ROAD TESTING THE PROTO-TYPE (Words: Welbourn) We have sussed the fall. The ones who comprehend the old ways will always prevail. Did the ancients embrace every technical innovation without a thorough road-testing? I think not. Change was once a slow, methodical process and many prototypes were unceremoniously dumped on the Neolithic scrap-heap, so to speak, long before seeing the light of day. For a world that accepts change without caution will surely fall. Embrace and utilise modern innovations to enhance your vocation, but a reliance on them puts you at the mercy of ‘the greeds’. For we, The Sons of TC-Lethbridge and our auxiliaries, have got this ‘fall thing’ sussed!

Today my thoughts are on time. Through autumn mist I walk across Big Moor. On this murky day, the relationship between the stones circles of Barbrook I & II is fractured, and in this familiar landscape I have become disorientated. I have strayed from the cairn-lined pathway that follows the ridge of high land between the ring of Barbrook II, and the giant ring cairn to the north of Barbrook One. In the swirling mist, my visibility is limited to only a few yards and although I am unconcerned by my disorientation, I begin to feel a little giddy. To compensate, I focus on the gorse beneath my feet, in the hope that I will locate the track from which I have strayed and once again regain my bearings. Unable to find the path, I glance upwards, and I am confronted with a landscape that is both alien and unfamiliar. The mist that had previously enveloped me has now vanished and I now have a clear view of my surroundings. The air is no longer damp but brittle and clear and the abruptness of this clarity alarms me. I am immediately aware that I have strayed down the hillside from the ridgeway track and find myself almost level with the Barbrook I ring that rises before me - but this is not the stone circle as I know it! The ring is now complete, and the dark stones rise out of the retaining earthen bank. I feel my temperature begin to rise and I experience a deep panic. I glance downwards in search of stability but my feet are no longer surrounded by heather but by a fine, short wire like grass that stretches down to the Barbrook in the valley below me. On the southern bank the heathered hillside that has long been familiar to me, is now replaced by green, stone lined fields where an unfamiliar crop is growing. Amongst this propagation, high on the slopes, I glimpse what appears to be another circular, stone shrine presiding over this arable land. My attention is drawn back to the magnificence of Barbrook I directly in front of me. The unfamiliarity of this scene makes me cautious and I am aware I am experiencing the world ‘out of time’. Suddenly I feel a deep need for rationality, and I glance down at my feet, and I once again witness the heather that is a familiar feature of Big Moor. I feel my temperature drop and I am once again enveloped by the swirling mist of this autumn day. The familiar site of the ruined circle of Barbrook I is immediately before me, and impulsively I glance at my watch. For today, my thoughts are on time. The archaeologist TC Lethbridge once observed; 'Time, as we know it in daily life, is just a convenience for the observation of sequences of events.... There is no such thing as a fixed universal scale. Even to us, the divisions of out arbittary time-scale can pass at very differing speeds.'

SLEEPING GIANT (Words: Welbourn) In this strange, but so cluttered land On days like these I train my thoughts onto the sky A guessing game – no winners only losers And from this sodden slope I watch the world go by After the silence, then comes the cold And when the strange rain begins to fall The doubters’ words echo ‘round my head I sit and think about all the things they said Take a look at ordinary people Take a look – they just make you close your eyes Out on a hill or somewhere in the distance maybe Out of reach – they just make you close your eyes They are not blind, yet they could not see Their view was blocked by broken trees Where bracken grows, thick gorse and bramble A giant’s face concealed The blind man’s glance is magnified Against a Vandal’s winter sky A hillside stake – a shadow cast Into a Bogart’s world A crescent hood-winks a goggle eye But snoring Sawston slumbers by A restless beauty deep beneath Springtime liaisons that she must keep I beseech no clue, no die to cast Ask not for proof or closure But to fall asleep on a hillside clear Is a misguided act of folly To struggle on in knee-deep mud With no concern for those above Where cushy armchairs magistrate Dogmatic! Distant! Holler! But when stones are tossed in open pools Unfathomed secrets will unfold With humble words I need not speak For a giant sleeps beneath my feet.

