ruins… they were living archives, whispering truths in the language of silence and alignment.
There is no doubt now.The stars of Orion’s Belt hold ancient wisdom—codes woven into the bones of the Earth, waiting patiently to be remembered. But their message was never only about the heavens.
It was always about us.
They call us inward.
To reclaim the strength we buried beneath doubt.
To stand in our strange, radiant authenticity.
To release the illusions of perfection and remember that the cosmos makes no mistakes.
And when life grows heavy, when the world dims and the path feels lost—look up.
The stars are still there.Guiding. Reflecting. Singing.
They remind us that we are not alone, and never were.We are threads in a tapestry eternal, woven through time, space, stardust, and soul.We are the children of light, returning to the stars we came from.
See you next time, fellow traveler.
The sky is still listening
And the stones are still speaking..
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