Bruce Charlton's Notions

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England has many extraordinary Neolithic remains (Neolithic = New Stone Age - dated approximately 4000-2500 BC and not culturally-terminated by the following 'Bronze Age'); including some of the banked enclosures commonly known as 'hill forts'.

Recent archaeological reconsideration (as well as common sense about the logistics of living on top of hills) suggest that many so-called 'hill forts' did not start-out as permanently inhabited military structures, nor even temporary refuges - but were most likely sites for 'ritual' gatherings, probably religious.

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Therefore, perhaps a better name for these early hill-top sites would be Hill Top Temples which brackets them with the more famous stone circles; and clarifies the truly stunning aspect of Neolithic life in England - which is that vast landscapes seem to have been progressively transformed into complexes of Temples: stone circles, hilltop enclosures and flattened arenas, valleys and clefts, causeways, burial sites of various shapes, and some conical ('pyramid-like'?) mounds both small and very large indeed.

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These hill-top enclosures are frequently found in both Somerset and Northumberland, those places where I have lived most, many remain un-excavated and barely-explored, and they are still being found so there must be many more yet undiscovered.

For instance, yesterday I visited one of the lesser known, and only half-visible, hill top enclosures beside Bolam Lake in Northumberland - only dated a Neolithic in the late 1990s. There is another similar, also partial, structure looking out over the plain - about a mile to the west. Perhaps this was part of a network extending North into the Cheviots and adjacent hills - and related to the vast amount of 'rock art' in this vicinity.

But the best known Neolithic ritual landscape is that in the South of England which links the stone circle structures such as Avebury and Stonehenge, Hill Top Temples, and huge man-made mounds such as Silbury Hill and its very recently dated 'sister' structure of Marlborough Hill.

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What seems to emerge from all this is that:

1. There was a High Civilization of Neolithic times in England, which in engineering terms far surpassed anything else achieved until the Roman era of about three thousand years later

2. This society was large scale - stretching over many scores of miles in large units of thousands of square miles.

3. This implies it was sufficiently cohesive and peaceful to enable very large scale cooperation over many hundreds of years.

4. This also implies it had a sufficiently large agricultural surplus (above subsistence) to allow probably thousands of people at a time to be working on making landscape structures.

5. The nature of these public works, the vulnerabilities involved in constructing them, their un-defensibility, the lack of military structures - all these imply a long era of peacefulness across large swathes of England, of freedom from fear of invasion.

6. All the above would seem to entail that there was a unitary and cohesive religion that united Neolithic England, and that this existed without significant schism or apostasy or abrupt revolutionary changes for many hundreds of years - and furthermore that this lost religion was devoutly held by much of the population. This is really the only plausible basis for such astonishing and large scale peaceful cooperation as observed in Neolithic England.

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An amazing thought! A Neolithic religious golden age in England - only beginning to be rediscovered during the past couple of generations!

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The hardly-known Ancient English Neolithic 'high civilisation' (which continued into the early Bronze Age) is something that increasingly fascinates me - especially in comparison and contrast with the roughly contemporary but vastly better-documented and far more technologically-sophisticated Ancient Egypt.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Neolithic

I am going to speculate freely on the nature and spiritual life of the Neolithic.

This was a society of magic rather than machines (things were done by magic that were later and elsewhere done by machines) - the obviously 'man-made' was disliked, and complex technology was regarded with revulsion and suspicion.

Since the economy was based on farming, the landscape was of course substantially re-made. There were long, winding or snaking roads and pathways - and these were unpaved - merely short grass, perhaps worn or scraped clear of turf to expose the natural chalk or other stone beneath. Large earthworks were not faced with rock but merely scraped clear of turf to stand-out white, grey or brown against the horizon or green fields.

Monuments were constructed as a matter of primary social activity - yet there was an attitude of minimal intervention. The standing stones and structures were left substantially natural, rough-hewn; various in size, placed according to a sense of rightness and without precise, abstract mathematical placement.

Those who harp-on about 'numerology' and the celestial alignments of Neolithic monuments have made a false emphasis - a society which strives for abstract geometry would, like Ancient Egypt, make monuments from exactly replicated blocks, with straight edges, sharp points, smooth surfaces; precision placed onto stone fixings - not variously sized and shaped, rough stones placed onto grass. There were alignments - but the whole flavour was organic and approximate - the fine interpretative 'tuning' was done on the basis of magic and wisdom - not 'read-off' like a scientific precision instrument.

Indeed, there is no point in attempting exact celestial geometry in England where clouds cover the sun, moon and stars most of the time - that kind of alignment only works under reliably unrelenting clear blue skies.

In Neolithic times, things were arranged in a suggestively symbolic fashion; features were made clearer, more obvious using contrast, colour, accumulations of earth, stone, rocks and wood - but the ideal was that no matter how obvious the features should seem to arise from the natural landscape; as if organic growths.

(Stonehenge is a late, indeed terminal, feature of this society - and marks the onset of corruption with an attempt at precision and a cult of death and sacrifice.)

The Neolithic was organised and literate - but the organisation was in the form of a fluid confederated druidical hierarchy of graded initiates, working individually and informally as mobile masters and apprentices and not organised into static colleges or temples.  The literacy deployed a symbolic and pictorial language - instead of sentences and paragraphs there were complex diagrams - each unique but with standard components - incised on leather and wood, or scraped onto stone; the subtle interpretation of which was an arcane art (so there was no need for secrecy - ordinary people could not comprehend the 'writing').