Colin Wilson: Mysteries (p.101): 'Magic has an ugly name to those who have seen black magic at work among primitive people. Others think that it is completely bogus and no such powers exist. But magic is simply the use of powers of the mind that are not yet understood by science.' Colin Wilson: Mysteries (p.101): ...Lethbridge compared his discoveries to a feeling of ice collapsing beneath his feet; but he never seemed unduly alarmed at the coldness of the water. (p.203) FROM CAPE WRATH TO CAPE FAREWELL (Words: Welbourn) The pack ice twists its fist-like grip And creaky bows begin to rip As we drop silent onto gentle snow A turquoise world begins to glow Translucent glare on panes of glass Compacted ice begins to crack And brittle shift and hollow sound I begin to fall through frozen ground Descent through dark, relentless cold An icey sea claims to its fold Below this film in gentle flow As I await the undertow Thrust up again in brittle light Beneath the veil there was no fight And I breathe in the crisp, thin air I walk on without a care From Cape Wrath to Cape Farewell On solid ground I live to tell Of lands once lost that now are found That I have walked on frozen ground.

THE MONKEY’S TAIL (Words: Welbourn) Out here on the Atlantic edge I stare back at the wreckage of land that is the Outer Hebrides and sometimes, on days like these, the detail of nature is so intense and I ponder upon our maker. Amongst the dwellings of the Damnonii I witness the evidence of perpetual change, The People of the Stag embraced this land, their totems survive to this day and under heavy skies I cross the Minch spellbound at their glory. It is the, By-the-Wind-Sailor - a floating Medusa, formed like a bell - that triggers a train of thought that we are all colonies. With this notion I feel reassured, as I cross this choppy sound on this lonesome voyage. It was Professor Adam Sedgewick who suggested to Darwin; ‘Don’t publish your ideas for they are far too abstract.’ But in a dowsers world everything is abstract; colour, space, light, and time, as we know it in daily life, which, after all, is just a convenience for the observation of sequences of events. Huxley and Spencer were soon on the Darwinian bandwagon and the rest as they say... is history! But what of the monkey’s tail? If, as I believe, mind is distinct from brain, who or what will observe a future time? Without the presence of a conscious mind, I ponder on ‘reality’ and in this translucent light, I ask myself far too many questions. It is cold now and the last strained rays of the winter sun are a distant memory and the chilling grip of winter takes hold on this northern outpost. To observe is a delight but to observe and comprehend is a gift - but a gift from who? If, as I am led to believe, we evolved from apes, comprehension is a faculty we have developed in our evolution. But, if mind is distinct from brain, then brain is no more than a censor for what may be suitable for earth level thinking. All this talk may sound crazy... but I seem to have fallen through into a world where there are many more dimensions. I live in a land of deciduous trees and I observe their annual cycle with wonderment, but does the tree have a say in its own evolution? If there is evolution, then this must take place in the seed. I am drawn to the fact that germination is again an abstraction of mind, of thought, of god? A peat fire burns in the room of my lodgings, I extinguish the oil lamp and stare out onto the harbour below - this is a timeless scene. I imagine the lanterns burning in the wheelhouses and the brochs and of families battening down the hatches for the night, taking refuge against the Arctic wind that has been relentless since time began. Privileged, I walk out under the violent starlit dome that is the night sky over Daliburgh and ponder on my day’s activities. My thoughts are occupied by Sithean - the piper’s fairy hill - and the middens in the dunes beyond Kilpheder, but I am drawn again and again to my greatest dilemma - that of a Genesis. The intensity of the stars triggers a million questions and this thought process alone provides me with evidence that, at least in my own mind, I have at last dispelled the myth of the monkey’s tail.

KAMIKAZE (Words: Welbourn) Glass Eye Frost Foot Cross-Cut Saw Janus is laughing he stands at the door Mast-Head God’s Eye The Dark in the Hall Magog is turning his eye to us all.

