Well, Shed Week 2008 is now over, so it’s a little late to enter this shed into the competition. In any case, it’s not “my shed”, so I can’t claim any responsibility for its wondrous condition. But I’ve been enjoying living with it recently. Kirsty claims a preference for “the more ramshackle” sheds; I’m sure she would appreciate it, too:

It’s way beyond repair. I’m not sure how long it would take me to get around to dismantling it if I owned the property. But it wouldn’t be pure laziness holding me back; there’s a messy, downtrodden poetry to it that would be missed.

I remember seeing a documentary where one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters (or perhaps Kesey himself), showed the fabled original bus, the mobile freak machine that toured ceaselessly through America’s psychedelic meltdown. Currently it’s a rusting wreck among some trees on a farm somewhere. The guy showing it pointed out the slowly peeling paint and rusting body, and delightedly elaborated his vision of it as a slow-motion strip-tease, the decay of industrial artifice in the face of nature’s inexorable force as a kind of gradual, erotic revelation of essentials.

This shed is almost an opposite to that vision. Human construction is similarly being decomposed by the elements, but the abundance of foliage alongside this organic deconstruction, moving in to colonize the hapless wooden structure, is a kind of engulfment, an enfolding, an embrace. Erotic, but more intimate than theatrical.

Trees were felled, sliced into regular lengths, and reassembled into a shelter for human use. Now the plants are reclaiming their remnants. It makes me think of J.G. Ballard’s visions in The Unlimited Dream Company, of London overrun by tropical flora; or that recent book about how the biosphere would evolve in the next century or few if humans just vanished, leaving their artifacts behind for nature to molest and merge with.

I think it would be possible to pry the ivy-smothered door and creep in, but I don’t want to. It feels like it would be an invasion into private space, a corner of this dense city that’s been re-created as a pocket of wilderness. I hear foxes sometimes nest in there. The cat wanders in occasionally; but even she’s cautious.

Some day it’ll need to be torn down. But until then, I’ll relish being the neighbour of this mysterious icon of the wild.

by Gyrus

Most of the writings in this book were written during a very strange, obsessive and fruitful time in my life. I was, as ever, experimenting with various ways of altering consciousness and interacting with the environment in magical ways. My own trip, the various complexes that I’d become aware of in my psyche, seemed to resonate uncannily with certain aspects of the prehistoric landscapes I was exploring—for the most part, Ilkley Moor and the Avebury monuments. As I dug deeper into their histories and associations, it sometimes felt like I was unearthing buried contents of my own mind.

There’s no certain outcome from getting into stuff like this. You can go off the rails a bit; you can publish some very dubious theories that say more about you than prehistory. My own approach was to keep my critical mind alert, but to embrace the fact that there’s a grey area between digging into your own unconscious and unearthing the realities of prehistoric life. How could it be otherwise, if we shake off the modern illusion of individual isolation, and accept that all our roots tangle together in the deep past?

There’s a long tradition of overlap between psychology and the study of the past. Carl Jung wanted to study archaeology, but his family couldn’t afford to send him to a university that taught the subject. So, he ended up doing medicine, which led him to psychiatry. The metaphor of archaeology remained with him, though. The crucial dream of 1909 that led to his theory of the collective unconscious involved him descending into the lowest level of the basement underneath a house, passing through a Roman level before encountering scattered bones. “This must be a prehistoric cave!” he exclaimed before waking up.

Oddly enough, my own plunge into the past was largely triggered by something above, in the sky. I had a nasty experience with chemicals at Glastonbury Festival—as you do—where I saw a vortex in the sky that threatened to drag me into it, to my death. The image of the vortex haunted me for years.

Looking back, with a playful eye for the movements of fate, I wonder… What led me after that experience to move to Leeds, a short bus ride from Ilkley Moor? And what led me to Ilkley Moor, where I was gobsmacked to find oodles of prehistoric rock art, the type of exotic and mysterious creations that part of me assumed were confined to caves in the Australian desert?

I had already written most of my essay The Devil & The Goddess, which takes ancient snake goddesses as a central theme, when I discovered by chance that a Romano-Celtic snake goddess—Verbeia—was worshipped as an embodiment of the River Wharfe, which runs past the moors and through Ilkley. I delved deep into etymology, and found that both “Verbeia” and “Wharfe” had potential roots in words referring to turning, swirling, and vortices. I quickly made connections with the turning, swirling Swastika Stone carving on the moor, and the vortex-like concentric circles of the common cup-and-ring marks carved onto many of the moor’s stones. Endless details, myriad connections, all gave me the vertiginous sense that I had psychically meshed with the local landscape and its history. My own association of the vortex with death and altered states permeated my reading of the rock carvings. I railed against the narrow-mindedness of academia (without having actually read much academic research, of course), and proffered my own visionary interpretations in the small press.

Before long, I was reading Richard Bradley’s book on the predominantly cup-and-ring rock art of Atlantic Europe. This was around 1997. Almost a decade before, David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson had caused a storm in archaeological circles with their paper, ‘The Signs of All Times’, which proposed that much Palaeolithic art was inspired by shamanic trance states. Drawing on their ideas about geometric shapes—grids, spirals, dots, and so on—representing the hallucinations from the early stages of trance, archaeologists like Bradley started to speculate about the Neolithic and Bronze Age cup-and-rings. Could they represent these early parts of the shamanic altered state? Lab tests had shown that vortex-like imagery was common as people were drawn into the deeper levels of trance. And entry into the Otherworld was frequently associated with death by shamanic cultures. Could the occurrence of spirals and cup-and-rings at the entrances to Irish passage graves be explained by this connection?

Well, of course it could. I’m all for keeping an open mind about prehistory, this vast period that we’ll never be certain about. But the logic and coherence of the “shamanic trance” theory of rock art, while it obviously can’t be applied anywhere and everywhere, means to me that it has to be placed in the foreground of our collection of possible models for the origins of this art.

Now, I’m really interested in how I managed to come to this conclusion independently, after a few years of messing around with strange drugs and staggering about West Yorkshire’s moors, when earnest academics had taken most of their careers of diligent study to get there. Does this mean that we can throw all our books away and get to the truth of the past by wrenching the lids off our minds? Sadly not. However, I’m not entirely convinced that it was blind luck that led me to this theory that academia has now validated. There really is something to be said for getting down to the basic structures of the psyche through experimentation, and using the data gathered from this first-hand experience to speculate about that period when these basic structures were being laid down—and, for the first time, expressed in material artifacts. It’ll never be an exact science, but it can function as an extremely valuable adjunct to scientific exploration. Some common-sense participation in the ways of magic, animism and altered states could, I believe, help ground abstract theories in the realities of the human body and the many qualities of the human mind that persist through changing historical circumstances. Anthropologists often go a bit native and live their subject’s life a little; why not archaeologists too?

If personal experience can contribute to the study of the past, what can the past contribute to our experience now? For me, history was always my worst subject at school. I’m still pretty patchy on all that stuff that happened between the Romans and the 20th century. My route into the past was Terence McKenna’s theories about the role of psychedelic mushrooms in the origins of human consciousness. Suddenly, someone was drawing compelling links between the direct experiences in my life that fascinated and inspired me, and the grander, often bewildering sweep of human history.

Recently, Andy Letcher’s book Shroom has taken this type of theory to task, heavily criticizing modern psychedelic culture for projecting its own agendas back onto the past. And many pagans, lead by Ronald Hutton, who was a big inspiration for Letcher, have for a while been taking apart the historical fantasies of Wiccans and others who believe themselves to be continuing a genuine lineage of magical practice. Why should we need validation for our current activities so much that we’re prepared to delude ourselves about history?

I do value the hard information and refreshing cynicism of Letcher and Hutton’s work—it’s priceless among subcultures that often succumb to insular illusions. But I think their views can be seen as the flip-side to the fantasies of historical validation that they try to demolish. To polarize things a bit: one side is so blindly in need of validation, that they are prepared to be certain about things that are up in the air; but the other side seems to carry itself with a kind of modern intellectual machismo that believes this need for validation from the past can be disposed of entirely. Science is the watchword, and despite the archaeological cliché that “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”, if hard proof isn’t forthcoming, we have to turn away. This seems to be as modern as Wiccan revivalism, and at least as damaging as they believe any uncritical reconstruction of past beliefs is.

We can’t just believe what we want about the past. But I feel we can’t just leave it be, or accept the “hard evidence” of orthodox archaeology as all that remains. The past is alive, and constantly expresses itself through the present, into the future. This isn’t determinism, it’s just the way things are. You can take a more complex angle if you want, and say that it’s our relationship to the past that is alive. The imagination is one of the most potent forces in human life, and it loves the past. Especially ancient times. It seems wise to engage consciously with this love, to nurture it and guard against its excesses, rather than decry it and hope it goes away.

Dreams, as Jung found, are particularly enthused about the past. Nothing is simple and straightforward in dreams; their metaphoric nature and tricksterish layering of meaning always defy any rational attempt to codify and delineate them. But they respond eagerly when you feed your head with images and stories of ancient things. The outward forms of prehistory, when they permeate your waking life, can seep into your dream world and help give shape to long-neglected patterns in your personal history.

