It is only between about 7000 and 10000 years ago that man was wandering the landscape as a hunter-gatherer, before the times of farming and of cities. The seasons were the deciding factor in movement and in survival. Wandering the liminal, the coastline, riverbanks and such fertile areas for food was the constant process. Three or four hundred generations of people, families and tribes from then until now. It is not that long ago in our evolution and growth.
We have made many seeming advances in technology since then. It was a period of flint working, bone and skin working, some basic textiles and nets, the weaving of reeds and wicker. Mankind needed only what he could carry. Even pottery was not created. Now we send satellites to the far reaches of our solar system and beyond.
We have learnt much about manipulating our world and its resources but we have not progressed far in emotional, spiritual or psychological matters. Some would say that we have regressed. Our emotional reactions to our lives, our world and our social connections are fluid energies partly driven by instinctive behaviour, the biological/chemical feedback and response to our perception of our place, value and position. Mood reactions, modalities conceived as rewards and penalties that then dictate action and change in our behaviour. Sometimes these changes are automatic, or originated in the subconscious, sometimes they are shaped after conscious mentation. As witches we explore all our boundaries, more than most, and we use the power and energy of self knowledge to change ourselves and the world we perceive. Can we really understand the pagan world, where the liminal was the landscape and the threshhold of consciousness that pertained to survival? Or do we merely approximate in our explorations? Memes may be passed on but can they be re-found or do we, each individual, create our own?
jape

Good question. From a personal point of view I think I only see the world in terms of what is around me now. I know that it was vastly different once , and part of me yearns for it all to be that simple again. I also think it is very easy to get stuck in the rut of trying to recreate something which no-one is absolutely certain existed just the way that it has been receated. I think we have to take our Paganism forward into the world we inhabit or else we loose the point / plot.

I had a feeling recently that started this old train of thought again, when I was doing a (rare) ritual inviting some local ancestors of this land to participate in my warding the block of bush I live on. I felt them around me as shadows - but the feeling was not of them watching me or responding to my 'call', it was that they were there in their own time and place. I felt that the 'liminal', the experience I was sharing, was a state of mind or a state of being. It was different to other connections I have had across time when I have actually felt an awareness of me in the souls I called or evoked, a response.
Fine points of perception I suppose and not seeming to interest many here, but thanks for your response artic wolf.
Reading William Gibson again of late (neuromancer, count zero, pattern recognition) I am in full agreement with your point about taking the relevance of Paganism into the world we inhabit now.
jape

Perhaps not so much disinterest as needing time for a bit of deep thought on this one!

Can we, I wonder, ever return to a state in which we relate to the world in the same way as the oldest Ancestors did? I'd probably say not, just because our lives are not for the most part so bound up with the processes of survival and subsistence. Most of us aren't directly working with the Land and we're not so much required to be in tune with its cycles. Many people are quite able and happy to live their lives in a manner that has no necessary contact at all with the natural world. Most of our environment is a manufactured one and we are insulated from the worst risks by the vast surpluses that exist.

Trying to return to a state in which all existence is sacralised would be a very bold step, and I think that's what would be required. I don't think that the Ancestors had a concept of religion in the way that we do, it was just a part of every activity. Can we do that? Having invented philosophy and theology, they can't really be uninvented.

Perhaps it will take someone not only to set the example but also to provide the lead to others, to show how we can take the leap "from the kingdom of necessity into the kingdom of freedom" as it were.

gwyn eich byd

Ffred

couldn't agree more.


"Memes may be passed on but can they be re-found or do we, each individual, create our own?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

i would hazard its both,

Gee Jape, I don't know about the time frames you suggest. In that period, some very clever people seemed to get around in the world and erect alot of amazing structures in stone. Archeologists are still puzzling over where these people might have come from. I have to side with the Native American legends of the "Four Great Cycles" on this one.

From the evolutionary aspect of spiritual consciousness, however, you have indeed many fascinating observations. I find it curious that none of yet might consider, that some rare lineages are well adept at passing on their ancestral memories on the psychic level without the need of spoken word.

Hehe, well I had to go away and research "liminal" to be sure I had understood what you wrote.. found an interesting article too:

The metaphors and rituals of place and time

Anyhows, I think I agree with Articwolf.. while as someone with a background in history and academia I find I can sort of immerse myself in how we perceive the past to have being, I am always fully concious that the past is very subjective and based on our best guess.

I also think we often see our past in a very santised way, and forget about the cruelities and hardships our ancestors had to endure. When we think of our pagan ancestors (and I'm using pagan here as in non christain) often they are almost deityfied as being somehow closer to the land, more aware and more spiritual but were they? Certainly, they understood the world via their beliefs and now we understand the world more by science, although more and more people are recognising that a more rounded understanding is possible through a mixture of science and spirituality.

