THE POWER OF THE MAP
S ince the 1950s, Guerrilla Sign Ontologists, Situationists and Psychogeographers have delighted in using the Power of the Map to decode the urban landscape. They have explored Manchester using a map of Milan , wandered Newcastle guided by a map of the Berlin U-Bahn, and explored Hackney with a map of the Moon. This re-use of maps may at first sight seem to be a simple economy measure - but these were in fact experiments aimed at creating spatial detournements, subverting the reified image of the city. By the intentional misreading of city space, the city would "be experienced not as a thing at all, but as possibilities".As the cityscape becomes more homogenised, places become increasingly interchangeable and any map will do. It is now possible to explore the rain forests of South America using a map of Cornish clay pits. The West of England can be explored using a map of the Cydonia area of Mars. It is unwise to confuse the map with the territory, but we are told that thanks to the wonder of cyberspace there is no need to travel anymore, anyway. You can just sit in front of your computer, listening to the traffic outside going nowhere.
Many years ago, vast tracts of land were laid out so that they may be explored using maps of the Constellations - these are the Terrestrial Zodiacs. So far a total of thirteen Terrestrial Zodiacs have been discovered in 'Britain'; they include the Zodiacs at the Lizard, Bodmin Moor, Ffarmers in Wales, Glastonbury, Althorp Park, Kingston-on-Thames, Cambridge and Hebden Bridge. They have as their centre the stone circle at Arbor Low, Derbyshire.
The Bodmin Moor Zodiac Revealed In today's lesson we examine the meanings of some of these Zodiacs, in particular the one on Bodmin Moor, and the psychogeographic mysteries of the land that surrounds it.
"Wheel-tracks in Old Cornwall there were none, but there were strange and narrow paths across the moorlands, which the forefathers said in their simplicity, were first traced by Angels' feet." RS Hawker, visionary poet, mystic and Vicar of Morwenstow, 1870.
LAND OF THE GIANTS The Glastonbury Zodiac is a complex topographical structure discovered by Katherine Maltwood in the 1920s. By aerial survey and by patient identification with local place names with Celtic-Arthurian myth, Ms Maltwood traced a ten-mile diameter zodiac in the Somerset landscape. Massive zodiac figures may be traced in the outlines of old field boundaries, stone walls and footpaths.
The zodiac in its familiar "western" form of newspaper horoscopes is said to have its roots in ancient Babylon - what we now call Iraq. Maltwood's zodiac however substitutes a ship for the Cancer crab, a dove for the Libra scales, and a unicorn for the Capricorn goat; she also adds an extra Dog outside the circle.
This genetically engineered symbol-shifting is in line with a proposal made by JG Ballard sixty years later in an article in Re/search magazine. Ballard notes that "an updating, however modest, of the signs of the zodiac seems much overdue. The houses of our psychological sky are no longer tenanted by rams, goats and crabs but by helicopters, cruise missiles and intra-uterine coils". He proposes twelve substitute signs: the Polaroid, the Computer, the Radar Bowl, the Clones, the Stripper, the Psychiatrist, the Psychopath, the Hypodermic, the Vibrator, the Calculator, the Cruise Missile and the Astronaut.
BLOT ON THE LANDSCAPE It has been said that this landscape zodiac-spotting is akin to the Rorschach ink-blot test, or to seeing pictures in the coals of an open fire. In terms of Jungian psychology those who see the figures may be projecting images of the Unconscious onto the landscape.
Mary Caine writes of the Glastonbury Giants
"Some have derided the Somerset Zodiac as the product of an overheated imagination, saying that such figures could be found, given sufficient misdirected ingenuity, on any map; but let us first consider some of the evidence for design before we join the scoffers. Can we reasonably expect Chance to provide us with twelve figures in a circle, all heads dovetailing in towards the centre, all facing West and all in proportion to each other? . . . Not only are these signs in correct order, but the corresponding constellations of the Zodiac fit over them when the planisphere is superimposed upon the map to scale."Caine does not provide us with a diagram of the planispheric evidence. In the diagram she provides, some of the heads are arranged towards the centre, others aren't, they face a variety of directions. The lion and the bull's head face each other and a scorpion is drawn roughly the same size as a lion. In the conventions of renaissance perspective, this proportion would imply that the lion was either very tiny, or the scorpion was disproportionately large; or the lion was further away than the scorpion, which implies the constellations are not in fact planispheric.
