Journal of Geomancy vol. 2 no. 1, October 1977
{PR6}
At the recent I.G.R. Geomancy Symposium I made certain remarks which, judging by the encouraging remarks of colleagues, did not sound too sententious. My main point was that, while none of those present needed convincing of the existence of terrestrial zodiacs, it was necessary to develop a ‘language’ for talking to those who would not be so easily convinced, and at the same time to contribute to the widening of archaeology and related disciplines.
This article, then, summarises various of the ways in which zodiac research might acquire greater rigour, without any corresponding loss of the élan and flair showed by pioneers of geomantic research like Katherine Maltwood and Alfred Watkins as well as many of today’s investigators, many of whom were present at the Symposium.
The most difficult kind of evidence to come by in zodiac research will be hard evidence. Archaeologists may be blest with potsherds and middens, but the zodiacist has only his watercourses, trackways, earthworks, and little more. But I would like to suggest that selective, and not necessarily too expensive, digs carried out by trained but sympathetic archaeologists might produce some positive hard evidence. A tentative hypothesis is that, in non-chalk terrain at least, the zodiac builders would have treated the ground in some way. One way of so treating open moorland or a cleared forest trackway would be to raise vallums on one or both sides and to harden the intervening space with broken stone, gravel or chalk. In most cases the raised ditches will have disappeared, either through erosion, silting, or ploughing, but the persistence of the trackways, except where they have become covered by tarmac or other road surface, suggests that they were made to endure; and this could not have been achieved (except in chalk areas) by simply removing turf and adding superficial treatment. The Pendle Zodiac still has at least one stretch where the vallums are still visible: along the Sagittarius bowstring. The track between could never have been a cart track, as it is too narrow, part is still protected by a stretch of double hedge, despite the disturbance caused by open-cast mining in the late 1940‘s. It could have been a bridle path, but the lowness of the double-hedge canopy suggests rather definitely that it was not. Nor is it likely to have been constructed as a pack horse road, as it does not lead anywhere in particular, unlike other Pennine pack-horse roads, which are well furnished with pack horse bridges (only stepping stones were provided in our case). Carbon dates, if nothing else, would definitely serve to establish the contemporaneity of any suspected earth treatment. Aerial photography would probably help us select sections where the raised ditches have all but disappeared. We would also need to carry out one or more ‘control’ digs on trackways not connected with the zodiac, though in in comparable terrain. This would be easy in the case of Pendle.
Besides hard evidence, there are other types of evidence that have acquired respectability in many different sciences. It is these kinds of evidence that promise the richest prospects {PR7} in zodiac research.
The purpose of this type of evidence is to reduce arbitrariness and the possibility of coincidence:
The most obvious distribution to look for is that of the zodiacal planisphere. A zodiac which conforms well to the planisphere is considered to be a convincing one. If a zodiac does not conform to the planisphere the onus is upon the researcher to bring to light the pattern in which the figures are laid out over the landscape. Pendle is such a case. It was only gradually realised that Pendle Zodiac is laid out in such a way that the sequence is highly intricate, in fact palindromic; so that, whether one proceeds clockwise or anticlockwise round the zodiac (arranged roughly in an ellipse) the sequential relationship between the figures is exactly the same. The Pendle Zodiac does indeed make use of the normal sequence of figures, but intersperses other types of figure sequence (I have no space to explain all the details here, but readers will find it fully discussed in Lord and Pennick Terrestrial Zodiacs in Britain, pp. 43–44.) The sequence of the figures in the Pendle Zodiac could not possibly have occurred by chance; and this itself is circular corroboration of the presence of particular zodiac figures in the locations in which they have been designated.
The sceptic can well claim that the English landscape is rich enough in natural and man-made features to make it possible for the zodiac-finder to conjure up whatever figures he wants wherever he wants. Not only sceptics, but even some of my more critical friends have suggested this. And, although I never doubt that they are wrong, I nevertheless take the view that their criticism is reasonable, and that their doubts have to be allayed.
