Wednesday, 23 September 2026, 7:30 pm BST (6:30 pm GMT/UTC)
Before there were clocks, calendars, or written histories as we know them, there was light: the rising Sun, the setting Moon, the changing horizon, and the sudden illumination of a darkened chamber. What if prehistoric architecture was designed not only to offer shelter to the living or the dead, but to frame encounters with the sky?
This talk explores the life and work of astrologer and archaeologist Anna Estaroth, whose research brought together astrology, archaeology, landscape, and the lived experience of the sky. From her investigations of the Clava Cairns and their relationships to the Sun and Moon, through her later doctoral research on light and darkness in Neolithic Orkney and Shetland, Anna sought to understand prehistoric monuments as places where celestial phenomena became part of human experience.
JD Kelley will trace this development and share the experiences accompanying her during a fieldwork trip in Orkney, where he assisted her as Anna investigated how sunlight could have entered particular prehistoric buildings and illuminated specific architectural features at significant times of the solar year. Anna’s work considers not only orientation and astronomical alignment, but also shadow, interior space, movement, art, and the experience of light itself.
What might it have felt like to stand inside one of these buildings as a beam of sunlight entered a darkened chamber? How might an image, wall, doorway, or stone have been transformed when touched by the Sun? And what happens when we understand prehistoric monuments not as static archaeological remains, but as carefully constructed encounters between land, sky, stone, light, and human beings?
In remembering Anna's work, this talk invites us to look again at Orkney—and to imagine a prehistoric world in which the celestial was not distant from everyday life, but entered directly into the spaces people built, inhabited, decorated, and made sacred.
John-David (JD) Kelley is the chairman of the Scottish Astrological Association, having served since 2020; the founding president of the International Association of Astral Magic (IAAM), and the organiser of Astro Magia.
JD is a professional natal and electional astrologer, as well as a practicing astral magician and talisman crafter. His astrological leanings are both traditional and modern alongside a deep interest in astrological and astral magic. JD is influenced by historical approaches to magic, the mixing of magical traditions throughout the world, by an animist view of the Cosmos, by art and art-making, and by visionary and ecstatic practices. You can find him at Cunning as Folk where he teaches and practices his range of esoteric and interpretive arts.