Therefore, while it is good for modern pagans to research and even try to recapture something of our ancestors, I think, we need and must look to the world we live in now and adapt and become sensitive and in tune to the land of today, not of yesterday.

(I’m doing this in my lunch break so it’s a bit rushed and may not come over just how I want it – bear with me!)

Obviously, insofar as the physical goes, man travels linearly through time, generation to generation.

But in the spiritual world, I hold the view that the spirits of the ancestors are just as “here and now” as our spirits were “then”. Not so much a vertical linear idea but more of a horizontal “pot” in which all consciousnesses are together and where time in the human perception of it is irrelevent. For me, that’s where your comment about your experience of sharing the ritual to ward your area of bush was key – that the ancestors were there in their own time and space.

My view is that that is precisely what was happening.

In the same way, IMO, experiences, memories etc can be, in the spiritual plane, discovered and re-used and re-lived, and each time that happens these experiences are given another facet, according to the modern existence of the day.

You said it yourself that



For me there is no regression in human behaviour. Because there never was progression. Everything you’ve said above can be applied to humanity since they first walked and will do so until the last one dies.

So yes, I think we can understand the experiences of our ancestors even though they physically experienced the world in a very different way to the way we physically experience it now. Strip away the trappings of modern life and the basic needs and wants of man are the same no matter where you go and when you are. Even though we are today so more self-consciously “earth-oriented” than our ancestors were.

Good onya folks, I do enjoy a good chat. Tonight will be a malt whisky and contemplation night, with some head scratching, dreaming, rereading of your responses and note taking from the links while the rest of this country is playing drunken baboon about the cup finals in two football codes ... thanks for the thoughts.
jape

I think Pomona that is an excellent point... we are (and using "we" here to mean us neopagans - oh dear, and using "neopaganism" as to mean modern paganism), we are more self consciously earth-orientated and I think that is actually a very big difference.

Our ancestors were motivated to be, what we think of as "environmental" because their existance demanded they took care of the land they lived on; it was a matter of survival. That aspect took on a spiritual nature, often ancestors saw natural disasters etc as the Gods being angry; they had done something wrong. So they tried to appease the Gods in the hope there would be a good harvest, there would be game to hunt for food. Their spirituality was also linked to their survival.

In modern life spirituality is a luxury. It's not based around our survival simply because we understand the world better, we have medicine that will often cure us, we have mechanisms to deal with natural disasters (although not always successul; afterall nature is an awesome power), our food is mass produced etc. So spirituality has become more intellectual.

There has been a fundamental shift in our sense of spirituality and linking back to the ancestors through the spiritual plains, sensing and feeling the rawness of their spirituality of their life, I believe there is much can be recaptured and adapted for modern life, a new sense of the land that scrapes away the perceptions we are conditioned with, however, going back to my original point, we must not let our own rose coloured glasses tint the ancestors experience. Those experiences discovered and recreated must be done within the context of the world we live in now and be adapted to have meaning for us in the modern world, to help us to connect more meaningfully to the land and to ourselves.

I hope that makes sense, I've not being awake long and still blinking sleep from my eyes!

Perfect sense, Very. Indeed spirituality would even seem a hobby for some people these days.
Looking back to a time where there were no handbooks to explain the forces in control of their lives, our ancestors had only what could be observed in nature, which they incorporated into a belief system to give their struggle for survival, some meaning to keep it all from seeming futile...to better understand and accept that it all has some integral purpose in which they could feel in some way an important part. Certainly those of us who've never had it easy can well understand this need where all else fails.

"our ancestors had only what could be observed in nature, which they incorporated into a belief system to give their struggle for survival, some meaning to keep it all from seeming futile...to better understand and accept that it all has some integral purpose in which they could feel in some way an important part."

And if we move from the general to the particular, to witches, they felt that purpose and integration anyway and had no need to incorporate or construct. I also do not believe it was always a 'struggle' to survive. It was hard work but well within the bounds of the individual and group. No harder than existence today, they had time to dream and plan and play. Higher as well as baser emotions, ideals and hopes and wishes. This is not some grunting ape, it is just us without the technology and systems.
jape

Indeed, for all the technology we incline to forget what it was like back in the days of compulsory DIY!

Never said anything about grunting apes...... merely pointing out life was more extreme; survival took priority and it was damn hard, doing backbreaking work from dusk to dawn. And nothing annoys me more when silly fairyheads come along and twitter about the glorious days when man was closer to the land.