The pace of life was slow, measured. The focus of life was religious - the primary deity being associated with the Sun, the secondary deities with the Moon and stars. The stars made up a permanent and unchanging eternal basic of life; the wandering planets tracked the linearity of time such that each year was unique; the Sun was the long term timekeeper by the seasons, the Moon phases provided the monthly scale organization of daily life.

Military strength (and this was an internally peaceful society) was directed against invasion - and was achieved by the capacity to assemble and deploy vast armies, unified by religious belief, trained to work together by participation in constructing the vast earthworks and monuments, and impossible to rout or demoralise. They used projectile weapons (probably storms of spears, thrown in coordinated waves) to devastating effect; followed by stone axes wielded by powerful and untiring arms trained in day after day spent earthmoving and stone lifting and shaping.

Hostile invaders, who necessarily came in small groups by ship, poorly supplied, without anywhere to retreat-to, different in appearance, language, behaviours - stood no chance against these massive and cohesive defensive hordes.

The farming, and the villages were a patchwork of shapes, no two the same yet fitted together; all rounded, all curves and bows - no straight edges or lines, no arches, no triangles, squares or perfect circles... Animals roamed with their shepherds.

The arts were of alliterating poetry - always chanted or sung from memory; the instrumental music for accompaniment and dancing was from pipes, percussion and drones. In singing, high clear graceful voices were prized above all; low gravelly voices were for humour and ribaldry.

There were no wagons, only beasts of burden; but there were boats everywhere - mostly flat bottomed rafts pulled from the river bank, or paddled canoes that resembled tree trunks on the lakes and inland waters. But the use of boats were governed by Moon and weather, magic and divination.

And they were waiting - spiritually waiting. The whole society was prepared and poised for the coming revelation, and the transformation of earth into Heaven.

England was like two gigantic hands, cupped and waiting to receive.

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The differences between the two contemporaneous, magical High Civilisations of England and Egypt can be encapsulated by a comparison of Neolithic standing stone 'growing' from the earth into the mist of England (this one from Avebury):

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The idea that ancient societies were Matriarchal and worshipped a Mother Goddess has been extremely popular in neo-pagan circles for about five generations. I certainly used to accept it - having imbibed it from Robert Graves The White Goddess, and seen much the same thing seemingly-confirmed in other literary, anthropological and archaeological works.

It isn't true, as a matter of fact. Or at least there is no objective evidence for it - or at least nothing that would count as evidence in other discourses.

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But leaving facts and their interpretation aside, it is clearly psychologically false as well - in the sense that there is zero subjective plausibility to a Mother Goddess worshipping Matriarchy. Such a society can neither be imagined nor depicted with plausibility, conviction and depth (and there are plenty of failed attempts - including those by Graves himself).

Or, perhaps, more exactly such a society cannot be depicted as the good, wholesome, 'golden age' kind of place that its devisers and believers hoped for.

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The Mother Goddess/Matriarchy people were and are motivated by a very obvious (and often explicitly stated) anti-Christian, anti-men animus - so that the desirable societies they discover/ devise and advocate have features in opposition to what they suppose are intrinsic to Christian Patriarchies.

But the only convincing Matriarchies in fact and fiction (and I mean real and robust societies - not little recreational clubs) are those run by evil and/or insane goddesses and priestesses who implement cults of blood sacrifice, lust, torture, death - something like the Thugs, or She (who must be obeyed). These do not worship a benign, loving Mother goddess, but an evil female demon - a prima donna of wilfulness, spite, and cruelty.

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Another reason why there never was a society which worshipped a supreme Mother Goddess who was loving and good; was that IF there was such a supreme Mother Goddess, she certainly would NOT want to be worshipped. Or, put is another way, worship would be an inappropriate attitude or relationship to a good Mother Goddess.

As an adherent of Mormon theology, I believe that the sex difference, male and female, goes all the way down; it is a fundamental and structural organizing principle of reality; and this is reflected by there being a Mother in Heaven, as well as a Heavenly Father.

However, the sexes are not symmetrical, but complementary - and while a relationship that could reasonably be called worship of the Father is appropriate and necessary (although requiring further definition of what constitutes 'worship') - this is not the case for Heavenly Mother. The proper relationship is of an entirely different nature - and a nature which seems intrinsically inexplicit.

(This position has consistently been supported by the LDS General Authorities, who clearly state that Mother in Heaven should not be formally worshipped nor prayed-to - although she is and should be loved, honoured and celebrated.)

This is just how it is. It is not accurate to believe that a good and loving Mother could, should or would evoke the same attitudes as a good and loving Father; in Heaven as well as earth.


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Which is a roundabout way of discussing Neolithic temples- stone circles, hilltop earthworks and large ritual pathways. These are so obviously sky focused; astronomically orientated; sun, moon  and stars-worshipping temples (circular, like the horizon - un-roofed - positioned with reference to celestial objects) that it seems silly to argue the matter.

And yet many people purport to believe that the Neolithic temples are dedicated to the Earth Mother Goddess - a good, wholesome, neo-pagan hippy kind of goddess.

I don't know how anyone could stand in such a temple, look up at the sky and believe that it was dedicated to an earth deity! - but they apparently do, and in their droves.

Which just goes to show that radical, secular Leftist, politics gets everywhere, can shape anything and everything, and will always critique, subvert and finally invert it: in this instance, turning the nature, objective and direction of Neolithic worship literally upside-down.