Anyone’s deeper complexes can be as uncertain and hard to pin down as the forever lost—but deeply resonant—rituals of prehistoric tribes. Just as we can’t pin down such archaic events with archaeological certainty, the precise identification of our own ancient moments of significance may forever elude us.

But likewise, just as the lingering, intangible traces of these moments can profoundly shape our lives from behind the scenes, we will never be able to fully wipe away our subtle bonds to the deep past of the species. In both personal and collective psychohistory, our unceasing curiosity should be tempered by a light touch that respects the reality and the importance of the past’s essential unknowability. The lack of hope for solid conclusions needn’t be a cause of despair; it can animate our investigations with a playful delight, and a respect for irreducible mystery.

by Gyrus

The bulk of these essays were directly inspired by my experience of Ilkley Moor in West Yorkshire. The essays range wide across topics such as evolution, sacrifice, Kundalini experiences, shamanic cosmology, models of history, and psychedelic plants; but really, for me, Ilkley Moor was where it all started. It initiated me into thinking more deeply about the past, and into trying to make my interactions with the landscape an integral part of that thinking.

Ilkley Moor is covered in stones that are carved with various patterns, apparently abstract arrangements of lines, cup-marks and concentric rings. These are three thousand or more years old. More recently, the region has accumulated more than its fair share of odd folklore, from black dogs to little green men. It’s a bizarre place that practically urges you to map the strangeness of your present experiences there back onto the layers of weirdness from the past.

And that’s what I did. I plunged into studying the moor’s rock art, and eventually the Romano-Celtic goddess of the nearby River Wharfe, called Verbeia, paying close attention at all times to my dreams & synchronicities, and folding the more tantalizing of these back into my research. I performed rituals to ask the moor and Verbeia for help in conducting my research into their histories, and my experience was that this worked—abundantly.

Ilkley Moor isn’t just a major inspiration for these writings, it’s also part of why I’ve invited Phil and Robert along tonight. I arrived in Leeds in 1993, shortly after Phil had left for London, and soon became aware of the recently deceased Chaos Magic scene in the area. After I discovered the moors, the kind of “urban” reputation of Chaos Magic left me slightly surprised that Ilkley Moor was one of the chief stomping grounds for Yorkshire’s Chaos Magicians. This was yet another layer of history on the moor for me; this one place, eighty pence on the bus from where I lived, had a millennia-old reputation for attracting cultural oddities which was still alive and kicking.

I’ve come to know Phil as having a sound appreciation for in-depth scholarship, alongside in-depth magical experience, so that’s another part of why he’s here, this intermingling of our academic and magical traditions; and this brings me to Robert.

I came to realize that my independent research into these prehistoric glyphs happened to be running alongside a new current in rock art research in academia—one which holds that these patterns and forms, from the cup-and-ring art that’s found across northwest Europe to the painted caves of southern France or Africa, may have been derived from visions seen in altered states of consciousness. Specifically, the apparently abstract Ilkley-style art has been associated with the so-called “entoptic” phenomena seen during early stages of trance—lines, grids, dots and vortices, all taken to be hard-wired into the optic nerve in some way. Perhaps the earliest landmark paper in this current, published in 1989, is ‘The Signs of All Times’, by two South African archaeologists, David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson.

David Lewis-Williams has since pushed this theory forward, popularizing it in his books The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind. Thomas Dowson went on to run a now-defunct MA in rock art at Southampton University. I had a friend there doing archaeology, and Thomas was her tutor. When he mentioned he was taking his MA students on a field trip to Ilkley Moor, she put him in touch with me. Along with a fellow independent obsessive in Yorkshire called Paul Bennett, I thus became a kind of wayward local guide to the moor for Thomas and his students—one of whom was Robert. Robert’s also a practicing pagan—author of a book on Norse magic alongside his many academic works.

Now, I’ve lost track of the academic debate since the late ‘90s. I’ve just recently been catching up with it thanks to Robert. And I’m at once heartened and disappointed. It’s heartening that things seem to be moving along, from an entrenched, long-fought squabble over the “neuropsychological shamanic trance hypothesis”, to a wider debate about the general mindset of prehistoric people. Animism has gone through a revival and re-thinking in anthropology of late, and this seems to be slowing seeping through to archaeology.

It’s disappointing, of course, that it’s taking so long. My reliance on obsession wasn’t a sustainable course for research; but within a few years I hit on basic shifts in envisioning the world that have taken some top academics decades to appreciate. There’s a lot of ideas in my essays here that I wouldn’t stand up and defend now; but looking back, it seems to me that my willingness to make my personal experience of magic and altered states filter my reading of archaeology and anthropology greatly enhanced my ability to tap closer into the mindset of the cultures who created these intriguing artefacts. I have more of an appreciation now for academic research, for the value of developing our own traditions of thinking instead of just trading them in for some kind of cod approximation of animism or shamanism. But still I wonder: might we need to sacrifice a good part of our traditions in order to develop them?

David Lewis-Williams writes in The Mind in the Cave on the neurological basis for religious experience. He says in his conclusion:

If these neurobiologists are correct … the fundamental dichotomy in human behaviour and experience—rational and non-rational beliefs and action—will not go away in the foreseeable future. … We are still a species in transition.

It seems clear that he envisions our species as progressing along a linear path from immersion in “irrational” religion, slowly stepping out into the light of rationality.

However, too much rationality is dangerous. In his excellent book The Paradoxes of Delusion, clinical psychologist Louis Sass argues that schizophrenia, far from being a triumph of irrational instincts over reason and logic, as it is commonly seen, may in fact be a dangerous excess of rationality. He describes schizophrenia as:

not an overwhelming by, but detachment from the instinctual sources of vitality; not immersion in the sensory surround but disengagement from a derealized external world; not stuporous waning of awareness but hypertrophy of consciousness and the conceptual life. … a matter of the mind’s perverse triumph over the body, the emotions, and the external world.

I wonder if the protracted stand-offs in academia, such as the debate in rock art over the past decade or so, also demonstrate “reason gone mad”.

Perhaps a fuller, more sensitive embrace of the evidence of embodied experience offers a way forward, not back, out of these labyrinths of the mind.

[audio:2007-11-06-metageum-pauldevereux.mp3]
(Download 99 MB MP3)

The ever-clued-up Bob Trubshaw just brought an exciting-looking week-long conference in Malta to my attention:

Metageum 2007: Exploring the Megalithic Mind
An inter-disciplinary international conference on approaches to understanding the origins of our megalithic legacy
- The Caraffa Stores, Birgu, Island of Malta
- 3rd-11th November 2007

Speakers that I’m familiar with include earth mysteries maestro Paul Devereux, ayahuasca phenomenologist Benny Shanon and neo-shamanism scholar Robert Wallis. I’m sure there’ll be some good surprises alongside them.

Besides the chance to explore Malta’s astonishing megalithic monuments, there’s a fantastic openness to “experiential” goings-on in evidence. Especially exciting are New York’s Body Temple troupe, who are facilitating trance-dance workshops throughout the week.

I’ve signed up. Maybe see you there?

I’m tempted to put the cover art up as a tease, but I think I’m going to wait until it arrives…

The persistent rain made my planned jaunt to Avebury afterwards less than promising, but after a hearty lunch in the Red Lion, by the time I got to Silbury Hill, I found myself between beautiful grey storm clouds and bright, warm sunshine. The walk across the meadow to Swallowhead Spring was nothing short of magical. I was already spinning from the lushness of the grass when a grouse poked its head up, followed by another smaller one, and another, and another… One mother grouse and five young ones bobbed about uncertainly. After a terrifying clash with a defensive mother grouse on the moors near Ilkley years ago, I have the deep respect for them. I slowly circled away from the path to avoid them and we passed in awed silence.

On the way back from West Kennet Long Barrow, I noticed—seemingly for the first time, though I must have seen it before—the plaque for the bridge where the A4 crosses the River Kennet. It says:

Wilts County Council
Pan Bridge
Rebuilt 1932

I smiled at the strange nod to the goat-god, and then it struck me sideways. Beyond the bridge in my line of sight was the very place on Waden Hill where I had a bizarre encounter with a black goat one solstice several years ago. I wrote an account of this here. I was dumbfounded, laughing hysterically as the speeding traffic rushed by. Searching on the web for information about this bridge brings up one page, a poem that mentions it briefly.

Does anyone know anything about this bridge? It’s a fine little coincidence to allow to exist in and of itself, but I can’t help being curious about its origins…

This was summer solstice, 2001. As is my wont, I was lounging around in Avebury. Having eaten a few ‘shrooms, I wandered away from my friends, who were ensconced beneath trees near the henge’s Cove stones, for a reflective visit to Silbury Hill. Along the path that branches away from the River Kennet, just as it approaches the Silbury car park, a sight and some sounds slowly, bewilderingly fell into union to present me with a bizarre, slightly distressing scene. A child’s pink scooter and an empty pushchair lay before me, apparently the aftermath of some terrible collision. A toddler’s anguished cries pierced the hot, hazy summer air, though they were out of sight, obviously just coming round after being pitched by the crash into the hedgerow. Suspended in the unnerving hilarity of this half-concocted situation, I took a photo.