"No harder than existence today"........... you are joking aren't you? We have more leisure time than our ancestors could even have dreamed of! Strip the vast majority of 21st century people of their technology and systems and put them back in the "wild" to live as our ancestors did.. and I bet you'd be talking a good 80% would die of starvation. (if not more)

Strip away the trappings of 21st century life then yes the basic desires and needs are the same, however, in very real terms we have become domesticated, just as we have domesticated say the dog. Put the dog back in the wild and it will die of starvation, very few retain the instinct for survival.

I think perhaps an important definition to clear up here Jape is your definition of witches. When I think of witches of "old" I'm talking of the wise men and women of the village who knew which herbs etc would help cure certain diseases, were inquiring of mind and learnt to read the weather, had very intune senses to be able to get an idea of the future. The person the rest of the village respected for their knowledge, prehaps even fear them a little... although thinking about it, I'm not actually sure there's any historical proof for such people. More likely older women, through age and experience had picked things up, learnt other's from their mum's etc, similarly with the men. Mind you, written history isn't that interested in the common people, unfortunately.

I didn't suggest you did say that , Very, I was responding to Quaz! But yes, apart from a few comfortable elite of which we are part, the pampered slaves, most people on this planet have a hard, short and squalid life today.
I do not believe 'existence' in that time would have been bad. Ask a deer or tiger if it has a short, bad life, then offer it intelligence and adaptability, aye and curiosity.
It was later in the times of cities and feudalism that the lot of many generated. If 80% did die under the circumstances you posit then it would be no more than a balancing and once the carcasses had rotted away the world would be a better place. I would come out of my cave in the hills at that point!
Witches are not what most think they are, the 'wise-woman' as witch is another myth, except perhaps in the times I was originally talking of when she was just as likely to be male.
I am interested in the 'common' people. It is what this thread is about in part.
jape

You have intrigued me then, please share your knowledge of witches of aeons gone by. I must admit I find this aspect very frustating historically speaking and most authors seem to just spout the usual fanciful ideas of who witches are.. or make loose comments about people who probably too secretative and knowledgable to be caught / known of by "common" history....

lol maybe my early years of academia has made me a little cynical when it comes to such things, I kind like proof. lol.

However, I would love to hear your thoughts on this Jape.

Just to comment about elders and wise ones. In the good old stoneage days when life expectancy was only about 35, anyone who did live longer had so much to pass on in terms of knowledge and experience to the younger members of the family or tribe.

If I was to seek to have a similar experience of nature , or the divinity of nature to my forefathers I would be dead now. I think Very and Pomona made good points about: living in a world of science today and having the spiritual side as an optional luxury .

On a purely experiential level I have also felt the aura/energy/spirit of those gone before us. Even to the extent of picking up emotions. None of them have imparted any occult advice to me though.

Pity...but do keep trying, you might get lucky!

P.S.: The wisdom of the ancients is not lost, but has been working down in CERN on a few data teleportation experiments!

Aye, it is about keeping a balance tho isn't it... (as is just about everything), to ignore science is foolish; at the same time we need to be able to trust our instincts which does cause a bit of dichotomy.

And that knowledge that is old does need to be evaluated in terms of today, is it applicable, does it require adaption.. and I feel the same toward magic and ritual. Of course some magic works on the energy that has been put into it over the years, and therefore you wouldn't want to mess around trying to change it for a more modern world.. it will work perfectly well as it is.... some Rituals tho, I believe do need adaption.

After all look how societal views on issues of drugs/sex/sacrifices have influenced us. Not so long ago I rather suspect many people wouldn't have turned an eyebrow at using say drugs to experience the mystical... and these days it's a little taboo.

I have had pagans earnestly inform me that no serious pagan today would consider a blood sacrifice, be it animal or human [in terms of today I mean offering a blood offering not actually killing a human as a sacrifice], and blood sacrifice never happened in the past; our pagan ancestors honoured the land too much for that...... I tend to get a bit incredulous at that point.

Sacrifices WERE made; heck the Bible is full of them alone! However, in today's more (to use Pomona's phrase) earth orientated paganism its not considered acceptable; so we have come up with alternatives. Yet the power our ancesters raised is what we need to tap into, we need to try and remember and understand what it is they were accomplishing and how they did it.... can we do that with the liminal - perhaps, I think it is subjective and I can't help wondering how societal values and pressures will influence a person. Yet if done on a personal level then I believe it is a worthwhile exercise and can only prove fruitful.

Yup, just as much a part of evolution as anything else and always begins with the individual.