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There are some striking parallels and contrasts between the civilization of Ancient Egypt and that of Neolithic England - one being the comparison between Silbury Hill (which I visited for the first time this summer - above) -

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-hill/

Which is the about 100 feet high and nearly 5000 years old and took about 18 million man hours to construct; and was originally probably a conical, stepped, white-ish coloured, flat-topped chalky mound.

(Note Silbury is not unique - there is a nearby and contemporary 'sister' mound in the grounds of Marlborough College http://www.marlboroughcollege.org/about-us/college-history/the-mound/.)


Up until very recently (and stimulated by listening to an audiobook of Rick Riordan's Kane Chronicles teen fantasy books with my family, whilst on car journeys), I never had much interest in the ancient Egyptian culture or religion; but I have found a superb guide in Jeremy Naydler's Temple of the Cosmos (1996) which convincingly gives a phenomenological reconstruction of what religious life was probably like in that strange and wonderful civilization.

Yes, for all the marvels of that most enduring, cohesive and stunningly-well-documented of known high civilizations - its writing, formal and finished art and statuary, refined technology, magic, architecture and all the rest... my heart is with the contemporary English civilization in all its rough-hewn and blurred and partial remnants.


I envisage Neolithic, megalithic England as a kind of twin but polar equivalent of Egypt - standing in comparison and contrast - the two places and spiritual worlds known to each other and drawing on the same roots - but emerging very differently due to the different soil, climate, and peoples.

While Egypt had extreme and (mostly) predictable seasons, and a stark contrast between the Nile and the Desert regions, and clear air and skies and the sun, moon and stars always dazzlingly visible -- England has its skies dominated and blurred by clouds, mists, rain; multiple tiny streams, rivers, ponds and lakes; hills, forests and bogs; wholly un-predictable weather and little seasonality and its earth being earthy rather and sandy or silty.

My inference is that the English religion would have been less celestial and fiery than Egypt's, and more cloudy and wet! Less of a contrast and circularity about its stories, and more gradually transformative and modulatory...

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One distinctive feature of Mormons is the belief that there were Christians before the incarnation of Christ - this is documented (in two different groups) in the Americas in the Book of Mormon.

These were Christians who knew by personal revelation and prophecy that a savour and redeemer, Christ, would come - and that his atonement would potentially cover everybody - before, during and after His incarnation - and who therefore practised a Christ-centred religion even before Jesus was born or resurrected.

I believe in the truth of the BoM; but even for a Christian who did not, there is a real possibility that what it describes specifically may have happened in one or more places.

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How might Christians have existed before Christ?

My hunch is that a Saviour is something that would make sense only to those who were, in some sense, monotheists - those who believed in One God.

(Not necessarily a belief in a one-and-only God but a supreme, authoritative and ruling personal God who had a care for Men - individually and collectively.)

It is not that a Saviour is unnecessary in a polytheistic system, but rather that there is (apparently) a considerable muddle and imprecision about polytheism, such that its philosophical implications(including deficiencies) are unclear, and undiscussed.

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How might Christians before Christ know about Christ?  Here are three possible lines of evidence.

1. Revelation - personal revelations to individuals, and to acknowledged prophets, may have been made by God to communicate the need for a Saviour, and the promise of a Saviour.

(God might make such revelations open to all Men and all societies; but they may not be looked for, or may be ignored or rejected.)

2. Reason may have worked-out the need for a Saviour; individuals may have understood that pure monotheism was philosophically-inadequate (even in principle) to provide and account for the combination of factors which characterised the human condition in relation to the divine.

(This argument is based on the fact that Christianity offers, or promises, more than any other religion - as was recognized by Blaise Pascal; in other words, other religions have more gaps and deficiencies.)

3. Psychology - people may have felt the need for a Saviour; may have recognized that they could not save themselves, and that for them to be saved required some kind of mediator between God the Father and man.

And they may have felt that because they personally needed a Saviour, then a loving God of power would 'provide' a Saviour.

(This is another place where it seems that monotheism is required to understand the necessity of Christ - those who believe in a polytheistic pantheon do not regard them as responsive to human needs.)

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So, it is possible that early men may, for a variety of reasons, have concluded that Man required a Saviour; and that what Man needed God would somehow give.

Also that because a Saviour is once-and-for-all, it did not much matter whether He had not yet come: life should still be lived with that awareness.

And so some early men may have practised de facto Christianity.

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Candidates?

My favourite is the Neolithic inhabitants of England who built the Avebury, Silbury, Stonehenge and the other linked outdoor temples, stone monuments, pathways and spaces across southern England.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-neolithic-high-civilization-of.html

I like to speculate, to imagine, that these people were monotheists - with their supreme sky God-the-Father associated with the sun - and that they were awaiting some intermediary Saviour who was Son to the Father God.

This is compatible with what little is known of these societies; but there is no positive evidence that I know of - indeed I do not know what might count as positive evidence of a proto-Christian religion among the kind of things that survive to be noted by archaeologists.

Only if some kind of writing is found from this era, and is deciphered, could we perhaps really know. But if archaeologists aren't even looking for proto-Christianity or rule-it-out a priori (because, as typical secular modern people, the idea strikes them as absurd) then of course they never will find it.

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There are many prehistoric monuments in England - the earliest seem to be under the ground - such as West Kennet Long Barrow of some five and half thousand years ago, perhaps the centre of the religious landscape of that time...


While somewhat later are the more famous stone circles such as Avebury (near to West Kennet, and part of the same 'ritual landscape')


In general, through human development it has become more and more difficult to contact the divine. And this may be related to the assumed whereabouts of the divine.

