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Votive offerings
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Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Edited Sep 08, 2009, 10:41
Re: Votive offerings
Sep 08, 2009, 10:34
Well squire (and Pilgrim) I think we're going to have disagree slightly on this :-)

While I agree that it's probably best to be as unobtrusive at a site as possible, the very nature of being human is to conceptualize things and make a statement about how we feel - to paint them or write about them perhaps. Not everyone can do that; not everyone wants to do that; and if it's a site, preferring to hold a ceremony and/or leave offerings there instead.

I can't understand either why some people leave some of the things they do but those things must have some meaning for those that do leave them. And if you scale the whole thing up you might say that the building of stone circles, cathedrals, rock art, whatever is a statement cut into or plonked onto an otherwise natural canvas (who said anyone had the right to do that ;-)

Putting aside acts of vandalism (graffiti) or unintentionally damaging something (leaving candles or food around) isn't everything else done at a site fairly harmless and merely a statement of personal preference. We might not like it but do we have the right to stop people for whom it has meaning from doing it. I don't like the Angel of the North but lots of people do, and it looks like it's there to stay. Most of us here don't like to see plastic tat at sites, some of us are OK with a few things of a natural kind, some of us don't want to see anything at all - it'd be a dull world if we all felt the same. Fact is, if items are not actually damaging a site we are going to have to find a compromise for the most frequently visited ones. Perhaps also continue to encourage discussion about the issue, which we're doing here and have done elsewhere. Perhaps, most of all, begin a serious and much more general anti-litter campaign. During the school hols I see kids out on the Green everyday dropping litter - oblivious of the fact that it's both unsightly and illegal. Just don't know what they teach kids at school these days but it's certainly not to leave litter around.

Then again, one man's litter is another man's tat is another man's offering ;-)
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Re: Votive offerings (nigelswift)
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