Passing the abandoned little vehicles, I saw a mother with a few kids in the neighbouring field. She was helping one of them take a piss, and another was wailing about something else.

It’s nice having a photo that, even just for oneself, captures a frozen moment of psilocybin-inspired unreality.

What I didn’t bargain for was the classically lens-shaped, classically vague and ambiguous UFO in the background over the crest of the downs. I didn’t see it at the time, but there it is, right where a friend convinced me he’d seen a UFO several years before as we stood on Silbury Hill.

I’ve just got back from a visit to Ilkley, a town in West Yorkshire, just northwest from where I live in Leeds. This bit of writing has been welling up for a while, and I’ve got down to it now because of what’s just happened.

I’ve been exploring the area around Ilkley, mostly the neighbouring Rombald’s Moor, for a while now—generally roaming around but especially getting into the prehistoric rock art carved onto over 250 stones across the moor. During the 19th century, when a lot of rock was quarried on the moor to build houses, there were thankfully some people around who respected the value of these ancient carvings, and saved some important examples from total destruction. The most famous example of this is the Panorama Stone. When building was due to take place in the region of the Panorama Woods, on the north edge of the moor, Dr Fletcher Little, a physician at the nearby Ben Rhydding Hydropathic Establishment, took action and bought the stones from the landowner for £10. They were relocated in 1892 and placed nearby in an enclosure opposite St. Margaret’s Church on Queen’s Road, where they can still be found. I’d already explored many of the rocks across the moors, but had never visited this enclosure, so today I went to take a look.

Approaching it from across the road, I could see some coloured objects on the stones, which I guessed might be flowers or similar offerings (Imbolc was last week). Getting nearer, I saw the objects were actually smashed Lucozade NRG bottles. What a shitty mess. A board within the enclosure informs the visitor that these rocks were ‘decorated’ in the Bronze Age, about 3,500 years ago. And they were decorated once more today, in a style characteristic of the late 20th century school of environmental embellishment. After sitting down and dejectedly pondering the situation for a bit, I climbed over the spiked railings and cleared the shards of glass up.

While I was clearing the glass up, an old guy with a dog walked past, looking at me. I explained what I was doing and he agreed that such littering was out of order. He then went off into an incomprehensible ‘kids these days’ rant, saying they ‘get hooked on these drugs’ and all that, and carried on to bash communism (not sure of the connection myself). I’ve got no interest in slagging ‘kids’ in general off—especially kids raised in a society that systematically crushes their souls and offers no joy, only frustration. Also, I doubt that many reading this are lazy enough to not bother taking their litter to a bin, so any admonitions made here are falling on converted ears. Are they?

This may seem like a petty issue to harp on about. But often we’re so concerned with ‘wider issues’ (particularly in publications like this) that we’re neglectful about all the ‘petty’ things that actually make up everyday life, i.e. real life. I know no perfectly integrated people free from all forms of hypocrisy, and it’s always good to really look at how your wider ‘ideals’ actually relate to what you do in everyday life.

Speaking of the people who got the Thatcher government into power and kept it there so long, anarchist occultist Ramsey Dukes wrote in the preface to Thundersqueak:

[...] those who most support [the Tory government's] "individualist" policies are those who would most like to cower behind the protective nuclear umbrella, and who are most eager to delegate personal responsibility to the strong arm of the law. These are the people who bolt their doors and call the police when they hear hooligans raging without—they would not consider going out to chat to the hooligans and suggest other forms of diversion. These are the people who do not stoop to pick up litter as they walk through public places—they leave it where it is and write angry letters to the press demanding stiffer penalties for those who first left it there.

Now I live in an urban area, the streets of which are regularly littered with decaying crap like chicken carcasses and student vomit. I don’t lose sleep if I’m not clearing this up all the time as I walk the streets. But when I walk across landscapes relatively untouched by the detritus of civilization, I’m a bit more prepared to do a bit of litter-picking. It’s just basic respect, which I quickly learned is the first step in forming any type of relationship with whatever you consider a sacred landscape. Take your waste home with you. When you have the time, and the space in your pockets (or carry a plastic bag with you…), try and dispose of some of the waste of those less mindful.

This is really the tip of some much deeper issues. I’ve recently got into a debate with a fellow amateur rock art researcher about the conservation of rock art sites. He’s incurred the wrath of some professionals because of his web site, which shows some carved rocks from the North Yorkshire moors, the carvings of which he has ‘chalked in’ to highlight the eroded grooves. Some American researchers are up in arms about this, apparently because of the detrimental effects the chalking might have on dating methods. He’s asked what exact harm is being done, and says that his accusers are unforthcoming with details, which suggests that they’re just being over-precious and haughty. I’m not familiar enough with archaeological dating techniques to really know what’s going on here. These carvings have so far eluded physical dating, because they’re on the top of element-swept moorland and all datable matter has been blasted away. I think some researchers are living in hope of more and more advanced techniques, and the idea is that we shouldn’t do anything to the carvings because we don’t know how this might affect as yet undiscovered methods of dating.

Anyway, the dating argument aside, I came to the conclusion that I don’t think his web site should show chalked-in carvings. Any individual may miss grooves, or chalk in grooves that are actually natural. It’s a pretty subjective affair, and I favour the idea of presenting the stones as they are, or doing tracings. For me, chalking the carvings turns the stone into an interactive art piece, a joint venture between archaic and modern humans. It’s not a good way of presenting ‘data’. But it may be of use in ritual activity based around such relics.

This last point touches some very uptight nerves in our culture and its attitude to its prehistoric heritage. The contemporary ritual use of ancient sites is a really contentious area, which isn’t limited to intellectual debate. This very issue resulted in a massive police operation and many atrocious examples of police brutality in 1985, when travellers heading to Stonehenge for summer solstice celebrations were stopped and forced into what became known as The Battle of the Beanfield (see Jim Carey’s article ‘A Criminal Culture?‘ in the last part of Towards 2012). Stonehenge has now become a fenced-off piece of history experienced from a distance by hordes of tourists, for whom the site is no longer alive.

The self-appointed ‘guardians’ of our heritage think, no doubt, that they’re acting in everyone’s best interests, preserving sites from vandals, or just from the general wear-and-tear of those eager to get close to the stones. And to an extent they are. There are people whose stupidity is a threat to sacred sites.

They could be just lazy and mindless like whoever it was who threw Lucozade bottles at the Panorama Stone. They could be active and mindless, like whoever it was who decided to inflict their ego on everyone else at Avebury, summer solstice 1997. A few of the stones that form part of the West Kennet Avenue processional pathway into the henge had been daubed with symbols in black paint. I looked at these ‘symbols’ myself, and they didn’t resemble anything I’ve come across in my research into magickal symbolism. So it was either a really dumb and uninformed act of vandalism, or some idiosyncratic chaos magickian, possessed by the type of reckless egotism that’s all too easy to fall prey to when Nothing Is True and Everything Is Permitted. Remember folks, Uncle Bill himself, referring to this maxim, said it first: "[...] not to be interpreted as an invitation to all manner of unrestrained and destructive behaviour." (Dead City Radio) Or perhaps the culprit was someone who’s let a healthy hatred for ‘New Agers’ get out of hand, and was trying to give the solstice celebrants a bad name? Or (for the more conspiracy-minded out there) maybe it was an English Heritage agent who wants Avebury to become another fenced-off ‘object’?! Whatever the case, as well as the damage caused to rare lichen on the stones, acts like this simply impose one ego’s trip on everyone else. Very few people, if any, can be sure that their ancestry reaches back to those who constructed a certain megalithic monument, so if these monuments are anyone’s ‘heritage’, they are everyone’s.

Will our culture’s ‘museum-consciousness’ never stop? Are we so pissed off at managing to alienate ourselves from our environment, our art and our sense of the sacred that we’re going to make damn sure that no evidence of less cut-off and boxed-in cultures escapes becoming an ‘exhibit’. Is the whole landscape of this country to be infected by our self-divided civilization, turning us all into ‘observers’ and ‘visitors’ whether we like it or not? This has already happened to a large extent. I can’t get my head around those signs that are put up in the countryside saying stuff like ‘Site of Natural Beauty Ahead’. People need to be told that? Like, shit, I might have missed that vast, gorgeous mountain if it weren’t for the sign.

Important rock art sites in America are now being fenced off, preventing even serious amateur researchers exploring them. I’m dubious about the possible collusions, even unconscious ones, between archaeologists and the tourist industry: are sites being fenced off due to scientific interest and conservation, or to rake in money—or both? Well, I accept that painted rock art sites, which are found all over the world but not in Britain, are inherently more fragile and precious than carved rock art sites. Paint is very ephemeral, and is also more amenable to dating techniques.