Probably (there are no records), the earliest humans lived always 'in' the divine world - there was no separation between divine and mundane. Later, among the recorded simple hunter gatherers - contact with gods and spirits was more difficult; only attainable intermittently by a minority of specialist 'shamans' - who had to undergo some training, or else learn to use altered conscious states.

I would guess that the next stage - after the development of agriculture, and corresponding to the early Neolithic as at West Kennet - involved a professional priesthood, each of whom would experience a prolonged initiation. And also sensory deprivation and isolation - hence the underground sacred places.

(The Pyramids of Ancient Egypt are likely a highly developed version of this - the inside of the pyramid being the sacred space.) 

Under-ground was also the place of the divine - corresponding to the intuition that the divine was 'within' everyone and every-thing.

The monument Seahenge had an upside-down oak tree at its centre - roots above the surface, trunk and branches projecting deep into the earth - perhaps linking the divine underworld with this mundane surface world...


In the later neolithic, and into the bronze age - it seems likely that the contact with the divine became even more difficult - such that the gods were no longer experienced 'inside' - but in the sky, far away, imperceptible - and only indirectly and abstractly contactable by such methods as divination.

Hence the great stone circles (and pyramidal 'mounds' such as Silbury) were 'sky temples' - astronomically-shaped and aligned. I also assume that there was a supreme single god, by this time (henotheism); corresponding to centralised priestly government. 'Heaven' also means sky.

(The gods-under-ground, and god-in-the-sky temples seem to have co-existed for a long time - perhaps catering to different types of person; but the distinct impression is that the sky temples to the supreme god had the highest status, at least among the ruling group - since the greatest efforts were put into these structures.)

By this point, the kind of knowledge-based, abstract, priest-led religion was established which survived (gradually changing, becoming more theoretical and less direct) right through to the Reformation, and (somewhat modified) into modernity - after which it declined.

Until, from the advent of modernity (?1500s) increasing up-to nowadays, most people cannot contact the divine at all, under any circumstances - and deny its reality.

The idea of Romantic Christianity is that - starting with a few people from about the middle 1750s, and increasing, modern people are implicitly aware of the divine in a different, and individual, way; but which is not recognised as divine contact.

This is the process of conscious intuition, which I have often tried to describe on this blog. My understanding is that it happens to many (or most) people - but that nearly-always its validity is denied, and it implications ignored.

The modern sacred space is each Man's consciousness.

Note: If you are interested by the above line of argument, although not the specifics, you can find it superbly explored in Jeremy Naydler's The Future of the Ancient World, 2009.

They weren't all Mr Nice Guys - Druids probably performed human sacrifices as well as the good stuff

There is a famous passage in Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, where he discusses the Druids; and describes their relationship to Britain:

Throughout all Gaul there are two orders of those men who are of any rank and dignity... But of these two orders, one is that of the Druids, the other that of the knights. The former are engaged in things sacred, conduct the public and the private sacrifices, and interpret all matters of religion. To these a large number of the young men resort for the purpose of instruction, and the Druids are in great honor among them. 

For they determine respecting almost all controversies, public and private; and if any crime has been perpetrated, if murder has been committed, if there be any dispute about an inheritance, if any about boundaries, these same persons decide it; they decree rewards and punishments; if any one, either in a private or public capacity, has not submitted to their decision, they interdict him from the sacrifices. 

This among them is the most heavy punishment. Those who have been thus interdicted are esteemed in the number of the impious and the criminal: all shun them, and avoid their society and conversation, lest they receive some evil from their contact; nor is justice administered to them when seeking it, nor is any dignity bestowed on them. 

Over all these Druids one presides, who possesses supreme authority among them. Upon his death, if any individual among the rest is pre-eminent in dignity, he succeeds; but, if there are many equal, the election is made by the suffrages of the Druids; sometimes they even contend for the presidency with arms. 

These assemble at a fixed period of the year in a consecrated place in the territories of the Carnutes, which is reckoned the central region of the whole of Gaul. Hither all, who have disputes, assemble from every part, and submit to their decrees and determinations. 

This institution is supposed to have been devised in Britain, and to have been brought over from it into Gaul; and now those who desire to gain a more accurate knowledge of that system generally proceed thither for the purpose of studying it.

From this reference, and other evidence; Britain was the centre of the Druids and their religion of eternal (probably reincarnating) life. It was the main place where Druids were trained by a complex and prolonged process of education and initiations - all done by word of  mouth and memorization, because writing this secret knowledge was forbidden. 

And the Druids were a problem for the Romans, because they organized and inspired the fiercest resistance they encountered in their invasions and eventual conquests of Gaul and Britain. Caesar comments that the druidic beliefs inspired the Britons with exceptional personal courage in battle, since they did not fear death. 

In Claudius the God, Graves makes the destruction of druidry the major objective of the inclusion of of Britain in the Empire - despite that Augustus had originally made it a principle that the boundary would be Gaul. So long as Britain existed to train and export Druids, then Gaul could never be securely subjugated. 

After the conquest, it was a major priority to extirpate the Druids and break their power; which is exactly what the legions were doing, a couple of decades later, in North Wales and Anglesey (as described by Tacitus) - when Boudicca mounted her massively destructive rebellion in the opposite corner of the country.   

Whether or not these Celtic Druids were in any way descended from the Neolithic/ Bronze Age priesthood who created the vast sacred landscape of southern England around the megalithic monument of Avebury, it is not known. 

