One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ~Carl Sagan The Demon Haunted World
Yes Sagan is the book I am listening to at the moment. I do not actually prescribe to the above statement by the way, free will has a lot going for it.
Being around prehistoric stones, there is plenty of foolishness that goes with them. Their magnetic feel when you touch them, true or not? The magical appearance of wheat 'crop circles', carved mysterious symbols on the landscape. So beloved in Wiltshire, its downs making the perfect artistic backdrop to drawing with a rope. Note how the crop circle people will follow the lines of the tractor to enter the symbol. The farmers are not too pleased either.
Ley lines is another fancy, the St Michael one perhaps being the most famous. It is simple, take a ruler and your map and then lay your ruler on the map, you will find that the line will go through several 'interesting' sites. Whether they be archaeological or churches. These magnetic lines influence the settlement of people over the ages, or so it is thought.
Now as many churches have the name of St.Michael it can't be true for many of them.
There is a thread that Runs through the St. Michael's ley line, it will take in Avebury, Stonehenge and Glastonbury on its way to the South coast. But then that thread also has Christianity, King Arthur and Jesus entwinned in it, alongside its prehistoric history.
One of the most interesting parts of this myth, was the hawthorn that landed on the late Queen's dining table from Glastonbury on Christmas day. For this branch came from a hawthorn tree which, according to legend, was planted, by Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury when he apparently came to England with the young Jesus.
Monks in the medieval period, in the hope of bringing pilgrims to their monastic houses and churches, would often make up stories to attract such people. A bit like 'The White Lady' ghost of our National Trust in the old houses. Glastonbury Abbey is also supposed to have the bodies of both King Arthur and his queen buried in the grounds. Yes the graves still exist but whether of this pair cannot be verified.
Glastonbury Tor is supposedly the centre of Avalon, a mythical country, surrounded on all sides by a marshy landscape, but perhaps more famous for its Iron Age Lake village set on a crannog in its time about three miles from Glastonbury. The famous Iron Age Sweet Track, a pathway of logs to the central island or crannog can still be seen.
Almost impossible to separate definite/ possible and rubbish in these sort of stories.
ReplyDeleteThey are stories that fall through the ages Pat being moulded to different interpretations.
DeleteUnfortunately the bamboozling doesn't end with this kind of harmless nonsense but also wrecks lives and even whole societies.
ReplyDeleteYes, if built on ignorance John. I am not sure what Sagan would have said if he had seen the lies politicians are so happy to give out these days. The fun side is good to potter around though, whether they be aliens or Atlantis. People want to believe in the impossible.
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