Thin places

Huh?!!

(probably not!)

What?

I think you've over written half your post. Maybe more like all.

There's certainly a Celtic/Gaelic feeling about "thin" places - where the boundaries between corporeal reality and some spiritual afterlife feel vague. These are often associated with standing stones and other ancient places of worship.

Did you hear shouts of "Crivens" in a thick accent?

A while back we had a holiday in Stockholm with our teenage son. He commented on the lack of overweight/obese people (compared with home in Scotland).

So I quess in that respect I've been in a Thin Place 😊

Anyone else felt they’ve been in a Thin Place whilst on earth.

Sober or after several days hard partying?

Has ChatGPT had a stroke?

https://dougiemaclean.com/index.php/f/41-feel-so-near

The old man looks out to the island he says this place is endless thin
There's no real distance here to mention we might all fall in all fall in
No distance to the spirits of the living no distance to the spirits of the dead
And as he turned his eyes were shining and he proudly said proudly said

Has ChatGPT had a stroke?

I think it's trying it's hand at poetry

Maybe it wants to be a bard?

I went to Papa Westray recently. That's a fairly thin place.

Did you hear shouts of “Crivens” in a thick accent?

Nice!

I went to Papa Westray recently.

Whereas we looked at Westray from Rousay and I have to say I was pretty taken by it - and so were ancient people who had built various brochs and more there...

I went to Papa Westray recently. That’s a fairly thin place.

Theres a point on Shetland where you can go coast to coast - from the Atlantic to the North Sea - in just 50 meters

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shetland+Islands/ @60.3977817,-1.3853807,219m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x489c14686803c3cf:0xd3639a2515cb557f!8m2!3d60.5296507!4d-1.2659409!16zL20vMDc1M24?entry=ttu

There’s certainly a Celtic/Gaelic feeling about “thin” places – where the boundaries between corporeal reality and some spiritual afterlife feel vague. These are often associated with standing stones and other ancient places of worship.

This is mainly people that want to feel connected to some imagined mysticism, imo, seeing as we have barely got a clue what went on in those ancient places. We are literally putting our best guess that they are places of worship. (Imagine when archaeologists dig up football pitches in 2000 years time and find dog bones, coins, the odd urn full of ashes of a veteran player and oddly placed posts...)  And, of course, those ancient places have as much to do with Celtic/Gaelic culture as Roman culture has to do with ours. I do love the mythology of liminal places though.

I was talking to a colleague about Crete a few days ago, and he was saying about visiting the leper colony on Spinalonga, and how it felt such an eerie place. I replied that I'd had that same feeling at Mametz Wood on the Somme, a place of death for so many people, but was it simply that we knew what happened in those places so expected to feel something? By the same token, I didn't get the same feeling at other tourist attractions like Alcatraz, Robben Island or any of the numerous stone circles I've visited. (Although Long Meg and her Daughters was a bit spooky, but that's because it was almost dark, midwinter, and I had 10 miles to ride alone back to my hotel... 😀 )

Still no idea what a Thin Place is.

Maybe it's like the cheese press in alum pot?

Still no idea what a Thin Place is.

Thin places are places of energy. A place where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin. A thin place is where one can walk in two worlds – the worlds are fused together, knitted loosely where the differences can be discerned or tightly where the two worlds become one.

It's a pretty common idea in fiction and mythology - accessing the underworld in old British mythology; entering the faerie world in a Neil Gaiman novel (iirc?); even perhaps Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter.

If I don't understand something I don't understand it.

I could I suppose just invent some utter bollox to appear to have great understanding rather than a deep ignorance. I believe it's a popular choice and you can I notice take a lot of people along for the ride.😊

It’s a pretty common idea in fiction and mythology – accessing the underworld in old British mythology; entering the faerie world in a Neil Gaiman novel (iirc?); even perhaps Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter.

