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Zariadris 286 posts |
Edited Jan 09, 2020, 08:26
Jan 08, 2020, 22:18
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Thanks for refocusing my attention on the essential thing: how we experience these sites and the wider spaces they inhabit. I’m grateful to everyone here who has shared their personal reflections which have been a pleasure to read. Indeed, one of my own such experiences had not really to do with the monuments I came to see, but with my keen awareness of the vast, inhospitable landscape they addressed. Cope really puts it beautifully in the Modern Antiquarian documentary when he described the positioning of stone circles around the hill of Dunnideer as a “psychological game” which their builders were playing: “…that’s what the ancients were about, constantly reinforcing the drama of where they were.” When the light is just right, and your own personal stars are aligned, this drama can really change your life. As a city kid I always felt awkward in the great outdoors. When I first made it to a very remote area of the Armenian mountains in search of rock art I was severely sleep deprived, not by design but just by the ordeal of getting there, and that drug-like effect made my mind all the more conducive to divining the spirit of the place. Those wild volcanic wastes were so overwhelming - I felt utterly vulnerable, out of place, insignificant: an intimation of pure Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror. I’ll never forget sitting on an outcrop of rock chiseled with stags and ibex and surveying the husks of cinder cones that ringed a plain made spectral beneath the passing shadows of clouds. The inhuman beauty and sheer physical scale of that windswept space - the sense of timelessness in its canted light - was terrifying. My feeling of utter humility was underscored by an ant that moved about my feet: how I longed for the un-self-conscious sense of belonging it seemed to have! I felt unreal, as though I was being dreamed by the landscape, a figment of its own imagination: “The thoughts of men are images; the thoughts of Gods are living beings,” as Rudolph Steiner wrote. Over the years my interest in ancient sites has allowed me to come to terms with the natural world: in effect, the standing stones were like portals, not to some other universe, but simply to what was right there all around me. They’ve offered a communion with the landscape which seems to be one of the essential aims the ancients had. A sense of homecoming. This is why I mourn the statue menhirs in these climes that have been moved to museums or city parks as though they were portable art. Bereft of their original surroundings they are as dead as butterflies pinned beneath glass. In situ they are living, lithic mirrors, reflecting the environment and ourselves - our fears, our dreams - bridging the gulfs of time, race and language to bring us together with our ancient kin in the primordial space we share. Again, Cope says it best as he sits near Silbury: “Everything I’ve done…has been based on centering myself in this landscape. Allowing myself to walk around this place, to slow myself down to this pace. You’ve just got to look beyond your own culture. That’s the way you can read between the lines and see”.
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tjj 3606 posts |
Edited Jan 09, 2020, 18:18
Jan 09, 2020, 17:48
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Zariadris wrote: ... Again, Cope says it best as he sits near Silbury: “Everything I’ve done…has been based on centering myself in this landscape. Allowing myself to walk around this place, to slow myself down to this pace. You’ve just got to look beyond your own culture. That’s the way you can read between the lines and see”. Really, really enjoyed your post Zariadris - in fact I've enjoyed all of the posts people have made here. It is good to see Julian Cope made reference too as well given it was his book that started many people on their journey. I have heard some say it changed their lives. I don't know where you live Zariadris - I live in a large town in north Wiltshire - quite handy for getting to Uffington if you have access to a car - which I don't most of the time. I do have reason to travel by bus through Avebury, past Silbury at least once a week. A couple of weeks back on my return journey the sun was going down, the moon had risen. Silbury was hovering in an ethereal mist - I totally get Cope's description of how that landscape affected him. In the fading light even the Red Lion looked like a welcoming sanctuary from another time.
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Zariadris 286 posts |
Edited Jan 09, 2020, 19:06
Jan 09, 2020, 19:01
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Hey, thank you tjj! I'm so pleased you liked it, and appreciate you taking the time to read such a long post. I've also greatly enjoyed yours, including your last. What an evocative, beautiful description of traveling through the Avebury landscape at night. You guys are so very blessed being near these special places. I live in Armenia, which has some unique megaliths deep in the mountains at elevations up to over 3000 m, making them mostly inaccessible save for a few months between late Spring and Early Fall. They seem to date to the local Bronze Age, sometime between 2200 and 1800 BC - around the period when work on Stonehenge was winding down and the Beaker Folk showed up. So, nothing as old or on such grand scale as can be seen in your neck of the woods. Anyway, Avebury has a special place in my heart. As a school kid I lived in England and during music camp one summer I went on an outing to Avebury. Those stones really put the hook in me. Many moons later, when I happened to discover the existence of a stone circle in Armenia, it was my memory of the incomparable Avebury that kickstarted my own obsession. Lucky for me, right around that time, as though by providence, Julian came out with the MA...and the rest is prehistory!
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Ilex Aquifolium 18 posts |
Jan 09, 2020, 21:21
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This is such beautiful advice, thank you so much. It's means a lot. I'm going to visit again on February the 1st. I can't wait! Sorry it's taken me ages to reply. Holly x
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Ilex Aquifolium 18 posts |
Jan 09, 2020, 21:26
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I'm very grateful x
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Ilex Aquifolium 18 posts |
Jan 09, 2020, 21:31
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Thank you.... what a wonderful, welcoming place this is!
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Ilex Aquifolium 18 posts |
Jan 09, 2020, 22:31
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I'm going to visit Wayland's Smithy on Feb 1st so I shall think of your friend there and his kindness to the place. I will read voraciously before I go of all that you kind folk have posted for mine and other's perusal. I am most grateful.
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thesweetcheat 6214 posts |
Jan 10, 2020, 05:53
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Glad you're enjoying it. Hopefully you'll stick around and update us with your adventures :)
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Kwoo 60 posts |
Edited Jan 10, 2020, 13:42
Jan 10, 2020, 13:35
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Thanks for this wonderful post! I'm hoping to visit the Avebury Stones this February. I've actually never seen any neolithic sites in the UK, as I only really see cities when I travel there usually. So that's pretty exciting. I think I get where you and Cope are coming from regarding engaging with the landscape. It took me some time to connect with the landscape of my ancestors. I suppose when you are younger and forming your own identity, you imagine that it all comes from the external; urban environments (where I grew up), scenes, subcultures etc. The more I learn about my ancestors, and engage with the Island landscape from whence my people came (and where we lived as Pagans and pirates), the more I realise I really am a wild woman of the windy west; My ill-advised mission to bring my friends there during far-from-ideal sailing conditions further underscored this. I wanted them to experience the mind-expanding environment... But I think I merely traumatized them.
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Zariadris 286 posts |
Jan 11, 2020, 21:20
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Kwoo wrote: The more I learn about my ancestors, and engage with the Island landscape from whence my people came (and where we lived as Pagans and pirates), the more I realise I really am a wild woman of the windy west; My ill-advised mission to bring my friends there during far-from-ideal sailing conditions further underscored this. I wanted them to experience the mind-expanding environment... But I think I merely traumatized them. Hey Kwoo! I hear you! I've had some stressful experiences shlepping friends to far flung places, assuming they'd be as keyed up as I was. Kind of like when you get to chose a movie to show to a group of friends and then you start freaking out thinking nobody digs it...Maybe that's just me! I dig your passion for your roots - man, I know it. As a diasporan person I altered the course of my life in search of my own heritage. Youthful passions have somewhat cooled, and I sometimes feel myself a prisoner of the choices I've made. Would love to break out and discover cultures that have nothing to do with my own. Anyway, yours sounds amazing..."pagans and pirates", "windy west", "island landscape"...wow. We talking the Caribbean here? Peace!
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