Spurious Saints
In 2010, Northern Earth invited readers to send in place-names and lore associated with saints – but not the bona fide type of saint. What we were looking for was spurious saints… here are some of the dubious divines we received.
Northern Lights
Mike Haigh compiles reports of anomalous lights over the Pennines Anomalous light phenomena have been noticed travelling over the landscape by people throughout human existence. Each culture interprets these events according to its own belief system. When our own modern culture first apparently noticed these unusual phenomena during the 1940s it tried to understand them
Ted Hughes, Shaman of the Tribe?
The late Poet Laureate uniquely occupied the Laureate’s chair with a bardic sensibility to the inherent presences of the land and those that live within it. His poetry and prose balance on the boundary of outer and inner worlds, and often offer a mediating passage between the worlds for the reader. Here, Brian Taylor addresses
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Genius Loci: Sense of Place
The late Jim Kimmis was an enquiring and wide-ranging researcher whose death in 2006 robbed us of a valuable perspective on neo-antiquarian topics. In this hitherto unpublished article, Jim lays out some preliminary thoughts on the nature of place impressions What is this genius loci, this spirit of place? When the phrase was coined, it
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Janet’s Foss experience
A Strange Experience at Janet’s Foss, near Gordale Scar, Malham, N Yorks. One of the entries we received in our Alternate Realities competition in 2008 was this intriguing report by Paul Degnan It was 21st March 1972. I was hitch-hiking with my girlfriend around the Dales. I wanted to show her round the Malham area,
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The Hollow Land
John Billingsley reports back from a more than usually liminal caving expedition In 2007, a group of us had an excursion to caves in the N of England, and were moved by an unexpected experience in a small cave that had a history of prehistoric usage from the Upper Paleolithic through the Mesolithic and Neolithic,
Communicating with Stones
Edna Whelan was a familiar name to friends of NE and holy wells, as well to many others with whom her enthusiasms brought her into contact. We regret that she passed on June 15 2015, at the age of 95. In 1995 she wrote this article for NE that expresses her very intuitive and experiential
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The Role of Dowsing in Earth Mysteries
There has long been disagreement about what kind and how much of a role dowsing can play within the left/right brain approach of earth mysteries, and NE is generally wary of an over-emphasis on dowsing as evidence for anything other than objective or visualisable targets like water, minerals, specific objects, etc., and we have long
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Alfred Watkins: The Richest Legacy
Neo-antiquarianism owes a huge debt to the man behind leys, Alfred Watkins. But what was his main legacy to earth mysteries? Rose Heaword suggests it is not just leys that we should thank him for. “I don’t believe in leys…” – a sharp intake of breath from the audience – “because Watkins never meant us
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Shamanism and European Pre-History
We frequently hear the word ‘shamanism’ bandied about in the context of prehistoric and tribal religion, and even in the context of witchcraft and modern contemporary trance techniques. But how far, really, does this all-encompassing idea of shamanism take our understanding of the phenomenon itself? We asked Alby Stone to comment. Since about 1950, shamanism
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