And as scotroutes says, there is some strong evidence that historically ancient peoples held special regard for places that they felt were this way.
It is hard to explain, but I get why people would feel this way. I understand why they chose some of the places - near the wild elements, open to distant places, and centred in their understanding of nature and the universe.
Go and spend time in wild & remote places, without modern interruptions or resources....that may be the best way of understanding.

Failing that, do a Billy Connolly.
https://twitter.com/sandracoleen00/status/1166849872575815680?s=20

I may be miss understanding so apologies but stay with me. Perhaps not a thin place in terms of a physical location but during deep thoughts where You try to let go of all preconceptions (so a meditation of sorts) I have felt like I am tripping and as if there is a element of someone I can't really describe but perhaps transcendens of some sort. Only achieved it once. No drugs.

Yep I get the stone circle idea and have visited lots but only thought interesting nice place and have spent months at a time in isolated remote places but again thoroughly enjoyed it but it was  no spiritual experience.

The Brick, sort of but no. Just the idea of a place being closer to the next step after death or another reality. Quite a common concept. No meditation or drugs required just the general feel of a place as a whole.

I went to Papa Westray recently. That’s a fairly thin place.

I think you'll find Papa John's is thinner.

And possibly crispier

Thin places are places of energy. A place where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin. A thin place is where one can walk in two worlds – the worlds are fused together, knitted loosely where the differences can be discerned or tightly where the two worlds become one.

Ah! Gotcha, LSD

about visiting the leper colony on Spinalonga, and how it felt such an eerie place

On our honeymoon we went to Aphrodite's grotto in Cyprus.
I hopefully asked my missus if she felt anything. Cold and hungry. Not the response I was hoping for to be honest.

In some places the myth is much better than the reality.

I hopefully asked my missus if she felt anything.

Not a question to ask on your honeymoon.

I know the OP in real life and at first I thought WTF has he been partaking of!!

But having read a bit deeper I sort of get what he's saying?

Never experienced anything, but find it interesting. (I've been listening to a lot of Blindboy and Manchan Magan recently...)

There's some stuff the ancients had figured out, which we've largely lost these days. Some would say it's progress, a move away from superstitious mumbo jumbo. I'm not so sure...

There's an old settlement on the hill not far from me, a quiet, seldom visited place. The old meadows are still green and heather free, little mushrooms grow plentifully on parts of the green come the end of this month.
It's a place I like to ride up to and sit next to the old walls from time to time.
Perhaps I should partake of more than a microdose next time I'm up, see if the veil thins. Im a big feartie though.

Cleared villages all over the Highlands have an energy to them, but I wouldn't say it was thinness, just an echo of the tragedy which happened there.
Equally horrible things were happening in every city in the land at the same time no doubt, but it's not the same there.
I think stillness is a major component, space to think and imagine times of old.

<p style="text-align: left;">There's a couple of "old places" near the town where my Mum's side of the family are from in Ireland like that. An old hill fort is the one that stays with me - I remember my great aunt being really disturbed by it and warned not to go there.</p>

I’ve been for a short hike today to explore a patch of ancient woodland near me, an absolute gem of a place which must have been a pre Roman settlement given its views across three valleys and across to the Pennines, I didn’t feel much in my bones about it the way I have other places, some close by, like where Old Street (called that because the Romans came along and built their new road half a mile east) goes by the old woods at Hampole, that feels eerily ancient in the sunken lanes.

Last year on the Wolds inland of Filey I got really emotional in a deep green dale near Hunmanby. Doing a bit of research afterwards the area is a huge concentration of Neolithic sites and we were at the site the Folkton Drums were excavated.

I’ve jumped into this rabbit hole a bit, and I really recommend Julian Cope’s The Modern Antiquarian and The Old Stones edited by Andy Burnham. You don’t have to believe any of the spiritual guff, but great for putting the landscape in historical context when often our first glance is dominated by modern features and use. If we holiday in UK I take them along and it gives a nice focus for planning hikes and rides.

