One of the benefits of Ireland lies in the leftovers of religious practices largely deconstructed by modernity. There are a notable amount of holy wells, sacred stones and sites of religiously symbolized worship that remain outdoors, in rural parts of the country. For most Western nations sacred symbols are now located in commercial production, personal sentimental spaces or museums. What are we to make of these exceptions?
In this case, I speak of Brandon Hill; it requires a minimal sense of adventure to pilgrimage to.
The hill, which is not by any means a particularly hight ascent (500 meters or so) has a large cross built upon the top of it. The site has been inhabited in one way or another for over 4000 years. We can assume this prehistorical location was both valued for defensive purposes (on a clear day one can see in every direction for the best part of 50km). Yet, we can also assume that such sites with particular defensive capacities are frequently also formed into sacred sites; perhaps sometime after their practical defensive value is no longer immediate. The use of castles for defensive purposes, for example, likely did away with the need for hill forts—or at least devalued them as sites, given that the same defensive purposes could be gained without having to climb or live up an enormous hill.
I couldn’t find any information online pertaining to why and who put the cross there. Regardless, the placement and maintenance of a religious symbol on the top of the hill is curious. Although, the original , much larger cross, has been placed on the ground(perhaps the wind blew it over?), a much less impressive, replacement cross was constructed in its place.
It looks like this replacement cross also functions as same sort of communication tower. This is another strange thing about Ireland. I have frequently been to sites where some form of old religious monument or Norman era tower was built, only to see it being used as a communication tower. High ground retains its functional and defensive purposes in our time, although as centres of technologically advanced communication instead.
For example—a Norman era tower placed at the mouth of a large river which would have been valued for its capacity to alert the near by city of incoming ships, now operates as satellite hub for the small local towns in the surrounding areas. It once saved the city from being raided by pirates. It now functions to ensure good wifi signal.
Ireland is an interesting country in this sense. Largely due to its delayed urbanization and its under-'developed’ infrastructure, Ireland’s historical expression of religiosity is noticeably more outdoors than in other Christian countries. This can also been seen in an enormous volume of gravestones placed at the side of roads. I have literally never seen a gravestone placed at the side of the road in another country, but here it’s everywhere.
A smaller to medium size town or a country road is rarely without a road side memorial. The frequency of this is also explained by the already mention underdeveloped infrastructure in (most) of the areas outside a small handful of more urbanized areas. Mix a sudden excess in high speed vehicles manufactured in the late 20th century with country side roads built in the middle ages (designed for horse and carriage)—and you tend to get a high frequency of car crashes.
Ireland’s high rate of road accident was crudely explained away to me as a child by the usual obnoxious health and safety degenerates who would arrogantly explain this phenomena as the result of Ireland having high rates of alcohol consumption(drink driving ect.). In reality, it was the cause of vehicles and infrastructure that were built in literally different epochs of history that were suddenly operating together(somewhat reflected in a Norman tower being used as satellite outpost). Infrastructure, as we now know through the internet, becomes part of the very fabric of that society’s communication, economy and movement. In other words, when medieval roads meet industrial vehicles, it tends to end badly.
If one takes a look at holy sites of pilgrimage, Norman guard towers being used as sites for telecommunication infrastructure, or murals built on the side of motorways, it reveals a peculiar clash of infrastructure from different epochs; all of which becomes more religiously charged because of its evident relationship to death. Ireland is a unique case of sudden exposure to the demands of modernity which didn’t go through a slowly developing process of industry and urbanization (at least to the extent this was ‘slow’, for England, France, Germany or the US). It instead went from a predominantly agricultural country to a post-industrial (digital) one within a few decades. To give you an example of how delayed this was, many rural areas only obtained electricity in the 1960s, and the acquisition of broadband was also extremely late compared to urban areas and probably rural areas in other European countries.
While affluent areas of Dublin are almost excessively urbanized—and express all the pathologies of affluent urbanization that come with it—much of the country side still retains a sense of religiosity which is entirely contrary to the dominant Christian(and then secular) character of the modern world.
