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Post by redraven on Apr 24, 2011 13:10:07 GMT -1
After some generous proof reading and input by certain members here and elsewhere, I have arrived at a final draught of my hypothesis which I am happy with. I place the link, therefore, here for anyone to stumble over and peruse at their leisure. To understand how the spirituality in this country established itself through critical and subjective analysis, is an important step in being able to base further ideas upon the foundations of facts. This is a major prerequisite for members here and I feel I have done a reasonable job with this piece of work to establish at least a baseline. As is customary, I welcome any and all observations. religionofthesoil.com/ RR |
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Post by potia on Apr 24, 2011 20:13:59 GMT -1
At the risk of irritating you I feel the tone of the above post is rather pompous.
Your hypothesis is a good one and makes a great deal of sense but it's still only a theory. Personally I don't think we will ever really know how the spirituality of this country was established and it doesn't really bother me that much because it's still changing anyway.
To say this a major prerequisite for members here is overstating it's importance in my opinion.
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Post by redraven on Apr 24, 2011 20:23:18 GMT -1
It's not meant to be that at all. I just happen to think that for this country, ancestral interaction was the primary type of otherworld interaction and this is an attempt to further that idea (note, it is just an idea) and that interaction with deity was a later progression. Didn't realise I could convey a pompous air in my posts.  RR |
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Post by Lee on Apr 24, 2011 21:15:03 GMT -1
ok, here is what i have a problem with;
your basis for this religion of the soil come from the burial. yet in the neolithic the 'flesh' wasnt the important part, it was left to be scavenged or manually removed. the bones seem to have been what was important and these were deposited in repositories (long barrows) rather than left in the soil to decompose.
i dont buy that all the effort of building a long barrow with all that soil on top was to them the same as burial, symbolic or not. to my mind, these barrows were a kind of 'house of the dead'.
i just dont think that an ideology or such a specific theological position can ever be preserved in a way which is any more than pure suppossition.
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Post by redraven on Apr 24, 2011 22:42:18 GMT -1
ok, here is what i have a problem with; your basis for this religion of the soil come from the burial. No, not the burial, the transformative process of taking the "hard" physical remains and placing them directly into the environment to interact with said environment. The burials were the "means to the end" so to speak. yet in the neolithic the 'flesh' wasnt the important part, it was left to be scavenged or manually removed. the bones seem to have been what was important and these were deposited in repositories (long barrows) rather than left in the soil to decompose. So what about the deposits found in the Earthern structures or the ditches? The burials in long barrows separated some of the bones from the environment but there are many examples of bones not being separated from the environment and some would suggest deliberate deposition into the environment. There is evidence that sometimes the decomposition was achieved by a burial for a fixed amount of time and then they dug up the bones after decomposition in the Earth. i dont buy that all the effort of building a long barrow with all that soil on top was to them the same as burial, symbolic or not. to my mind, these barrows were a kind of 'house of the dead'. I think they were actually an early example of people trying to create a ritual space. They were designed to separate human remains from the environment and thus create a separate space. i just dont think that an ideology or such a specific theological position can ever be preserved in a way which is any more than pure suppossition. Does that therefore, make such speculation worthless? It may be that this piece is more important to me because it provides a chronological sequence that can be evidenced and in a purely personal way, this progression resonates with me more than others here, especially as interaction with deity is not something afforded to me much. The collective ancestral ideaology resonates with my experiences much more than the "classical" deity interaction and it may be that this piece ultimately, is only really important to me and my posting here and elsewhere may be seen as nothing more than an ego trip, but I would hope that this is not the case. I am prepared to accept it may seem this way to other people, but for a person with no academic background, I'm actually quite pleased with the results. RR |
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Post by Heron on Apr 25, 2011 15:57:09 GMT -1
Whatever the merits or demerits of your theory RR, I take the point made by others, and reinforced by your own comment that it is only speculation, that this is an historical theory that can never really either be proved or disproved. To make assertions (even speculatively) about the past is always risky without access to evidence (rather than intuition) to back it up. My own criterion for assessing such interpretations would be: Do they help us understand the way the gods were worshipped in those societies? But where we cannot actually know this, it s better not to make historical claims but to generate stories, [re]constructions, practices that make sense to us and our relationship with the gods without claiming any historical verity for what we do except where this fits with what we can show to be likely on the basis of available evidence .