Did some microdosing of shrooms a while back, twas not a thin place nor a thick place.

I've walked to Compostelle four times, been to all sorts of neolithic and earlier sites, visited more cathedrals and churches than is healthy, and searched quite hard for something spiritual - zilch. The nearest I got was an "hopital",  a pilgrim stopover, on the top of a Galician mountain. In my mind I could see the thousands of pilgrims who'd tramped that way before me and felt part of it, and very peaceful. But that's all quite logical and based on too much interest in history and too much tramping along pilgrim routes.

The schrooms experience is existential rather than spiritual IME.

Are you guys talking about the Backrooms?

I often feel like I've crossed over into a parallel universe, everything seems normal but then I notice that Ben Fogle is still on broadcast media and I know something just isn't right...

I understand what is meant by ‘thin places’, and I’ve been to a fair number of places which have connections with Neolithic cultures, but I’ve never felt any significant connection with anything ancient, other than peace and quiet at some of them; once the tourists have pissed off!
Various bits of plastic tat, like ribbons and other crap tied to branches and candles left in nooks and crannies, along with ‘offerings’ tend to remove any real sense of mystery that such places ought to possess. Bloody hippies! 🤬

I remember an article a number of years ago about a chap who was convinced ley lines were part of a doorway between this world and the next. So deep was his conviction that he was found dead lying on what was considered to be a ley line, or a junction of them(I forget the actual details)

I cant remember if he committed suicide or died naturally. Possibly the former.

Did some microdosing of shrooms a while back, twas not a thin place nor a thick place.

Microdosing 😕  You want to have half a kilo of them for some idea of what they really do to you.

Half a kilo is maybe a tad excessive. :-O

I'm not sure you'd ever come back, mentally, from that kind of dose.

The micro-dosing thing is interesting and has merit for more research I think...the problem is it's such a taboo subject, and of course in the vaccum of fact, we have all the pseudo hippies on instagram or whatever banging on about it talking all sorts of crap.

Things like Psilocybin and also LSD are increadibly powerful drugs when taken at over threshold levels. Trust me, I know!

By threshold, I mean that you can take 'x' amount and not realy feel much, but if you take enough just over the threshold.. boom... your'e not in Kansas anymore for about 12-18 hours, or what I would call a 'real trip'.

Mushrooms are interesting, as you dont really 'peak' in a liniar way like you do on LSD, the high comes in waves, one second you feel totally straight, and the next second your in cloud cookoo land, and it keeps happening, it can be very traumatic for someone who's not used to it.

There’s some stuff the ancients had figured out, which we’ve largely lost these days.

Really? Is that a specific theory or just sentiment?

Nothing to do with psychedelics I'd say, been there done that, great fun but not connected.

It was Ben Fogles Sacred Islands talking about it after a conversation with a friend that got me thinking.

Not a religious experience or any need for it to be a place of worship though if such places have been recognised why not pray to your God of choice there.

It's the tangible feeling a doorway or alternate place is virtually within touch, I've only experienced it once but find it an interesting concept.

Mr Overshoot this must be fairly normal compared to previous chats!

I had read, and heard, so much about how special Iona is. About people connecting with some spiritual feeling. On a cycle tour I made a specific trip there, with the intention of camping on the island. I was severely disappointed. It had no "feel" for me at all and I found it hard to look past the fact that every building seemed to be selling something. I got the ferry back to Mull and camped at Fidden Farm instead.

well there's

or alternatively

britain's narrowest street, apparently.

Or alternatively again, if thin means "a bit spooky" which is how I'd summarise the OP, then loads of places qualify. Graveyards after dark, spooky old buildings, etc etc.

Various bits of plastic tat, like ribbons and other crap tied to branches and candles left in nooks and crannies, along with ‘offerings’ tend to remove any real sense of mystery that such places ought to possess. Bloody hippies!

