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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Sacred Landscapes
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Annexus Quam
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Nature
Jul 31, 2003, 09:58
There's been a lot of talk on this thread about Nature and the ancients.

First, I don't think we will never know the rituals and minds of the ancients. We are getting closer and closer. 50,000 megalithic sites around Europe are giving us more and more clues in the enormous amounts of paraphernalia, building methods and relationship of the tombs to their settlements and the environment. And, as Fourwinds says, places like Ireland, Spain, Portugal, etc still preserve, believe it or not, quite a lot of Neolithic elements in traditions like festivals, dances or pilgrimages. As far as I know, for instance, no proper compendium of possible pagan festivals has ever been written. As more countries like Albania or Romania open up to research, we will get more clues to our own particular beliefs (even though it is NOT the same, why are dolmens the same or why are long dolmens all over Northern Europe the same? - common elements are everywhere). There’s just been a general lack of talk between European archaeologists as well as a lack of global vision of sites in context (until now).

Now, if the Land (or parts of nature like boulders, hills, rivers, etc) wasn't sacred to the ancients, then what was? Are we implying they didn't consider anything sacred? Because *that* was all they had. All of this supposing we ignored years of anthropological research among pre-literate societies, like, say, those who are still tired of calling their land 'sacred' (the Amerindians), those who communicate with the spirits of the dead for counsel via trance (Siberian shamans) or those who are still building megaliths in a Cult of the Dead as we speak (in Madagascar). Were our ancient ancestors, for some unknown reason, different from all other pre-literate societies?

We are surrounded by so much stuff and information nowadays that we feel so secure in our distinction between sacred and 'not sacred'. For a thousand years or more, since part of the land was consecrated and became God's Acre, we have been able to draw a distinction between the sacred space and the not-sacred space. Any of us who had to spend 24 hours a day outside surrounded by Nothing-but-nature and have to survive, would automatically start believing in fairies and trolls. Atheism would turn into passionate fervour. And we would also become illiterate as there is no need for words – everything is already said in the complex mithology of the landscape. We just forgot how to interpret it.
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