The Stone Table is somewhat like other stone altars. Those of us familiar with the Bible will think of Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac, or Noah after the floodwaters receded, and of course the Old Testament system of regular sacrifices for sin and other purposes. Such a place was for sacrificing animals, to either placate or thank the spirits/gods/etc. In some cases humans were sacrificed for success in war, or for better harvests etc.

Paul Ford, in Companion To Narnia, describes the Narnia Stone Table as a 'great grim slab of gray stone, supported by four upright stones.... carved all over with strange lines and figures that might be the letters of an unknown language, and that cause a curious feeling in onlookers.'
He says,'Although its size is not mentioned, it must be a low table, because the girls are able to kneel and still kiss Aslan's face as he lies on top of it'. That is something I never thought of - and as the girls are only 8 and 12 that's not very high!

[FYI Stonehenge's origins were thousands of years earlier than the Celts, who moved into Ancient Britain no earlier than 1000 BC. The Druids would have made use of henges and other formerly sacred places. They were banned and defeated by the Romans in the first century AD]

The Stone Table was the name of a website where I posted on the forums under the user name of Ramandu. It closed about ten years ago, and I was very sad that the friendly discussion there had ended. I always liked the name of the website and thought it was so appropriate for something to discuss Lewis and Narnia.  The Stone Table was very similar to the cross in Scripture, and it was a brilliant part of Narnia. I don’t know if Lewis was inspired by Stonehenge in creating it, but it certainly fit in the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I think it was one of Lewis’s best creations. 

Posted by: @coracle

[FYI Stonehenge's origins were thousands of years earlier than the Celts, who moved into Ancient Britain no earlier than 1000 BC. The Druids would have made use of henges and other formerly sacred places. They were banned and defeated by the Romans in the first century AD]

I was going to add this too, thanks, coracle. While Stonehenge is an amazing place (I've been there a few times), I don't know if there's any evidence that C.S. Lewis took any direct inspiration from it for the Stone Table in LWW. There aren't any monuments at Stonehenge that bear any real resemblance to what he describes — certainly no stone slabs supported by four other stones, with carvings on them of any sort. Also, as far as I'm aware, there's no archaeological evidence that human sacrifices ever took place at Stonehenge, though I would guess there are myths to that effect.

Back to the Stone Table in Narnia — it's a mysterious and awe-inspiring part of the first story, and of course the broken remains of it have a cameo role in PC, now hidden within the maze of passages in the mound called Aslan's How. What bugs me, however (though not enough to seriously dampen my enjoyment of the Chronicles!), is that Lewis seems to have forgotten all about the Stone Table, and its original purpose as stated in LWW, by the time he wrote Narnia's and the White Witch's origin story in MN.

I remember this coming up in another NarniaWeb discussion some time ago — how did the Narnians, some time after the reign of Frank and Helen, come to the point where ritual sacrifice of traitors became necessary? In LWW, in a plot twist that's never explained completely, we learn that the White Witch was in fact divinely appointed, under "the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning", to execute traitors on the Stone Table — and if she doesn't "have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and will perish in fire and water." It's also made very clear that this really is her role and her right, and even Aslan himself can't deny it or "work against the Emperor's Magic". Of course what Aslan does do is to offer himself, as "a willing victim who had committed no treachery", in place of Edmund, and what the Witch doesn't realise is that this will set in motion the Deeper Magic that she's unaware of, which will break the Stone Table and undo death itself. This of course is a major element of the Christian symbolism (NOT allegory) within the story, and it's an essential part of the plot. The Witch needs to have an apparently inescapable claim on Edmund's life, which only Aslan can overcome by sacrificing his own life instead.

The problem is that Lewis then doesn't set up any of this, or even give a credible way that it could follow on, in The Magician's Nephew. We get a suitably terrifying backstory for the White Witch as Jadis, the empress who destroyed every living thing in her own world rather than lose her rulership. And she is indeed present in Narnia at its very beginning. But in no way is she given any role in Narnia's system of divine justice. There's no mention of the Emperor-Over-Sea at all, let alone of him putting a Deep Magic into Narnia — or of Aslan doing so on his Father's behalf — that creates an irrevocable law that traitors must be executed, and that Narnia will be destroyed if they aren't. At no time is there any indication that a Stone Table has been created, or will be created in the future, for those sacrifices to take place. And there's definitely not the slightest hint that Jadis is going to be designated as "the Emperor's hangman" (as Mr Beaver derisively calls the Witch in LWW), and that because of this, she will claim (a thousand years later) to have the right to rule Narnia herself. Far from having any dealings with Aslan or the Emperor at the "Dawn of Time" in Narnia, she flees for her life as soon as she discovers that throwing an iron bar at the Lion's head doesn't hurt him at all.

So there it is... in LWW, the Stone Table is an essential and quite chilling part of the plot — the place where Edmund, as a traitor, must be put to death by the White Witch under a divine law that was woven into Narnia at its beginning, and only Aslan can save him. In MN, where we actually do see Lewis's (later) conception of the beginning of Narnia and the origin of the Witch, absolutely none of that comes into it — no Deep Magic, no "Emperor's hangman", and no Stone Table — and there's no leeway anywhere for how any of those things might have come about after the events of MN. As far as I can see, it's the biggest single flaw in the plotting of the Chronicles overall — and a massive one, because it makes two of the most vital books in the series (the first book and its prequel, or, if you insist on the chronological order, the first and the second books) totally irreconcilable with each other. 

As I keep saying, for me at least, this doesn't ruin the Chronicles — nothing could! But it does mean I find it hard to see the Stone Table as being as awesomely important as Lewis implicitly intended it to be in the original book, because he apparently forgot all about the Table and its significance — plot-wise and theology-wise — later on.

CS Lewis actually wrote in a letter that the Stone Table was also meant to be a reminder of the Stone Tablets that God wrote His Ten Commandments on (which I'm sure that those of us who grew up going to church and Sunday School have learned about at one time or another).

I've also read in another Narnia commentary that the Stone Table breaking in two is equivalent to the Temple Curtain splitting in two when Jesus died on the cross.

So the Stone Table in many aspects has a lot of religious reminders- the Stone Tablets of the Ten Commandments, the altar, the cross, and the curtain that hung in the Jewish temple.

@jasmine_tarkheena thank you. Those are helpful.

And isn't that something to be grateful for- that for those of us on here that are Christians, we don't have to go to the Jewish temple and the High priest for sacrifices, because Jesus did it once and for all? The tearing of the Veil showed that a sacrifice is no longer needed!

The Deeper Magic in Narnia- "when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." The breaking of the Stone Table in two showed that a sacrifice was no longer needed on the Stone Table in Narnia.