Agreed - and can we include flippin' prayer flags from the Buddhists. The flags seem to be popping up all over the place. Just spoils a nice natural place.

Finding thin places in the natural world.

scotroutes agree on Iona I've been as used to live close by and it's a very pretty island but that's it.

"Thin" places and spooky are not the same. Graveyards are just dead people so not spooky unless you believe in zombies or vampires. You've kind of missed the point but never mind.

I do like prayer flags on mountain passes but that's just a reminder of fun climbing trips.

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@scotroutes same experience (or lack of it) not in Iona, but in other places people view as 'spiritual', or 'evil' or whatever.

"You can feel the presence" - no I can't. "The birds never sing there" (Belsen) - er yes, there's a bloody full blown dawn chorus! "There's a serenity to it" - maybe, but there is in any wild or natural space and there's nothing supernatural about it. Etc. etc.

My office is def a fat place judging on how they have the air con permanently cranked to 'explode'

from the OP:

a place where whatever happens after death is almost tangible, closer to the current place we are in

...sounds a bit spooky to me!

and this has some scary moments

I think we can all have personal memories that affect our feeling of other-worldiness too.

When I sold our family home after my parents died, I had almost no feeling about it. Devoid of their possessions it was just an empty building. However, put me in a pine forest on a late summer evening, especially after a summer shower, and I can almost reach out and touch my father, he is so palpably close to me. This all derives from childhood memories.

I remember an article a number of years ago about a chap who was convinced ley lines were part of a doorway between this world and the next.

Ley lines are the ultimate in manufactured bollox, aren't they?

I once drove home from London in my old Beetle and stopped at Silbury Hill for a walk before resuming my drive. I got home and my camera had disappeared from my bag. I searched everywhere, car included. Beetles are not large cars to search. I drove back to London the same way, a few days later, and stopped again for a walk at Silbury Hill. Arriving at my place in London I discovered my camera sitting on the transmission tunnel, just behind the handbrake. I've always said it was ley lines!

Scotroutes, what a great thing to have and is kind of close to my understanding of it though from my own experience it's an actual set place that brings that experience rather than our memories and is a closeness to another "dimension".

I appreciate it's all a bit crystal mumbo jumbo vibe about it.

Parliment St in Exeter is 25"

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Britains-Narrowest-Street/

I dont remember my dreams as a rule, but i wont forget drowning in a dream and not waking up until i was good and dead (in the dream obviously). That was pretty unpleasent.

“The birds never sing there” (Belsen) – er yes, there’s a bloody full blown dawn chorus! 

Yeah, this is BS. The other one i heard was that birds don't fly over Auschwitz. Bloody hundreds of them when I was there.

A big group of us stayed in a Gite near Fontainbleau many years ago. On the last night I happened to mention that I hadn't slept well all week, odd feelings of discomfort, weird dreams, waking up with sudden starts, that sort of thing. As soon as I mentioned it about half the group said they'd felt the same but hadn't felt strongly enough to mention it. One girl had been totally freaked out by the place though.

I put it down to the dodgy wallpaper.

where the boundaries between corporeal reality and some spiritual afterlife feel vague.

Do you mean Ketamine 🤔 😁

See, I'd have laughed at it... But I've had that feeling, that sort of suspension-of-normality or something? Like the rules have changed when you weren't looking. Not just from location but from what else is going on. Like, I remember really vividly going to beltane in edinburgh and it's all bollocks but after a couple of hours of it I was so drawn into it that coming round a corner and seeing edinburgh city centre was like being hit in the face. The city just seemed totally false and unlikely, bumping into a fawn would have felt less strange than seeing an LRT bus. For that little time, I could definitely have been somewhere else or some time else. No, no drugs involved but it felt exactly like it. Off in a little pocket universe or a Neil Gaiman novel.