This is partially explained by the fact that most of Ireland is not protestant. The protestant influence on Christian countries during the period of fast urbanization and industrialization became excessively domestic. The Victorian era—as I have pointed out in other pieces—is marked by a fusion of industrialization and domestication. The morals and norms formed through it dominated other expressions of religiosity by enforcing a stance of ‘civilized’ whereby the history of Christian consciousness was to meet its end-of-spiritual-history, through a settling-down project. Good little Victorians trimmed their garden hedges, read their bible quietly alone in their lofts and remained inside (literally and in terms of the excessively emphasis on remaining ‘inside myself’ that individualistic subjectivity implies), while both Calvinist and Catholic expressions of religiosity which were better suited to medieval urbanization or rural living, were deconstructed by affluent-urban morality. The social, ritualistic, pilgrimaging, and certainly the war-like (deconstructed through ‘tolerance’) were expelled; expelled perhaps through notions of ‘development’, which are inseparable to all moral of cultural changes. To what extent the Victorian era placed a religious emphasis on ‘development’ is still a question gone unanswered.
These leftovers of medieval religiosity, which uniquely enough expresses itself, not through social relations, or church attendance or marital norms, but through space and infrastructure, should be appreciated—especially in times where development has becomes almost synonymous with pathology and misery. This is no romanticization of the past for merely therapeutic reasons, but an acknowledgement that religiosity has certain spatial dimensions to it which change an alter overtime; especially through the history of infrastructure—and its relation to both material and moral ‘development’.
As the philosopher Paul Virilio notes, the digital revolution has caused an immobilization crisis. We saw this particularly aggressively during the Covid lockdown where the best way to respond to fear of death was through self-immobilization and a social-engineering experiments in self-debilitation— and even hibernation experiments (there was even some speculation at the time that we could indefinitely go into forms of quarantine in the winter when flu rates were high).
However, navigating through depths of the countryside, climbing this hill and experiencing the (admittedly pathetic cross) at the top, I couldn’t help but feel that this was a far superior form of worship. And despite its duality as a telecommunication tower, it retained some authentic spiritual character.(I found out about the place online so one could argue the internet, despite all its flaws also has a communicative power which sometimes operates in ways beyond consumption, titillation and jealously stalking your school friends).
This superiority is over the worship of ergonomic comfort, worship of the self-image (which is always immobilizing and his people indoors starring at screens in the their spare time) worship of economic progress, or vulgar worship of a priestly class that simply recite off dictums which they themselves haven’t the sorriest understanding or concern of. Essentially, the pilgrimage—and its communicative pull—stands out against all of these others. It is a practice of finding sacred communion through movement and directional conviction.
Spatiality is crucial as a spiritual category as we are worlded—or de-worlded—through space. The collapse of space, as Virilio points out, has a rapid de-worlding effect on our sense of belonging, social reality, and our own consciousness as living beings occupy a certain time and space. Secondly, movement, particularly when it is an ascent, stirs within us an inner hierarchy reflected by the hierarchy of top and bottom. You can’t help feel, when you reach the top, as if you are now in a ‘higher’ place, both within and without. The presence of a cross placed above the cloud cover is especially powerful in this regard.
By de-spatializing religiosity we lose its hierarchal dimension. Easy access becomes the primary communion-methodology; and it was this de-spatializing and domesticating of the religious which came prior to more obvious forms of spiritual and cultural flatness, such as mass-society or cultural commodification that 20th century critics would point to.
Placing religious symbology on physical terrain which is difficult to get to—and reminds the worshiper of his fatigue, his smallness and distinction from the peak of the hierarchy—was always a way of ensuring worship was only participated in by those who were willing to move towards it, and would not see worship as a demand, in an entitled manner, that the religious be dragged down to suit them. The same criticisms of the church were levelled during the reformation. Yet, its spatial dimension was never accounted for. In fact, the personalization of religious belief into a purely domestic and private affair did far more to facilitate the corrosion of religion than the church ever could(despite their best efforts).
In other words, the domesticating of religiosity toward comfort and ultra-personalised subjectivity has deconstructed its hierarchical dimension, which means that religion becomes easy to utilize for acquiring and justifying lower motivations. As the Gods of immobility reveal their demented nature, perhaps a revaluation of the infrastructural and spatial dimensions to religiosity will make a comeback.