GIANT LIZARD ZODIAC In Cornwall's Landscape Zodiac, Sheila Jeffries writes that she is "a mystic, born with gifts of clairvoyance", whom God, space men and fairies have spoken to. She is a former resident of Glastonbury, who now lives in Porthallow, Cornwall.
She has discovered a massive Zodiac pattern on the Lizard peninsular and describes the figure patterns in her local area of Porthallow, outlined by field boundaries, stone walls and footpaths. Here too, the constellation figures differ from the Babylonian model. Her zodiac includes Cygnus the Swan and marks the stars of Orion on the Gemini Twin. A massive Dolphin replaces the Dog as an extra sign outside the Zodiac. She has also discovered groups of megaliths set in the patterns of the stars "the Orion stones, just inland from Coverack are the most remarkable group. The eight major stars of Orion are represented by megaliths and tumuli (burial mounds) while twelve more stones mark the place of the minor stars in their constellation … The stars of the constellation Leo are marked on the landscape Lion centred on Porthallow. The stars of Orion are marked on the Gemini Twin inland from Coverack. The stars of Cygnus are marked out along the wings, neck and tail of the Swan pattern centred on Tarboe Cross and including the Earth Satellite Station at Goonhilly. The alignment of the Cygnus stars are about 26 degrees from the North and points to the horizon. This seems to indicate that this line of stones was used for time observance at night - just like the stones known as the Nine Maidens near to Bodmin".
MOORLAND CLOCK WATCHERS? Why would the people who made the Nine Maidens want to tell the time at night? There were no TV programmes to watch, no transatlantic phone calls to make, no shift work to do, and there still are no buses to catch up there. For what purpose then? It is unlikely that it was for Natal Astrology. The belief that a person's fate can be determined by finding out their precise time of birth is a modern one. Birth times were not recorded before the French Revolution. The concept of Natal Astrology was most likely inspired by the pernicious spread of clocks and calendars and indicates a profound misunderstanding of "what time it is."
LADY IN THE LAKE The first clue to the Bodmin Zodiac is the King Arthur Mythos. There are many Arthurian sites in North Cornwall. The first linking of Arthur to Tintagel was made by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s, about a century before the castle there was begun by Richard, Earl of Cornwall. Geoffrey may have been drawing on an older tradition linking Arthur with Tintagel, certainly as a Welshman he had no need to give Arthur's birthplace as a remote spot in Cornwall unless there was something significant about the site.
At St. Nectan's Glen, Knights of the Round Table are said to have bowed their heads in prayer before setting out in search of the Holy Grail. St. Nectan is a Celtic saint with a severed head legend. Dozmary Pool, remotely situated on the Bodmin Zodiac, was occupied by some of the earliest inhabitants of Cornwall in the Mesolithic age some 10,000 years ago. It is said that it was here that King Arthur's sword Excalibur was taken at his death and thrown into the water, and from whence came the hand of the Lady of the Lake who seized it and vanished into the waters with it. This, together with the Royal Beast Skull ties the Bodmin Zodiac to the mythos of the Althorp Park Zodiac, where Princess Diana is allegedly buried.
Prince Charles inspects timber on a visit to the Duchy woodlands' sawmills at Restormel, near Lostwithiel, in 1970.