That's not to say that you shouldn't speculate. But this is written as if it is the result of historical or archaeological research and gives the impression that you are doing more than speculating. So people are bound to assess it as an assertion of of how you think things were, and may want rather more in the way of evidence than you are able to supply before being prepared to accept it.
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Post by redraven on Apr 25, 2011 17:27:44 GMT -1
There are 25 separate references involved with this piece, most of them produced within the last 10 years. If I was preparing this as a PHd dissertation then yes, the referencing may appear to be a little lacking, but for a 8000 word piece, I don't think it's a bad effort by a non academic. Does this piece help us understand how the Gods were worshipped? Actually, I think the evidence presented suggests ancestral interactions in Britain came before individual or collective deity worship. The evidence as I have endeavoured to present here, very strongly suggests to me (and I accept that this may just be a point that is significant for me and no-one else) that spiritual interactions originated in this country through ancestral interactions before the identification and interaction with deity. If this is the case, then there is a basis for an understanding (again, accepted that this may be a purely individual and unusual perspective that may not be replicated or relevent for anyone else) as to why some people only seem to connect through a shared ancestral framework. I just find it fascinating that this could be the case in this country. I do find it frustrating that an attempt to engage in a possible new idea is met by such negativity. Is it now the case that people are more comfortable analysing the work of others and are not open to new ideas unless they have the credentials of an Oxford Don behind them? I'm not after praise for this work, I just present it in the hope that it may generate new discussion, but I accept the piece may well fall outside the remit of what is thought of as "core" Brythonic discussion and therefore it may not warrant engagement.
RR
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Post by Lee on Apr 25, 2011 18:15:56 GMT -1
it isnt that we are being negative of such ideas, more that it is something that just cannot be shown to be more than speculation. everything you offer can be interpreted in a way that is different and in some ways borne out more by the evidence; i.e the bones post-flensing/sky burial being the important bit.
we just can never know if the people of the past looked at the soil in this transformative way.
the idea that gods evolved form ancestors isnt a new one, i think i have suggested something similar myself many years ago. there is plenty of evidence from here and abroad for this. it stems from a death and dying focussed mindset; the big, lasting structures were for the dead. we also have comparison with indigenous cultures today to look at. do any of them think of the soil in this way? i think that might be the most fruitful line of investigation rather than british archaeology as it wont preserve anything useful and supporting of your hypothesis.
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Post by Heron on Apr 25, 2011 21:03:18 GMT -1
There are 25 separate references involved with this piece, most of them produced within the last 10 years. If I was preparing this as a PHd dissertation then yes, the referencing may appear to be a little lacking, but for a 8000 word piece, I don't think it's a bad effort by a non academic. Does this piece help us understand how the Gods were worshipped? Actually, I think the evidence presented suggests ancestral interactions in Britain came before individual or collective deity worship. The evidence as I have endeavoured to present here, very strongly suggests to me (and I accept that this may just be a point that is significant for me and no-one else) that spiritual interactions originated in this country through ancestral interactions before the identification and interaction with deity. If this is the case, then there is a basis for an understanding (again, accepted that this may be a purely individual and unusual perspective that may not be replicated or relevent for anyone else) as to why some people only seem to connect through a shared ancestral framework. I just find it fascinating that this could be the case in this country. I do find it frustrating that an attempt to engage in a possible new idea is met by such negativity. Is it now the case that people are more comfortable analysing the work of others and are not open to new ideas unless they have the credentials of an Oxford Don behind them? I'm not after praise for this work, I just present it in the hope that it may generate new discussion, but I accept the piece may well fall outside the remit of what is thought of as "core" Brythonic discussion and therefore it may not warrant engagement. RR RR I didn't want to appear negative about your argument, which is, of course, a substantial piece of work, quite plausibly presented as the result of serious research. In the sort of academic environment which an article written in this serious and considered way would be presented, it would be open to quite ruthless analysis by other academics. By treating your argument polemically, this accords it such status. But if you're going to say that you want it received as speculation for general discussion about the intuitions contained in it, then you might have got a different response. But it isn't written like that, it reads like an academic essay. In fact I find myself in intuitive and emotional agreement with the things you say in Section Three of the argument and the idea that ancestors remain transformed in the natural environment