EDITORIAL

This is the last issue of ANCIENT MYSTERIES magazine, as financial stringency and the editor’s health have made continuance of the publication impossible on the present scale. The IGR is not dead, however, far from it. When we set up in 1975, the intention of the IGR was to pursue Geomantic Research, and of late that objective has receded due to the pressure of producing AM. ANCIENT MYSTERIES is now coming to an end in its present form, the next issue emerging as CAMBRIDGESHIRE ANCIENT MYSTERIES issue No. 1. This will be issued by the Cambridgeshire ‘core’ of the IGR – the Cambridgeshire Ancient Mysteries Group – dedicated to pursuing local research on geomancy and geomythics in the post-1974 county of Cambridgeshire (which includes the old Huntingdonshire and Peterborough). We will continue to issue occasional Occasional Papers, but owing to the change, our subscription arrangements are to alter. Subscription to CAMBRIDGESHIRE ANCIENT MYSTERIES will be £2.00 a year (4 issues quarterly). The magazine will concentrate on new research into local earth mysteries and the group will hold regular meetings to discuss findings and plan fieldwork. Any local IGR members are more than welcome to attend. IGR members with outstanding subscriptions to ANCIENT MYSTERIES will receive the new CAMBRIDGESHIRE ANCIENT MYSTERIES until their subscriptions expire, when they can renew in the usual way. If members do not wish to receive the new magazine they can let us know and we will refund their outstanding subscriptions.

With the reorganization, we will be able to get the CAMBRIDGESHIRE LEY PROJECT back on a proper footing and eventually evaluate the work of Alfred Watkins in his Diamond Jubilee Year. By concentrating on a local basis we are moving on into a new phase in geomantic research as evidenced by the burgeoning community geomancy groups in various parts of Britain.

In connexion with the CAMBRIDGESHIRE ANCIENT MYSTERIES GROUP of the IGR, we are issuing reprints of two Cambridgeshire geomantic articles from the former Albion and Journal of Geomancy on the Gogmagog Hill Figures and the Cambridge 7-church ley. The change to CAM will not affect the production of Fenris-Wolf publications, several of which are in the pipeline at present. Subscription to CAM automatically brings you IGR and Fenris-Wolf lists. The list issued with this AM has a few copies of some long-out-of-print Megalithic Visions and Fenris-Wolf Publications, which have unexpectedly turned up. The CAMBRIDGESHIRE ANCIENT MYSTERIES GROUP welcomes any assistance, financial and otherwise, in our task of unravelling the mysterious earth patterns of Cambridgeshire. However things develop in future, we hope that we will never fall into the trap of becoming a fossilized core of archaeology like the school of G. Daniel (who lives astride the Cambridge 7-church ley).
NIGEL PENNICK
March 1981.