BEECH TREES AND CHEMICAL REACTIONS The Name Bodmin Moor (meaning long, smooth penis) seems to have been invented by vulgarians at the Ordnance Survey in 1813, to supplant its ancient name of Fawimore, named after the River Fowey. This apparently means beech-tree (river). Beech trees are not thought to have flourished in Roman and Dark Age Britain, but the name seems to show their presence in the area of the river. The good stands of them now seen around Golitha Falls on the river, where the Royal Beast Skull was found, are planted.
Trees and water seem to be very good places to look, if you want to find evidence of astrological influence. HR Burr found that variations in the electric potential in trees depend not only on the gross activity of the sun but on individual flares and therefore on the position of the planets.
In SW Tromp's Possible Effects of Extra-Terrestrial Stimuli on Colloidal Systems and Living Organisms Piccardi is reported to have found, in a series of investigations that covered more than thirty years variations in the rate of standardised chemical reactions that could not be explained by laboratory or meteorological conditions and tended to conclude "that the phenomena observed are primarily related to changes in the structure of water used in the experiments".
The Duchy of Cornwall owns over two thousand acres of woodlands in Cornwall, which are primarily stocked with conifers. Most of them have been planted in the last quarter-century principally Douglas fir and larch.
Prince Charles himself has taken a lead in the planting of more trees, with an emphasis on producing a greater variety of trees in these plantations. The coniferisation of much of Britain's woodlands has led to protests, especially from the conservationist lobby, of an over-indulgence in commercial forestry at the expense of scenic value and wildlife populations whose habitat may have been adversely affected by a lack of real variety. The Prince, visiting the Restormel area with Princess Diana in 1984, expressed himself firmly on the subject, and promised more hardwoods in Duchy forests. More hardwood trees were planted on the Duchy estates than ever before, a mixture of cherry, sweet chestnut, lime and beech trees have been introduced.
BODMIN MOOR EARTH GIANTS There are many legends of a race of giants that once roamed Cornwall, erecting the massive stone circles that pepper the landscape. Perhaps these giant legends are a hazy memory of massive images encoded upon the solid earth? Bodmin Moor is a wild, beautiful place where time stands still. Evidence of thousands of years on man's occupation is all around - stone circles are testimony to the Bronze Age. Hill forts remind us of Iron Age man. Villages named after Saints were built around the monastic cells of Celtic missionaries, and ruined engine houses stand against the skyline, stark reminders of those who mined here in the last century.
The giant zodiac images of Bodmin Moor are in the form of colossal animals drawn from the folklore of the area. New evidence has come to light which suggests that the Beast of Bodmin phenomena may be an example of an Afro-Celtic Teleportation Voodoo acausally connected to a Feline Landscape Imprint within the Giant Zodiac on Bodmin Moor.
Around the Goodaver Farm (see News 10) The Beast of Bodmin's Simulacra, The Giant Tom Cat, lies over Catshole Downs with his head formed by Tolborough Tor, his generative organ is formed by Brown Willy. The Tom Cat has marked his territory by spraying on Showery Tor and has leaped over Buttery Tor, his front paws proudly comb the ground at Priddacombe.
Brock, the Great Badger, lies on Brockbarrow Common.
Virgo is represented as The Leopard Goddess, her breasts are formed by Butten Hill and Bray Down.
Capricorn, The Scapegoat, prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice on Slaughter Bridge. Ophiucchus, the Neutered She-Cat lies on Spey Moor, unafraid of Shallow Water Common, her paw on Hawks Tor and her head by Butter Tor Downs. Aries the Ram is represented by the Giant Black Sheep of Jacob's Flock, who stands over Tresmeer. The Pisces Fishes lie beside Dozmary Pool, on Gillhouse Downs and Higher Gillhouse. The Serpent has been dealt a deadly blow by Ophiucchus and lies at Splatt. As John Michell writes in The Earth Spirit: Its Ways, Shrines and Mysteries "…the serpent represents the mercurial currents of the earth spirit gliding in serpentine channels through the earth's crust - the yin force of nature… When the serpent current of the earth spirit is transfixed by the lance of the dragon killer, it can no longer move freely about the earth, for its energies are now fixed and concentrated on one spot."
