Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

The following passages from Michell’s “The Earth Spirit” are some of my favorite, and represent how insightful and eloquent a writer he was. They have a special, manifesto-like poignancy for me, and in honor of Michell’s own vital spirit, I thought I’d share them here:

“Everywhere that men have been on earth they have discovered aboriginal inhabitants in the form of spirits from whom they have inherited the secrets of the landscape. A dying or departing race has always passed on to its successors the local mystical knowledge, and it is only in modern times that the tradition has been lost by the appearance, as in North America, of a people who did not care to receive it. Violence, restlessness, drink and crank religions are the compensations of the alienated, and the power of the electric generator substitutes for the lost power of natural invocation."

“Wherever indigenous culture, which means ultimately knowledge of local spirit, has disappeared, depopulation has followed. People do not mind being poor but they do mind being dispirited. The history of rural decline that followed from the enclosures of common lands in England is well known, and so are the events that led to the depopulation of Scotland and the starvation of Ireland, but the prime cause of these disasters has never been properly recognized. For the process is still continuing in Britain and now all over the world. Everywhere people are drawn from the country to be consumed by urban industrialists, and the reason is that everywhere local culture and independence are under attack, and when they succumb, consciousness of the native spirit goes with them. Without this consciousness life becomes at worst physically unsupportable, at best boring, provincial and second-rate. The cause of rural depopulation is not primarily economic but lies in the fact that if the spirit is destroyed the body disintegrates. It is the relationship between men and spirit that determines whether or not a country is habitable; on which account Plato advised the settlers of his proposed ideal republic that, having chosen their territory, they should first of all discover the local shrines of its spirits and institute festivals there on the appropriate days.”