Journal of Geomancy vol. 2 no. 3, April 1978

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LETTERS

FROM Prudence Jones, Cambridge.

Stephen Oannes (J. Geomancy 2/1) suggests that witchcraft is essentially a system of ‘raw transmaterial energetics’ and that its secrets are unnecessarily withheld from a needy world by ‘a fringe of people who for various reasons hold to it as a religious faith’.  The implications are that anything ‘raw’ is value-free and therefore open to grabs by all, and that religion is an unjustified belief.  I may be doing Mr Oannes an injustice, but in case anyone else has understood the same from his article as I have, I would offer some elucidation. 

Most of the facts about ‘natural magic’, which is something like raw transmaterial energetics, are available in books.  These are probably on the Vatican’s Index but on no-one else’s,.  Those that are out of print are still available on the open shelves of libraries.  Doreen Valiente’s books on witchcraft, Ophiel’s on more eclectic personal magic, as well as the countless books on ritual magic (mostly Christian/Jewish-heretical) and meditation are the ones to look for.  Anyone with the desire and concentration can practise a large and effective amount of natural magic. 

The essence of a religious system is that it is a system of veneration of values.  We can forget the sillier arguments of Protestant Christianity which attempt to make the deity into some kind of super-efficient final cause in a mechanistic materialistic atomistic (any more?) universe.  A deity is not something that somehow transcends the physical universe for the simple reason that it does not fit in it, but is a cause of reverence, an expression of values and striving.  We can ignore also the reductionist arguments of psychology, especially of theoretical psychiatry, to the effect that our ‘need’ for values is only a neurosis.  So is our need for psychiatry.  So too is our allegiance to the values of psychiatry, which once was presented as the means to integrate maladjusted people into society, now appears as the means to help us fulfil our own potential.  In ten years’ time it’ll be something completely different – and make something different of religion too.  So we needn’t try to make witchcraft pass the Christian test for religion, nor need we accept a dismissal based on self-referential reductionism. 

Most religions, established ones as well as the trendy new ones, hold to a concept of unity, ‘Brotherhood’, ‘relatedness’, ‘the Universe as centralized state’ (that last one’s mine) are some of the terms used about it.  Witchcraft, on the other hand, is a dualistic religion, it believes in the fruitful tension and continued interaction of two equal and opposite forces, personified as the Great Mother Goddess and the Horned God.  Witchcraft is essentially a dialectical religion, not a dogmatic one.  The attraction of opposites, their attempts at union, which may or may not be illusory, are seen as the source of all power by witches, in contrast to the orthodox religious belief in illumination from above, ascent and transcendence by what is below.  With due acknowledgements to those who were in Cambridge in 1972, then I would suggest that witchcraft is a type of HORIZONTALISM; the hierarchy of most other religions runs vertically.  The Craft too is firmly based in the here and now, it thinks the world is fine, we belong here and we can make it even more enjoyable and beautiful if we try.  Other religions, most of them, are profoundly embarrassed by the world, they spend a lot of time trying to convince us that there is a better world around the next corner.  This if nothing else makes it politically hot, since witches won’t be browbeaten into obedience by the fear of hellfire and the promise of salvation next life.  Hence centuries of political persecution, hence much of the witches’ continued silence.  {77}

These beliefs, in dual polarity, in the sacredness of sexual attraction, in the beauty and adequacy of the world, are liable to slip into a kind of hedonism defined negatively by the very values – centralism, ‘sublimation’, other-worldliness – to which they are in fact a positive opposite.  The structure and solidarity of religious rituals help keep the Craft positive in its own right.  But basically, witchcraft is a religion not just a magical system because of its code of values.  I hope Mr Oannes is clearer on that point now. 

FROM Alan Bullion, Tonbridge.

The dead-end at which we have arrived with regard to the ‘Kit’s Coty’ affair and the Department of the Environment does not surprise me.  It seems that they only care when it is a building such as a castle or Roman villa where money can be made.  The point concerning the actual nature of the megalith that the DOE made I find very spurious.  They suggest that the name denotes that it was a natural outcrop (i.e. Grey Wether), but I actually named it from my own observation that it resembled a recumbent sheep.  The most important thing is that it should never have been moved in the first place, but at least many local people have become interested in the ‘missing megalith’ and several people have enquired of it.  The letters to the local paper however elicited no response whatever. 

I agreed entirely with the points you made concerning ‘Kit’s Coty’ and I hope you have better luck with ‘Gogmagog’. 

I have also found cut some more concerning the dragons and St. Leonards Forest.  There is in existence a piece of old doggerel or rhyme which goes like this:–

The adders never styng
Nor ye nightingales syng. 

This was composed after the incident in 1614 (see J. Geomancy 2/2) at a place called ‘Faygate’ in the Forest.  The Devil is also supposed to haunt the Forest as well as Squire Paulet, so it is a veritable pot-pourri of mysteries. 

In Tonbridge also two hauntings occur both on ley-lines.  The ‘Cardinal’s Error’ pub is haunted by a lady in a tall hat.  I have never seen her, but I suppose she might appear after one has had a few drinks!  The other is at ‘Hartlake Bridge’ on the River Medway.  The bridge collapsed when a horse and cart-load of East-End hoppers were crossing on their way to the hop fields.  They drowned in the river and a song was composed last century concerning the incident.  The song is well Known in folk music circles.  Every September (hopping time), the apparition of the incident is said to be replayed at the now rebuilt bridge. 

