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 Karin
was exhausted. She had spent the entire weekend sifting and shoveling
soil, repairing the worn paths around one of England’s ancient stone
circles. Karin Attwood is one of the trustees who look after the
Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire, UK. Karin told me she hoped their
erosion problem was only caused by the sheer volume of people who visit
her megalithic site, but she feared some of the damage might have been
vandalism caused by souvenir-takers. Some visitors don’t realize it’s
not OK to pocket a stone or a small scoop of soil from sacred sites, but
in fact it’s against the law in most countries. It also creates
very bad karma.
 At Homolovi State Park in Arizona, park ranger Karen Berggren showed me
a letter she received from a man who was mailing back some ancient Hopi
pottery fragments he had stolen. “I’m sorry I was ignorant and stupid,”
he wrote. “I should have known I was robbing the Hopi culture.” The man
detailed how he was “haunted.” Three times each night, his bedroom door
would open and shut by itself. He desperately hoped that returning the
artifacts would remove the “curse” that was causing him to feel so
ashamed. This was not an isolated case. Not only had the Homolovi park
office received other, similar letters, but also rangers in two other
Arizona parks told me they regularly get rocks and pottery fragments
mailed back by remorseful thieves suffering from bad karma.
Souvenir theft is not the only way sacred sites are damaged. Offerings
left by well-meaning visitors can be even more harmful. West Kennett
Long Barrow, near Stonehenge, is one of the world’s oldest monuments and
part of a World Heritage Site. In 1995, Clare Prout was outraged when
she read that the National Trust was hiring security guards to regulate
access to the barrow—until she visited the site and saw the damage.
Stones that had been brought to West Kennett 5,000 years ago were being
destroyed by the heat of candles. Chalk symbols had been drawn over the
greasy black candle soot. On the ground was decaying fruit, noisy with
flies. Pagans had been performing religious rites there. Clare said, “I
left feeling that the best course of management would be to put up an
electronic fence and a pack of Dobermans around it.”
What Clare actually did was help found the London-based organization,
Save Our Sacred Sites. “I’m a Pagan,” Clare said. “I try to honour the
land, perceiving it as a sacred and sentient creature. We need to learn
new and less damaging ways of living with these delicate and vulnerable
sites. At the same time, the managers of sites have got to come to terms
with the fact that a large and growing percentage of the population view
ancient monuments as places of worship.”
 Clare and her organization recommend that anyone who visits a sacred
site leave no trace of their visit, and that means no tangible
offerings. “If our intention is to show respect and leave something of
value,” she suggests, “could we not water the trees in summer or clean
up the site? We have no right to leave offerings. It is arrogant to
think otherwise. As people who profess to care for sacred sites, we have
a responsibility to them, and to those generations who will want to
visit after we are dead and gone. Either we do everything we can to keep
the sites pristine or they will fail. That’s the simple choice.”
Although Clare didn’t specifically mention it, I’m sure she would agree
with me that the practice of burying crystals or any other foreign
stones should also be forbidden. The fact that someone may have a dream
telling them to “heal the planet” does not give them license to
re-design ancient stone circles.
During
medieval times, there were 27 rules of behaviour for spiritual travelers
to follow. These included: “No pilgrim ought to wander alone about the
holy places without a Saracen guide ... The pilgrim should be aware of
stepping over the sepulchers of the Saracens ... Let the pilgrims beware
of chipping off fragments from the Holy Sepulchers, and spoiling the
hewn stones thereof ... Pilgrims must be aware of laughing together as
they walk about Jerusalem to see the holy places, but they must be grave
and devout...”
If you’re
thinking about doing any sacred travel, I recommend you first read The
Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau, from which the above quote was
taken. Not only does Cousineau offer excellent suggestions on how to get
the most from your trip, but he also provides useful exercises to help
you prepare for your journey.
Robert Scheer is a freelance writer who specializes in spiritual travel
to sacred places. His email address is
powertrips@canada.com.
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