But I still find myself questioning the basic drives behind the ‘museumification’ of human-landscape interactions like rock art and megalithic monuments. How important is conservation? I want to conserve these sites, but how far should we go? Even if everyone going to sites is respectful, some ‘damage’ is done by human presence, as in the erosion of Silbury Hill in Avebury, caused by people going up it (including myself). Here I think we need to ask ourselves a big question: do we want to preserve these sites absolutely as long as possible, but experience them from a distance (unless you’re a scientist); or do we want to accept a slightly increased rate of erosion and decay and actually experience them? How does conservation and the acquirement of increasingly accurate scientific information weigh up against the right to experience ancient sites as they were intended (i.e. without a bloody great fence between you and them)? Do scientists see this right as applying to anyone but themselves? I don’t undervalue scientific research, but why is it so often assumed that this takes precedence over all other factors? Do we value data over experience? And has Christianity left us with a few too many illusions about the world? Are we still trying to fight off the fact that, in the end, nothing is certain and everything is finite?

I don’t believe in polarizing the argument into an ‘us against them’ situation, because I know full well that archaeologists today are acutely aware of these issues. I’m not so sure how much the potential value of ancient sites to us today is really recognized, though—value in terms of direct experience, that is. If this value isn’t recognized much, it could well be due to a lot of the rubbish believed by the popular end of the ‘earth mysteries’ community. It could also be due to a lot of the rubbish left lying around sacred sites, and the people who (sacred intentions or not) think that it’s a good idea to take to megaliths with spray cans. I say to these people, direct your street-art energies more intelligently: "Vandalize only what must be defaced." (Hakim Bey, ‘Poetic Terrorism‘) Physical violence in political protest seems to be a bad tactic in our society, not because it’s naughty and we should all behave, but because it’s counterproductive; it just leads to increases in police and state powers (and besides, they’ve got bigger guns). Similarly, careless treatment of sacred sites will only give the ‘heritage’ authorities another excuse to fence them off. And in the end, as I said before, basic physical respect for a site is the baseline from which to form a bond with it.

I’ve heard rumours of plans to fence off some of Rombald’s Moor. The Swastika Stone, a unique rock carving in this country, has long been spoilt by spiked iron railings around it put in place to stop it being spoilt by vandals. The idea of whole areas of this moor being restricted horrifies me. Wandering freely around it, exploring the stone circles, standing stones and carved rocks, has been a great source of inspiration for me and many others. Inspiration is too weak a word, really. It’s the type of inspiration you get from loved ones, intense music, sex and dancing. It’s life-affirmation. Unless we do our best every step of the way to create a cultural climate in which these places are treated with care by all of us, they may be taken away from us. We’ll fight to keep them whenever and wherever this happens, but in the meantime let’s prove ourselves worthy of them. Let’s try and bring the wasteless economy of nature into our culture, not spread the shit of the city over the land.

by Gyrus

pagan n. & adj. —n. a person not subscribing to any of the main religions of the world, esp. formerly regarded by Christians as unenlightened or heathen. —adj. 1 a of or relating to or associated with pagans. b irreligious. 2 identifying divinity or spirituality in nature; pantheistic. [ME f. L paganus villager, rustic f. pagus country district: in Christian L = civilian, heathen]

The Concise Oxford Dictionary

I’ve spent some time wrangling over what’s implied by calling this part ‘Paganism’, and it was an odd surprise to find a pretty good approximation in the dictionary definition given above. To be pagan is to be concerned with ‘spirituality’ (or the realities behind this illusion-saturated word), and to work with it outside the ‘world religions’. It involves being seen by many Christians as ‘unenlightened’ (we’ll take that as a compliment). It should, in my view, involve being ‘irreligious’, if ‘religion’ is defined as pompous, uncritical, fanatical or just dull spirituality. Above all, it involves finding divinity, life-source, in the physical environment, and in our bodies.

Of course it’s a lot more complicated than this at the end of the twentieth century. Paganism changes character depending on who you speak to—such is the rejection of dogma. ‘Pagan’ was originally just a term used by urbanized early Christian cultures to refer to the peasants, rustics and country folk. In academia, ‘pagan’ is now usually used to refer to polytheistic, usually agricultural societies like the early Greeks or the Celts. But today mutated paganism thrives in the hearts of cities. ‘Urban paganism’ is nothing new—the Romans, for example, were very urban, and, pre-Christian conversion, very pagan. Modern urban pagans are usually more aware of the hideous drawbacks of ‘civilization’. But cities are still environments—as the Velvet Underground said, they are "flowers made out of clay". In Chaotopia!, Dave Lee discusses a TV interview with an Amazonian shaman:

Just before the occasion of the interview, the shaman’s son had taken him into a town for the first time. They had ridden on a bus and gone to see a film at the cinema. The old man was tremendously excited by all this; he had lived all his life in the forest, and had learned the spirit songs of animals, plants, rivers, elemental forces. Suddenly he had been precipitated into an environment where he knew very few of the spirit songs. To him, a car or a cinema was as worthy a subject of a spirit quest as any creature or object he had been brought up with. He told the interviewer how he was performing his spirit vision quests to learn to sing the song of the car, and the song of the cinema! Since these things were now in his mind, part of his mental environment, he saw no reason why they should not have songs, songs that would be his tools for improving his power relationships with them. Such an approach is far away from the guilt-ridden anti-technology attitudes of new age "shamans", and is of the essence of the ancient current.

Well, ‘techno-paganism’ has been a fashionable buzzword for some time now; hopefully the chaff of hype will fall away quickly and leave us with a basic awareness that technology is not inherently destructive, and can, even must form a part of modern paganism.

A driving impulse behind modern paganism, though, is the desire to reconnect to the source of our life, the natural environment. Some, hearts set on stellar travel, may see this as regressive—just as Freud saw ‘oceanic ecstasy’ as a regression to ‘womb-consciousness’. Both are victims of linear models of progress, assuming that ‘the past’ is a relic, a dead weight to be shed; not a living foundation, perpetually drawn on and re-created. That said, the lifeforms that have evolved here will have to leave their native cradle some time in order to survive. It’s odd that most people who favour sticking with the Mother in preference to space exploration see the planet as an organism. This view, in my book, would make the Earth mortal (which, according to most cosmologies, both mythical and scientific, it is). We’ll have to leave well before she dies her natural death.

On the other hand, futurist evangelists who try to convince us that we have to leave the planet now, to avert ecological catastrophe, seem to me to be unwittingly siding with a grossly irresponsible aspect of humanity. "Oh shit! We fucked this place up, let’s go find another one!" I thought of this when I saw Independence Day. Besides the high humour of the president’s speech and the cheesy gung-ho, the film showed a classic case of humans projecting their skeletons-in-the-closet onto aliens (either people of different ethnic backgrounds, or, in this case, literal aliens). The aliens were seen as marauding parasites who hop from planet to planet, draining resources and screwing up eco-systems along the way. A similar idea lay behind the alien/Egyptian god in the abysmal Stargate. In both these films, the vampiric beasts from space are opposed and conquered by… American martial force. And we all know the impeccable ecological record of the US military-industrial complex! It’s these corrupt scum who’ll probably end up being humanity’s interstellar ambassadors—more power to the Autonomous Astronauts, we say.

America was, by its nature, colonized by the West’s frontier-breakers. Some were anti-law drop-outs, searching for freedom from Europe’s repressive social systems; some were religious libertarians, seeking new ground for the realization of Heaven on Earth. But the land was not a blank slate of wilderness; it was an ecosystem that already included fully developed human cultures. And despite the links formed between the drop-outs, libertarians and natives, it was the disrespectful, patriarchal and nature-fearing/hating frontier-breakers who ultimately triumphed (for the meantime). Do we want the same human impulse that massacred Native Americans and ultimately became the US powers-that-be to spearhead our birth into space?

Earth is a temporary home, our cradle; but maybe we’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re grown-up enough to colonize other worlds just yet. Some may see the alienation of modern urban life as necessary preparation for the rigours of isolated interstellar life—a rehearsal for final separation from the biosphere’s matrix. Too often it appears to me to be preparation for an ignorant future of parasitism and cosmic disrespect. The real question we need to ask is: does our longing for space come from a sense of joyous overflow, of loving expansiveness? Or does it stem from bored restlessness, alienated aggression, and a discontent that will never be sated, always destroy?

Despite the energy, resources, and exciting fervour of the city, we still value and love the natural environment. There’s not much ‘natural’ environment left though. So much has been physically destroyed or spoilt by unharmonious capitalist expansion. There’s a more subtle level to this as well. I used to think that I was walking across untrammelled ‘natural’ land when I roamed about the moors here in northern England, only to discover later that these open moors were once covered in forests—which began to be cleared by humans as early as 8,000 years ago.