The Giant Cat of Bodmin Moor
RENNES LE CHATEAUX TYPE HOMOCULT GUARDIANS It is alleged in a number of best-selling books , that the Knights Templar were aware of huge secret geometrical land formations around the town of Rennes le Chateaux, France. These they used to conceal various relics of the crucifixion, the Holy Grail, the Body of Christ, etc.
It is said that Jesus once visited Cornwall with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, landing at Fowey then trekking overland to walk on the mud of Glastonbury. The parish of Temple on Bodmin Moor is so named because it formerly belonged to the Knights Templar, their estate here is mentioned in 1185 as 'one land on Fawimore'.
The Templars were founded in 1118 or 1119 as a kind of military police to protect the pilgrim routes to Jerusalem, newly freed from the infidel Turks. The knights took the same vows as monks- poverty, chastity and obedience - were thus a religious as well as military order, calling themselves 'poor knights of Christ' who adopted as a symbol two knights riding on one horse. Two centuries later, by which time the Turks had recaptured Jerusalem, the Templars had become immensely rich, and as far as the Pope was concerned, had outlived their usefulness.
It was alleged that the Templars, while ostensibly serving the Pope, were secretly protecting a different form of religion, one to do with an idol named Bathomet, usually described as a skull, a human head, or three heads. They were accused of infanticide, abortion and homosexuality-on-horseback. It is possible that the Knights of that Order were aware of the giant Zodiac figures surrounding them on the Bodmin Moor. Philip IV, King of France, who suppressed the Templars for political reasons, charged that the Templars were initiated by being commanded to kiss the anus of a black cat.
MORE SACRED GEOMETRY Another guardian of the Bodmin Moor Zodiac was Daniel Gumb, an 18th century figure whose house at the Cheesewring bears carvings of sacred geometry. As a boy he was highly intelligent, strange and unsociable, having nothing to do with the ordinary pastimes of his peers.
He preferred to wander alone on the moors with a book, spending nights at places such as Roche hermitage where he would lose himself in the wonders of the night sky. In later life he was a stone-cutter who became obsessed with Euclidian geometry, and, having married a local girl took up residence in a stone-built cavern directly below the Cheesewring. The mundane life of a cottager did not appeal to the visionary mind of Daniel, who was happier to follow the ways of a more ancient persuasion.
The remains of Daniel Gumb's House are still to be seen, with the roof fallen in and a stone beside the doorway carved with his initials and the date (1735) when he forsook the ways of the world. It was here that he lived, winter and summer, on the bleak moors, gazing out in mystic reverie and pondering the mysteries of sacred geometry.
The Rev RS Hawker wrote that even in the last century, local legends still identified the tall and craggy places with the youthful scholar who spent his nights 'learning the customs of the stars' and 'finding out by the planets things to come'.
The Sun and the Serpent by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhust, Pendragon Press, 1989
Virgo, The Leopard Goddess 0f Butten Hill
FLIGHT OF THE SHAMAN It is possible the Bodmin Zodiac designs were laid out on a simple grid pattern on the ground which was designed to be viewed from the air during some kind of shamanic flight. There is a long history of witchcraft on Bodmin Moor and some of those witches are alleged to have been able to fly by use of a salve.
Erich-Will Peuchert of Gottingen University is said to have discovered a formula for witches' salve, involving ingredients like thornapple (datura stamonium), henbane (hyoscymus niger) and deadly nightshade; as well as wild celery, parsley and lard (or the fat of an unbaptised baby).
In 1960, Peuchert and a fellow researcher applied the salve to their foreheads and armpits and passed out. They awoke twenty-four hours later with blinding headaches and dry mouths - but both convinced they had attended a witches' sabbat. Before comparing notes with his fellow researcher, Peuchert asked him to write down all he remembered of his dreams. He did the same.
