It was a consequential experience to me, as being inside Newgrange I
discovered an antediluvian region of the human mind which contains
principles of the bliss of sexual union, of scientific discovery, of
artistic creation, of physical conquest, and of mental expansion and of
death. Its immersive consciousness was one of inexhaustible intensity,
in fact I cannot withdraw from its prehistoric immersive circle, for
once experienced, it is as much within as without and it has become
subjective as well as objective to me.

Newgrange has been originally built about 3100 BC. It consists of a vast
stone and turf mound about 85m (280ft) in diameter and 13,5m (44ft)
high, containing a passage leading to a burial chamber. Outside the
base, 12 out of the original estimated 38 large boulders up to 2.4m
(8ft) high form a ring of about 104m (340ft) in diameter. The stone
circle was built about 1000 years later than the original structure,
dating probably from the Beaker period. This ring of stones is almost
unique in Great Britain and Ireland, with Clava and maybe Loanhead of
Daviot being the other notable exemples.

The base of the mound is retained by no less than 97 large stones, lying
horizontally, many of which bear beautifully carved designs of spiral,
lozenge, zigzag and other symbols. The most famous of these is the stone
marking the entrance, with carvings of a triple spiral, double spirals,
concentric semi-circles and lozenges similar to those found in Brittany
(France), at Gavrinis.

Above the entrance passage is a 'roof-box', which precisely aligns with
the rising sun at the winter solstice of 21 December, so that the rays
touch the ground at the very centre of the tomb for about 20 minutes.
Many of the upright stones along the walls of the 19m (62ft) passage,
which follows the rise of the hill, are richly decorated. The cruciform
chamber inside the mound measures 6.5 x 6.2m (21ft 6in x17ft), has three
recesses and is roofed by a magnificent corbelled roof reaching to a
height of 6m (20ft) above the floor. In the recesses there are three
massive stone basins which presumably had some ritual use. Excavations
in the central chamber produced the remains of two burials and at least
three cremated bodies as well as seven marbles, four pendants, two
beads, a flint flake, a bone chisel and fragments of several bone pins
and points.

As at Knowth, some satellite tombs have been found outside the edge of
the mound: one of which lies to the East and another to the West of the
entrance. Cement posts now mark out what was once a double circle of
wooden pillars, enclosing Beaker cremation pits.

Newgrange gets its modern name from the fact that by 1142, the site had
become part of Mellifont Abbey farm. These farms were known as granges
and by 14th century the site was known only as the 'New Grange'. In
early Irish mythology, Newgrange was not only the alleged burial place
of the prehistoric kings of Tara, but also the home of a race of Irish
supernatural beings, known as 'Tuatha de Danainn': the people of the
goddess Danu. Newgrange was also taken to be the house of the
patriarchal god Dagda.

The power of the experience lay in its ability to provide me with a
prehistoric/technoid consciousness of presence in becoming and in dying.
It was not a conventional symbolic fulfillment however, as Newgrange's
immersive space helped further to reveal the existence of my own
extended and encircling technologically immersive consciousness.
Newgrange revealed to me the greatness and glory of life by its
super-conscient attributes, as it made me cognizant of the orb in which
the one and many give and take as a whole.

Nature is really sublime and beautiful because it is not only nature, it
is immersive nourishment. Newgrange represented in its integrity the
immersive harmony and immersive consciousness of humanity in nature. I
suspect Nature is becoming for me beautiful in so far as it is the
expression of immersive consciousness because for me an appreciation of
Newgrange draws no distinction between beauty of art and the beauty of
nature and the beauty of woman. A woman's body, appearance, actions, may
be beautiful in so far as they are indicative of meaning and expression
and Newgrange is beautiful in that it is indicative of the underlying
meaning of being.

Newgrange looks upon art as that of reproductive Nature and as such
Newgrange is conceived as splendor consciousness and is dynamic in its
approbation. Newgrange's magnificence is the dynamism of sex and life
and spirit and death and since Newgrange's opulence is absorbing and
compressing it frees being from the touches of horror and introduces it
into pathos. In this exhalted height of existence, presence feels an
unaccustomed attraction, a new delight in the wide expression of
vivacity, not through nature but through Newgrange's consciousness of
immersive existence itself as it impresses us with its absorbing sense
of transport, resplendent merger and supple affirmation which are
characteristics of Newgrange's immersive art-as-life-as-sex-as-death
consciousness.