division, specific real spatial relations arise together. An apposite example of this is
provided in Chapter 2 where I describe how the wall of the cave provided a basis
for the depiction of collective imaginal content, a specific social or socio-religious
organization and for the specific collective relation of that group to the larger world.
(b) Place as Vital, Animate Energy
Much of the literature written about actual or sensate place is striking in its
denial of any animate, inherent dynamic and autonomous capacity or quality to
affect the individual or group. However, there is literature that attributes to place
an animation and energy that defies rational explanation. Examples of this are
Findhorn in Scotland and the various active sacred sites around the world where
miraculous events take place, where things happen; where there definitely are
observable phenomena that defy rational explanation. This may be attributed to
synchronicity and the psychoid dimension, a dimension, as Jung suggested,
involving a coalescence of psyche and matter (Jung, CW 8, par. 380). Heselton
provides help to understand this phenomenon:
There seem to be strong parallels between energy in the body and
energy in the landscape ... I f the Earth is a living being its energy
flows and sacred centres correspond to the meridians and
acupuncture points in the human body ... Some have taken the
parallels between the human body and the Earth much further and
have postulated chakra points on the Earth’s surface which have
specific effects in landscape terms appropriate to the nature of the
corresponding chakra. The heart chakra, for example, has been
seen in terms of a river curving around a conical hill with a church.
(Heselton, 1991:79).
Of relevance here is the research of Dr. Patricia Newton, a psychiatrist with
John Hopkins University Medical I nstitute, who has undertaken biochemical analysis
of patients she has worked with who exhibited paranormal behaviour resulting from
alterations in the Earth’s electromagnetic field:
I ncrease and change of the electromagnetic field has a profound
effect upon the melanin centres of the brain. Melanin centres in
the brain are also precursory, at least melatonin is precursory, in
the foundation and development of adrenalin, serotonin, and
norepinephrine, the neurotransmitter peptide which have to do
with altered states of consciousness and brain function (in
Chandler, 1999:198).