I also found another piece of folklore concerning the Tonbridge tunnels in an old edition of my local paper, the Courier.  A small boy was said to have entered one of the tunnels to look for treasure and to have seen something terrible about half-way down it.  He ran out in a state of alarm, but to this day it is not known what.he saw.  The story has a familiar ring to it in connexion with other tunnel legends all over the country, and just simply serves to add to the mysteries concerning the town. 

From Jim Kimmis, Southend.

A news item – today’s (1/2/78) paper relates that Carmarthen council are seriously thinking of removing the remains of Merlin’s Oak.  Apparently it’s a traffic hazard.  Last time it was interfered with, the town was flooded, so it could be worth watching the press to see if the august councillors change their minds. 

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SEE BEGINNING OF THIS ISSUE; from the Cambridge Preservation Society.

Dear Sirs, I refer to previous correspondence concerning the request of your Society to clean-up the site of the hill figures. 

As you are aware Miss A. Taylor, Archeological Field Officer for Cambridge, three members of your society and our Assistant Secretary, Warden and myself visited the site on Sunday, February 19th.  Miss Taylor could see no reason why the area should not be cleaned up or a resistivity survey being made, as this did not constitute a ‘dig’.  However, there was considerable feeling by several members of the Council of Management against any action being taken including the cleaning.  I personally, feel strongly that at least the area around Lethbridge’s ‘figures’ should be enclosed by a single rail, and a notice erected asking visitors not to walk inside to minimise erosion.  The members met on March 14th and the following decision was thus Minuted: “The Council of Management AGREED that a resistivity test and a magnetometer test could be arranged, but no fencing to be erected until the results are known”.  Yours faithfully S.P.Beamon, B.A.  Secretary. 

From Mary Caine, Kingston-upon-Thames.

So many instant zodiacs of a doubtful not to say fluffy nature are being produced that a list of guide-rules should be drawn up to help other zodiac-finders and set them a standard.  This standard is given by Mrs. Maltwood, without whom the whole concept would not have appeared.  It may be that there are zodiacs standing on their heads, strung out in straight lines, even 50 miles across, the figures interlacing with one another like worms in a compost heap etc. etc.  But it is certainly not enough just to draw such aberrations on any map and step back smartly with a yell of triumph.  To do this is to bring the whole sublime subject into disrepute, not to say nuttiness. 

There are many other conditions which must be fulfilled.  And the fulfilling of these is where the hard work and research comes in.  Zodiac-finding is a craft, and like any other craft, metal-work, wood-work etc., needs a long period of apprenticeship or initiation, where one humbly learns the skill from a master craftsman.  Mrs. Maltwood is our master, and she spent many years researching.  Not only into maps and field-research, but into mythology: Arthurian, Celtic, Greek, Indian, Egyptian, etc. etc., and other fields especially astrology, folklore, history, geology and psychology.  Psychology especially, for this is the nub of the whole quest. 

Finding a zodiac, one finds (as Mrs. Maltwood did) one is on the Quest of the Grail – the Quest of Oneself.  The first thing one finds in this work is that we cannot work!  We then have to find out why our effigies are so slipshod, our place-names so few, our legends so non-existent, our total commitment so lacking.  We then despair and blame a sceptical public for its blindness and apathy.  But it is we ourselves who are blind, apathetic, egocentric and slipshod.  We are not even good workmen yet, and want to be acclaimed as Masters.  If our own zodiac is there – and I emphasise the IF – it is up to us to find the most convincing paths, roads, streams etc. to delineate good figures.  This will go far to make others think.  But it is not enough in itself.  Many other conditions must be satisfied.  Some will involve us in considerable expense and this in itself is a test of commitment.  Airphotos are vital.  A star-map scaled to the effigies.  (Note that I have failed myself to provide one as yet for my Kingston Zodiac, a failure I must remedy in the next edition of my booklet!  There is always something important one leaves undone – some troublesome detail one avoids and conveniently forgets.) 6″ maps are expensive, yet provide paths and field names that do not appear in smaller scale maps.  Some of these can be vital clues to the effigies.  Much background reading must be done.  Mrs. Maltwood’s bibliography to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars can take years.  But it is vital and can give meaning to place names we would pass over without it.  A local history is equally vital. 

Here is my list for the comments of your readers: {79}

From Michael Scott, Cambridge:

Dear Nigel, ref. the translation of Prof. Dr. J. Hopmann’s 1935 article (J. Geomancy 2/2; 1978) Researches into orientation:

On p. 37 Hopmann writes that his new geodetic survey of the Gutshof gave a better value for the azimuths of the earthworks and walls than was possible relying on the old land register.  “… a simultaneous identification of all six walls and of a seventh alignment for the Quellenhügel holds only for two dates.  One is 1500 B.C. … approximately the earlier solution of Riem and Neugebauer, the other is 620 B.C., in confirmation of our researches of 1927.”

Many enquiring minds are aware of E. Velikovsky’s conclusion that a planetary disturbance occurred half way through the second millennium B.C., and a second in the (?) eighth century B.C.  and that each shaking of the powers of Heaven led to a readjustment of the calendar.  Might not such disturbances have brought the need for new sighting instruments in the form of the constructions at the Gutshof and elsewhere? 

Hopmann’s article was written over a decade before Velikovsky’s best known books on the catastrophe hypothesis began to appear.  Their independent findings look to be mutually supporting. 

Velikovsky was recently reported to have received a standing ovation at the end of a six hour grilling before the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.