HALANGY DOWNER* Tekh: ‘I went down to Halangy today.’ Martin: ‘Yeah.’ Tekh: ‘It was dark, really fucking dark man.’ Martin: ‘That place is so strange.’ Tekh: ‘It was as if the place is like… you know, some kind of giant recorder. Yeah. You know it’s as if the walls have recorded everything that has ever gone on down there. Yeah, like a, like a giant (indecipherable). Are you awake yet? Are you awake yet? Huh? Awake? A wake? Awake yet? *Bant’s Carn is a Bronze Age Entrance Grave on St Marys, Isles of Scilly. Below Bant's Carn, lies the remains of the Iron Age village of Halangy Down.

THROUGH A PILOT’S EYES (Words: Welbourn) Through a pilot’s eyes, over the Firth of Clyde and out - over open sea - across to Brodick Bay. Through rising vapour from sodden pine, the navigator’s flight is measured and crossing Glenrosa over to Stronach Wood, it provides the pilot with a bird’s eye view of my world. Below, dense woodland, where I sit spellbound on exposed rock, as the roar of engines breaks my mood and I turn my gaze to the sky. The torrential morning rain has now gone and I have broken cover into Stronach Wood and as I ascend the woodland path, steam rises from the pines an d forms broken spectres in the translucent, afternoon light. The waterlogged track is like a brook and cuts like an artery through dense woodland and in my mind’s eye, I imagine the land in the Neolithic. We know the ancients shaped the land, evidence of this can be seen in the massive earthworks that still litter our countryside. The felling of trees provided them with raw materials for their dwellings and timber shrines and would have created vacancies in the dense forest, that at the time, covered much of Britain. I realise that this logging would have also been systematic and deliberate. Visual effects could have been created by this innovative felling and I imagine the possibilities of this long, lost art. Parallels can be drawn to the renaissance gardens of Versailles and Fontainebleau and of minds such as Bernini, le Notre and Vanbóurgh. Men whose vision saw beyond the restriction of petty, man-made barriers. Heads who re-created a romantic vision of possibilities... Imagine a landscape of tree-lined processional venues leading to sacred hills. Sight lines through trees to distant mountain tops - and sacred groves open to the sky - just like here at Stronach Wood. The woods were perceived by many later cultures as the habitat to the godless. The management of woodland was therefore a statement of power - a control over the pagan wilderness. Since the Age of Reason, the insensitive planting of trees, the erection of dwellings and the building of walls has created, ‘the blindfold effect’. Many of the relationships between prehistoric shrines and sacred landmarks has now been lost - call me paranoid - but I believe, that much of the fragmentation of the sacred, Neolithic landscape was deliberate! Throughout our land, plantations of trees at stone circles such as Sunhoney, Midmar Kirk and Rollright, have disenfranchised these monuments from their objects of veneration. Walls at Rudston and on Stanton Moor were created, not to protect, but to detach their victims from their focus. Recently, I witnessed the hill of Prestley in Rutland obscured by the building of a dwelling between the church of St. John the Evangelist in Caldecott and this once ‘priestly’ hill. The rain has enhanced the Stronach Wood carvings. They glisten and glow and reflect back the afternoon sun into the clear blue sky. Above me Goat Fell, a focus not only for this shrine but also for the stone circle in the Clauchland Hills above Lamlash Bay. These cup and ring carvings are unique, for unlike similar carvings at Westwood Moor and Doddington in Northumberland and Cairnbaan and Auchnabreck in Argyll, these appear as humanoid shapes with the cup and ring as a head or fulcrum of activity - a psychic centre. All art is an interpretation of the chaos around us. A comprehension of the unfathomable, ‘the glittering prize’. The mystic, T.C. Lethbridge once stated, ‘No artist can ever feel secure, for the knows that he can never create the perfect picture.’ The exposed rock was deliberately decorated, for it represented the baron aspect of the great mother. If the seed fell here it was useless. Fertility was central to prehistoric ritual and consequently, fear of infertility gave rise to all religion - a defensive response to the unpredictability and wilderness of nature. The cup and ring carvings on the barren rock act as vessels to the rain that drips from the pine trees, in some crazy, futile gesture to the rain gods. Was it not Plato in the ‘Timaeus’ who decreed the circle to be the necessarily perfect shape for creation as it alone formed a line of complete containment. From Stronach Wood a rainbow forms out across the tree tops - arching away from Goat Fell to the east and beyond the trees to Holy Island - For this is a very special place when viewed through a pilot’s eyes.