King Solomon’s House or What’s in a museum?

© Mogg Morgan

Manchester Museum is about to give a party for the return of the Lindow
Man otherwise known as Pete Marsh. For those who know not of what I
speak – Pete Marsh is a well-preserved Iron Age corpse discovered on
Friday 1st August 1984 by a peat cutter on Lindow Moss, near Manchester.
Pete is currently displayed in the London’s British Museum. The history and
possible provenance of this body is told in two excellent books, (The Life
and Death of a Druid Prince by Anne Ross and Don Robins and The Bog
People by P V Glob). Lindow Moss is just a stone’s throw form Alderley
Edge, one of the legendary resting places of King Arthur and his knights and
a place much beloved of local pagans (see Maxine Sanders’ recent biography
‘Fire Child’).

The return of Lindow Man to his former stamping ground coincides with a
widespread reappraisal of the manner in which museums curate human
remains and indeed all their religious artifacts and assemblages. Like many
museums Manchester is undergoing a radical refit and indeed rethink about
how these things should be presented to public. Part of this is about trying to
accommodate changes in the way the public wish to engage with their
collections. This also coincides with a noticeable growth in a pagan
sensibility. It’s some of these issues that I will try to explore in the following
short article.

I should say that I am a member of a special focus group known as

H(onouring) the A(ncient) D(ead), which brings together various pagans
with an interest in the ancient past. I’m quite happy to self identify as a
Pagan although I know that for many the term can be a problem. This might
surprise some who know me as a senior member of the Golden Dawn Occult
Society and indeed as a long standing Hermetic magician obsessed with,
amongst other things, Ancient Egypt. But for me the term ‘Pagan’ originates
in the world of classical Egyptian magick. The best way to define
‘Paganism’ is by reference to a pre-Abrahamic Egyptian religion – but that’s
another story!

Over the last few years HAD’s focus group of ‘pagan theologians’ has
successfully lobbied, along with others, for museums to adopt a less
reductionist and more respectful approach to their ‘wonderful things’. One
of the upshots of this was the idea that those with a mind for it, could, in an
unobtrusive way, make small, appropriate offerings to the illustrious
ancestor on the other side of the glass case. With this in mind I posted a
request to my local pagan elist to see if I could elicit some ideas on the
mechanics of how this could be done. The first response reminded how
controversial such concepts can be, even amongst pagans.

Also immediately someone said that the only thing we should be doing is
placing an offering box so that more money could be raised for the
museum’s work. It was a disappointing reaction from my own community –
to say the least. After all it’s not as if museums are not already going to be
asking for money. It’s almost as if Pagans have so internalized their marginal
status they find it hard to even imagine what they would do if they were
given the chance. It’s the whole ‘fear of freedom’ thing or is it ‘fear of
flying’.

But there again as Marx said (Karl that is not Groucho) – money is the
ultimate fetish object. And my own proposal re the mechanics would be
some sort of great pot or cauldron, filled with water, into which people
could, if they were so minded drop those talismanic coins, and indeed other
small metallic objects. This is what I mean by the mechanics of ritual – the
museum requires something that is manageable. And indeed any pagan
temple of the past would have had some sort of delineation in the kinds of
offerings people could make – hence the standard offering in an ancient
Egyptian temple, was a loaf of bread, some beer or some linen.

In the absence of guidance one ends up with the ‘trash altars’ seen at St
Necktan’s glen in Cornwall When people go there they are obviously moved
by the number of previous offerings to make their own dedication. But
because they are not expecting to do so, they are stuck with what they have
in their knapsack – which often turns out to be trash. This could be a
problem in a museum.

Hence one needs to address the issue of the mechanics of offerings. Pagans,
with a growing knowledge their own history; do have some relevant
information – something that might actually be useful. So for example my
offering cauldron, is not just manageable, it does also have resonance with
the object – by reason of offering into water – the Lindow man was also an
offering into water – and indeed offerings of valuables things into water is
part of the Iron Age context. It is also a coin – a fetish for us and also a fetish
for many Iron Age people. It is also money, so handy for the museum,
whereas a lot of dodgy photocopies are just a hassle. The whole also has a
resonance with the whole wishing well thing, which may interest the lay
punter at the shrine. You don’t have to agree, but I hope you will see my drift
and come up with your own solutions.

Some may already be shouting (I hope so) saying but what about the
ordinary punter – why should they be made to do this!?* Well no one is
being made to do anything – it’s just an option – hopefully subtle and
unobtrusive. But there again, I suspect that even the accidental pilgrim to a
museum, or sacred site enjoys being there with the more obviously
committed tourist. There is room for both the tourist and the pilgrim – as
much today as they did in the classical world. I suspect that many prized
objects in museums were the ancient equivalent of that tacky ‘Kiss Me
Quick’ hat. The ancients probably were also known to say ‘Oh no, not
another one of those!’

Recently I went to a pagan handfasting at Roll Right Stones on the

Oxfordshire/Warwickshire border. The normal visitors who came in were
smiling not frowning – surely that’s OK – people smile – they enjoy that we
are being pagans – right??

My offering cauldron is just an example, just to give you an idea of what it’s
about, this mechanics of ritual thing. Call it experimental archaeology if it
makes it easier. I’m hoping others will have more ideas about how this can
be done in an inclusive and interesting manner. For example, what about that
cauldron, how does it look, should it be an existing artifact from the storage
rooms or could local artists and craftsman be enlisted to come up with
designs? Hold on there – could it be that we pagans might actually have
projects that could draw others into creativity – I think so.

Which all made me think about museums and what are they for? I work and
study in Oxford, and once a year I give a tour of its ‘Hermetic’ campus. The
central area around the Bodleian library is laid out on Hermetic principles.
What is now the bijou science museum was once the house Christopher
Wren designed for the magus Elias Ashmole. In recent renovation they
unearthed the original alchemical laboratory in the basement and a name for
the collection as King Solomon’s House. The original meaning of ‘museum’
is as a ‘house of the muses’. The name ‘Solomon’s House’ derives from Sir
Francis Bacon’s book ‘The New Atlantis’. In origin a museum is a collection
of people and things arranged to inspire and invoke memories Culture is
memory, is it not?

Elias Ashmole went on the lay the basis for the collection that forms one of
Europe’s first new museums since ancient (pagan) times – The eponymous
Ashmolean museum in Oxford.

Society and academics have spent a great deal of time disenchanting things
such as museums. They have been so successful in this that all of us need
reminding of what these institutions and indeed enterprises were originally
for. Take for example Egyptology, set in motion by renaissance Hermeticism
and Egyptomania of the Romantic period, it has become a fairly dry
discipline emptied if its original magick. It’s a good of example of throwing
out the baby with the bath water!

So I guess I’m arguing for a small reintroduction of enchantment to

museums – its not something that was never there and it may well be
something that saves the institutions from becoming just another branch of
the entertainment industry, ‘a café with a fine museum attached’. None of
this need detract from the subterranean academic work that goes on behind
the scenes – it’s all about inclusively not excluding any view. It’s just that we
pagans set the whole in motions, and it just might be that we have ‘mummy
truths to tell, whereat the living mock; Thought not for sober ear, For maybe
all that hear/ Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.’

Mogg Morgan
3 Feb 2008