But it seems clear that  there were several times in history - up to the 'Oxford Movement' of the 19th century - when the British Isles has been a major focus for religion, with international significance.

However, Britain was also the place where the industrial revolution began - and the way of thinking we could call 'positivism' or materialism began to be established, and where this eventually achieved perhaps its most thorough triumph; with, here-and-now, the all-but eradication of religion as a powerful motivator in human lives. 

Positivism has a fascinating role in the history of human consciousness, if we regard positivism as a development in human thinking - rather than as a response to changed conditions. In other words, if we regard the industrial revolution as a product of positivistic thinking (i.e. Not the cause of positivism). 

We need to recognize that positivism was - at first - experienced as a great liberation of the previously-passive human individual from the oppressive constraints of... well of all forms of communal immersion and control (good and bad). 

Positivism meant that its adherents felt able to think for themselves for the first time in history - and to experience life from a centre in the individual; and from this centre to evaluate and choose-between the ideas and instructions of the rest of society.

Positivism activated Men's thinking, and grounded it in his self.  

Of course we are now at the incoherent, alienated, and self-destroying end-stage of this process - and Britain has become (under the recent domination of its diaspora-nation the USA) an originating and generative centre of materialistic global totalitarianism and (therefore) evil.

But this has been our choice, and the choice of our ancestors. 

Exactly because of our individualistic consciousness, we could have chosen otherwise - and still can do - if we wished.  

Positivism is not necessarily evil when it is known to be what it was intended (by God) to be: a transitional phase of human consciousness. 

If the people of Britain had instead chosen to root their knowledge, lives, culture in God and the spirit - then we could have taken a very different and better path - and so could the rest of the world, if they too had chosen.

It is not a matter of eradicating the mind state of 'positivism' and trying (but failing) to go back to an earlier phase of consciousness; instead we ought to use our innate capacity (and doom) of individual knowing, evaluating, and choosing to create (because this freedom is precisely a form of creation) a world rooted in the spiritual, in God, in context of a perspective of resurrected eternal life - made possible by Jesus.

Consider; in the world here-and-now people believe/ know/ live-by all kinds of weird, nonsensical and evil stuff - and our communal, institutional world therefore operates on the basis of these beliefs; and (by our choice) forces them back upon us. 

If, instead, we choose to believe/ know/ live-by that which is true, beautiful and good; then... our world and the communal world would begin to operate on those beliefs. 

...It really is as simple, and as difficult, as doing that. 

Note added: Another way of thinking about this matter is that Positivism - as such - was actually an expression of divine destiny, and an intended aspect of that line-of-development initiated by Jesus Christ. Its many evils are a consequence of being cut-off from Christianity on the one hand; and also because the Christian Churches cut themselves off from the implications of this new mode of thinking - initially by the Churches excluding and resisting individualism and a spirituality rooted in originative intuition, later (and now) by these same Churches accepting and assimilating-to atheistic-positivism.

  

We took a rail trip out to Hexham yesterday - a favourite place. The Abbey, in an earlier version built by St Wilfrid during Northumbria's 'golden age' was once the largest building in Europe, north of the Alps.

The views of the River Tyne and its valley, seen from the train window, are evidence of the wonderful strength of beauty that remains, waiting; and it is delightful that the buskers (i.e. street musicians - a melodeon player in one place, and two fiddlers in another) were playing folk music - including this (first) tune:


Anyway, as I travelled out I was reading a collection of John Michell's essays (Writings and rants of a radical traditionalist - recommended by this site's sometime guest blogger John Fitzgerald: Thanks!) - and reflecting on Michell's popularisation of the idea of the sacred landscape of Britain.

But Michell was a 'geomancer' and described the sacred landscape in terms of straight tracks, roads and Ley Lines of energy force - the ancient sites along along such alignments - and the detailed geometric/ astronomically-oriented  diagrams of monuments such as Stonehenge - this kind of thing:




But, I am struck by exactly the opposite!

That the sacred landscape of England - in large and in microcosm is extremely irregular, asymmetric and un-geometric - and this applies to Neolithic/ Bronze Age - Celtic or Anglo Saxon designs, sites, roads etc - I see little in the way of straight lines, sharp points, repeating patterns:




So, although I am pleased that John Michell drew attention to the subject of sacred landscape - I feel he was barking up the wrong tree in discussing it in terms of geometry and numerology.

This would, indeed, be appropriate to somewhere like Ancient Egypt, with its stereotypical obelisks, pyramids, right-angles - sharp edges, smoothed and polished stone - all silhouetted against a plain blue sky...

But England is all mists, rugged rocks, and wavy lines - it was an English painter (Hogarth) who said the line of beauty was a curve - and English literature prizes its array of unique characters (not 'representative' 'types') which fill Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens... Harry Potter.

John Michell was a Christianised (but not actually Christian) Platonist - with a strong element of the Pythagorean number mystic. This is alien to my temperament! - I find it a mystery why anyone would want to 'explain' spiritual beauty with mathematics!

Why would so many people want so much to describe everything as ultimately a matter of geometric shapes, or of 'fractals'!

Yet to regard mathematics as the underlying truth or reality - the archetypal world of 'forms' - is a deep and powerful urge among many, probably most, Western intellectuals since Ancient Greek times. So they see nothing absurd or contrived about covering the British landscape with abstract lines, angles and shapes drawn on maps, and aligned.

