Spirituality and ethics

[artemidite]

This question is regarding the purchase of antiquities for spiritual purposes - essentially, how do you all feel about it

Comments

[hyperform]

if i was a greco-roman reconstructionist of any flavor, i'd definitely want a roman coin, or at least a stone or something out of the general area. or, you know, like a small piece of hadrian's wall or something? i'd feel like it would connect me to the time and place where these deities were significant, and i think that as sort of a focal point would be very important

[darkmousie]

On a purely historical note, Hadrian's wall used to be something like six feet thick and fifteen feet tall. People raising sheep in the area left it between three feet thick and nonexsistant (from what I've seen, anyone living near the wall can correct me) and two to six feet tall. The stones have been removed to make fences for livestock, farm buildings, regular buildings, and things like that.

[hyperform]

hahah, i think i heard that. talk about pragmatism!

[alfrecht]

Yes, there's very little of it left. Stone reusage is a "problem" throughout the British Isles, and always has been. Luckily, sometimes they'd find ogham stones re-used as the roof lintels in souterrains and such, so they could be recovered. In the Hadrian's Wall area, some of the altars that have inscriptions to Maponos were re-used in the crypts of Christian churches, and are still viewable there. But many temples and other such structures are more-or-less gone for good, either destroyed entirely or in some now unknown locations.

[heresiarch]

same thing on the continent -- all those roman brick buildings were once covered in marble and limestone, which was all reappropriated by medieval people for their building projects. why quarry and dress stone when you can just reuse what's lying around?

still, historical reuse of ancient materials can't really be compared to the issue of removing artifacts from research sites, which is the issue about which archaeologists get all huffy.

[alfrecht]

I take your point: these are different times and different circumstances, of course. And there were no obstructions to people doing it in the past. I think it's actually more difficult to do it now with laws and protected/guarded sites and such. But it was simply as a matter of information that I mentioned these things.

There's a site in north Co. Cork, Ireland, called Labbamolagga, which is the site of a cemetery now, but it also has a very small 10th century church named after St. Molagga (who is based on the god Lug--Molagga = "my little Lug"), which has a small stone circle near it, and there is a "secret sod" somewhere on the property, in which there is this special magical skull that can be used to make wishes. It has been there for a good long time, and no one runs off with the skull, which is rather amazing to me. Then one hops over to Greyfriars cemetery in Edinburgh, where there are literally millions of people buried, and bones come up on a regular basis in the surface soil, and tourists take them away with impunity

[onyxtwilight]

But, realistically, everyone doesn't WANT a piece of Hadrian's wall. If everyone who actually wanted and had a spiritual use for (as opposed to just wanting a souvenir) a piece of the wall were sent one tomorrow by Federal Express, there would probably not be a noticeable dent in the quantity of stones left laying around.

I wouldn't chip a piece off of a Stonehenge dolmen. But if I were visiting there, and there was a little chip laying on the ground, I'd pick it up without qualm. It's not like they could glue it back to the stone, after all. :-)

[birdofparadox]

I have a stone from the chunky gravel at Drombeg/Dromberg Circle. It's not a piece of the stone itself, but from the gravel they put in to keep it from turning to mush. It feels like the area, though, and it's enough of a tie to the place without desecrating the site itself.