Saturday, May 06, 2006

Callanish




Legions of imbeciles, conspiracy theorists, fruit cakes, and saddos are about to descend on Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh. They will be engaging in a fruitless search for a Star of David on the chapel floor which does not exist. They will protest vociferously about this, and claim that a Catholic Church/CIA/Protocols of the Elders of Zion sect is responsible.

Admittedly nobody in Scotland is complaining much. The canny Caledonians are fully aware that fools and their money are soon parted. This ancient esoteric knowledge, hidden from all but the adepts, has kept the Edinburgh financial sector in rude health over the last couple of centuries.

Da Vinci code hysteria is certainly good for tourism, but the poor deluded souls in pursuit of the mystical and unknowable would be better advised to direct their attention westward. The Neolithic stone circles and cairns of western Britain and Ireland date from prehistory. There are no written records, and the lives and beliefs of their creators are matters for conjecture.

Callanish, a ring of stones on the Isle of Lewis, is as impressive in its way as Stonehenge. The stones are on a much smaller scale, but the astronomical alignments are similar, and their physical relationship to the surrounding landscape superior.

Anyone interested in the subject should take a look at Julian Cope’s (fruitcake rocker) The Modern Antiquarian. He may be slightly off his trolley, and suffer the odd acid induced delusion, but nobody else has devoted as much attention to these structures and their significance.

I’m off to pick some magic mushrooms.

13 comments:

The Mistress said...

Yay! I'm first!
*getting silly on psilocybin*

pissoff said...

And what kind of shrooms would those be Garfer?

pissoff said...

Oops... I obviously don't read well... Magic Mushrooms.

Back in the '70s we had a great area, Somena marsh, where the hippies would come from miles around in search of the magic mushroom. When you drove by all you'd see is them crouching down, with their long hair and headbands, searching for a good crop.

I've only had the opportunity to try those once in my life and that was more than enough for me.

garfer said...

Strangely enough the things are legal in this country as long as you don't dry them.

Apparently nutmeg is also an hallucinagin, although you have to eat a whole one to notice any effects

Fuckkit said...

Are they legal in Scotland but just not England and Wales then? Save some for me, there's more hippies than mushrooms in Oxfordshire, I don't get a look in.

garfer said...

I am tending a fine Fly Agaric. Its spots are developing superbly.

I intend to have it ritually anointed by a shaman Inuit.

I shall then dance like a spastic.

S.I.D. said...

They are trying to ban their use in Ireland as its legal here, well a few miles down the road.


A whole nutmeg will kill you.

You go out on a high though.

FirstNations said...

fantastic picture!!

anyone who read TDVC and did anything but throw it aside in disgust deserves WHATEVER THEY GET. I hope the locals bag a mint off those idiots.

powdered shroombles in a nice chocolate milkshake...yum! pretty colors!

Kyahgirl said...

funny thing is quite the drug expert now! a useful person to know garfer.

when I was a teenager, all the hippies from my area of B.C. would go on a pilgrimage to pissoff's area of B.C. to pick mushrooms. its a small, stoned world.

I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code, good entertainment. However, why do people always seem to forget that its fiction?

garroo said...

Magic Mushrooms eh? Sounds like a good enough reason to visit.

Anonymous said...

I like that picture.

Maybe I'm hallucinating it though, as I've just eaten a tin of mushroom soup.

Kyahgirl said...

Maybe you could get a degree in mushrooms?

less than two weeks...so tempting eh?

S.I.D. said...

I'degree with that!