First and foremost of the material we deal with are issues of Place and Space, and how we experience them. This section includes phenomenology and psychogeography as ‘ways of seeing’.
Traditions of a powerful ‘genius loci’ drew Jill Smith to an island in the near Atlantic, and a sense of presence Living in the Hebrides, I have for decades been somewhat obsessed by the islands and stacks of St Kilda, which lie 40 miles to the W of Lewis and Harris. They come and go […]
The Amazon Woman of St Kilda: a landscape figure Read More »
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
#3: The Society of the Spectre Read More »
Cognitive maps and other inherited understandings can illuminate historical landscapes with a phenomenological focus The presence of memory accretes to locations – not for nothing do we describe places as ‘our familiar haunts’, for at any one time a place is composed of layers of itself. It haunts itself… from what we see now,
#2: Thinking in the style of our pasts Read More »
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 In this hitherto unpublished article, Jim lays out some preliminary thoughts on the nature of place impressions What is this genius loci, this spirit of place?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
Genius Loci: Sense of Place Read More »
When Jim Kimmis died at the end of 2006, the neo-antiquarian world lost a figure whose contributions to its world-view went largely unrecognised. Here we have Jim embarking on a phenomenological journey that many of us will share. Elements of a Journey Any journey, from a short walk to a world tour, can be analysed
An Enquiry into Walking Read More »
Jim Kimmis muses further on the debate over whether earth mysteries can claim to be a discrete entity. Although I dropped out of the EM scene many years ago, I read John Billingsley’s ‘E.m is dead – Long live e.m.!’ (NE98) with interest. It is useful to locate the development of earth mysteries within a
People, Places and Phenomena: A model? Read More »
John Billingsley suggests a more mundane origin for some alignments The defining characteristic of a ley is – I hope we would all agree – straightness. That was the key point that Alfred Watkins drew attention to, and even advocates of the alleged energy lines that have come to be mis-labelled ‘ley lines’ generally feel
A New Line on the Ley: Desire Paths Read More »
This article from John Billingsley[1] is intended as a reflection upon the influence of urbanised and planned landscapes upon human perceptions and the social and political attitudes that may derive from shifting psychogeographic viewsheds Broadly and simply summarised, the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, was characterised by a change in human relationships with the land.
A New Mesolithic Mindset in place: When the rough beast returns Read More »
NE has made frequent references to psychogeography, a hydra-like conceptualisation of people’s interaction with place. Often seen as an urban pastime with origins in a post-war Marxist milieu, John Billingsley here explores how it is also pertinent to rural and traditional cultures and communities, and bears a clear connection with earth mysteries and the wider
The City and the Country: Psychogeography – As we see it Read More »
Richard Thornhill delves into Emily Bronte’s dark and secret places Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is one of the world’s most powerful and perennially popular novels. However, I think that it has been misunderstood. I am not a literary critic, and I read the book for the first time only recently, but I am familiar
Wuthering Heights and the fairy cave Read More »