Although I reject this approach, I don't have any equally comprehensible and depict-able alternative for the sacred landscape - so me it is a miracle of intuitively sensed but undescribable rightness - like an unique character from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Shakespeare's plays, the 'design' can be shown and felt, but not made into a formula.

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I will not try to persuade anyone, and it is not a matter of Christian importance - but I personally believe the legends that Jesus came to England in his youth, with Joseph of Arimathea: I just cannot help it, and it gives me great satisfaction!

Not because the evidence is in any way overwhelming - although there is some; but (presumably) partly because I spent my school-days just a few miles from perhaps the main place He is supposed to have visited (Priddy, in the Mendip Hills); and partly because it fits with my general understanding of what seems like the special role of England throughout the history of Christianity (including the role of that Englishman abroad - Joseph Smith).

Anyway - if you are likewise inclined, I have found a very enjoyable and engaging book on this subject for you; a book which collects pretty much all of the legends and stories of Jesus in England: The missing years of Jesus: The extraordinary evidence that Jesus visited the British Isles by Dennis Price.

The idea is that this visit was between the ages of 12 and 30, and was prolonged; but it was not part of Christ's ministry and He did not perform any miracles; but rather He was engaged in some kind of 'work' relating to the metal and stone (tin, perhaps silver, mining and smelting) trade and business interests of Joseph of Arimathea (who is here presumed to be Jesus's uncle).

I need to point-out that this book is not really Christian. I mean it is compatible with Christianity, but does not seem to assume that Jesus was the Son of God. It is written from a New Agey perspective - for instance, the lurid cover has a picture of Stonehenge, which Jesus is presumed to have visited.

Indeed, one thing I liked about this book's speculations was its linkage of Jesus's visit and residence, with the Neolithic monuments, about which I also have off-beat beliefs (i.e. I suspect some of them are relics of a proto-Christian, literate, monotheistic civilization).

Incidentally, Stonehenge (unlike some of the earlier monuments such as Silbury and Avebury) is here interpreted as essentially a demon-and-ghost-haunted place of death: animal sacrifice, and probably human sacrifice. So Jesus's visit is argued to have had the nature of an exorcism and new sanctification.

Aside, there are some good bits of scriptural close reading; for instance, I was convinced by the collection of passages which seem to indicate that Jesus (age thirty-ish, at the time of his ministry) was treated as unfamiliar by many people in the gospels, and was not immediately recognizable even by those neighbours and family who would have been expected to know him (not even to his cousin John the Baptist).

This seems to be there in the text; and is interpreted as evidence that Jesus was absent from Nazareth for many years during which his appearance changed.

Of course it doesn't mean He must have been in England; but He might have been...

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From Albion Awakening...

...This is Maumbury Rings, a Neolithic henge. Here's an aerial photograph.




We have returned to the oval area enclosed by a ditch. That is to say, there would originally have been a ditch, formed by the construction of the outer banks, but that has long since been filled in. But still the basic layout of an oval demarcated by a border remains. 

Now, forgive me, but what does this remind you of? All I can say is that I have to assume it was constructed as a sacred space dedicated to the Mother Goddess. In its time it's been a Roman amphitheatre, a fort in the Civil War and even an execution ground in the 18th century during the Monmouth Rebellion, not to mention farmland and a place of assembly. But it is over 4,000 years old and its original purpose would have been religious. 

Archaeologists frequently say of ancient things when they are not sure what they are for, "used for ritual purposes" and I expect they are often right in that, but this clearly was a sacred space used by the local tribe for their most profound encounters with the numinous. When I used to go there 30 odd years ago it still had a feeling of peace and stillness, and there was also a sense of being safe and secure. 

Is it too fanciful to think of it as a kind of spiritual womb? Rites of death and rebirth are among the oldest and most widespread forms of human spiritual activity, and I think that is what Maumbury Rings would originally have been associated with...

Notice of a new blog - maybe weekly? - recording the mostly-prehistoric archaeological explorations of me and my wife around Northumbria:

https://northumbrianarchaeology.blogspot.com/

This first episode is about an apparently unrecorded example of neolithic/ bronze age 'rock art' we stumbled across a couple of days ago, while looking for something else...

Long Meg and her Daughters is a surprisingly large Neolithic stone circle in Cumberland, near Penrith; which we visited recently. It was an enjoyable experience - as others have found.  The site originally will have had a very broad 360 degree view to distant hills and horizons; and it slopes slightly toward the Pennines, as if the shape was intended to be visible from the flanks of Cross Fell and thereabouts.

It has several special features - first is Long Meg herself - a red sandstone pillar with 'rock art' concentric circular symbols still visible on one face (archaeology suggests there was originally another similar pillar, making an 'entrance); and the main circle of her daughters - made of grey stones; through which a small road goes.

Of the circles I have visited, it is most like Avebury, although smaller. The Daughter stones vary a lot in size - reinforcing my idea that each stone probably symbolically represented (was 'like') an individual person (or deity). Also the Daughters are spread-out, with no impression of ever having been contiguous. This differs from other Cumbrian circles such as Swinside and Castlerigg, which look as if originally the stones were placed close together, contiguously, to make an enclosing-excluding 'wall'.

A similarity with Castlerigg is that there is an area that looks as if there are extra stones that perhaps originally made a 'sanctuary' or 'chapel' jutting-in from the perimeter. 

From the fact that so many survived 4000 years plus; the British Isles must once have been covered in these and similar structures in the late Neothlithic-Bronze Age - I find it quite a remarkable thing to imagine moving through such a 'ritual landscape'. The stone circles are associated with other features such as pathways, parallel ditches (cursus), and various types of burial (some long barrows predate the stone circles).