and can be regarded as inhabiting it. I wouldn't restrict this, though, to the soil. Nor would I feel that a convincing academic case could be made for deciding on the nature of belief systems in neolithic or mesolithic societies. We can speculate, but I don't think we can be as specific as you suggest in presenting a picture of their belief systems. So I don't find the later part of your argument convincing. But I respect your construction of a religion of the soil as something that makes sense to you. I'm not averse to the idea of such a religion. But I don't feel the need to construct an historical case for it, except where we can cite suggestive evidence that our ancestors thought specifically in this way. Ronald Hutton, it should be noted, concluded in his Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Islesthat the slender evidence that exists suggests discontinuity and quite arbitrary practices, differing in different times and places, rather than anything that can be identified as any sort of continuity of theological practice among the Ancient Britons. I respect your contrary view. But if you are going to present it for serious analysis you need to be prepared to take the knocks of debate that such analysis brings. But as a suggestive exposition, I do, as I said, find Section Three conducive to positive consideration, but find the argument about the development of the theology in later ages less convincing. You might also like to consider re-presenting it as a continuous piece.I found reading the different sections backwards disconcerting. |
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Post by redraven on Apr 26, 2011 16:10:23 GMT -1
The Wordpress framework means once you have read the site, the latest piece is always shown first. May think about creating six separate pages so as to be better presented and more easily accessed.
I don't think the interactions were limited to the soil as such, more that the soil was a tranformative substance and that once the remains were successfully subjected to this transformative process that required human interaction for it to work correctly, there wasn't a compulsory need or requirement for said remains to stay there after completion. This is similar to the later impact fire had when creating base metals from ore. To create the finished article, the fire had to be fed and was considered by some to be a living thing in it's own right and I would suggest a similar theological position may have been held with soil as it played it's part in the transformative process of the dead.
RR
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2011 11:29:52 GMT -1
The info about the soul in the stele is interesting, redraven.
I wonder if you might be interested in the way the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso think about stone and bone - just to get an idea of how some indigenous people think since it's often different to ours. Mineral is one of the 5 elements (fire, water, earth, mineral, nature) and - to quote Malidoma:
"Mineral is the storage place of memory, the principle of creativity, resources, stories and symbolism... It is the elemental energy that allows us to remember, to communicate with one another, to express our feelings, to receive messages from the Other World, and toremember our origins and purpose in life. These functions are what the human skeletal structure, made of mineral, is all about. In Dagara physiology, our bones, not our brain, are the storage place of memory. In the village it is not uncommon to hear an elder say,"This is in our bones as it was in the bones of our ancestors." In the West there is a similar saying, "I knew it in my bones,"which refers to a deeper, more elemental knowing than is possible through rational thought.
To the indigenous person, mineral is also equivalent to stone. As they say, the bones of the earth are the stones and rocks we see. To know the true story of our earth, including the story of ourselves, is to listen to the rocks.
They are the conduits through which earth passes information on to us. Any creature that is born with bones is said to be born already possessing some knowledge. This is where the indigenous derive their belief that one comes into this worlds with a genius, and that this genius must be opened to the person shortly after birth, first through the name, and later on through initiation. All those in Western culture who wander without purpose are perhaps stripped of their genius and are in exile searching for ways to remember. These people are in need of mineral rituals to repair their relationship to memory, which is symbolised in mineral.
Indigenous people think that our bones are the minerals in which we store thousands of years of information. They store that which we need to remember...
Indigenous people don't learn by looking outside themselves; instead they learn how to remember the knowledge they already possess. The person who has a mineral nature speaks a great deal because mineral expresses in discourse what is stored in coded form within the bones.
Mineral people are storytellers, fascinated with myth, tradition and rituals, versed in dealing with metaphors and symbols. In Africa, they are the town criers who know what happens now and what has happened for countless generations. They constantly remind us in stories, proverbs, songs and poems the deep healing significance of staying connected. They know how to praise and warn...
Indigenous people know that there is a collective memory and an individual memory. Collective memory is not a vast well that exists separate from individual people. It is the sum total of the personal memories of each person. In other words, for a village, a tribe and a culture to remember, each individual must master the ability to remember the knowledge that lives in his or her bones.