What’s left of nature is often conceptually boxed up, and has all its wonders theorized away by overly self-conscious modern thought, which stresses the illusory quality of ideas about ‘naturalness’. It’s important to realize how ‘nature’ is usually filtered through human mental constructs and models. But this awareness of our distance from nature is not a revelation granted to us by recent theorists. For me it is the basis of paganism—along with the realization that we are part of nature at the same time. Look at the old Germanic word Hagzissa, meaning ‘hedge sitter’. It is the root of the modern German Hexe (witch), and refers to those people in a community who straddled the gap—symbolized by the hedge—between the world of the human community and the world of non-human nature. If shamanic cultures really saw themselves as living ‘at one’ with nature, as many Western pagans see them, shamans would have no need to venture out into the wilderness alone, for what Native Americans call ‘vision quests’. This archetypal adventure away from the community is an acknowledgement that the community is, to some extent, cut off from nature by its consensus illusions. In the woods, mountains or deserts, the isolated shaman is progressively stripped of his or her cultivated perceptions and ego-barriers, and thus becomes open to contact with the spirits of nature. In pagan northern Europe, this practice was known as ‘utiseta’ (‘to sit outside’, the whole night). It is this experience that still retains the potential to burst the shell of separation from nature that modern thought often still perpetuates, with its sophistic and self-referential theories.

Of course, the shaman returns to the community after immersion in wilderness, to share the wisdom and power gained there—an activity that differentiates shamans from free-range nutters who wander off and live in their own world (not such a bad idea, but it ain’t shamanism). It is here, in the return to society, that culturally conditioned ideas of nature influence the nature-contact. I would say that the efficiency and flexibility with which this influence is mediated defines the health of a community.

There is the argument that any ‘contact with nature’, however removed from human communities, is inevitably governed by cultural constructs. Nature spirits and primeval elemental forces are masked by idiosyncratic ideas about them, however much conceptual baggage is ripped away. This can be seen in the phenomenon known as UFOs (remember what that first letter stands for!). Those from a technocratic space-age culture can see them as alien craft from other galaxies; those with an open scientific mind can see them as possibly sentient energy-forms created by tectonic stress along faultlines in the Earth’s crust (‘earth lights’); rural folk can see them as faeries or ‘the little people’; tribal cultures can see them as ancestor spirits or the disembodied souls of shamans. In terms of the intellect, and post-experience rationalization (the detritus of experience), cultural conditioning is inescapable. But in terms of experience itself, it is possible that while contact with this type of phenomenon is happening (as with intense psychedelic states) conditioning is suspended to reveal raw, concept-free communion with nature that is unmediated—at least to the extent that being human allows. And we have yet to discover the limits of being human.

The use of the word ‘shaman’ has slipped in here almost unnoticed, and it deserves special attention. It comes from the word saman, used by the Tungus people of Siberia, meaning "one who is excited, moved, raised." In anthropology it came to replace terms such as ‘medicine man’, ‘witch doctor’, ‘sorcerer’, or ‘seer’, used to describe healers or spiritual specialists in various cultures. Mircea Éliade famously defined shamanism as "techniques of ecstasy", emphasizing its lack of religious dogma, and its focus on methods of entering altered states of consciousness on behalf of the community. Nowadays the term has passed into popular use, and academics often descend into spasms of despair and indignation at how casually it’s bandied about. It’s suffered most in the hands of New Agers, who use the word to conjure up a feeling of ‘authenticity’ (which always rakes in more money), and debase it by glossing over some of the less palatable and marketable aspects of shamanism in tribal cultures (like sorcery, tortuous initiation rituals, and a deep concern with the experience of death and dissolution).

Technically, ‘shamanism’ should be understood to refer to a traditional practice whereby a particular individual enters extreme states of consciousness, communicates with and masters particular spirits, and utilizes these relationships for the benefit of the community—usually to heal. (Often shamanic activity isn’t really individualistic—see ‘The San & The Eland‘ in these pages.) But despite the New Age’s rose-tinted shades, I still think the words ‘shamanism’ or ‘shamanic’ can be used intelligently with a broader view than that of the academic—to refer to a range of interactions with otherworlds and the spirits that dwell there, and to mythological motifs with obvious, if indirect roots in these experiences. And however you define it, I think shamanism is one of the most fundamental phenomena behind ‘paganism’. I’ve no grand theory about this, but my own experience and research has led me to believe that the basic motifs and perceptions found throughout shamanic cultures—soul-travel, the many-levelled cosmos, an animistic worldview, death/rebirth, shape-shifting—form a good, basic map of possibilities for human interaction with the more esoteric aspects of the biosphere and the body itself. But that’s just my view.

The archetypal death and resurrection experienced by the tribal shaman can’t be directly assimilated into our culture. Modern people who, spontaneously or otherwise, undergo a similar experience, have no fixed, culturally-sanctioned net of belief to be caught by. None of us can ‘become a shaman’, because a shaman is universally accepted by his or her culture as a uniquely gifted and magickally potent individual. Try going around today believing this about yourself and see where it gets you!

As our culture has fragmented, so have our identities. More than ever before, paganism and magick today involve an acceptance of different self-images, and a willingness to allow these to shift, dissolve and reform as our personal circumstances move on. The modern West is witness to the first humans to become pagan, rather than to be born into a pagan culture. In an age dominated by consumerism and the image-obsession fostered by advertising and the mass media, consciously ‘becoming’ anything often involves more concern with the image that this new identity projects to others than with what it means in terms of experience and genuine mutation. Paganism is particularly prone to this, because it supplies such a vast wealth of images and visual styles, as well as conceptual identity-supports, that can be picked up and recycled. I don’t think anyone’s immune from some form of image-obsession, so it’s a bloody good idea to be aware of it. And to surrender the whole lot on a regular basis through whatever form of ego-shattering and rebuilding you have access to.

This, like all sound paganism, requires the exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Altered states, drug-induced or otherwise, are simply a human birth-right; in some ways they are the essence of being human. Some anti-hedonists see the revival of experimentation with altered states in the West as a "phase", part of some pre-millennial decadence. Non-ordinary states of consciousness are not a phase. If there is a "phase" involved, it is the period we are about to emerge from, a period where ecstatic consciousness is demonized and the illusion of ‘ordinary consciousness’ holds sway. Altered states have never left us and never will. Cultures like our own that suppress them by restricting access to them—through drug prohibition, sexual repression, persecution of ecstatic religions, clamping down on uninhibited communal revelry—find them popping up in nasty ways, like mental illness or mass hysteria. It is in deeper states of consciousness like trances, dreams and trips that we brush against the roots of ‘normal’ consciousness. We travel in realms that spatially and visually represent the structures underpinning the little worlds we call ‘reality’. Paganism, for me, with its multi-faceted, interconnected and non-linear apprehension of ourselves and the world, is rooted in these realms. But then again, so is everything else. I suppose paganism is distinguished by the feeling that these otherworlds are not absolutely separate from the flesh, juice, air, fire and earth that make up this world. They are related, and influence each other through a process that we can, if we want to, take part in.

The articles collected here are not a ‘summary’ of paganism, they’re just a few views on it, or expressions of it. Some contributors may call themselves Pagan. Some may use a small ‘p’ in the word, to try and shed the idea that paganism should become some new world religion. And to shed the idea that individuals are just ONE thing. Some may hate the word because of the baggage it’s been made to carry. Some might not be arsed at all about the word. The title of this issue is really just a convenient term to tag onto the spiritual ideas and perspectives that interest me.

The heavy focus on natural landscapes and archaic monuments is a reflection of my current obsessions. It’s a mistake, though, to think that paganism today has to be rooted in some ‘unbroken’ lineage of paganism from the past, especially as we’re just guessing about, and creating the past most of the time. Interpretations of prehistory inevitably say more about us than our ancestors. Well, to me this is often why looking into the past is so interesting. Even if you only vaguely brush against the ‘actual’ views of prehistoric people, you usually manage to expand your own horizons and learn about yourself and your culture in the process. The ‘creative’ use of archaic spirituality has got a bit of a dodgy reputation, understandably in light of the Nazi’s appropriation of northern European paganism. That doesn’t mean there can’t be other interpretations that are more intelligent, more concerned with human freedom, and less self-critical and pompous!

There’s plenty here to please or annoy people of most persuasions, hopefully in a creative way. Ideally, there’ll be something in here that will inspire you drop your search for the ‘true path’, and do something. Education in these realms, as in all others, comes from action, involvement, risk, failure, play and persistence. The path is not straight—it bends, curves, spirals and shifts. It is not given to you—it comes out of you. You do not work towards it—you’re already on it. And you move along it every time your senses remake the world.

by Barry Patterson

Introduction

We are living in a society in which most of us are thoroughly insulated from the rawness of the elements, & our idea of nature is a walk on a path through the agricultural countryside or a TV documentary. Our lives revolve around values which are far removed from those of our origins, & although we don’t dominate nature, we try to, & when that doesn’t work we try to sanitise it or retreat from it.

The problem of our loss of integration with the environment isn’t just a physical one about pollution, or an ecological one about our present lifestyle not being sustainable, it is also at the heart of the spiritual crisis which our culture has created for itself. More & more people are alienated, stressed out & suffering from subtle dis-ease resulting from the way we live, & are realising, at the heart of this sense of wrongness that they feel, a drive towards magic or alternative spiritualities. A number of movements have arisen in the past two decades, including the diverse community of modern pagans, some of whom try to address these issues in an holistic way; discovering that there is healing & transformation in contact with nature in all its depth & sometimes danger.

I have long held the view that one particular dynamic which has incredible potential for a return to a greater sense of wholeness is contact between people & special places with which they form relationships of mutual benefit. In one sense, animistically, it is about mediation between the human & non-human worlds; in a mystical sense it is about the recognition that the boundaries which divide up our lives can fall away, & we can experience the fundamental ground of being, the source & unity of all.

