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.
This article was first published in NE175, March 2024. Is the daisy wheel always a protective sign? Anthea Hawdon suggests another interpretation In 1686 the antiquarian and Fellow of the Royal Society, Robert Plot, described a carved perpetual calendar in his Natural History of Staffordshire.1 This wooden almanac marked each saint’s day with a symbol […]
Say it with rosettes: the daisy wheel as a love symbol Read More »
Do rooks have an ancestral awareness and maps of significant places? John Billingsley is transported A familiar sight as the light thickens at the end of day are streams of corvids – rooks and jackdaws – skeining overhead as they head towards their night’s roost. It is a flight full of direction and purpose, and
Between a rook and a thin place: spirit paths of the corvids Read More »
This is an updated version of John Billingsley’s article in Northern Earth 181. A memory popped into mind some months ago as I was driving along a stretch of road near my home in West Yorkshire. It was an image of that stretch at some point in the early to mid/late 1990s when the roadside
Getting it down on tape Read More »
A constant element of an alt-antiquarian perspective is to experience the world with senses as alert as they can be at the juncture we find ourselves at any one time. It’s a mode where neo-antiquarianism, psychogeography, phenomenology, forteana and more may coincide – a state of not looking for anything, but being ready for anything
The Alt-Antiquarian’s Scrapbook: Psychogeographical encounters with the world Read More »
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
#12 Walking myths into place: Is the damned landscape zodiac salvageable? Read More »
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
#11 Noticing: The Cleethorpes Liminal Zone Read More »
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
#10 Honest visions and toxic errors in the neo-antiquarian landscape Read More »
Looking and seeing are different things, and understanding depends on what we do with them; this is where phenomenological perception is vital to our field Koyaanisqatsi, made 40 years ago, is a movie celebrating the beauties of the Earth, and the impact of modern civilisation upon it; a stream of images upheld by a Philip
#9: Para leer en forma interrogativa… Everyday Perception Read More »
“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
#8: “We shall not cease from exploration…” Read More »
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
#7: What’s the editor on about? Earth mysteries, phenomenology and psychogeography Read More »