Indigenous people recognise that when the individual does not remember, gradually it is the culture, the society that forgets. Individuals who forget their life purpose put the whole community at risk. They begin to look outside themselves for their purpose and society often responds to their demand by creating artificial goals. But society loses in this process because it is not receiving what it is the individual's to give. Not to know what gift you're bringing to your people implies that you cannot deliver. If you cannot give, it means the community cannot receive from you."
The last paragraph is slightly off topic but is worth repeating I think!
(I participated in a mineral ritual with Malidoma and the group I was working with and 'remembered' and 'received' a poem, a poem of celebration for a woman in the group whose birthday it was, and recited it at her birthday supper. It was quite magical.)
The Dagara people don't have written language (they associate written language with cruelty because the Christian white men had it and were cruel) so if you think about it, in times before writing the poets and memory keepers would have been the books, but what remained of them would be bones so it's quite reasonable to think of memory and knowledge as residing in the bones or the equivalent of bones in an earth context, stones. If you made a deep mark on a stone it would last through the generations.
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Post by redraven on May 5, 2011 14:36:56 GMT -1
Thank you Gellifach, that "feels intuitively right" to me and it is gratifying to find out about a similar cultural perspective to the one I have endeavoured to present with this piece.
RR
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Post by Francis on May 6, 2011 9:13:09 GMT -1
Clearly this is a piece of work into which you've put a great deal of time and emotional investment. In my opinion it was a hypothesis of much merit and was worthy of the time it has taken you in researching this project.
I regret to say though that I don't find either the reasoning or the evidence that you base your conclusions on compelling. It's a work of advocacy rather than an detached and objective interrogation of the hypothesis. You have cited many sources that at best are 'not incompatible' with the ideas you suggest they are evidence for...
I'm not going to list references or quote passage to justify my comments - I offer this as nothing more than my opinion as requested. My view is that the suggestion your hypothesis reflects an ancient actuality has at best been unproven, and has possibly been 'damned by faint evidence' to paraphrase a saying.
However it is still a valuable and potentially useful idea. Obviously it was always going to be interesting to see if it reflected the past, but in my lame opinion it may be more worthwhile to develop the basic premise in a contemporary context. How could this perspective colour our practice and perceptions today?
Talking generally now, and as ever offering my view - and not attempting to making vain proclamations on how the world is!
My understanding is that the paramount goal of Brython is relationship with the whole sphere of this land. One tool we have is to look backwards in time to seek how people on this island once practiced this relationship. But that's only one strand in the cord we're trying to weave. I would suggest there is a tendency when we have ideas to seek to 'test' or develop them in an historical context, possibly because it is the least risky (emotionally, intellectually, potential for ridicule and easiest to stay neo-pagan fluff free). The historical route allows us the opportunity to follow a format of scholarship that has a long and approved tradition.
More challenging would be to develop our ideas into a perspective that more directly informs our contemporary practice - and that could lead to deeper relationship and 'spiritual' utility today.
Reading your work and posts on this idea RR I would suggest it's actually pretty explicit that this hypothesis came out of the way you relate to the Land around you, and that it could be fundamental to your perspective and practice? It would be exciting to read of any attempt you might make to develop, and build confidence into the practical utility (and internal consistency), of this idea in your personal contemporary practice.
Stated more clearly I'm suggesting you 'evidence' your idea in the here and now. Does it take your practice forward? Does it offer you a perspective you can work with more deeply or with more utility? Could it offer others here more richness, depth or utility to their practice? Does it matter a jot whether this idea/view was held explicitly at any point in the past? Is it an idea we could develop and extend pragmatically for now?
