Sometimes a book finds you just at the right moment in the right place when you are not even searching for anything in that specific field. Apart from the sheer pleasure of spending an afternoon in a nice bookstore, this kind of chance encounter is why we still need to support our local shops and visit them regularly. There were many such finds during my recent trip in the UK, but one of the best and most important of them was the book I want to write about here.

“Weird Walk: Wanderings and Wonderings through the British Ritual Year” is a book born from the eponymous zine devoted to the practice of visiting sacred, strange and, well, weird sites across the British Isles. Not only did it reignite my interest in zines and independent publishing, but of course pointed me to a new direction in my travels around England and Scotland. I had some vague ideas of visiting Stonehenge or maybe another one of “stone circles” of which I had a very rough understanding too. “Weird Walk” did not present me with a map of places to see and that was not the goal of its creators, but it did something better. It gave me a method of exploration that is applicable far beyond Britain and its religious or archeological practices. 

The writers consciously use the term “weird” not just in its modern meaning of something strange, supernatural and perhaps a bit crazy, but also in its original etymological root. “Wyrd” is fate, fortune and destiny and so there is a way to interpret the name “Weird Walk” as a journey through your fate or an exercise in finding your destiny. That practice is achieved by re-connecting with the places that have special meaning for the communities living nearby whose fate is linked to these locations through rituals, festivals or just occasional visits. Not the least important here is that the book is organised by months of the calendar year and so another aspect here is grounding in the planetary cycles and nature. 

Of course, the book tells about the visits to Stonehenge, and Cerne Abbas Giant, and Avebury, but there are so many other places I have never heard about. In fact one of the explicit messages of the book is that, perhaps, these sacred, weird places exist everywhere. They just need what the authors call “re-enchantment”. Many practices and rituals seen now as “traditional” have after all very short history or have been constructed recently on purpose. And that is fine. Sometimes we follow the traditions that have been passed on to us hundreds of years ago and sometimes we need to re-discover the significance of the landscape we find ourselves in. The search for meaning is eternal and must never stop. Curiously, this corresponds with what I read about in the latest book by Alan Moore (which I also bought in London!). The afterword to his novel “I Hear A New World” is a manifesto for the work of this kind. As he puts it, “all that is required of us is that we do the necessary work of researching, and remembering, and re-enchanting”, and he sees this work as vital to our existence. 

And so immediately, I started my research and already learned about so many unique and weird locations here in Japan! Strangely shaped Ishi-no Hoden (seriously, just look at it), five-meter high Sanshuen menhir and recently discovered Kanayma solar calendar and observatory that is more than five thousand years old. Not to mention lots of my favorite shrines with sacred trees and stones, the natural hot spring pools and buddhas carved in the mountains. Japan is no stranger to the re-enchantment and there is some work here to be done that I can hopefully contribute to.