Here I am going to look at the potential of what might be called "Sacred Geology", the idea that different kinds of rocks & rock formations can alter our state of consciousness & are worthy of consideration by those of us who turn to the natural world for inspiration, guidance & healing.

Science, Art & Magic

I don’t think of myself as a scientist, nowadays, despite my background & training. I still value the insights & knowledge which come from my scientific education & I have always been a keen amateur naturalist & geologist, but I am no longer a participant in any activity which could be called science. On one hand I accept, generally, the current models of the history of the earth & theevolution of life, but I place some of my own idiosyncratic interpretations upon them too; what is history after all?

The reason for this explanation is to clarify that in this article I am using geological nomenclature & some modern scientific ideas, but I am giving them other, non-scientific meanings or significance as well. I am not pretending that what is presented here is in itself scientific, nor would I rejoice to hear it described as quasi- or pseudo-science. I really don’t accept the model that says that you can do controlled experiments in magic. It is possible that in some future time science might provide some kind of workable hypothesis of how different kinds of rocks & minerals or landforms might alter human consciousness in a measurable, consistent way, but I am not interested in attempting to make such an explanation, rather in describing what my own & others’ investigations have suggested, in a way which will hopefully encourage others to make their own.

Finally I make no bones of the fact that I consider magic, divination, ritual, trance work or whatever as arts (not sciences) & that, in the long run, I consider science to be an art as well. This view may not be acceptable to many, but I offer it here, with no apology for a lack of explanatory philosophising, so that the reader will be able to understand how I have approached mysubject matter.

What makes a sacred site?

If you ask most people to name a sacred site they will probably choose somewhere which is famous for religious or mythical reasons such as Stonehenge, Tara or Durham Cathedral, & there is a lot of current interest in ancient or sacred places, not only among modern pagans but much of the population for a variety of reasons.

I was recently reading a book in which the famous American psychology writer Scott Peck (of The Road Less Travelled) was visiting megalithic sites in the UK. It was interesting to read the associations which he made with them but also to see familiar places through another’s eyes. He very soon began to address the question of why some places feel "holy" & others simply don’t. Obviously just because a site is ancient doesn’t make it feel sacred, & in the end we are going to attend to our own personal impressions more than anything anyone else has to say about the matter. On the other hand there are those who go on about "The Stones" but who light fires against them or daub them with graffiti or leave litter & inappropriate offerings. After removing litter from countless sites one can only imagine that such people aren’t really interested in what’s there at all, only in what it means to them in their own narrow little world view.

It’s a truism, I suppose, to say that a place is powerful or sacred because we feel it to be so ourselves, but much of what concerns me here is totally subjective. Often you get back what you put in, so if you approach a site with awe, reverence, or respect you are more likely to feel some kind of positive response. There is an argument that everywhere is sacred & it is purely a matter of our mind set, but that being said we still find ourselves for the most part in the relative world where some places affect us more than others. "Everywhere being sacred" is, if you like, another state of consciousness (although one well worth aspiring to). One of the reasons for these different effects is, in my opinion, the "local geology", by which I mean the local rock types & the shapes & forms that we find them in. On a recent trip to Ireland I often found myself as awestruck when I encountered natural rock formations as I did at some of that country’s truly marvellous megalithic sites, if not more so.

Of course the whole ecology of a place will contribute to its atmosphere & its effects upon our mood or perceptions. This includes plant & animal life, time of day & year, weather, human history, use & abuse, folklore & so on; ideally I like to approach the subject in a holistic way & have written about that elsewhere; but underneath all of these is the ground from which they sprang, the living bedrock of the Land.

Finding Your Place

I am a great believer in the almost clichéd (a cliché is in the mind of the beholder!) saying "Think Global, Act Local", & feel most strongly that instead of racing around the country visiting important places (so that we may feel important?) we should find, get to know, work with & look after our own local places of power. They may be sites of scientific or archaeological interest, places with interesting folklore attached to them or just anonymous spots where we feel something special & to which we find ourselves returning. If you think about it we all have such places or have had them at some time in our lives, & it isn’t hard to get in touch with that again. Reading books on local history & natural history & studying local maps is a good way to get started if you find yourself on new turf, as is getting out & exploring, whether in a planned way or just by aimlessly wandering to see where the Genius Loci, the spirit of the locality, might lead you.

If reading this article turns you on to considering geological factors in finding or working with local spots then you may decide to purchase a geological map. If you do, I hope that the following advice will be of assistance. Geological maps show different types & ages of rock as different colours superimposed on a monotone map of the area. It is useful to have a standard O.S. map to hand as well to make comparisons to locate sites of interest. Geology is a complex science & the maps are covered with a lot of technical terms. Some of them are briefly clarified elsewhere in this article but if you’re going so far as to get a map then get an introductory book on geology with a glossary in it (you’ll probably find one in the local library), & a local guide book too, which describes what the map illustrates. When you are choosing your map you will discover that they are expensive, & this means that scale of map(s) you choose will be dependent upon your budget. It’s cheaper to buy one which covers a larger area but shows less detail. There are also two kinds of maps, solid & flow. The former show the solid bedrock underlying the area covered by the map while the latter also show the deposits which exist on top of that such as those of rivers or glaciers. You need to choose which to use; I prefer solid maps.

If you are looking for potential power places to visit try finding:

1. Places where there are lots of geological faults, (shown on the map as black lines) major fault lines or where faults meet. Rock faults are lines where a the rocks have split & slid along against one another. Studies have noticed a strong correlation between the concentration of faults in an area & the occurrence of stone circles, as well as reports of UFO’s (unidentified, right?), hauntings & other "strange" phenomena.
2. Localized igneous intrusions (see explanation below). These are usually shown as red, pink or purple blobs.
3. Places where a lot of different layers (different colours) are found close together in a single locality.
4. Any obvious small sized islands or blobs of anything which contrast with the surrounding land.
5. Interesting physical features such as caves, gorges, dykes, escarpments, etc.

Minerals, Stones & Rock

The rocks of the earth’s crust are made up from various chemical ingredients with their own clear identities. They are called minerals & most rocks are a mixture of them. Ultimately most minerals are in crystalline form but the crystals in many rocks are microscopically small in size. Larger crystals occur for a variety of reasons (see below). When I say rocks I mean types of rock. By stones I mean pieces of rock which have broken free from the bedrock. Bedrock, where it outcrops on the surface or can be accessed in quarries, caves or mines, or on the coast, is sometimes referred to as living rock because it is still in direct connection with the deeper layers or other structures beneath it.

A Zen Teacher said: "A stone has the life of a stone", & there are parallels between stones & more animated objects such as people and other creatures. They are born when they separate from the body of their mother, whether bedrock or a larger stone. They exist as individuals for a period of time during which they may spawn smaller stones & eventually they wear away. They are broken up or eroded to the degree that their life has come to an end. Just as a mystic might say that we are continually dying & being reborn, so our stone, in its natural environment, is being constantly eroded by wind, water, ice & other stones. This is one explanation of why we feel an affinity with stones, & because their life span is often so much longer than ours (depending upon their hardness), hold them in reverence, like ancient trees or elders of the clan.

I’m an animist. If you asked me do I believe that stones have an indwelling spirit, I’d say yes, but if you said do they have some kind of conscious awareness then I would say there’s no nervous system, so not like ours. One doesn’t have to believe that there’s a person living in that rock or stone in order to treat it with respect or enter into communion with it. You could say that rocks are non-human entities of an age & size beyond our imagining, which sounds a bit Lovecraftian, but how we approach them is surely a matter for the private conscience of the individual.

Types of Rock

There are unseen dynamisms within the earth. Huge currents & movements of the liquid & semi-liquid materials beneath the crust lead to what we now recognise as continental drift, a migration which takes millennia. On the surface there are other faster & more easily identifiable geological processes at work. We can all witness the three great processes which have shaped the land: erosion, transportation & deposition. The agents of ice, sunshine, wind & water have been playing with the basic materials of the earth’s surface since before organic life emerged in the soup.

Some of the oldest & deepest rocks, although they do emerge onto the surface in many ways, are those which are formed when molten material such as magma, under the surface, or lava, emerging, have cooled down & solidified. They are usually hard rocks composed of complex patterns of interlocking mineral crystals of varying sizes & types. Basalts, which form structures under the surface such as sills & dykes, maybe later revealed by erosion, tend to be composed of very small crystals. Granites, on the other hand , often have such large crystals that individuals can be seen clearly with the naked eye. Such rocks as these, born when the heat of down below cools, are called igneous rocks.

Such rocks, no matter how hard, cannot resist the forces of erosion & are broken, split, smashed & bashed into smaller bits, which are carried elsewhere by water or ice or wind. They become pebbles, gravel & sand & eventually even fine powders such as clay & silt. These materials accumulate on beaches & lake & sea beds, on river bottoms, floodplains & in deserts, & after millions of years of build-up the lower layers, now deep underground, are heated & compressed to form layers of rock. These are known as sedimentary rocks & they tell the story of what conditions were like in a particular place at the time when they were dumped there. They are the kinds of rocks such as sandstone or shale, which often contain fossils. Some sedimentary rocks are more organic in origin than anything else, such as chalk, limestone or coal.