I believe their queries are already substantially met by the schematic evidence I have already discussed, above. But there are further features of the Pendle Zodiac which constitute positive evidence for its reality and actual existence. Firstly, the figures all exhibit either overlapping or contiguity, especially of extremities: feet, hooves, hands, heads, tails. Not only this, but the patterns of overlap and contiguity have led to the most ingenious ‘jigsaw’-like arrangements, which only the most obdurate sceptic could attribute to the workings of chance and a fevered imagination. (I have reviewed this evidence in detail in the publication already mentioned). Secondly, there is a tendency of the Pendle figures, in bas relief fashion, to take in every single early man-made and natural feature of the landscape. This characteristic of Pendle in having not only the outlines but the anatomical detail clearly marked may be unique. There is one figure, Aquarius–Hercules, in which every possible stream, river, path, and trackway is used (except the major roads A59 and A666 which for those stretches are evidently eighteenth century turnpikes). In the group Diana–Dove–Capricorn the area on and to the south of Bleara Moor (south-west of Skipton) is (or rather was, on the first edition of the six-inch ordinance) covered by a dense network of footpaths. These convincingly represent the large net in which the Dove is trapped and which Diana is holding spread across the landscape from Foulridge to Cononley. {PR8}
It goes without saying that all the schematic evidence so far referred to can also become comparative evidence as soon as comparisons are made between the different terrestrial zodiacs so far proposed. But there are specific kinds of comparative evidence. I have singled out some of the principal kinds which will concern us:
Toponymy is one of the most conservative of sciences. Place-name researchers stick to topographical features, generalised activities and often hypothetical Saxon or Norse chieftain or tribal names. Not all the existing place-name derivations can simply be dismissed as wrong; very far from it. And it must be obvious to anyone who has become involved in the intricacies of place-name derivation that only the greatest rigour prevails among toponymists. What I am suggesting is simply that the presence of a terrestrial zodiac may throw new light on the origins of particular place names in a particular area. Perhaps the best example from the Pendle Zodiac is the ancient town and abbey of Whalley. The existing interpretation of the first syllable of hwæl-leage must now undergo modification since we know, firstly, that hwæl is the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘whale’, and, secondly, that the extremity of the tail fin of the zodiac whale is at Whalley. Furthermore, such a reinterpretation receives additional support from the fact that the arms of Whalley Abbey display ‘three whales hauriant or, in each mouth a crozier’ (to quote one reliable authority on the heraldry of fish). This is chance occurrence apparently since Whaley Abbey in Co. Wicklow and several Whaley families all have whales on their crests. It is intriguing to speculate as to why the whales of the Whalley Abbey we are presently concerned with have croziers protruding from their mouths. Perhaps it has something to do with the Christian conversion of the area, attributed to Paulinus, whose three (famous Saxon) crosses in Whalley Parish churchyard possibly also symbolise the exorcism of the power of the three whales/fishes (so far I have only found one fish besides the whale, but perhaps because of this and the existence of three marine creatures in other zodiacs, I should look for a third.) It also hardly needs pointing out that we might do well to look for zodiac figures in places where particular place-names occur.
As all the terrestrial zodiacs appear to be pre-Christian in origin, we should expect to find regular relationships between zodiac figures and particular gods of the Celtic pantheon. Sufficient is now known about Celtic religion in Britain to make reasonable hypotheses possible. Because of the frequent occurrence for example, of the element coc (in words like Cock, Cuckoo) in the area of Pendle Pisces (it reaches double figures) and seldom anywhere else in the zodiac, it is a reasonable hypothesis, in my opinion, that the Pisces area was dedicated to, or that Pisces was associated intimately with, Cocha (Romanised as Cocidius) the ‘red god’ or Mars–Silvanus. There is also the occurrence of Martholme (one interpretation of which could easily be ‘the holme of Mars’), and probably relatively recent Dionysius Wood, near Red Hall. The element coc- also appears in association with Pisces in the Nuthampstead and Pumpsaint Zodiacs.
An obvious area for comparative research. {PR9}
Another obvious area for comparisons. There are far more questions than answers in medieval history, and these will evidently multiply when we are concerned with restricted localities. Overdue is a detailed reappraisal of the role of the Knights Templar especially, and perhaps other orders like the Knights of St. John (what were the latter doing building a hospital and church a mile or so from the long-deserted ruins of Ribchester, by the lowered head of Aquarius–Hercules, and, perhaps more interestingly, why has the ancient church (Stydd church) been preserved when it was for so long a white elephant?) in perpetuating, albeit in overtly Christian guise, the reputed power of the older Zodiacs. Where did this knowledge come from? Was Henry VI as orthodox in religious matters as his recorded pronouncements make him seem? And did he really go mad? Or was he preoccupied with some lore known only to a select few? In the context of the Pendle Zodiac why did he build a roofed well exactly at the eye of Taurus, when he was in hiding, but evidently not afraid of attracting local curiosity by carrying out building operations for all to see?