I think maybe it's because the normal and everyday is actually really weird too, and we just forget it's really weird. Big flying metal things, people doing "jobs" for 8 hours a day, then dying because of little tiny creatures you can't see, mad implausible shit everywhere. So occasionally you get a wee jolt and you see it again as weird, and then things that aren't real, we also see as weird, and you can end up in a bit of an equivalence. Or you see a new and odd real thing and there's a bit of dissonance where you haven't integrated it yet. You can see or experiencing things that aren't real- misunderstanding something, or a trick of perspective of light- and for a little bit they're in the exact same state in your brain. Is phantom pain/lost limb memory like that?

(like, I woke up from a dream once where I was feeding tiny miniature elephants the size of guinea pigs with SIS pink sports goo. Went to work all normal but all day I had this nagging worry about the elephants and about whether they were hungry, the elephants weren't real and it's not like there was any confusion about that but the memory was 100% real, and so the aftereffects of the unreal thing were as real as a real thing. Every time I thought about it it stopped, every time it was in the back of my mind it started again. Ever been punched in a dream and been confused all day why you haven't lost that tooth? So much of what we're thinking about is memory not right in front of us, things you saw half a second ago are memory and so can things you didn't see half a second ago. I crashed a car once, because of a motorbike that didn't exist)

Could this be the longest running religion thread on STW since Woppit disappeared?

Humans seem to have spiritual needs and existential hangups, a need to believe. If it makes you feel good run with it. But keep it to yourself because once people get into these things collectively anything can happen.

Edited to remove humourous tease.

I am not very spiritual but the closest I got to a thin place was the top of the hill fort near Church Stretton.

The views are special too.

Personally I think it's not places that are "thin" but perhaps times when are more open to memories or feelings from the past or present .
A few years ago I had an experience where I felt strong connections to the past and to those who were there with me At The Hydro, seeing The Grit Orchestra

Never felt any sense of connection or being drawn into anything in the way OP describes, but really, really old structures and buildings have sent a shiver down my spine before when I've stood quietly and taken them in deeply.

Durham Cathedral commenced construction in AD 1093 and whilst I'm not a religious person in any way, the world events that have happened since that was built are incomprehensible in volume and you do get a sense that the building has breathed the world of the time in and out for nearly 1,000 years.

Hadrian's wall was build around AD 122. Standing on it today and picturing the Romans looking out over unconquered Caledonia is a powerful image and gives a sense of how small our own lived snippet of world history is. To me, that elicits a physical feeling of connection to a past world that is still visibly present in our current time.

I have a very mechanistic viewpoint on the world.  We are a bag of squishy chemical reacting in complex ways.

However I do "feel" something at special places - neolithic stones etc.  Interestingly enough Iona is a special place for me but thats tied up with memories.  With the neolithic stuff is it just expectation?  Some places really seem to have something extra about them but the confirmation bias is strong on this one 🙂

• Ah well interesting thoughts, only ever experienced it once in a place I have absolutely no connection to and was nothing to do with religion or spirituality for me or history. Reality or a brain fart going off. I guess I'd have to go back to the same place and see.

Could this be the longest running religion thread on STW since Woppit disappeared?

It's not really got anything to do with religion.

It’s not really got anything to do with religion.

Though it seems to have the same acceptance of the supernatural for some who experience it? Not everyone of course. It seems some rationalise it as memories, sensory stimulation, moods or whatever and some think spirits, other dimensions, gateways into other words etc.

It does seem  to me that as with so many other 'phenomena', some people are hardwired to look for a logical explanation (or accept that there may be one even if it. Isn't immediately apparent) and some default to supernatural explanations.

It does seem  to me that as with so many other ‘phenomena’, some people are hardwired to look for a logical explanation (or accept that there may be one even if it. Isn’t immediately apparent) and some default to supernatural explanations.