Everything is constantly changing & rocks under the surface may be exposed to extreme conditions of temperature & pressure, causing them to change their appearance & composition. Both igneous & sedimentary rocks can be transformed, limestone into marble, or granite into gneiss (that wonderful stuff which they used to build Callanish!), & when this happens the new rocks are known as metamorphic rocks in recognition of their change.

With respect to the subtle influences & significance of these rock types, the following ideas are suggested as starting points for further investigation. They are based primarily on my own experiences & therefore are very subjective. Nevertheless I feel that they have a place here & will give at least an idea of how geological considerations can influence the feeling of a site or one’s work with the Genius Loci.

Igneous rocks, called plutonic rocks when structures from the deep places appear on the surface, can generate powerful energies with some degree of possible modulation & focusing available to the human operator. I imagine those tightly packed matrices of interlocking crystals as being like huge storage batteries & microprocessors. The former can release sudden bursts of energy & the latter are waiting for programs to run. The unwary can find themselves face to face with the animated contents of their own deep psyche in ill-prepared workings where igneous materials come to the surface. They may also meet that which inhabits such materials! This is very useful if one is considering evocative or magical operations, but one must be wary that one is clear about one’s intention & familiar with one’s own stuff. To be suddenly confronted by an animation from the plutonic region can be disconcerting to say the least!

Metamorphic rocks tend to affect our body awareness, & can be very useful in healing or trance work of various kinds. The keyword is transformation. They can be just as intense as igneous rocks, but the effect is much more likely to build up over a period of time before it knocks your socks off. This gives you more time to monitor & control the situation. Metamorphic rocks are usually the source of what are popularly known as "crystals", i.e. large individual crystal forms which most people buy in shops & were probably strip mined in Brazil or some other developing country by exploited peasant workers. With the help of a good book on minerals we can go looking for our own (but read comments on conservation, later). It also means that specific spots in a metamorphic region may have strong concentrations of particular materials, & that we must choose our spot with care. One spot may be right on top of a big vein of lead pyrites with a strong grounding influence, while another may be near to a big lump of quartz which could give you a jolt.

Sedimentary rocks are the ages in an aeon-old book that tells the story of this place. Each layer is a landscape, quite possibly inhabited, with its own vegetation, climate & landforms, some familiar, some less so. The deeper you go, the further back in time you travel. Usually there are pages missing from the book. These are called non-conformities, when layers have been eroded away before the next were deposited. This means that the journey down may jump back millions of years in an instant.

What I love are sandstone surfaces which once were the strand & still bear the ripples of wave action hundreds of millions of years later. Huge mountains were eroded & their remains washed down in rivers & dumped as sand in estuaries & the sea. When, as rock on the beach, they are revealed by the action of today’s waves, you can see identical forms side by side, ancient & modern. I have a bit of a thing about steamy carboniferous forests full of giant amphibians too!

Limestone is a significant material worthy of much study. It is often full of fossils, is permeable & soluble to water & is responsible for some of our most dramatic & mysterious places. It forms cavern systems & steep sided ravines, like the lushly wooded denes of County Durham, & where the bedrock is laid bare the incredible forms of limestone pavement like the Burren, a possibly man-made desert in Western Ireland. Limestone was lain down in ancient seas which once covered much of this land & consists mainly of the excreted remains of tiny planktonic animals, shat by slightly larger ones. Chalk is of similar origins & is responsible for the famous downland landscapes of southern England. It is also the matrix in which we find flint, that mysterious, brittle, sharp edged stuff so important to us for most of our history.

Shapes in the Land

It would be misleading of me to try to categorise the forms that may be found in the landscape in the way I have rocks & stones. These forms are of course dependent upon the materials of which they are made & also upon events which have taken place there over the aeons. That little hill may be a baby mountain in its youth or it may be the scarred stump of some ancient Everest or Vesuvius. I have mentioned trying to look at places holistically & for me this means trying to see the big picture, the whole thing, to try to feel the identity, the meaning of the place. To enter into a relationship with the spirit of place is a noble but long term project. We must always be on our guard to recognise our own projections, fears or fantasies of wish fulfilment.

A very good way of studying the esoteric side to land forms is to study the folklore & mythology of different kinds of places. Some commentators speculate about such sources being the remains of, clues to, or codes of lost knowledge, & this may be so, but I enjoy taking the stories as I find them; they have much to tell us about the character of an area & a lot of insight into the challenge of contact between human & non-human beings.

One theme which stands out is that inaccessible places are often seen as the abode some kind of otherworldly being or race. Inaccessible often means hazardous, so people go there but don’t always come back. There may be injunctions against going there among local people. Should we respect them? It can be just as powerful (or even more so) to do one’s ritual just below, or in sight of the holy mountain or mound rather than on the top. On the other hand sometimes we need the danger & challenge of taboo-breaking to test our knowledge of ourselves against the world or society. It must also be said that in my experience, if you are going to work on the hill, then you should work on the top where the energies are usually both stronger & more coherent. A certain power place known to me has been known to reduce people to gibbering wrecks, but it is interesting to note that they are usually people who decided to do their thing in the woods on the flanks of the hill rather than at an obviously central location on the top. It can still be powerful & challenging there but there is a clarity about it which is simpler & more direct. Put in other terms, you get to play about with the lesser, more dodgy spirits around the sides, whereas on the top you’re dealing with The Boss.

Areas with lots of faulting seem to have a lot going on. They can be very active in terms of what most people would think of as "strange" phenomena such as hauntings, & they often show striking seasonal & lunar cycles which can be fairly easy to tune into. It must also be said that such places attract "strange" people too & they aren’t all necessarily people you’d want to meet on a dark moonless night down the pub never mind the old quarry!

Sills & dykes are sheets & ridges of intruded igneous rock which can stretch for hundreds of miles under the surface. Where they come up as outcrops can be particularly striking & powerful places. Imagine some millennia-old leviathan breaking the surface of the sea for a moment! Working on such an outcrop one senses the other places where the same great body touches the sky. One senses the powerful presence of the landscape as a whole in such situations. These great beings are truly Titans. We can touch them, & if we do so with awareness, they might respond to us!

Practical work

1. Collecting

Geological conservation is a serious problem. There’s a big fuss if ancient woodland or wetland is destroyed or damaged but you don’t hear of many scandals about sites of geological significance being trashed. Everyone complains about the idiots who chip bits off the Rollright Stones, but if they’re at the seaside for their holidays they don’t think twice about hacking away at something interesting. Certain famous & not so famous localities have been ruined by keen collectors of fossils & minerals chipping away at them for specimens to keep in boxes & cases & on shelves, so please don’t contribute to this problem. If you must, try collecting stones rather than removing any living rock. Beware picking stuff up willy-nilly as well; in a house full of different stones its sometimes hard to tell which ones are really significant.

It is useful to maintain what I think of as a gift protocol with respect to natural history specimens or "power objects" of any kind. One approach which I use is: it has to be on the surface, in my path, & looking like it was put there for me to find. Then I ask it if it wants to come with me. Whether or not you’re an animist this is a useful exercise because it gives you time to take a breath & find out how you really feel about the situation, & you never know it might reply! Some stones I’ve picked up have given me an instant headache or sense of discomfort, in which case I replace them carefully with my blessing.

If you do receive some kind of gift from a place you visited then spend some time meditating with it, find out the best way of keeping or treating it. Does it need to be cleaned in any way? If so stick it in a jar of salt for a while or wash it in a fast flowing stream (with the stream’s permission of course!). Be warned though, you can destroy whatever made it special in the first place if your preparation is too strong! Intuition is needed.

Sometimes if something grabs my attention I don’t just collect it, I put it somewhere where someone else will notice it, either to admire it or take it themselves. Sometimes one can do little spontaneous pieces of art, as long as they’re not intrusive. Give them a blessing to heal whoever looks at them or something. It’s not a major operation to do so, just wish it, whether out loud—always preferable in such acts—or inwardly. Don’t leave powerful personal stuff lying around for others to pick up though! If you do an outdoor working always close down, ground the energies thoroughly, & sit still until you feel in a good state to continue your journey.

2. Tuning in

By tuning into the rocks & stones in a particular setting you can also start to make connections with the landscape generally. I like to study maps & guide books a bit so I have some idea of what is going on, but it’s a matter of taste.

Approach a site or stone outcrop with respect. Delay getting hands on as long as you can; use your other senses first. Take time to make a connection with the whole situation, not just some object in front of you. Touch with your hands. Keep them still. Push. Stroke or rub the rock. Lean against it. Breath with the rock. Place your cheek or forehead against it, but don’t rush. Get your shoes & socks off! Bare feet are a great way of making contact with the power of rocks & stones. Now try practising whatever meditation you are familiar with. Make sure that it is appropriate though. By this I do not mean that it must have a direct cultural or historical link with the place, although that can be helpful, but that whatever you are doing is sensitive to what is already there; in harmony with the energies that you find. If you must make offerings, which is a very good thing to do, try to be unobtrusive. One person’s offerings are another person’s litter, & the bits of food & flowers which you so carefully arranged might just be a horrible mess after the wind, rain & local beasties have finished with them. Try picking up all the litter which you find there, that’s a kind of offering. Not all offerings are material!