When the accounts were compared, there were astonishing similarities. Both dreamed of flying, landing on a mountain top, of wild sexual orgies with naked women, demons and monsters, perverted sex practises and paying homage to the Devil. Why should the salve have produced the same dream in both researchers? Possibly because they were both expecting something of the sort. Peuchert had also suggested that the salve acted on specific sites in the brain, triggering images involved with 'sex and wickedness'.
Aldous Huxley in Heaven and Hell says the mind 'like the earth of a hundred years ago, has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins' - an image that suggests that our own inner worlds may have their own distinct geography (i.e. the essence of Kabbalism). Huxley says: 'Like the giraffe and the duck-billed platypus, the creatures inhabiting these remote regions of the mind are exceedingly improbable'
Witches by Una Woodruff and Colin Wilson, Paper Tiger, 1981
ZODIAC SPOOKERY The Landscape Zodiacs of Cornwall are criss-crossed by informatic fields which have been tapped by the Satanic forces of the New World Order.
In The Intelligence Game, James Rusbridger describes how in 1986 the leader of the British Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, telephoned Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull was the lawyer representing Peter Wright during the Spycatcher trial in Australia which was causing the British government and the security services endless embarrassment. As Turnbull's number was dialled in London, the group of numbers, converted into digital pulses, sped on their way to Sydney via Mondial House, the British Telecom international switching centre in London, to the Post Office tower and west across Britain via the main microwave link down to the earth satellite station at Goonhilly on the Lizard Zodiac.
As the first group of pulses were directed to the satellite high above the Indian Ocean, mixed up with all the other transmissions going out to the Far East, they were snatched out of the ether by the American NSA's giant aerials at Morwenstow 60 miles up the coast to the east of Goonhilly, and compared with the watch lists of 'interesting' numbers on their computer memories.
As Turnbull's calls were of great interest to the government at the time any calls to him from Britain would be separated from the surrounding chaff and monitored. Within seconds of Kinnock completing the call a full recording of his conversation was on its way back to Fort Meade and, from there, back to GCHQ in Cheltenham.
By allowing the NSA to tap the call in Britain GCHQ had not been involved and, since the presence of the NSA in Britain is not officially admitted, the government could claim the interception never happened.
HUMAN SACRIFICE James Rusbridger was a tremendous irritant to the security services. His letters to newspapers poured scorn on the Official Secrets Act; his books cast doubt on the official version of events. But where Rusbridger, really annoyed the spooks was when he unearthed Britain's code-breaking secrets, in particular the story that the British had cracked Japanese naval codes in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbour.
He was bright, hale and hearty for his 65 years of age before he was found dead at his home in Jasmine cottage near Bodmin. He was dressed in a green protective suit for use in nuclear, biologica l or chemical warfare, green overalls, a black plastic mackintosh and thick rubber gloves. His face was covered by a gas mask and he was also wearing a sou-wester. His body was suspended from two ropes, attached with shackles fastened to a piece of wood across the open loft hatch, and was surrounded by pictures of men and mainly black women in bondage. Consultant pathologist Dr Yasai Sivathondan said he died from asphyxia due to hanging 'in keeping with a form of sexual strangulation'.
His death occasioned a piece in The Sunday Times, (20th February 1994) where reporter James Adams, whose own books boast of contacts with British Intelligence, reported: "His death was as much a fantasy as his life,'. The article went on to claim that Rushbridger, a cousin of Peter Wright of Spycatcher fame, had become interested in intelligence since his conviction for four counts of defrauding the Bodmin Cash and Carry in July 1977 when he had been sent for psychiatric counselling in a local hospital. Such an extensive demolition job by intelligence officials would perhaps only be merited by someone who had been a serious thorn in their side.
In my own copy of The Intelligence Game, purchased from a book sale at St Austell library, anonymous pencilled margin notes have been added. They refer to the secret recovery of aqualungist 'Buster' Crabb's severed head, after a failed spy mission to a Russian ship in a British harbour in 1956.
