Hi Mick

< I have seen and experienced (first hand) traditions that not only stretch back 2000yrs (some much less) but have used particular sites (including the natural lanscape) in a very particular and precise manner. >

I'm assuming here that you're on about the times you've spent in northern India, yeah?

< The way sites are used is not only passed on in the oral tradition but is allso in the written form......I dont want to get to tied up in the particulars as this is not the point of this post and these particular sites are not in the u.k. I do however suggest that we can learn a hell of lot from these living traditions, and possibly relearn our own >

The problem as I've always seen this arena is the pollution which emerges from the modern pseudo-religious flavours - which aren't necessarily bad, but they certainly bear little resemblance to original uses. Finding out how any ceremonial/ritual/sacred site may have been used in Britain or Western Europe comes to us only through the fragments of xtian scrolls, and the profuse folklore records. In Eliade's 'Patterns in Comparative Religion' we find tons of correlates between the religious concepts and rituals of places echoed at many places in the UK, but this seems rarely to be taken up by many folk. I'm not sure whether that's because specific intellectual groups are uncomfortable with adopting concepts like animism, polytheism, etc, into the archaeocentric beliefs systems which keep changing with the times, or whether it's simply cos they don't think anthropology and comparative religion has any relationship with the British neolithic. Which seems either naive on the one hand, or just damn stupid. I also think just talking or writing about such (seeming) conceptual ideas like animism, instead of gerrin' out there and giving it a go, inhibits the ability to write or talk about such things with any validity.

Ritual use of sites in the UK similar to what is found at sites elsewhere in the world DO echo each other - with obviously differences occasionally, but these relate to the difference in 'genius loci', or animistic propensity of respective spots. Is this what you're on about?