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@scotroutes same experience (or lack of it) not in Iona, but in other places people view as 'spiritual', or 'evil' or whatever.
"You can feel the presence" - no I can't. "The birds never sing there" (Belsen) - er yes, there's a bloody full blown dawn chorus! "There's a serenity to it" - maybe, but there is in any wild or natural space and there's nothing supernatural about it. Etc. etc.
My office is def a fat place judging on how they have the air con permanently cranked to 'explode'
from the OP:
a place where whatever happens after death is almost tangible, closer to the current place we are in
...sounds a bit spooky to me!
and this has some scary moments
I think we can all have personal memories that affect our feeling of other-worldiness too.
When I sold our family home after my parents died, I had almost no feeling about it. Devoid of their possessions it was just an empty building. However, put me in a pine forest on a late summer evening, especially after a summer shower, and I can almost reach out and touch my father, he is so palpably close to me. This all derives from childhood memories.
I remember an article a number of years ago about a chap who was convinced ley lines were part of a doorway between this world and the next.
Ley lines are the ultimate in manufactured bollox, aren't they?
I once drove home from London in my old Beetle and stopped at Silbury Hill for a walk before resuming my drive. I got home and my camera had disappeared from my bag. I searched everywhere, car included. Beetles are not large cars to search. I drove back to London the same way, a few days later, and stopped again for a walk at Silbury Hill. Arriving at my place in London I discovered my camera sitting on the transmission tunnel, just behind the handbrake. I've always said it was ley lines!
Scotroutes, what a great thing to have and is kind of close to my understanding of it though from my own experience it's an actual set place that brings that experience rather than our memories and is a closeness to another "dimension".
I appreciate it's all a bit crystal mumbo jumbo vibe about it.
Parliment St in Exeter is 25"
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Britains-Narrowest-Street/
I dont remember my dreams as a rule, but i wont forget drowning in a dream and not waking up until i was good and dead (in the dream obviously). That was pretty unpleasent.
“The birds never sing there” (Belsen) – er yes, there’s a bloody full blown dawn chorus!
Yeah, this is BS. The other one i heard was that birds don't fly over Auschwitz. Bloody hundreds of them when I was there.
A big group of us stayed in a Gite near Fontainbleau many years ago. On the last night I happened to mention that I hadn't slept well all week, odd feelings of discomfort, weird dreams, waking up with sudden starts, that sort of thing. As soon as I mentioned it about half the group said they'd felt the same but hadn't felt strongly enough to mention it. One girl had been totally freaked out by the place though.
I put it down to the dodgy wallpaper.
where the boundaries between corporeal reality and some spiritual afterlife feel vague.
Do you mean Ketamine 🤔 😁
See, I'd have laughed at it... But I've had that feeling, that sort of suspension-of-normality or something? Like the rules have changed when you weren't looking. Not just from location but from what else is going on. Like, I remember really vividly going to beltane in edinburgh and it's all bollocks but after a couple of hours of it I was so drawn into it that coming round a corner and seeing edinburgh city centre was like being hit in the face. The city just seemed totally false and unlikely, bumping into a fawn would have felt less strange than seeing an LRT bus. For that little time, I could definitely have been somewhere else or some time else. No, no drugs involved but it felt exactly like it. Off in a little pocket universe or a Neil Gaiman novel.
I think maybe it's because the normal and everyday is actually really weird too, and we just forget it's really weird. Big flying metal things, people doing "jobs" for 8 hours a day, then dying because of little tiny creatures you can't see, mad implausible shit everywhere. So occasionally you get a wee jolt and you see it again as weird, and then things that aren't real, we also see as weird, and you can end up in a bit of an equivalence. Or you see a new and odd real thing and there's a bit of dissonance where you haven't integrated it yet. You can see or experiencing things that aren't real- misunderstanding something, or a trick of perspective of light- and for a little bit they're in the exact same state in your brain. Is phantom pain/lost limb memory like that?
(like, I woke up from a dream once where I was feeding tiny miniature elephants the size of guinea pigs with SIS pink sports goo. Went to work all normal but all day I had this nagging worry about the elephants and about whether they were hungry, the elephants weren't real and it's not like there was any confusion about that but the memory was 100% real, and so the aftereffects of the unreal thing were as real as a real thing. Every time I thought about it it stopped, every time it was in the back of my mind it started again. Ever been punched in a dream and been confused all day why you haven't lost that tooth? So much of what we're thinking about is memory not right in front of us, things you saw half a second ago are memory and so can things you didn't see half a second ago. I crashed a car once, because of a motorbike that didn't exist)
Could this be the longest running religion thread on STW since Woppit disappeared?
Humans seem to have spiritual needs and existential hangups, a need to believe. If it makes you feel good run with it. But keep it to yourself because once people get into these things collectively anything can happen.
Edited to remove humourous tease.
I am not very spiritual but the closest I got to a thin place was the top of the hill fort near Church Stretton.
The views are special too.
Personally I think it's not places that are "thin" but perhaps times when are more open to memories or feelings from the past or present .
A few years ago I had an experience where I felt strong connections to the past and to those who were there with me At The Hydro, seeing The Grit Orchestra
Never felt any sense of connection or being drawn into anything in the way OP describes, but really, really old structures and buildings have sent a shiver down my spine before when I've stood quietly and taken them in deeply.
Durham Cathedral commenced construction in AD 1093 and whilst I'm not a religious person in any way, the world events that have happened since that was built are incomprehensible in volume and you do get a sense that the building has breathed the world of the time in and out for nearly 1,000 years.