In passing, I would like to recall that my Pendle figures in some cases underwent profound modification as a result of using the first edition six-inch to the mile ordinance maps of the area. Much of the bas relief detail only became apparent on these maps. It became evident that designer (or designers) of the Pendle Zodiac were well versed in the sophistication of Hellenistic Iconography, as the figures are all intricate bas reliefs in two dimensions, with pronounced tendencies to the Celtic curvilinearity of the Romano-British period. The style of the Pendle Zodiac figures not only makes it possible for us to think about dating, it also brings to light certain iconographic peculiarities of the figures themselves; and enables us to suppose either that different groups of figures were executed by different people, or at different periods. If my realisations are even approximately correct, then it becomes obvious that the quality and style of the figures is not even. The ‘best’ figures are probably the adjacent Leo and Taurus. It is also interesting to observe that neither of these figures makes any but the slightest use of natural features. The ‘worst’ seem to be Sagittarius and Pisces, also adjoining, heavily reliant on natural features such as streams and rivers. There are no whales or fishes looking exactly like the figures depicted here (so far as I have been able to determine) and they are probably copies of bad copies, certainly never drawn from life. In Sagittarius there is a mistake. The figure has just shot an arrow, but the bow is still curved fully, whereas in real life there would be no curve at all, or very little. The twins and Scorpio, adjacent to the eastern end of the Zodiac, are ‘impressionistic’, with difficult detail suggested rather than precisely worked out. They are also problematic in that their executants evidently posed themselves tremendous feats of draughtsmanship. They tried to draw a scorpion, greatly magnified in profile, and moving! They also tried to draw the interweaving of the legs of the Twins and the embracing of the one by the other. Also these two figures lead one to suppose that they were not completed; the face of the younger ‘twin’ (forgive the logical contradiction) is probably not complete, and with the legs of the scorpion the surveyors (if not the draughtsmen) seem to have given up altogether. {PR10}
For convenience sites can be divided into three groups:
(i) Pre-Roman
(ii) Romano-British
(iii) Medieval
One interesting feature that has been emerging from the reconstruction of the Pendle Zodiac is that all three groups of sites seem to have served a twin purpose: (a) To mark the significant extremities of figures, especially feet, hands and features of the head, and (b) to mark the areas in which figures overlap or are in contact, acting as a kind of nail riveting the figures to the landscape. One problem is that sites are lacking in some areas where one should accordingly expect them. It could be however that sites do exist for which a search might be profitable in some cases.
If there is a rule, it appears to be that, whenever a pre-Roman or Romano-British site is not available, later sites are developed by monastic orders or knightly orders (or, if not actually developed, at one time earmarked for such development). There are no sites other than manors, which are of medieval provenance and which do not fulfil some significant role in the Zodiac. Whalley Abbey for example, is at the overlap of the foot of Aquarius–Hercules with the paw of Leo (an earthwork was built between the Abbey and the paw exactly along the outline of the paw); the site of Barnoldswick Abbey lies at the complex overlapping of Taurus, Capricorn, Diana, and Sagittarius; ‘Black Abbey’ in Accrington (not a full blown abbey, but a religious house) was at the foot of Virgo; Stydd Church (and formerly hospital) is at the head of Aquarius–Hercules; Bolton Abbey in front of the advancing scorpion; Skipton Castle (and chapel) is at the point of contact of Scorpio and Aries; Sawley Abbey was on the muzzle of Taurus; Burnley ‘Paulinus’ cross (Godley Cross) was at the head of Sagittarius; Hoghton Tower a mile or so above the head of Virgo; and perhaps by some trick of the collective unconscious Stonyhurst College,(a Jesuit school), is in the teeth of Leo.
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EDITOR’S NOTE:
Some aspects of the iconography of terrestrial zodiacs
will be discussed in the next issue of the Journal of Geomancy (Vol. 2 No. 2),
along with a new figure recently discovered near the Nuthampstead Zodiac.
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