Spirituality and ethics

[artemidite]

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

Comments

[freakchylde]

I guess for me, it depends on if you found it, if it's a funery object, or if it was originally found in a position that would have suggested it would be a sacrifice. If it's a funery object, I'm pretty specific about how it was handled in removal and how it's been treated. If it was a sacrificial object, I tend to re-sacrifice it to make sure it remains a sacrifice.

[brock_tn]

I have stones on my altar that I've brought from Glastonbury Tor, and Maiden Castle, and the Tigris River watershed. Ordinary stones, not pretty. But old stones, from ancient places.

But no ancient artifacts. The artifacts on my altar I use. Ancient things I'd fear to damage, were I to use them. And besides, no one ancient ever practiced Wicca, so why would their things have meaning in Wiccan practice?

[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.

[darkmousie]

I have a few pieces of quartz from Snowdon which I put where I keep sacred things (not an altar user) but I don't use ancient artifacts. Part of that is because I live in an area where people don't find artifacts very often. Another part is because most of the artifacts found are associated with burial (if they're from "trash heaps" or villages abandoned due to season change or lack of food I'm not as iffy) and I like to think that the people who buried these objects with a person did so for a reason and the artifacts should stay with that person.

[faeryl]

*laugh*

Well, the stuff *is* highly useful for certain studies(pulls up old memories of eccentric archeology profs)

But it's much easier to get past the ick factor when it's fossilized(Coprolites).

[faeryl]

Blech. That's *archaeology*

Must need more caffeine this evening...