"C's head brought ashore in Lee on Solent. Saw it myself. True. The Navy knows this. Really True. The head was in a sort of plastic or string bag. I was walking on the beach with my baby son. Divers Navy? carried it."
The Intelligence Game by James Rusbridger, Bodley Head, 1989
The Giant Sheep of Treesmeer
DOMES, BIOMES AND PALINDROMES The notions which underline the Work Ethic are thought to originate with Protestant sects such as the Calvinists and Puritans. According to Ashton's History of the Industrial Revolution, Quakers, Presbyterians, Wesleyans and other nonconformist religious cults were greatly over-represented among the early industrialists. Modern work obsessions - with deadlines, haste and urgency - can be traced to the Puritans' perception of there being a perilously short time in which to build God's Kingdom on Earth.
This "God's Kingdom" is now being built by a new breed of crackpot millennialists obsessed with imposing their fanatic yuppie mindsets upon the landscape twelve years too late. Modernist Welfare-to-work brainstorming sessions have produced a flipchart full of bullet-points for a brainwashing Greenwich Millennium Experience theme park to be built on the bank of the Thames. They plan zones called: The Learning Curve, Licensed to Skill, The Spirit Level, Serious Play, A Typical Seaside Resort with a Difference, and Time to Talk!
At the centre of this Millennium Dome, sits a huge Silver Statue of Bathomet, sexless and taller than the Statue of Liberty. In the year "2000", thousands of visitors pay around £20 each to be herded inside its massive rectum. Once inside the silver colon they are strapped into hundreds of haemorrhoid-shaped virtual-reality headsets to be programmed with the virtues of a flexible labour market. As the programming progresses, the Silver Sphincter slams shut. The innocent victims are trapped inside. Too late, they realise the Silver Giant is in fact made of wicker, covered with baking foil.
High Priests of the Countryside Alliance enter in a ritual procession. They chant, "Satan, Oscillate my Metallic Sonatas!" as the Silver Giant is put to the torch. This obscene ceremony is the prelude to the ritual murder of Prince Charles.
MADAM, I'M ADAM Millennium madness continues with the planned erection of a bizarre glass-roofed rainforest in a clay pit in the middle of Cornwall.
The £106 million Eden Project has been granted a mighty £37 million from the Lottery Millennium Commission. The Project, headed by the palidromic entrepreneur Tim Smit, has been described as "the world's most exciting greenhouse". Its main attraction is to be a Tropical Rainforest biome 60 metres high. It will exhibit plants from four climates to 750,000 visitors a year. The site is currently a working quarry, digging china clay (kaolin) from the body of the Earth Mother. This china clay is used to make the shiny paper used in pornographic magazines as well as medicine for people suffering from diarrhoea. The clay workings have already been used to build great pyramids on the landscape round St Austell.
To get the thousands of visitors to the Eden Project site, it is proposed that a new access road will be built. This will cut through two existing nature reserves. The Green Party and Friends of the Earth oppose the access road.
"Our opposition to the project is that it's going to attract tens of thousands more cars through that part of the countryside at a time when the County Council is supposed to be reducing reliance on private cars," says Betty Levene of Friends of the Earth's transport group in Cornwall. Levene also raises concerns over how the Eden Project will affect local people and Cornwall as a whole.
"Mid-Cornwall is the last part of the county where there is proper full-time waged employment which isn't based on the tourist industry. What we don't want to see is the area becoming totally dependent on part-time seasonal slave wages like the rest of Cornwall."
The Big Issue 9th February 1998
It may be possible that the Wild Cat images encoded on the landscape are setting up Chaospheric time-tunnel wormholes between the moorland and the distant jungles of Africa, from which rare and exotic beast-gods emerge at time of famine to feast upon unwary Cornish sheep.
And it seems that ritual magicians, using computer model sigils, are beaming up American pumas and depositing them in clay-pits-to-be-rainforests-of-the-future.
First published in Network News: Land of the Giants Issue, 1998.
| Network News | Next | Home |
