In this issue readers will find a letter from Bronwen Griffiths of the Women's Environmental Network, concerning the threats that face what remains of our ancient magical landscapes. Northern Earth believes that a defensive response to such threats is as much a part of earth mysteries as visiting and researching a sacred site. We have been only too aware that threat, loss and damage are an unavoidably recurrent theme in our 'News and Ephemera' section.
We cannot claim that modern day attitudes are any more remiss in their treatment of the ancient landscape than those before; indeed,they are, if anything, more considerate. It is generally unlikely that an archaeological site remaining above ground will be destroyed by official order. Yet this can be no cause for complacency.
The Sacred Land
For us to be able to visit and learn from a sacred site today, it must have already survived up to a few thousand years. This in itself is remarkable in a landscape so intensely colonised and developed as that in Britain. That so much is left makes us wonder, on statistical grounds if nothing else, how much has been lost. A Peak District archaeologist estimated that recent field-walking surveys have increased the known archaeological sites a hundred fold; although these will not all have co-existed at any one time, we can see that the ancient British terrain was far fuller - and more sacred - than was lately thought.
Earth mysteries has always had two complementary approaches to the landscape - that of solid empirical research and that of spiritual quest. It seeks to integrate within its love for the land these two contrasting kinds of activity. And both its academic and spiritual arms reach out to embrace an understanding of the landscape as a whole, not separated into this or that special site. We now recognise that the very form of the land may have symbolic meaning of great spiritual resonance and are attempting to recover that vision. Instead of searching the heavens above, the teacher before, or the void within for our enlightenment, many realise, like our ancestors, that the Earth itself holds great spiritual meaning that we can be heir to if we so choose. We do not need to embrace the Goddess, paganism, esoteric Christianity or any other belief to inherit this store of spiritual wisdom, for it is there in the land and underwritten in many of the monuments that were raised upon it. Such places as Silbury Hill which embellish the spiritual message of their surroundings provide us with a key to the insights of ancient cultures. If the spiritual quests of the ages are spoken of as seeking, then the research that we find specifically in earth mysteries suddenly accrues extra and deeper meaning.
The threat to our ancient remains shows how much this message needs to get across. Just when we are all-too-slowly realising the damage our lifestyle is doing to the planet, just when it begins to be apparent that we all lose from one person's or company's self-interest, we look around and see that at root nothing has changed. We have laws protecting historic sites, we have powerful groups like English Heritage and its sister organisations doing what they can in their own way to preserve the message of the past, we have TV programmes and magazine articles drawing our attention to the subtler mystery sites of old... yet still we have a government prepared to blitz the landscape and all it means to pursue its private dream (our nightmare) of a tarmac swaddled land. These consumer dreams promise a consumptive Britain.
All the threats that we report on are symptomatic of our current economic system and the lifestyles parasitic upon it. Crom Dubh (NE 56,57) was stolen on the whim and purchasing power of a passing tourist - and as Sharon Higgins pointed out in NE 51, it is tourism, including the new outward-bound variety, which is eating away at what has been relatively untouched by world capitalism. Twyford Downs was lost to the alleged need for motors to rush about with everything from industrial goods and toxic waste to commercial travellers and tourists, all helping the steady degradation of land and planet. Flower Scar Hill (NE 55) may be open cast mined because it is cheaper and more convenient to tear the face off the earth with machines than to maintain deep mines and the communities that depend on them.
It is thankful, but rare, that we have a case like the rescue of Oxleas Wood in London from this tragi-comedy. More often, we have experiences like the Twyford Down motorway or Thorp re-processing plant threatening not just the environment but also our own sense of power in the face of what seems to be vandalism as unthinking as any broken telephone box.
The Earth Mysteries Response
Earth mysterians may feel that threats to the ancient landscape can be adequately dealt with by influential groups such as environmentalists and archaeologists. But earth mysteries has a special perspective, not addressed by these interests,offering an extra dimension to protest campaigns. Earth mysteries expresses to people not just the value of the Earth itself, but also its value in our own lives, as a constant meaningful presence, accessible through place and lore, contributing both spirit and substance to human existence.
