It was not until yesterday (15th of August) that we managed to arrange a flight over the circle. The UK has been subject to some pretty bad weather in the last week with
torrential rain and thunderstorms sweeping across the country, but even yesterday the flight was risky as there was a huge amount of cloud cover and not many breaks for the sunshine to come through. It’s a 5 hour round trip drive for us to fly from Wellesbourne Airfield from our home on the south coast, so we were hoping beyond hope that we might get a glimmer of sunshine for our trouble. As you can see from the picture, the Gods smiled on us and we got our
sunshine.
This formation was quickly named the ‘Dove’ for
obvious reasons, and its connections to Christian iconography are obvious. The dove has been used as a symbol for the Holy Spirit almost since the inception of Christianity. The Holy Spirit appears as a descending dove during the baptism of Christ and it is used on Holy Communion medals given to young Catholics at their first communion. It is also sometimes impressed upon the communion wafer itself. But as far back as Ancient Egypt birds were associated with the spirit, a bird with the head of a
human represented the human spirit freed from the body and was regularly used in funerary paintings and reliefs.
More generally, the dove is an internationally recognised symbol of peace
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