THE BROCH - SYMBOL & PLACE

In trying to understand just what a broch might have been, structures of similar forms in other places and cultures have been reviewed. The proposition adopts the catchphrase of Modernism, 'form follows function,' coined by Louis Sullivan, and develops the theme that similar forms might have the same rational functions. So it has been that we have The Desert Broch and The Chinese Broch - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-desert-broch-ksar-de-draa.html and https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-chinese-broch-hakka-tulou.html - ideas developed from the various circular forms that have appeared from time to time and have stimulated one's interest.

It was a segment in Griff's Canadian Adventure that caught one's attention this time, not with a circular structure; it was the section of the traditional longhouse that aroused one's curiosity. One was intrigued by the occupancy and use of the various levels accommodating this ancient way of life that was centred around an axial array of fireplaces - one for every two families. One immediately thought of the broch section that indicated levels around an open core with a central fireplace below.

The longhouse was indeed long; it accommodated multiple families in a timber-framed structure clad with sheets of bark sewn on, layered as shingles. The framing formed three ledges on each side of a central isle - ground with two above -  and was shaped to create a semi-circular roof form. The commentary that accompanied the images explained that this was a matriarchal society; the husband moved in once married: the longhouse was shared by many families.

The voice-over continued, noting that the lower level at the ground was for firewood that kept the fires going 24/7; the next ledge was for sleeping and general living purposes; the upper level was for the storage of food. This level was uninhabitable because of the smoke from the fires. It was explained that the longhouse was a completely sealed space; the smoke collected in these upper levels and deterred pests as it preserved the food. Other sources record that the longhouse, that can be over 90 metres in length, had openings in the top of the roof to let the smoke out. This discrepancy makes little difference to the notion that sees the upper space of the longhouse as being uninhabitable; it would still have been very smoky, acting something like the smoke chamber of the typical open fireplace, at the base of the flue.

One wondered: might the levels of the broch have been used similarly? One pondered the possibility of the lower entry level being for firewood/peat, and other working/wet stores, with a central fire burning 24/7. The argument for this area not being a byre has been put previously. The notion that this is a 'wet' area comes from it's function as an entry space, a transitional zone, as well as the understanding of the movement of moisture: up from the ground; through the external wall - there is no cavity at this level; and down from the outer 'wet' skin of the twin walls above.

This is one of the very few illustrations to suggest framing above a wet area;

perhaps there is too much framing?

One could further hypothesize that the upper levels over this space, in the 'dry' areas, could have been used for food storage, with the smoke acting likewise both as a deterrent and a preservative. This idea would involve a sealed cap to these storage levels to contain the smoke. The idea of the uppermost 'chapel' accessed by the intramural stair^^ offers this opportunity to seal off the stores, leaving the smoke to percolate out through the openings in the inside wall and eventually through the drystone, external wall. The smoke from a fire in the 'chapel,' if there was one, could percolate through the thatched roof as it did in the blackhouse, keeping vermin out.

This model of functional occupancy hypothesizes a lower, ground level, general purpose 'wet' space, a working, in-between area that acted as a foyer too. Above this, on the number of levels required by the village - the proposition suggested here is that brochs could have been constructed in stages as cathedrals were - the store areas were suffused in smoke and accessed by ladders from the foyer below.

Diagram for possible staged development of the broch.

This is one of the few illustrations to suggest an upper communal space.

Above these levels, the 'chapel' space has been proposed, an isolated communal area accessed from the same foyer area by the intramural stair. This layering of the broch functions establishes a base of the everyday, with the less-accessed storage areas above to suit needs, and the more private 'chapel' above this again.

One could envisage this diagram as having a core axis mundi, with the base everyday layer transitioning up to the more isolated and less-frequented storage spaces providing the general sustenance for life, with the spiritual layer over this, providing the emotional sustenance. Above this, one might hypothesize a zone for god, or gods, or spirits.

Using the notion that everything in this cosmic world has its opposite, one might hypothesize a well for water as a lower sustenance level, and the underworld below this again, the home of other spirits.

Can a broch be seen as the wheel of life?

Can the intramural stair be seen as the path; the spiritual way?

The diagram can be seen to be something like the chakras in yoga, and the layers of cosmic understanding in other creeds, parallels that could draw more subtle concepts and analogies; c.f. the core setout reference of the structure and it's possible meanings: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/more-on-building-brochs-thinking-doodles.html. One has to remember that early man was not schizophrenic when it came to emotional understandings and the relationship with the world. He was 'at one,' with things exoteric, all carrying an equivalent, but esoteric meaning. Reality and mystery were intertwined, integrally.+

Given this, one could see the broch as a living example of the cosmos, a model of the universe, incorporating not only the everyday, but also things more exotic and subtle.* Here one can see the role of the intramural stair holding a complex significance. Linking the everyday to the world of the gods, the narrow, dark stair could be seen as the testing 'way' both in reality and as symbol. The stair rises from the everyday, bypassing the physical sustenance in reality and symbolically along the 'narrow path of righteousness,' ignoring the temptations of life as it moves to the spiritual sustenance where more symbols illuminate beliefs and hold meaning in place at the centre of the world, that is the same core of the everyday spaces below and around. We have to remember that the images of the stairs that we see today are those of relics seen in a different light.

Mousa broch.

Dun Troddan.

Midhowe intramural stair.