The circles themselves seem like sky temples to me. I am impressed by the fact they don't have anything at the centre - just like the sky; but I don't believe that most of the stone circles have significant astronomical alignments. They are just not sufficiently regular geometric structures - the stones are very rugged and various in size and shape - and most are not even true circles. (e.g. LM and her Ds is flattened on one side).

My current guess is that the circles were dedicated to the sky god/s and stones were added to after the deaths of significant persons - or perhaps to represent gods. But they were clearly very important indeed - the sheer size of some stones is evidence of the work required to make them. The positions are distinctive and rare. They are part of complexly-shaped landscapes.

Probably, this was a literate society (the 'rock art' being the remnants of their 'writing'); and the number of these temples suggests a large pantheon, or in some way different functions of different temples (as with the much better documented and contemporary Egyptian religion).

I get the impression of life lived in this context; of life being a movement-through these sacred landscapes - perhaps following narratives of divine history; people continually reliving the primal stories of their gods.

*

Note: the following is based on a speculative conversation with Michael A Woodley - and it was Michael who invented the tern Giga-death to describe the post-industrial world of collapsing population. This post continues from:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-rise-and-fall-of-industrial.html

*

The Industrial Revolution had the effect of allowing many billions of people who would have died to stay alive - this meant that genetic mutations which would have been eliminated by death during childhood instead accumulated.

The Industrial Revolution has kept the mutants alive - including (very probably) you, and me, and billions more like us!

*

Indeed, for reasons which are somewhat uncertain, most people in most of the world chose not to have replacement numbers of children (the only exceptions being among the most devout members of highly traditional religions) and a combination of contraception and abortion mostly allowed them to achieve this choice.

Therefore, on the one hand mutations have been accumulating, generation upon generation, with (approx) one or two deleterious mutations being added to each lineage with each generation; on the other hand, people who exhibited traits caused by deleterious mutations - such as lowered intelligence and impaired long-termist conscientiousness, or higher impulsivity, aggression and criminality - were positively selected, were genetically favoured - simply because their pathologies meant they were either unable or unwilling to use fertility-regulating technologies.

In other words, accumulating mutations which damaged functionality actually amplify reproductive success under present conditions and for the past several generations.

Or, after the Industrial Revolution, humans have been bred for increased levels of genetic disease: we are now a mutant-enriched species.

*

Thus the proportion of mutants rose from two causes:

1. Incremental accumulation of spontaneous mutation, generation upon generation.

2. A positive feedback effects whereby damage from mutations (unless lethal or nearly so) would amplify reproductive success.

So there are more mutants in the population from accumulation, plus these mutants are more successful at reproducing and thereby spreading the mutations.

*

This trend is amplified further by recent and current patterns of mass population migration from areas with higher established mutations loads which have been further amplified by the effects of the industrial revolution, and various degrees of population replacement. 

*

At some point, the proportion of mutants - who are on average significantly damaged in functionality - will become so great that the Industrial Revolution will fall-apart, collapse; the 6-7 billion excess population will be unsupportable; there will be a Giga-death (i.e. billions of deaths) scale of mortality over some period - and eventually the world will again become agrarian.

However, countries such as Europe will not return to the medieval level of agriculture but to somewhere below the mediaeval level in terms of social complexity and productivity.

We could expect something more like the Dark Ages or the Ancient British (Iron Age) agriculture at best - or maybe even back to the productivity of Neolithic (New Stone Age) agriculture if metalworking is lost. 

In other words, productivity after the Industrial Revolution will be below the levels of productivity before the Industrial Revolution - because the post-Industrial world is full of damaged mutants.

*

This is important to recognize. A population of mutants whose intelligence has been dragged-down to a certain level will be much less functional than a population where selection has kept it in equilibrium at that level - the mutants will be carrying multiple pathologies in addition to their impaired intelligence. 

*

But arriving at this situation will take a while.

Before then there will be the Giga-death phase: the die-off of the billions of excess population which have been sustained by an Industrial society of frequent productivity innovation, but otherwise not.

So, there will be lots of mutants of many different types, living among a contracting, collapsing, population - as the billions in excess of the earth's agrarian carrying capacity begin to die-off.

This world of mass dying will provide a new kind of selective environment - some mutants may reproduce vary rapidly under these strange (and temporary) conditions by evolving to exploit unusual resources which are (temporarily) abundant in a Giga-death world..

And if the dying-off lasts a few generations, some weird mutant 'scavengers' may come to dominate in some places.

Interesting times...

*

Among the admittedly few bloggers who take notice of my comments, I have quite often been accused of not being a real reactionary; as if this was something I claimed to be, and an accusation I might be assumed to dispute...

Although wrong, this is not all that surprising, because several years ago I did go through a period when I did consider myself a reactionary; and this period included writing my book Thought Prison, and it was at this blog that the Orthosphere was devised and named (mainly by Kristor Lawson) - but it is now quite a while (probably about four years) since I was a part of this movement, or had reactionary aspirations - by which I mean the primary hope or intention of returning society to some earlier phase.

On the contrary, I believe we are in the End Times, the Letter Days - that these times are unique and that the 'destiny' (in the sense of the proper, best, intended future) is therefore qualitatively unlike any era of the past.

