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Sacred Landscapes

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FourWinds Jul 31, 2003 06:50:29

Replying to FourWinds

Of course patterns or patrons still exist. Look at somewhere like Gleanncholmcille where there is a circular pilgramage of over 46 stations, some of which are wells, megalithic tombs, christianized standing stones, rock outcrops etc.

If that doesn't constitute an active ritual landscape I don't know what does. In the UK you've lost all that because the Proddies don't go in for such stuff, but go to a good old Catholic country and you will find it.

Lugnassa festivals only really died out in the 1950s. over 200 of these were held on mountain tops in Ireland exvery year, usually with processions up the hill to a cairn or stone. There is still one big one (very commercialised now) in county Antrim every year.

BrigantesNation Jul 31, 2003 08:03:11

Replying to FourWinds

"Ritual landscapes were built"

Where are they being built? You describe a pilgrimage, which is fair enough but nothing I suggest that we could look to and say "this was deliberately constructed as a ritual landscape", we could say "this has been interpreted as a ritual landscape" but even then, other than the notion of "god's country" I doubt many people saw their pilgrimage as being accross a sacred landscape, more a set of points of potential sacred significance distributed accross a landscape.

What I'm getting at here is that we don't actually know why the ancient monuments were built, some are linked with causeways that we may choose to interpret as having ritual significance, and that a particular density of such monuments and causeways accross a landscape could be interpreted as being a sacred landscape. Where are the more recent examples of us building sacred landscapes? Or is it really just a bit of a fantasy?

I guess if we look for a modern comparison we could think of London's ritual landscape - Buck's palace, the royal mile and Westminster Cathedral.

I'm just thinknig out loud here, this debate has thrown quite a few new angles at me.

AtomicMutton Jul 31, 2003 08:03:27

Replying to FourWinds

A Lych gate as a pair of stones ?

But why did we pair stones so avidly back then ? Left and right ? We've found it so we'll show it ?

The proddies were probably better at recording the ancient placenames (formally) though. The closest thing to a church back four thousand years was a hill - the more glacial the better.

I don't know what I'm going to find when I get back to Camp1 this afternoon. As I was leaving on Monday the keepers went swirling in with their new Landrovers, riding shotgun to the little digger. This JCB will be acting as a toreodor (sorry) before the big buggers arrive. I've got some little lumps of Gur for the fuel systems. In the right circumstances that will construe as using reasonable force. Two ballaun stones, a little re-erected standing stone and the capstone off something too. It's futile, of course.

English Nature seemed to give *backdated* permission for a road a mile long in their SSSI. Backdated nine months - the moor's only been sold six. I've certainly never seen that happen before (Don't Call Me Mark Thatcher). TomBo, our budding shaman, maybe fifteen miles away as the crow flies, might have written to the local MP, even. I can see him telling me the stonecrusher is really a big baler or a new type of combine! The EN field officer told me that as the burial mound had already had some stone taken then that made it more ok to take the rest of it. A local placename - the Three Pikes - needs revision. One Pike |

He's gone

(to 520m.)