It's all part of my Attention Deficit Disorder!

I must collect them all :-)

"Curiosity, scholarly, spiritual, fun or a deep sense of yearning to connect with the spirit of an ancient place?"

Boringly, I've got to say All of the Above.
Plus Nature plus Landscape plus Aesthetics.
(Since taking up amateur painting I feel like I've grown extra eyes and aesthetics has become a dominating delight. It's everywhere at ancient sites and I missed it all before. Everyone should do it, for that reason alone).

I just feel a deep need to seek out plastic tupperware box's.

Stones dude.

Hi Shestu - nice to see you're still frequenting these parts. I just wanted to say that I present these things "gingerly" not because I think that everyone here is Rationalist & Roman, but because I am anxious to distinguish my writing from that of (so-called) "new age" authors. I think you probably know the kind of writing I mean - where the author pays no regard to historical facts at all and just launches into a wild flight of fancy that has no basis in reality. Erich von Daniken's books are a wonderfully entertaining example of this kind of (fictional!) writing. Also, I am often writing with people in mind who have absolutely no interest at all in stone circles and the like. These are the people I am most interested in reaching with my writing - preaching to the converted is not my main aim. Lastly, I find that it helps me to write if I imagine the reader as a sort of opponent, someone who is intelligent, critical and skeptical - it helps me strengthen my argument. Strangely enough, this "intelligent, critical and skeptical" (notice I don't say cynical - I think skepticism is a healthy thing) reader who I envision in my mind's eye usually seems to be FourWinds these days! : ) I also find it entertaining to gently ridicule reason!

Tombo,

I too have read your Spirit of Place essay in your weblog. I wish I didn’t lack the edification to discuss it with you on an equal basis. Since I suspect I’m a lot older than you it gives me the uncomfortable feeling that I haven’t used my time as well as you. On the other hand, I’ve probably eaten more curries, so I guess it all evens out.

But in one small way I can talk to you about this on an equal basis. You’ve said you agree with me about the dominance of aesthetics. I find that striking, because it’s pretty unusual for people to cite that as a specific constituent of their understanding of Spirit of Place (atmosphere, beauty, natural energy, yes, but nothing more specific). So far as I’ve been able to analyse my own reactions I’ve concluded that for me Spirit of Place IS aesthetics. I’ve actually been forced to that conclusion, as I’ll explain in a minute.

You mentioned you’d like to do some sort of scientific survey of people’s reactions to ancient sites. (I don’t know why you don’t set something up here). If that is your interest then my own testimony might be of use to you since I am at the extreme end of the spectrum of possible reactions: I am a rationalist par excellence, always have been. From the age of six when I sat in my local church, listening to Sunday School stories, surrounded by the signs of faith erected by eight centuries of my elders and betters, and still had the nauseating arrogance to think they and the teacher were deluded purveyors of crap, right through my adult life, I’ve always been consistent and absolute in thinking there was nothing, anywhere, that didn’t connect to the every day world. Rationalism isn’t stubbornness, it’s nature, and you and those who aren’t afflicted should think of us as worthy of sympathy since we are condemned to live smaller lives than you!

So that’s the state I was in when I came to ancient sites a few years ago. Obviously my reactions were positive, for all of the reasons that everyone else here would feel. Plus, I’ve always been a Natural History freak, so that added even more punch in nice settings. But that was it, full stop. It was all what it was, the makers were long dead and nothing was left but what I could see and touch and therefore appreciate.

Then I got into painting and poetry. Nothing to do with ancient sites, but it had the effect of widening my eyes even wider to the natural world and I got onto a whole new level of pleasure from being exposed to it. This wasn’t an hysterical religious experience, you understand, and I still think Wolverhampton is a dump, but driving through the British countryside in June became an absolute feast as never before.

Continued, as too big...

I think it's a number of things for me, depending where you go. At Waylands its peace, mingled with a sort of awareness. Things sometimes seem clearer, leaves are greener, sounds are clearer. Everything just seems so much more real. Other places & times I just get lost in a sort of daze, closeing your eyes & just feeling. I suppose thats where the spirit bit comes in. Everywhere has energy bound up in it, whether it be in the form of movement of trees in the wind or the energy that others put into building such things. You cannot fail to be impressed at how it was done.
It's also a feeling of safety & shelter sometimes. Quite often your entering a place which is either fairly secluded or is just so ancient you can almost smell it & its kind of comforting.

