ALT-ANTIQUARIAN

The Alt-Antiquarian is a series of articles written by the editor, John Billingsley. ‘Alt’, of course, stands for’alternative’. The views expressed often suggest perspectives which run counter to what have become standard (and sometimes mistaken) neo-antiquarian assumptions and tropes.

#12 Walking myths into place: Is the damned landscape zodiac salvageable?

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN /

A few weeks ago, the subject of terrestrial zodiacs popped up in discussions on our e-group, NEReaders. They are definitely a carry-over from our early earth mysteries days, when questions previously deemed beyond credibility were to be asked and reconsidered (like leys), possibilities explored, and new hypotheses of the past and subtle reality to be […]

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#11 Noticing: The Cleethorpes Liminal Zone

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN /

Summer’s passed and the Alt-Antiquarian shares his holiday snaps…                 Sometimes one experiences an object lesson in how closely related the antiquarian instinct and psychogeographic sensitivity can be, in reality as well as in the observer. Still, it can be a surprise… It’s always a pleasure to discover such convergence where one might not immediately

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#10 Honest visions and toxic errors in the neo-antiquarian landscape

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN /

Jeremy Harte’s exegesis of placenames [How Placenames Grow, reviewed NE169] is fired by the misuses to which they have been put, and more often than not by adherents of alternative viewpoints such as earth mysteries. In such impressionistic contexts, Balham (for instance) becomes the enclosure or home (ham, OE root) of Ba’al (ancient god, or

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#8: “We shall not cease from exploration…”

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN, PERCEPTION /

“We shall not cease from exploration…”  Eliot’s advisory for perception. 3 We have been talking of the past, and of the present, and of the hauntological membrane of experience between them. That membrane is of course unanchored, timeless, a hiatus between the twin towers of objective evidence and lived documented experience. Between the two lies

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#7: What’s the editor on about? Earth mysteries, phenomenology and psychogeography

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN /

Paul Screeton asks, quite reasonably, what’s the editor on about? Modern understandings of the past, says the editor…   Paul Screeton, Seaton Carew: What to call ourselves collectively is a topic which not only has its peaks of discussion while forever in flux, but also there are also elements of cultural tracking. Neo-antiquarianism distinctly takes inspiration

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#6: That obscure object of desire: Leys, Watkins and ‘energies’

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN, EARTH MYSTERIES, PERCEPTION /

  (ill. Davina Ware) In 1972, walking up Glastonbury Tor, I was talking with a chap who, like me, had just hitch-hiked into town. As we approached the tower, he started talking about leys, which he’d just read about. For some reason, the topic sparked off something inside me; the next day I headed home

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#4: The Ancient Spectacle Updated

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN, ARCHAEOLOGY /

Continuing our editorial musings on modern antiquarian implications Last time, our alt-antiquarian found themself side by side with a psychogeographer, contemplating the landscape and its variant pasts, real and spectral. And, our psychogeographer will point out, some of those pasts we imagine today are well-managed, staged dramas for a populace weaned on screened stories. There

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#3: The Society of the Spectre

ALT-ANTIQUARIAN, PLACE /

Places predate monuments; monuments imply a concrete materialisation of narratives that over time becomes more codified – the narratives become myths, become scriptures etched on to place. Journeys between places infused with narratives become less nomadic, more pilgrimages. Dominant cultures are taking shape, and represented on a landscape; alt-antiquarians need to note that the objects

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