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Post by redraven on May 6, 2011 18:45:22 GMT -1
Clearly this is a piece of work into which you've put a great deal of time and emotional investment. In my opinion it was a hypothesis of much merit and was worthy of the time it has taken you in researching this project. More so than I realised both at the time and afterwards. I regret to say though that I don't find either the reasoning or the evidence that you base your conclusions on compelling. Didn't expect it to be, it's a springboard and not a finished thesis. It's a work of advocacy rather than an detached and objective interrogation of the hypothesis. You have cited many sources that at best are 'not incompatible' with the ideas you suggest they are evidence for... See previous comment. I'm not going to list references or quote passage to justify my comments - I offer this as nothing more than my opinion as requested. My view is that the suggestion your hypothesis reflects an ancient actuality has at best been unproven, and has possibly been 'damned by faint evidence' to paraphrase a saying. Fair comment, it's just a starting position for me to build from. However it is still a valuable and potentially useful idea. Thank you. I can ask no more of anyone than this. Obviously it was always going to be interesting to see if it reflected the past, but in my lame opinion it may be more worthwhile to develop the basic premise in a contemporary context. How could this perspective colour our practice and perceptions today? Talking generally now, and as ever offering my view - and not attempting to making vain proclamations on how the world is! My understanding is that the paramount goal of Brython is relationship with the whole sphere of this land. One tool we have is to look backwards in time to seek how people on this island once practiced this relationship. But that's only one strand in the cord we're trying to weave. I would suggest there is a tendency when we have ideas to seek to 'test' or develop them in an historical context, possibly because it is the least risky (emotionally, intellectually, potential for ridicule and easiest to stay neo-pagan fluff free). The historical route allows us the opportunity to follow a format of scholarship that has a long and approved tradition. More challenging would be to develop our ideas into a perspective that more directly informs our contemporary practice - and that could lead to deeper relationship and 'spiritual' utility today. Reading your work and posts on this idea RR I would suggest it's actually pretty explicit that this hypothesis came out of the way you relate to the Land around you, and that it could be fundamental to your perspective and practice? Yes, my interactions aren't typically deity driven and it's this lack of deity interaction that has led me to consider how other methods of interactions may be derived. It would be exciting to read of any attempt you might make to develop, and build confidence into the practical utility (and internal consistency), of this idea in your personal contemporary practice. This work has led me to the "realization" that the continuing actions of thought may be, for me, tied inextricably to the physical remains left in the enivironment. I am though, aware that this may be a very unusual type of interaction and not at all typical. Stated more clearly I'm suggesting you 'evidence' your idea in the here and now. Does it take your practice forward? Yes, in so much as it clarifys things for me on a personal level and sets a baseline from which to work further. Does it offer you a perspective you can work with more deeply or with more utility? I am happier that I have a basic grasp on the idea of thought and physicality being linked after death, yes. Could it offer others here more richness, depth or utility to their practice? That's for others to decide, I'll continue to post anyway  . Does it matter a jot whether this idea/view was held explicitly at any point in the past? For me, it does, but as mentioned previously, I am prepared to accept that this may be just an intensely personal perspective. Is it an idea we could develop and extend pragmatically for now? That is a very big part as to why I'm continuing to explore this here with people for whom I have the highest regard for. RR |
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Post by redraven on May 8, 2011 19:04:39 GMT -1
You might also like to consider re-presenting it as a continuous piece.I found reading the different sections backwards disconcerting. Heron, I've altered the appearance and structure of the site to deal with your comments here, I would appreciate it if you could run an eye over it now to see if it is structured more in keeping with your comments which, I have to say, I think are correct. RR |
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Post by Heron on May 9, 2011 13:15:02 GMT -1
You might also like to consider re-presenting it as a continuous piece.I found reading the different sections backwards disconcerting. Heron, I've altered the appearance and structure of the site to deal with your comments here, I would appreciate it if you could run an eye over it now to see if it is structured more in keeping with your comments which, I have to say, I think are correct. RR What I had in mind was putting the whole argument into one posting so it could be read through from beginning to end. But your new arrangement of providing access to each of the sections separately from the main menu works well enough in this respect, especially if you regard each stage of the argument as self-contained and distinct. Currently you have them in order across the top of the opening page, and then under 'pages' on the right, where they are easily accessible separately but not actually in sequence order. Is this because you are prioritising some sections over others? |
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Post by redraven on May 9, 2011 15:11:29 GMT -1
But your new arrangement of providing access to each of the sections separately from the main menu works well enough in this respect, especially if you regard each stage of the argument as self-contained and distinct. Currently you have them in order across the top of the opening page, and then under 'pages' on the right, where they are easily accessible separately but not actually in sequence order. Is this because you are prioritising some sections over others? No, it's how the wordpress theme has ordered them, still trying to figure out why it's done that and how to correct it. RR |
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Post by Sìle on May 9, 2011 17:07:12 GMT -1
Have you considered using google sites to arrange the pages as you want them, since Wordpress seems specifically for blogs and so has odd sequencing arrangements?
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