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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 21, 2004, 21:01
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http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/foamycustard/
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Wyrd Brother 13 posts |
Jul 22, 2004, 04:36
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Thanks for the pole star tip, I'll look into this. Primrose Hill is further north than the range of these alignments, but it is the source of the Tyburn and a kind of outer barrier to old London, so very important.
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Wyrd Brother 13 posts |
Jul 22, 2004, 04:47
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I've got a British Library ticket I'll try there. But I always get a suspicious when these thing get complex and alignments start being seen every where, a few basic major astronomical alignments in a simple pattern is enough for me :)
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Wyrd Brother 13 posts |
Jul 22, 2004, 05:08
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>When I first read your initial post I thought, "Ey-up, we have a right one 'ere" :-) but it seems that >this is not the case. Well thanks, I think :) My motivation in this is complex, my heart is basically with a kind of Discordian Psychogeographic stance with no time for New Ageism (though I can translate into their strange language if necessary), and this mediates between a creative streak which likes to re-enchant and transform the image of the City into something some of us find more aesthetic, while on the other hand a more sceptical intellectual agenda from my Philosophy of Science background requires something a little more 'convincing' and 'real'. I struggle to reconcile these most of the time :) I dislike both 'true believers' and 'know it all skeptics' in equal measure. And have a tendency to react in the opposite extreme when I encounter them. I genuinely believe there's something going on with all this stuff, but the rest is theory (just like any science really). One scientific test I might try (shhhhh this is private to this group) is to get walkers to dowse the 'real' leys (which so far has produced impressive results), but then ask them to dowse for a 'ley' I've made up, and see how the results differ :))) Shame that RiotGibbon characters not around, read some of his postings, he sounds a dude....
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Wyrd Brother 13 posts |
Jul 22, 2004, 05:22
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One theory (still fresh and untested) I've developed is that London may have been settled because an Equinoxial allignment here actually corresponds not to an artificial allignment (ala Stonehenge and most other allignments in London and elsewhere) but to a geographical one, namely the two hills of London, Ludgate and Cornhill, with a natural spring. There are other geographical allignments like this but they mostly consist of only two features, which are often hills (which are big enough not to make this too surprising as a chance thing) but 3 seems rare and might have struck those who passed through that this was a special place and worth settling. The midpoint of that key geo-allignment being St Pauls, perhaps explaining why it became so important. The mundane river trade explanation probably came later and explains the success of the city rather than its original reason to be here. Well it's a thought, and quite an entertaining one.
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 22, 2004, 10:54
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"3 seems rare and might have struck those who passed through that this was a special place and worth settling. The midpoint of that key geo-allignment being St Pauls, perhaps explaining why it became so important." I really think you're onto something there. I've heard St Pauls has a pre-Christian temple underneath it? What you say reminds me of a standing stone near Edinburgh (don't ask me its name) that stands pretty much exactly half way between the two most eye-catching hills in the area.
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Wyrd Brother 13 posts |
Jul 30, 2004, 06:26
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I've since learnt that one of the features of St Paul's - St Paul's Cross, a place of free speech in the churchyard - was once a rough stone called St Paul's stump. There were also stones directly between the hills, including (maybe) the London Stone. St Paul's stump was originally called Pol's Stump (where the Paul connection comes from?) and Pol was the Saxon name of Balder, the Norse dieing / resurrecting light god. And historians say pagan Saxons worshiped in the uninhabited post Roman ruins of London long before the place was (re)Christianised, amongst the possible ruins of a Diana and Apollo temple at St Pauls (and if so a probable Pre Roman sacred site as well). So Pol's Stump may have been pre St Paul's and maybe even pre Saxon. Where the stone originally was exactly is unknown it seems. It would be nice to find it marked the sunrise orientation of the site!
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wideford 1086 posts |
Jul 30, 2004, 08:10
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Though not strictly our kind of thing (pardon pun) there is a rather nice article at http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/crockern.htm that discusses very early English local sites of government that could provide some of our fellows with clues to prehistoric boundaries and such for further investigation.
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 30, 2004, 18:01
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Fascinating stuff, Wyrd Brother, it set me thinking about a possibility that's been riddling me that may interest you. I wouldn't call it a full-blown theory or anything, mind you - it's something I'm still researching, although I must say that the foundations of it feel solid to me. I'm obsessed with a place called Ludwell: http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3667 It interests me not simply because I (unknowingly) drank its water for many years, but because of it's name. As I say in my fieldnote there, I consider Lud to be a name of Odin (by "Odin" I mean the pre-Viking Odin) - basically I consider the deities known in Irish and Welsh myth as Lugh and Law to be a "Celtic" Odin. I'm not alone in that, either, plenty of writers think the same thing (Robert Graves, for example, although simply mentioning his name is probably enough to completely undermine this theory in the eyes of "orthodox" historians!). Anyway, I recently came across this (which I also link to on the Ludwell page): http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/efft/efft47.htm The association of Odin with the gallows is well known, and this hangman's tale seemed to back up what I thought about Ludwell and it's name. It was when I started trying to find out more about Saint Ludgvan that things became tantalizing, though. His name is fascinating - it's basically a compound of Lud and Wan ("v" easily becomes a "w" by known sound laws - in German, for instance, the written letter "v" is pronounced "w", and vice versa). Wan is another Odin name - that's easy enough to prove, since the Eddas specifically state it. So I tried digging around on the internet for information on this "Irish missionary", and found very little. This page... http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/Cornwall/Ludgvan/ ...revealed that there's a Saint Ludgvan's church in Penwith, Cornwall, and also that this saint's more usual name was Ludowanus, a name that is even more blatantly Lud and Wan. It was when I saw this page, though... http://homepages.tesco.net/~k.wasley/Ludgvan.htm ...that I became completely confused. It's another page about Saint Ludgvan's in Penwith, and it comments that the church is "dedicated to St Ludowanus (now Saint Paul) whose feast is celebrated January 25th". This utterly baffled me, at the time, since Saint Paul didn't strike me as "a heathen deity in a threadbare Christian cloak" (which is how James Frazer described Saint Bridget, words that stick in my head because of their accuracy). But what you say here sets me wondering... London, I believe, used to be called Lugudonum? (or something similar) I'm by no means the first to argue that it's named for Odin (although I believe I am the first to point to the name Scotland's capital for another Odin name as supporting evidence in this context!). If I understand it rightly, then Saint Paul's is a place of huge heathen significance. If Saint Paul = Ludowanus = Odin then perhaps we can start to grasp the reason for London's Odinist name? Like I say, I'm still researching this Pauline Odinist connection, so please remember that I consider this to be an intriguing possibility and a riddle, rather than a fact. Thanks for sending me on a different tangent of thought with it all - little gems of information have a habit of turning up at serendipidous times, and it never ceases to amaze me! :)
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 30, 2004, 18:03
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"Lugh and Law" I mean Lugh and Llew
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