3. Trance Workings

Most everyday states of consciousness are trances of one kind or another. In order to be successful in trance work I suggest:

1. Daily meditation practice at home in a safe, preferably designated place.
2. Practising moment to moment awareness of what kind of trance you’re in now.
3. Finding a good teacher who won’t play games with your head &/or wallet.
4. Practising all techniques indoors in your safe space first before you do them outdoors if that is at all possible.
5. Always keeping your bum or another stable body part on terra firma while you’re working & not doing trance in potentially dangerous places (see later).
6. Having a clear intent & raison d’être for the working. State it out loud when you start & do so again as & when it is helpful. Learn it off by heart & make sure that you are clear enough to fully understand & really mean what you are saying.
7. Debriefing yourself. Be honest. If you feel comfortable commit to do it again if you can. If not don’t try it!

That being said, & assuming that you’re familiar with some kind of meditation or trance work, here are some ideas:

1. Going down from where you sit or lie, through the layers, back in time, explore, see what you can find, make sure to come back up!
2. Going into some kind of structure like a hill, mountain or cave, try to find its centre. You may not succeed first time even if you thought you did; debrief properly afterwards, was it really that profound?
3. Lying on the ground, once in your trance imagine that you stand up & open your eyes. Then:
   1. Explore your surroundings. You may want to spend time building up a visualisation, but I recommend that if you are successfully tranced just take it as it comes, assuming that you have clearly stated your intent.
   2. Imagine that light or lights appear in the ground or rock around you. Note what it is like & investigate it/them.
   3. Call to the Guardian/s of the place & request a meeting. State your intent clearly. Remember, a statement of intent is not enough, you have to understand the significance of what you are saying & really mean it.
4. Try to enter into conversation or communion with a stone or rock formation, whether worded or just empathic.
5. Expand you awareness to take in more & more of the landscape. Rap with it if you can.
6. Use or follow the water present in the place to sense more about what’s going on there on a more subtle level.
7. Dreaming. Spend the night there, sleep & keep a dream record as the night progresses. Build a simple ritual around it. Make sure that you are properly prepared for the physical conditions which you might find there.

N.B. Remember to ground any energies carefully when you are finished.

These are just a few suggestions to give you ideas, take them as far as you like or think up your own. It is probably a good idea to build some kind of simple ritual around them so that you have a set of boundaries & can orientate & protect yourself if necessary. What happens & how you deal with it are up to you. I advise that you never cease to question yourself about whatever you think may be happening & urge anyone prepared to try such practises not to abandon common sense & psychic hygiene along the way.

Danger!

The kinds of places which I am writing about are seriously hazardous. Don’t be complacent in the mountains, in quarries, on rocks or crags of any kind, & on the seashore be sure that you know what the tide is doing. Negligence of these matters kills many people every year. Please observe the country code & basic rules of personal safety at all times if you are intent on practising out of doors.

There are other dangers too. If you are unfamiliar with altered states be warned! Certain kinds of places, whether they be fault lines, bare basalt hill tops, caves or whatever can have effects as strong as certain proscribed chemicals under the right circumstances. Make sure that you feel confident & healthy enough for any challenges which you might face. I don’t think that I am recommending dangerous practices but please give this careful consideration. Extreme situations are quite rare & in my experience there’s always a point at which you can opt out. If you feel any doubt or discomfort then do so. Debrief yourself & talk to a friend, co-worker or advisor about whether or how you should proceed.

I mentioned H.P. Lovecraft earlier. Well where did you think he got a lot of his ideas from? The natural world, I say. He seems to be horrified by the vastness of time & space & the diversity of natural forms, a horror which strikes a chord because everyone, at some point, has at least been awestruck by these things. Geology & geological time feature strongly in his work & although I think that his mythology is spurious in many ways, some of the experiences which befall his protagonists are not beyond the realms of possibility in this work. The huge tentacled horror which has slept beneath my house for millennia may well be a fossilised cephalopod from the Palaeozoic Era & meeting her face to face is quite a trip!

Our own fear is one of the most dangerous things which we may encounter & it is important to acknowledge this & do some work on it. The "dark side" hinted at by macho occultists is not really about the "dark glamour" (sexy succubi in leather gear?), but the stuff which we really don’t want to know about ourselves & our world, so much so that we have sealed it in an impregnable vault deep down somewhere. Contact with the primal energies which may be released by magical workings at certain geological structures can open that vault. Are you ready for that kind of experience? It can be overwhelming.

Something to remember should you find yourself in an extreme situation is don’t make any sudden moves. This includes suddenly stopping whatever you were doing at the time. I remember well a situation in which something unseen but gigantic brushed against me while I was drumming & for some reason filled me with horror. I focused on the drumming itself & the energy of my horror entered it & was released with a rush of excitement & euphoria. If I had stopped, which I nearly did, no doubt the horror would have settled, lasted & maybe even got worse. One very useful technique for dealing with extreme emotional states involves entering rather than struggling with or trying to rationalise the feeling, & instead of mentally going over & over it, trying to recognise it as a sensation within the body & focus on that. To manage this however one would have to be experienced in some kind of basic meditation practice.

Fear can unhinge the mind but it can also cause physical danger too. Make sure that you are fully aware of a safe exit from the place in which you are working. Panic & you could do yourself or someone else some damage.

In the City

In the city any large stone or rocky outcrop is a potential pace of power because even if it has been shaped in some way or placed there by men it still represents contact with a world far more ancient & deep than the increasingly symbolic, virtual image that urban people inhabit. Even a railway cutting or an artistically placed boulder in the park can put you in contact with the magical power of the earth. For this reason geological features of note near population centres are often very popular places with a lot of stories attached to them. Be careful that you handle the human energies or disturbed natural energies that you may find in such places with care & don’t leave a big charge behind you when you’re done. The vast majority of the population are just as sensitive to these things as you are, they just don’t know it or don’t want to know.

In the same chalk, as they say, such places may need some kind of healing or cleansing work to be done for their own good as well as that of their human visitors. If you embark upon such work make sure that you can handle what you might find. Be prepared to look at the place as holistically as you can. If you don’t feel up to the task right away just monitor the situation. I once did this with a very disturbed spot near my home & found that after a year or two the intensity of whatever it was that repelled me died down & I could gain safe access & do my work without worrying about picking up anything nasty. That said, try not to be too judgmental. If that’s the place on the common where the kids hang out its probably been the place where the kids hang out for years. Maybe its their place, not yours. Maybe you should be cautious before you rush in to try to heal something which was there anyway & they were attracted by in the first place. There are a number of places near where I live that fall into this category. (One is called "The Devil’s Playground"!) Don’t forget, the earth has seen far worse than this in her long life, it’s the human beings that are really fucked up!

Another way of connecting with urban rocks is to study the building stone which may be found in your town, but I will leave that for others to look into.

Conclusion

Geological factors are of great significance in the study of earth magic, geomancy & sacred ecology, yet they have largely been ignored. Practitioners of outdoor meditation or ritual & those trying to enter into communion with the life of the land or the spirit of place can find a wealth of material for exploration & practice in this field. It is my hope that this short essay may stimulate more people to think of these things. I pray that in going out into the field that they will show sensitivity to what they find there, & that the Dragons of Albion will be kind to them.

Reading list

• The Spell of the Sensuous – David Abrams – Vintage 1997
• Toward a Transpersonal Ecology – Warwick Fox – Shambhala 1990
• Discovering Landscape in England & Wales – Andrew Goudie – Chapman & Hall 1992
• Sacred World – Jeremy Hayward – Rider 1996
• Pseudonomicon – Phil Hine – 2nd Ed, Dagon Productions 1997
• British Geological Survey Maps & Guides – HMSO (Or contact the B.G.S. Shop & Office in the Natural History Museum, see below)
• New Penguin Dictionary of Geology – Phil Kearey – Penguin 1996 (N.B. not recommended for total beginners!)
• At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft (currently available in many anthologies)
• Ages of Gaia – James Lovelock – Oxford University Press 1995
• Highland Landforms – Robert Price – Aberdeen University Press 1991
• The Black Goddess & the Sixth Sense – Peter Redgrove – Paladin 1989
• Rebirth of Nature – Rupert Sheldrake – Century Hutchinson 1993

N.B. There are loads of good guide books to rocks minerals & fossils & the following are just selections. Dorling Kindersley do good ones but I don’t have the details.

• Collins Photo Guide to Rocks, Minerals & Gemstones – Walter Schumann – HarperCollins 1996
• British Palaeozoic, Mesozoic & Cenozoic Fossils (3 vols, my edition is ancient!) – The Natural History Museum Bookshop, Cromwell Road, London,SW7 5BD

(None of these authors or institutions would necessarily endorse the views that I have expressed here & some would no doubt not wish to be associated with them!)