The Georgia Guidestones are located conveniently off of Guidestones Rd.
About 45 minutes east of Athens, GA sits Elberton. The town is mostly known for granite. And, since 1980, it’s become known for a few particular slabs.
The Georgia Guidestones, often called America’s Stonehenge, stand on a hill overlooking Hartwell Highway. You have to seek them out, and when you do find them, you realize that they’re massive. They reach over nineteen feet high and weigh over 100 tons.
But, it’s their mysterious origins and the more than 4,000 characters sandblasted on them that attract the most attention: The guidestones feature a kind of new “ten commandments” in twelve languages.
Mysterious Origins of the Georgia Guidestones
The Georgia Guidestones’ placement does undeniably call to mind the Stonehenge site.
So how did they get there? The history has been explored in a number of places online and perhaps best explained by Scott Wolter on H2’s America Unearthed.
In short, the story goes like this: A man using the pseudonym R.C. Christian walks into an Elberton bank with cash and very specific instructions for the site. The bank coordinates Christian’s wishes via the Elberton Granite Finishing Company. Still, no one knows who R.C. Christian was except the banker who, to his credit, continues to honor his commitment to his customer and the request for anonymity.
Today, the guidestones sit on private property and remain the property of Elbert County.
So, Who and Why?
Some say R.C. Christian was L. Ron Hubbard. No one really knows, but it doesn’t really sound like Hubbard. Supposedly, R.C. Christian – his name supposedly chosen because he was a Christian – represented “a small group of Americans who seek the Age of Reason.”
Christian made it known both to Granite City Bank and Elberton Granite Finishing Company that the monument was undertaken with the hopes of encouraging a new age of reason and appreciation of conservation.
The stones are now seen by many as a Ten Commandments of a godless New World Order. Some of the commandments seem harmless enough. I particularly like:
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
That sounds like something most of us could rally around. However, it is difficult for many to get a handle on #1:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Anytime you start talking about population control, people understandably get uncomfortable. The world population is over 7 billion right now, and at the time of the stones’ placement, the number was around 4.5 billion. So, do the math – what would that 500 million number look like in practice?
What The Guidestones Are Telling Us
The placement of the stones, and the stones themselves, specifically draw from traditions of solar and astronomical calendars. The tone of the site suggests a coming apocalyptic event that the rest of us didn’t get the memo on. Or, are the stones and site calling for a man-made apocalyptic event?
Note the archaeoastronomical feature at the top slab of the guidestones.
One thing we can say for sure is that the commandments themselves are thematically consistent with known ideals of the Bavarian illuminati. Here they are in English, one of twelve languages that appear on the stones:
- Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
- Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
- Unite humanity with a living new language.
- Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
- Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
- Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
- Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
- Balance personal rights with social duties.
- Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
- Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.
I do like how they have the big ideas down but don’t get bogged down in the details.
In The End . . .
The placement of the stones orients with the North Star as well as the summer and winter solstices.
While driving away from the Georgia Guidestones, you realize that you leave with even more questions than you had upon arriving. It’s all too elaborate and costly to be a hoax.
And why, besides the availability of the granite, would it be situated there in Elberton? Christian named the climate and his ancestry as reasons, and the site is located near what the Cherokee believed to be the center of the world. (That may be where I stopped to get gas. Dirty bathroom by the way.) But, how does all of that synch up with the precision of the archaeoastronomical features?
As with any tourist site, visitors were parking cars, looking, laughing, and asking others to take pictures for them. I did not however see any selfie sticks.
And, nearby, in the spirit of leaving room for nature, a traveler walked her dog on a potty break.