for Iain Sinclair
‘I know I mix the present with the past,
but that’s how I like it:
there is no other way to go on.’
– John Ash, ‘Forgetting’
‘Pilgrimage is archeology on the move’
– Sophie Sleigh-Jones, Code: Damp
Our world has become smaller and more known, so it is best to self-mythologise and create one’s own mysteries. Walks become pilgrimages, stories fables or religious texts, detritus sacred relics. The Necromancer is expert at turning extended hikes into mystical explorations, graffiti into magic texts, documenting haunted churches and absent architecture on scraps of paper which become occult maps.
Strolling into delusion and pseudo-religion is a kind of controlled madness, conjuring up visions of long-gone histories and secondhand fictions that suit the political and social moment, allow ventriloquised critique and resistance in the guise of angels, demons, ley-lines and imaginary scriptures.
Disciples and followers abound, creating sub-genres to suit their own expertise and interests: birdwatching and nature, apocalyptics, cryptology, mountaineering and domestic science fiction. One made his fortune with populist adaptations and interpretations of Hawksmoor’s church architecture and Blake’s ecstatic artist’s books.
The past is long gone but we cling on, trusting that there are memories we can sequence and order to make a nonsense of traditional understanding, offering interpretations we can only sense not comprehend. It is easier to live with echoes of the past or zones of influence and power than take responsibility for the darkness mankind has made, the damage we have inflicted upon each other.
© Rupert M Loydell
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