Part of this attitude is repulsion, part is attraction. Repulsion is that - when I try empathically to identify with any actual society of the past I find it impossible to yearn for it. There are aspects and phases - sometimes short transitional eras - that I do yearn for: some aspects of Neolithic society, of Anglo Saxon Northumbria in the Golden Age, participating in the Divine Liturgy at the Hagia Sophia during the height of the Byzantine Empire, that brief and lovely flowering of the Church of England around the time of Thomas Traherne... little bits and glimpses; but never the whole package.

In particular, I do not want anything on the lines of medieval Europe in the Age of Faith; which seems to be the staple yearning of most reactionaries (either that, or Holy Russia - which I do find preferable; or some kind of puritan commonwealth...). While there is much to admire (I read a lot of Chaucer and his contemporaries, I regard the Gothic Cathedrals as the most beautiful of all buildings) overall I don't much like the idea of Catholic Europe in the way that Chesterton and Belloc painted it. I have tried to make myself, at times; but really I don't. My aversion is solid.

In sum, I cannot regard any previously existing Christian society or type of Christianity as what was wanted or intended - all had good qualities, but all were very deeply and profoundly flawed (not always from their own fault - but usually so). In sum, I am not a traditionalist in any overall sense, nor in any sense which would enable me to point an any actual society and say that was how it was meant to be; that is what Christ intended for us.

I presume a real reactionary must be able to do this, must be able to regard some previous state of affairs as pretty-much ideal, given the constraints (although reactionaries differ greatly among themselves as to what 'that' actually is) but I cannot and do not want to be able to do tit: I am not and do not want to be a reactionary!

Not that I like these times and their trends - they are awful. I am on record of saying on multiple occasions that nowadays in the West seems to be the most evil time and place in human history - the only time when an increasingly systematic inverted morality (good as evil, evil as good) has been officially promoted and enforced in a sustained fashion.

But I am convinced we need to go through these times and out the other side; not back. My diagnosis is that we are stuck in rebellious adolescence - but the adolescence was both necessary and good - the problem was getting stuck for 200 plus years in what was meant to be a short transitional phase leading to a grown up Christianity of a type we never yet have seen.

So I am not a reactionary - I am future orientated. What I would most want is a Christian society, a theocracy - but of a type and nature as yet unseen and unknown (except in glimpses). This would - presumably - delay The End (which seems to be what God wants - he wants this world to last as long as possible, as long as it does good for salvation and theosis) ; but of course in the fullness of time the end will come; and will need to come. But that is God's business, and not even Jesus knew the timing. 

But I regard all previous and existing forms of Christian life as flawed and or stunted; i particular most serious churches are currently severely limited, stunted and distorted by continually having to fight the sexual revolution (they have to do this, it is necessary that they do this, I support them doing this - but the fact is that it takes a serious toll on what is possible for Christian churches in our era).

Stone circles were of primarily religious significance, clearly; and there is a strong tradition of assuming that they were usually 'sky temples' - which seems likely given their locations and the 'feel' of them. 

I accept that there is an element of astronomical alignment with some of these circles, such as the ability to indicate sunrise at summer solstice (as at Stonehenge) - but I believe that any such measurements could only be approximate - given the very various shapes and sizes of the stones. 

Such stones are not at all well-suited to the purposes of precise measurement - if that has been the purpose surely something with a distinct point, more like an obelisk would have been employed. Also, (nearly always) the lack of a central stone in circles seems to make the use of circles as highly-accurate calculators less likely.  

When I visited Swinside (above) I was struck by the variety of shapes and sizes, to the point that I felt that each stone had an individual character; and it struck me that this may imply that each stone represented a particular person. 

I could imagine the circle makers of neolithic times, being alert to such correspondences; and finding a particular, distinctly shaped and sized, stone; that they intuited had a one-to-one relationship with some (probably deceased) individual; presumably someone regarded as important or worthy - who deserved, or needed, such a monument.

Or, indeed, each stone might represent an anthropomorphically-conceived god from the (presumed) pagan pantheon. Or stone corresponding gods may be have been ex-humans - whether deified or avatars. 

The point is simply that each stone's shape was related to its identity as a personage - as well as the placement of the stone having a function related to alignments.   

Therefore I envisage these circles being added-to, incrementally, over generations - as suitable stones were found, and perhaps modified. When circles were being used for religious rituals, the participants would also (simultaneously) have regarded themselves as surrounded by spirits of specific, venerated ancestors... Again able to contact them - whether, from love, for guidance, or for propitiation.    

This landscape feature is one that much appeals to me, and which seldom fails to induce a yearning kind of numinosity.

I realised recently that the interest and feeling probably came from the cover of my teenage-bought edition of Alfred Watkins's The Old Straight Track.


So that is the (suggested) link between such tree clunps and ancient landscape features - they are supposed to mark 'ley lines', which - according to Watkins - were Neolithic pathways criss-crossing Southern England.

I heard about Watkins's book from the references at the end of The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner - and found a copy in the Bristol City Library; Garner has the Old Straight Track as a magical path visible only at full moon, as the moon rises - it plays an important part in the story, and provides its most memorable scene.

Later, John Michell (in A View over Atlantis) took Watkins's Ley Lines and made them into lines of spiritual power - but I knew nothing of this during my teens.

Anyway, all this seems to have left me with a particular sensitivity to a particular landscape feature. The Hundred Acre Wood in Winnie the Pooh is also sometimes depicted like this - which may have been a further latent aspect of my interest; as also a very good children's book called Borrobil by William Croft Dickinson (1944) - a kind of neo-pagan precursor to Narnia, and also written by a Professor.