It is only now that we are beginning to truly recognise that our European Bronze age ancestors showed the same remarkable levels of sophistication and civilisation as that of the ancient Egyptians and cultures of the Middle East. The remarkable locations and sacred sites within Suffolk which we shall explore shortly are of 'stone age' ingenuity and cosmological significance. Once rediscovered they open up one's consciousness to our ancestral heritage and in so doing demand from us consideration with beginner's mind once more to the world around us, restoring to us that sense of ‘awe’ that modern day living can so easily obliterate. History, the ritual landscape and geometry once resonated very much as one, and I earnestly believe that there is something here in Suffolk of enigmatic design and purpose and whose origins were laid down millennia ago. Faint traces of our ancestors, whose silent whispers in the landscape once conveyed so much awe and splendour now sadly lie silent, their purpose and meaning largely forgotten, for in general there is a present day lack of any real sense of connectedness. This compounds our ability to relate - be it to the environment - through the seasons, the cosmos - through the heavenly bodies or to our community through a neighbour.
Several different metaphors have been proposed in trying to understand our present 'pathological alienation' between human consciousness and the rest of the biosphere, the most common one being a collective amnesia, that our species has forgotten something which was commonplace to our ancestors. They‘ practised certain attitudes and kinds of perception’ with ‘ an ability to empathise and identify with non-human life, respect for the mysterious, and humility in relationship to the infinite complexities of the natural world. Thus, for a complex variety of social and historical causes, a core feature of the European psyche is a dissociative split between spirit and nature ' (Metzner, 1993). Metzner concludes that the ‘great mother goddess of ancient times has become the dead matter of modern materialism.’
‘The bond between a person and his (or her) country is not merely geographical or fortuitous,
but living and spiritual and sacred. His country... is the symbol of, and gateway to, the great unseen world
of heroes, ancestors, and life-giving powers which avail for man and nature’
(A.P. Elkin, cited in Levy-Bruhl, 1983).
What is natural and around us today we are struggling to identify with or value again culturally en masse, choosing instead to hang our identity on the next passing fad, media celebrity or reality TV show. I’m no technophobe, I have a mobile phone like the majority of the population and wonder how I survived (EMF’s and all) without it - but I know that there is an increasing trend towards embracing what has been termed, the digital revolution, the full immersion and surrender into cyberspace, with all it’s stylishly packaged synthetic, and often safer than the outside world, antiseptic realities - though it’s not all fun and entertainment. The dangers of cyberspace are real and potentially deadly. If this sounds far fetched consider the notion that mental states provide us with a filter for how we view the world (Alessi & Huang, 1999). This filter varies with time and circumstance, frequently resulting in dysfunctional behaviour. Currently some 48 % of people (in America) will meet the criteria for a clinical psychiatric diagnosis in their lifetime with many more may having 'sub clinical syndromes of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, or simply particular personalities that repetitively affect how they perceive and react to the world around them.’ (Alessi & Huang, 1999). An individual's mental condition has a clear effect upon how they experience their world and how we respond and relate to our reality not only effects who we are and how we ‘look’ but what we see, shaped by the link between the observed and the observer through the shamanistic enfolded reality that is the quantum universe.