While archaeology can only focus on places that have been 'institutionalised' or are likely to yield informative material, earth mysteries interests do not cease at the boundaries of a site; no megalithic remain, for instance, can be seen divorced from its surrounding horizon, and Wychbury Hill is more than just a hill with some interesting historical bits. Earth mysteries, more than any other perspective, recognises this fact and is in a position to integrate it with other landscape issues. And by taking action in concert with such campaigns, by cogently expressing the insights gained from a holistic appraisal of both ancient remains and surviving myth and lore, we will be demonstrating that earth mysteries is more than a quirky, introverted hobby. We will be giving an identity to a field which is still understood only hazily at best by others.
As earth mysterians, therefore, we may perceive a threat which environmentalists and heritage bodies do not address,but which is nonetheless likely to strike a responsive chord in the local population affected - as witness the unlikely-seeming alliances of the Dongas and other pagans with neighbourhood groups in the successful Oxleas and the unsuccessful chestnut tree campaigns. We therefore have an obligation to ourselves and our own interests, as well as to the planet, our ancestors and local people, to firstly ascertain any threat to those interests from proposed new developments and then to make our views known about them in any way we see fit.
Northern Earth welcomes the initiative of the Women's Environmental Network in highlighting the danger to sacred sites. We will support and help publicise any campaign against such threats. Yet we cannot be everywhere at once; many issues are treated as regional in nature, and make limited impact in the media. Based in West Yorkshire, we cannot monitor all of the north, and we are not always able to assess the impact of such developments on local earth mysteries sites. This is one way readers can help - let us know of threats to the sacred landscape, which sites and surroundings will be affected and how, and where objectors can register their views. It is our business.
Currently, one of the most disturbing threats to our geomantic heritage is undoubtedly that facing Wychbury Hill, on the Clent Hills of the West Midlands. The hill lies on a triple fault and is host to a number of fascinating historical and natural features.
The most prominent of these is the Iron Age hill fort that covers about seven acres around the 700-ft mark. Within this is a stand of 28 ancient yew trees, some dated as far back as 1500 years. One local scholar notes that King Arthur's grave is traditionally associated with a yew grove and suggests this may have been the site of Arthur's battle at Mons Badonicus. Near the western gate of the fort is the Round Hill, which was also once home to yews.
It is uncertain whether the Round Hill and another curious feature, a multiple mound known as the Saddleback [see 'The Saddle As A Sacred Landscape], are natural or human-made; however, other ancient archaeological remains include a beacon site, Celtic field systems and a possible villa or enclosure. Historical significance does not end there in 1758, Lord Lyttleton built the Temple of Theseus and the Obelisk. The Doric temple thought to have inspired the Classical Revival outside Greece, is the most important monument of its kind in Europe. There is also chance that the Obelisk was sited on an ancient henge or shrine.
What Susan Newlant calls a 'poisoned lance" - a 10-mile 6-lane by-pass - is ready to shoot a double tunnel through this precious place. Its course would intersect the Temple and Obelisk and cut away the flank of the hill. The effect on the subtle, not to mention the physical, geomancy of the whole hill can only be dreaded. We can see the distance between the archaeological and earth mysteries interests outlined in the main article in that English Heritage supports the scheme, since it does not directly affect 'their' hill fort.
A decision is to be made in 1994. Write to Box Excalibur. c/o 498 Bristol Road ,Birmingham B29 6BD for information or write directly to the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Transport. both at 2 Marsham St. . London SW1P 3EB
This is not a complete list of dangers, and not all of these may affect legitimate earth mysteries interests (and conversely other developments not listed in which FoE do not themselves have an interest may affect us) but all of them should be assessed to determine whether or not our ancient sacred landscape will be negatively affected by the development.