Time and change...

This was taken seven years ago, when I wanted to give my kids a sense of some of what I grew up with.

We were at Aberlemno, Tayside (Scotland, for anybody who isn't clear on that) having driven quite a way, that day, chasing Pictish stones. Not that the stones were moving, but the accounts I had were not always clear, and I'd forgotten what the road was like from Forfar to Aberlemno.

The stones stand by the road, with another in the churchyard: but this is the oldest one. Did the 'Picts' of the sixth century or so, C.E., deliberately use an older cup-marked stone, though, as repository of their symbols, I wonder, or was it simply convenient?

I'm Jenny Blain, this is my home page, or one of them! Directory and a handful of links representing some of my interests are given below. No, I don't have a neat index on this page, it's not designed that way. There's more ways than one to do these things. This is a bit more, ah, discursive. It did start out alphabetical, though, once upon a time. There is, too, a link to the new Heathen networking list at ukheathens.

Yes, the kids have changed, in these seven years: grown. One would expect it. So have I, in other ways. Perhaps the stone has changed also: at least in how it seems to me, and the mystery it represented when I first met it, as a child living in Dundee, out for a day-trip with family members; and what it may represent for me, today.

 

For your appreciation...

(under continuous construction)

Please note that Wyrd's Well now has its own site at home.freeuk.net/wyrdswell

Images

From Kilmartin valley
I think of this now as the tomb of the ancestors.
Rock art at Achnabreck.

From Shamanism in contemporary Society conference field trip in Northumbria. Also my reflections on the conference (read this first, and you can link to the images).

Assorted research images, from Iceland, Canada and US.
(Warning -- these are on geocities and so the page is slow to load.)


Selected links

Current Project: Sacred Sites

Sacred Sites project

Anthropology

CASCA homepage
Anthropology on the Internet (article by Brian Schwimmer)
Anthropology webring sites

Archaeology

Archaeology on the net
Nova Scotia Museum Archaeology homepage
Kilmartin House Museum
Stone Pages (megaliths)

Asatru/Heathenism

The Troth
Ásatrúarfélagið The Icelandic Ásatrú Association
Fiskiörn Kindred
Asatru links
Óðsmál by Gudrun Kristin Magnusdottir

Nature Religions' Study

Nature Religions Scholars' Network
The Pomegranate
Some of my papers on Anthropology, Heathenism, and (mostly) Seiðr;

Poetry

Poetry pages on geocities

Seiðr

The Return of the Volva. The original article describing the attempts within Heathenism to reconstruct seiðr, by Diana Paxson.
The Seidhman Rants. The author Bil Linzie is one who I've described elsewhere as the heathen who comes closest to the model of the 'traditional shaman'.
Spirit Talk issue on Seiðr, including material by Diana Paxson, Bil Linzie, Malcolm Campbell, Annette Høst, Karen Kelly, and me.
And then, my stuff again, much of it on Anthropology, Heathenism, and Seiðr;.
Sorry that little recent anthro. material is here, i.e. within last two years. It will be... I just have to be a wee bit careful with copyrights for journal publishing purposes. However, this link also includes 'Rules for Journeying the Otherworlds', ideas about the etiquette of European trance states, derived from folktales.

Shamanisms

Shaman journal homepage.
For other points of view: I have about a million neoshamanic urls, or that's what it looks like in my bookmark file. Which to use, though? For 'Core Shamanism', try the London Core Shamanism site. Will have a look out for a good neoshamanic site with a lot of links.

General Musings

Back to my geocities pages for material on: The Sanctuary at Avebury; opinions from 'liberal Heathenism'; or more from Kilmartin...

Conferences and conference volumes

A Permeability of Boundaries: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Art, Religion and Folklore. Southampton, UK, Dec. 1999.
The conference volume is now out - available from British Archaeological Reports (and in the Oxbow Books catalogue), edited by R.J. Wallis and K. Lymer.

Viking Millennium International Symposium, Newfoundland and Labrador, Sept. 2000.

New Approaches to Medical Archaeology and Anthropology Conference in Cambridge, 2000. Volume expected in 2002, from Oxbow Books, eds Gilly Carr and Patricia Baker.


Portrait

[thumbnail link]From Avalon East Pagan Gathering, Nova Scotia, August 1998.


 

Networking

Email list at yahoogroups ukheathenry is a networking group for Heathens in the UK.

Click to subscribe to ukheathenry


Links to UK sites are on my homepage


return to homepage feedback: email me at jenny.blain@freeuk.com




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updated December 12, 2001