I can't really say why I like to visit the stones or trackways & hill forts, only that I feel better when I do. It's that simple.

I would however give just about anything, just to see things as they were originally, as they were intended.

Maybe the spirits do hang around, in whatever form. I'm not talking ghosts or anything, but just the energy or force of what was left behind.

Oh well, thats me anyway. Here come the nice little men in white coats to take me away..........

B

Tombo,

Beauty/aesthetics: you say you agree, and simply add that for you beauty is also a spiritual thing, “good for the soul”. But there’s no divergence:
I’ve wondered why, as I wander eccentrically around the Worcestershire lanes, just why I/we find natural beauty so overwhelming (other than the possibility of creeping insanity of course). And I’ve tried to analyse it (“typical soulless rationalist dope, analysing beauty instead of experiencing it!”). I’m not so deluded as to think I can tell you what poets and philosophers have failed to do, especially as it’s in the eye of the beholder, but I can tell you what I see and what I feel and why I think I feel that way. Being based on my own observation, rather than with reference to book-larnin’ it may well be old hat, but for me it’s my hat.
First, the God thing. Out of my window there are a million greens, and none clash. There’s also oranges and purples, and those don’t either. Poets have said as much. Observations like that are often taken as pretty much conclusive proof of a creator. And who can blame anyone for such a conclusion? Back to painting, and if you try to put four greens and an orange on canvas you soon realize how blindingly clever God’s million greens are. You end up having to mix a bit of each colour with the others to stop them jarring. It’s called “The McDonald’s Corporate Colours are an Offence against God” syndrome, or should be.
So “Clever God” is one explanation of natural beauty. But what about a rationalist view? Could it not be that those greens aren’t designed, they just exist, mere random wavelengths of light, but we’re programmed to feel that they’re pleasing in every combination? No, because it doesn’t work on canvas. So there has to be more. What strikes me is this: if you take an orange that is part of a natural scene and paint it on a farm tractor far in the distance it suddenly becomes intrusive and offensive. So what has changed? It’s the intrusion of artificiality. Perhaps it’s not that we are programmed to react to and appreciate God’s colours but we’re programmed to appreciate the hand of God rather than the hand of Man................. >>>

This has been a quite wonderful thread. And yes a PhD could come from it all!

But I agree with much of what's been said. And I like the notion of some kind of aesthetic resonance whether this is converted (no pun intended) into some kind of a spirtual experience or not.

I cannot think of one prehistoric site that I've visited that doesn't connect with the landscape in some way or at least have wonderful (magical?) environs. Wayland Smithy is fantastic and I experienced a wonderful peace there without anyone elses vibes being there.

Some of the Worcestershire countryside is wonderful, but Shropshire also has a magic all of its own.

One thing I do find is that I have a growing yearning and need to be in touch with nature/landscape/seasons/sky/water/earth as much as possible. I can't stop staring at it and wanting to experience it - be one with it. It is some kind of primeavil calling I guess and the only thing that keeps me sane in this increasingly mad world.

I always felt an 'otherness' about these places,the first being a hillfort in Worcestershire, then onwards I became dutybound to let my legs do the walking and the land the talking. But there is truth here, in the natural landscape, who was it said 'sermons in stones, books in babbling brooks'? Or somesuch? Spot on.

Over 27(ish) yrs of the odyssey, I found the Earth to be a lover-mother-lovelode of deep yearning and giving, from the terrifying to the most fragile quiver of *being*. And the stones? The mounds? I feel they both captured and amplified the indefinable humming 'buzz' that exists between the self and the Other, the macro-microcosm, not so much a fly in a web-of-a-shake as a web in a webinawebinaweb.... Could I be more vague? ;-) It's somethingabout the reflection of my faith in life, and vice versa, and IMPOssible to put into words effectively, which is as it should be I guess. Agree with Wychburyman, ye compadre of old, this is a great thread. And one that most wonderfully of all, joins each of us here :-)

Wordsworth had a handle on it when he said;

I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man (sic)

* b e *

This week megalithomania had 24 referals from whiteawareness.net !!! I think I might just give this shit up.

Wow

after all this input - when are we going to right the book!!?