Hadrian's wall was build around AD 122. Standing on it today and picturing the Romans looking out over unconquered Caledonia is a powerful image and gives a sense of how small our own lived snippet of world history is. To me, that elicits a physical feeling of connection to a past world that is still visibly present in our current time.
I have a very mechanistic viewpoint on the world. We are a bag of squishy chemical reacting in complex ways.
However I do "feel" something at special places - neolithic stones etc. Interestingly enough Iona is a special place for me but thats tied up with memories. With the neolithic stuff is it just expectation? Some places really seem to have something extra about them but the confirmation bias is strong on this one 🙂
- Ah well interesting thoughts, only ever experienced it once in a place I have absolutely no connection to and was nothing to do with religion or spirituality for me or history. Reality or a brain fart going off. I guess I'd have to go back to the same place and see.
Could this be the longest running religion thread on STW since Woppit disappeared?
It's not really got anything to do with religion.
It’s not really got anything to do with religion.
Though it seems to have the same acceptance of the supernatural for some who experience it? Not everyone of course. It seems some rationalise it as memories, sensory stimulation, moods or whatever and some think spirits, other dimensions, gateways into other words etc.
It does seem to me that as with so many other 'phenomena', some people are hardwired to look for a logical explanation (or accept that there may be one even if it. Isn't immediately apparent) and some default to supernatural explanations.
It does seem to me that as with so many other ‘phenomena’, some people are hardwired to look for a logical explanation (or accept that there may be one even if it. Isn’t immediately apparent) and some default to supernatural explanations.
Definitely 😀
I like it as a literary conceit. In real life, I think it's a load of rubbish, but I'm also intelligent enough to know that I'm saying that from the safety and security of my centrally heated home, with plenty of food in the kitchen. I don't have to explain why grazing animals tend to graze that hillside over there in preference to this identical hillside, or why the bones of my ancestors don't rot to pieces when dug into that hillside, or why drinkable spring-water comes magically out the ground here but it's salty over there. I know that the ground contains minerals that affect taste and decomposition so I don't have to assume that supernatural is involved and build a shrine there.
I wonder if that makes sense, because I'm typing quickly before going home!
IdleJon
Full MemberIt’s not really got anything to do with religion.
I think it's got quite a lot to do with the hardware that religion runs on, though.
Ever been punched in a dream and been confused all day why you haven’t lost that tooth?
Yes, I used to smoke, and when I gave up, often had a dream in which I was happily puffing away. The feeling was so real that I remember waking up thinking "Ohno, I've had a ciggie, and I had gone to all the hassle of giving up" and taking some time to figure out that no, it was a dream and I've still quit.
I f ound this place to be very spiritual a few days back.
Never come across the phrase 'thin places' until this thread, but I recognise it as something I've been interested in for a long time. As an evangelical atheist my thoughts are probably too incoherent still (as befits the subject I guess) to post here, but as said Julian Cope has written some interesting stuff around this once you get past the drug-addled musings and psychedelia.
Anyway, physical experience of a place <> spirituality <> religion but that doesn't mean some places don't resonate differently with us for whatever reasons.
FWIW, other than obvious burial sites I'm not 100% convinced that prehistoric monuments (and the Christian sites that often co-opt them) were necessarily spiritual or ritual. For me they probably had much more prosaic uses.
I think that water and it's associated environments were probably much 'thinner' for our pre-christian ancestors in this country than big old lumps of stone but that's another thread maybe.
There are lots of micro dose studies but they apparently just cancel each other out with the results.
PTSD is one field to get tested with tiny amounts over a few months.It's all chemicals after all
As for thin places I pushed my wife off the cuckoo stone near wood henge as its supposed to have mistic powers around having babies.
No rock is getting her pregnant
Amongst all the "woo", "daisy flattener" and "Merlins bucketry" * of thin places , always remember being properly freaked out by Was****er as a kid. Just after my first visit, a dead body was located on a rock shelf, a murdered French student I think...
Similar feeling whilst kayaking with our local Venture Scout group some years later, following which I was told about the Was****er gnomes.........The landscape may be stunning and it's a fantastic view (or was before some TV moron advertised it as such), but stick to the road and you'll be reet ......
* c/o The Infinite Monkey Cage
colournoise
FWIW, other than obvious burial sites I’m not 100% convinced that prehistoric monuments (and the Christian sites that often co-opt them) were necessarily spiritual or ritual. For me they probably had much more prosaic uses.
Told you I was feeling incoherent on this topic!
Of course those Christian sites have a spiritual or ritual use!
What I was driving ineffectually at is that I'm not sure that later use parallels the original purpose of the site (beyond the Romans or whoever thinking 'Ooh, that place looks important to the locals. Let's turn it into one of ours').
I think that water and it’s associated environments were probably much ‘thinner’ for our pre-christian ancestors in this country than big old lumps of stone but that’s another thread maybe.
Yeah, agreed. Especially the places where it comes out of the ground, but it's a fairly special substance in all forms. 😀
I was also wondering last night about resonance, magnetism and gases issuing from the ground in certain places. There are places along the coast here where you get a certain resonance in the ground at some states of the tide and wind. The wind would do that blowing among rocks as well. (Hound Tor on a windy evening comes to mind. That's maybe why Dartmoor feels a bit odd.)
Q for the geologists - do rock carry a magnetic field that's detectable by animals, even faintly?
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR-4NyiGptqBbHqSxN1bK68C5axg2XznAwsnA&usqp=CAU
Rather thin.
Went to Purton the other day. The bit between the hulks and sharpness canal is quite thin.
And I like After Eight mints.