Definitely 😀

I like it as a literary conceit. In real life, I think it's a load of rubbish, but I'm also intelligent enough to know that I'm saying that from the safety and security of my centrally heated home, with plenty of food in the kitchen. I don't have to explain why grazing animals tend to graze that hillside over there in preference to this identical hillside, or why the bones of my ancestors don't rot to pieces when dug into that hillside, or why drinkable spring-water comes magically out the ground here but it's salty over there. I know that the ground contains minerals that affect taste and decomposition so I don't have to assume that supernatural is involved and build a shrine there.

I wonder if that makes sense, because I'm typing quickly before going home!

IdleJon
Full Member

It’s not really got anything to do with religion.

I think it's got quite a lot to do with the hardware that religion runs on, though.

Ever been punched in a dream and been confused all day why you haven’t lost that tooth?

Yes, I used to smoke, and when I gave up, often had a dream in which I was happily puffing away. The feeling was so real that I remember waking up thinking "Ohno, I've had a ciggie, and I had gone to all the hassle of  giving up" and taking some time to figure out that no, it was a dream and I've still quit.

I f ound this place to be very spiritual a few days back.

Never come across the phrase 'thin places' until this thread, but I recognise it as something I've been interested in for a long time. As an evangelical atheist my thoughts are probably too incoherent still (as befits the subject I guess) to post here, but as said Julian Cope has written some interesting stuff around this once you get past the drug-addled musings and psychedelia.

Anyway, physical experience of a place <> spirituality <> religion but that doesn't mean some places don't resonate differently with us for whatever reasons.

FWIW, other than obvious burial sites I'm not 100% convinced that prehistoric monuments (and the Christian sites that often co-opt them) were necessarily spiritual or ritual. For me they probably had much more prosaic uses.

I think that water and it's associated environments were probably much 'thinner' for our pre-christian ancestors in this country than big old lumps of stone but that's another thread maybe.

There are lots of micro dose studies but they apparently just cancel each other out with the results.

PTSD is one field to get tested with tiny amounts over a few months.It's all chemicals after all

As for thin places I pushed my wife off the cuckoo stone near wood henge as its supposed to have mistic powers around  having babies.

No rock is getting her pregnant

Mmm always reminds me of Sapphire and Steel 🙂

Amongst all the "woo", "daisy flattener" and "Merlins bucketry" * of thin places , always remember being properly freaked out by Was****er as a kid. Just after my first visit, a dead body was located on a rock shelf, a murdered French student I think...

Similar feeling whilst kayaking with our local Venture Scout group some years later, following which I was told about the Was****er gnomes.........The landscape may be stunning and it's a fantastic view (or was before some TV moron advertised it as such), but stick to the road and you'll be reet ......

* c/o The Infinite Monkey Cage

colournoise
FWIW, other than obvious burial sites I’m not 100% convinced that prehistoric monuments (and the Christian sites that often co-opt them) were necessarily spiritual or ritual. For me they probably had much more prosaic uses.

Told you I was feeling incoherent on this topic!

Of course those Christian sites have a spiritual or ritual use!

What I was driving ineffectually at is that I'm not sure that later use parallels the original purpose of the site (beyond the Romans or whoever thinking 'Ooh, that place looks important to the locals. Let's turn it into one of ours').

I think that water and it’s associated environments were probably much ‘thinner’ for our pre-christian ancestors in this country than big old lumps of stone but that’s another thread maybe.

Yeah, agreed. Especially the places where it comes out of the ground, but it's a fairly special substance in all forms. 😀

I was also wondering last night about resonance, magnetism and gases issuing from the ground in certain places. There are places along the coast here where you get a certain resonance in the ground at some states of the tide and wind. The wind would do that blowing among rocks as well. (Hound Tor on a windy evening comes to mind. That's maybe why Dartmoor feels a bit odd.)

Q for the geologists - do rock carry a magnetic field that's detectable by animals, even faintly?

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR-4NyiGptqBbHqSxN1bK68C5axg2XznAwsnA&usqp=CAU

Rather thin.

Went to Purton the other day. The bit between the hulks and sharpness canal is quite thin.

And I like After Eight mints.