Pilgrimage to Lamorna

Cornwall has always been known to have some of the highest levels of spiritual hotspots in the UK, with sixteen known stone circles and many unknown beneath the soil, endless folklore tales and myths of magical beings and creatures, Druidry, Paganism and many other fascinating pockets of mystical energy. The intersection of ley lines is prominent across the Cornish landscape, these lines have created intersections embedded with high signals of spiritual energy. The prominence of these crossovers has led to spiritualist peoples being able to interact with the original unity of the earth and secret ground of relations. The act of rituals or gatherings, ceremonies of solstices being celebrated in these points forms the area into a ‘privileged location’. As Simondon’s theory of phase shifts suggests, you can understand the magical universe as a landscape with privileged sites.

The landscape has pure past funnelled through a cone of memory to reach our plane of matter, as there are ways of disturbing the habitual ways of being to communicate with these streams of energy and recollection. The way that energy is transferred and exchanged between peoples and the natural world allows us to interact with the marks that ancestors or predecessors have left in their absence. Acts of pilgrimage and ritual carry heavy weighting, and as the funnel of past delivers the memory to hotspots in the landscape, they provide spaces for us in the present to return to and learn from. Therefore, this is why I chose to follow the steps of Ithell Colquhoun – from London to Penzance, to visit the town of Lamorna, to feel the energy of the land that fuelled her interdisciplinary artistic practice, to engage with the Merry Maidens stone circle, the spiritual power of the land and leave offerings of natural entity for healing and inner balance.

One of the Merry Maidens with her shell gift.

The Merry Maidens Stone Circle

The pursuit of craft by Colquhoun and others, implies an aesthetic thought process that is future orientated and calls for a mode of being that approximates the magical mode of existence. In phase shifts, these locations become attached and mobile, according to Simondon, as archaic culture clings to the land as residual culture to constantly re-embed itself in the present, emergent culture. As art itself is a form of alchemy, of turning one thing into another, creativity is a mystifying act and a conduit for exploring the dimensions and realities that are not easily acceptable to us on this plane of existence and allows us to communicate alternatively to the voices of both present and past. There are ways of living in this world that are not restricted by the canon and mainstream narratives as finding alternate inhabitations in connection with the earth is a means of survival for many.

By dedicating myself to the idea of ‘psychological morphology’ that was of discussion between Surrealists in 1938, and an idea that Colquhoun embedded herself in for much of her life, I am attributing my senses and relationship to the Earth to constant growth and evolution. By performing healing rituals and nurturing the connection I feel to the natural world, I believe that my soul and body will be more centred and that it is crucial for our existence. The natural world calls to many of us and I feel a deep affinity with the elements – especially water and the ocean.

Interacting with the Merry Maidens in the same way that I created my own stone circle with the shells that I had collected over time through beach combing, created a link between ocean and Earth and produced an area that was my own personal privileged point. By gifting the Earth shells, sea glass and amethyst (a spiritually healing crystal that ‘connects the concrete with the divine’) in both locations, I have embedded my own specific area with energies that will be channelled through the funnel of past into that new hotspot. Much like Colquhoun, I have felt the spiritual energy of the landscape and nurtured it through my own practice to bring residual culture forward into emergent culture.

One of the Merry Maidens with her shell gift.

Flat Pilgrimage Zine Net

For the same reason that spiritualism and magical thinking is increasing in popularity today, the sense of interest in understanding the world around us that is separate to science and religion is resurfacing. The search for something intangible in order to heal us, when perhaps what we crave is to become magical ourselves, draws people to the natural landscape as the way we make sense of our existence has never been straightforward, but art and the earth can be used as a method to reveal hidden truths and knowledges that help us to discover the ways of living that are liberating. Magical thinking is a fluid process and so creativity itself is a medium of magic. Art is a way of making ‘an image that embodies the struggle to express something about a world that seemed inexplicable’ and it gave women a community of creatives at a time when they couldn’t officially study art academically. In conclusion, my pilgrimage was a successful journey that has fuelled my artistic practice and my understanding of my relationship to spirituality that I would embark upon again - both back to Lamorna and to other privileged sites in order to continue the lifelong quest to find enlightenment and liberation through spiritual practice.

Related Reading:

- Bowman, Marion (1995). Cardiac Celts: images of the Celts in contemporary British paganism.

- Hale, Amy. 2020. Genius of the Fern Loved Gully: The Supersensual Life of Ithell Colquhoun, Artist and Occultist.

- Higgie, Jennifer. 2023. The Other Side.

- Ithell Colquhoun. 2016. The Living Stones : Cornwall.

- Simondon, Gilbert (2011 [1958]), ‘On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects’

- Oliver, Mary. 2004. Wild Geese : Selected Poems.

Stills from the 'Pilgrimage to Lamorna' video documentation:

'Valley of streams and moon leaves, wet scents and all that cries with the owl's voice, all that flies with a bat's wing, peace!

Influences, essences, presences, whatever is here in my name of a stream in a valley I salute you; I share this place with you.

Stirrings of life, expanding spores, limbo of germination, for all you give me, I offer thanks.

Oh, rooted here without time I bathe in you; genius of the fern-loved gully, do not molest me, and may you remain forever unmolested.' - Ithell Colquhoun

When we dance here together, we are passing through time. Generations overlap and we are one. Feel the peace and submerge in it! The voices cry, but remember...

'You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.' - Mary Oliver

Whatever the earth gives us, she can reclaim. We give the treasures back to her once by way of ritual and once as our final destination.

Bury your hands deep within the sand, feel the life she carries along the ley line.

Mother we thank you!

Please accept the gifts we leave you.