One day in Germany Speyer Cathedral, World Famous Heritage continue… September 10, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cars, Destination, Europe, Hotels, Museum, Rail Pass, Tour , trackbackThese geomantic stones had associations with certain alignments and the axial centres of towns. The Domnapf location not only had typical Blue Stone connotations with ancient judicial rules, as indicated above, but also expresses this geomantic role as its presence on this alignment attests. Furthermore, it was from this spot that the layout of the streets of Speyer was arranged. The omphalos point.
Maximilianstrasse was created at the time of die cathedral in the eleventh century as a Via Triumphalis, linking the west gate — the Old Gate or Altportel — and the west porch of the cathedral. The German Emperors and the newly appointed Bishops of Speyer used it for their ceremonial entrances into the city. (This is a medieval continuation of the link between kingship and straight alignments.)
Between the cathedral and the Altpörtel, the line of the ley passes through the great maypole or Maibaum situated on Maximilianstrasse. Maypoles are a pagan survival, representing the cosmic axis or World Tree linking this world and the Otherworlds of spirit. It is also a phallic symbol of regeneration. The Speyer Maibaum therefore is a pagan element linked by the line of Maximilianstrasse with the Christian manifestation of spirituality embodied by the cathedral. Its position on this line may, of course, be fortuitous.
Ulrich Magin has noted that the axis of the cathedral and the course of Maximilianstrasse continue beyond the Altpörtel, which marks the ancient city limits and dates from 1246 (upper storey 1512), to pass through sites in the countryside to the west. The line strikes the church of St Gangolf at Dudenhofen, passes through the church at Hanhofen a few kilometres further west, through the moat of the no longer extant castle at Hanhofen where once existed a chapel on this site as well, bisects an old crossroads, one of the arms of which is marked Hohlweg (hollow road), indicating antiquity, before reaching the ridge from which rises Kalmit (Bald Mountain).
This strong alignment is under 151/2 miles (25km) in length. Magin states that the features on the line point to it being ‘both ancient and deliberate’, and notes that the strict east—west direction supports the ‘holy hill’ pattern. It seems as if the basic line may date from prehistory, with elements on it being evolved up to the medieval period. Magin reports the finding of further sites on this line.
But, as we noted at Aachen, it is also possible that ancient knowledge became fed back into arcane threads of knowledge in medieval Europe, surviving perhaps as late as the eighteenth century in ’secret’ groups such as the Freemasons, resulting in alignments and other geomantic patterns belonging solely to the historic era. This clearly is an element in the medieval evolution of this line, and must be certain in the case of another curious geomantic `coincidence’ affecting the site of Speyer Cathedral — it lies on a line that links the castle (now Landesmuseum) at Karlsruhe with the castle at Mannheim.
Karlsruhe was laid out on a linear system in the eighteenth century, and 29 straight roads radiate out from the Landemuseum. The city plan was based on a regular 32-fold division of the circle. The line from Speyer not only goes through the fulcrum of the city plan, the Landesmuseum, but continues through to the main city church. As Pennick comments, at Karlsruhe we have ‘a perfect example of the linear layout of a city, incorporating sacred and secular places of power within the alignment framework, laid out with reference to earlier sacred places, in this example, the cathedral at Speyer‘.” The German researcher Jens Möller has noted that Masonic symbolism occurs along the street alignment.
The Karlsruhe — Speyer line continues northerly from Speyer to Mannheim. It passes through the corner of the castle there, and cuts diagonally across the city’s street grid. So not only does a line link Speyer with specific, central features in Karlsruhe and Mannheim, it also relates to the street plans in both these places.
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