All broch activities cluster around and are joined by the same centre, the axis mundi, with an upward and downward movement. Thinking about the inversion, one has to ask about the underworld and the dead. How did this era handle death? Might the well have been the entry to the underworld? Could the dead have been interred in the lower level of the broch, with the bones eventually being moved to an ossuary? Here one thinks of the archaeological finds on Orkney that suggested the dead were managed in this manner. Could the recesses in the base of the broch have been something like those in Maes Howe? More needs to be known about this, but something significant must have happened with the dead. Were there burial grounds outside the village precinct?

A cosmic circumambulation.

While these hypotheses need more research, the model does offer a rich and coherent concept for understanding broch functions both as factual matters and as things spiritual; we can see how the broch might be vital and meaningful, an essential place for the community's well-being, both in the everyday and spiritually. The right angle is not just an abstraction. It is the human being itself in nature.* Is the broch that nexus between 'the human being itself' and 'nature'? This symbolic interpretation of the broch offers a cohesive role for a place of communal importance and significance, with a demanding dominance because of this fact alone, rather than as an expression of brazen power as broch researchers like to explain. The display of intimidating power might be there, but it can be seen to arise from the raw necessities of being rather than as some self-conscious, self-centred, proudly threatening display.

One discards the notion of a lord-and-serfs relationship, with the 'lord' somehow occupying the pride of place in the broch, while the serfs suffer, squashed and submissive in their hovels. Rather this hypothesis suggests a more democratic, co-operative community that might operate somewhat like a monastic enterprise.^

Broch of Gurness

At the heart of this understanding lies notions of spirituality. To test these thoughts and ideas, more needs to be known about the emotional life of these times. What can be noted is that this interpretation goes further in accommodating the notion of wholeness that those in older times shared with nature, where there was a rich ground of subtle experience that was ingrained in everyday symbolism, revealed in things ordinary.# It is really just too easy for the analytic mind to suppose broch dwellers were sceptics like us; and just as easy for rational research, that demands facts as proof, to acknowledge or consider only matters 'real and measurable.'

The basic proposition has been taken from Ananda Coomaraswamy: that we can only truly understand other times and their works through the eyes, ideas, and emotions of those who lived in these times: this remains our challenge. By seeking out possible clues as parallels in forms and functions in other societies, we are hopefully avoiding our own personal interpretations of how we think a broch could have been. We are, at the very least, opening ourselves to realities lived by others, knowing that, at the core of things, man is basically the same.

Clachtoll broch.

So we have a composite interpretation drawn from older sources and new, thoughtful interpretations that seek to avoid the known traps of personal invention. It was Coomaraswamy who noted the prevalence of egocentric, personal creations drawn from one's own experiences and promoted as 'self-expression,' as being misguided distractions, distortions, rather than anything informative or cleverly 'creative.' Real meaning has roots in tradition, its necessity; in the transmission of origins rather than being cleverly 'original' as in being 'bespoke.' So it is that we need to look for levels of braided meaning with roots in reality and mystery, in our broch explorations: this is a start.

Dun Troddan intramural stair.

Muness Broch

# 

As an example of the integration of meaning in everyday objects, one can use Aldo can Eyck's example given in Team 10 Primer, edited by Alison Smithson, Studio Vista, London, 1964: the Dogon basket. This functional item was made circular at the top, transitioning to a square base, being symbolic of the cosmos and earth held in one practical piece of homely craft made for everyday use. It offered a constant reminder of heaven and earth to the user. Tradition is about remembrance as well as transmission: the memory of origins. One needs to see the broch world through this ordinary, poetic complexity rather than through our own cleverly efficient eyes.

“To make presences emerge in the built environment (architecture) that evoke emotions, essential factors in the phenomenon of poetry.”

Le Corbusier’s Hands André Wogenscky MIT 2006, p.77

+

Note on brochs: This was an era when everything was religious; there was no division between the secular and the sacred. The great irony with the recognition of this state of affairs is that broch research might acknowledge this fact, and then promptly ignore it.

The 'chapel' space located on the top of the broch would have located this most important of spaces in the most centrally remote part of the community. The Intramural stair was the direct connection, the beginning of the Circumambulation, the processional way that led directly to the sacred place from the everyday that was embraced by this gesture of worship: see THE BROCH - ITS INTRAMURAL STAIR.^^

For 3D digital model of Mousa Broch, see: https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2019/10/getting-measure-brochs/

The typical understanding of what a broch is is included in this link:

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Brochs-the-Tallest-Prehistoric-Buildings-in-Britain/#:~:text=Brochs%20are%20mysterious%20features%20of,brochs%20once%20existed%20across%20Scotland.

For a broad summary of broch matters and the references, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broch

For more on brochs. see;

https://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/brochs/brochs_architecture.htm

*

NOTE:

Sound & Form

‘Music is not the opposite of silence but its complement. When Indians play music, they hide because they know that music, even more dangerously than language, leaves them exposed.’

Le Corbusier’s Hands André Wogenscky MIT 2006, p.75.

One has to wonder, not only about the language of the broch era, but also its music, and how the broch dwellers responded to this – and where; in what context? Was music considered to be ‘dangerous’? What sounds emanated from the broch?

The right angle is human intelligence bringing space toward the vertical line dedicated by weight, and toward the horizontal plane along which our eyes move and within which they settle in their search for the infinite. It is the axis of all things, the reference without which we cannot locate anything, especially ourselves. It is the order toward which our thinking process brings all natural forms that are unpredictable, random, and sometimes chaotic. It is the geometrical order in relation to which we look at the world and we think.

The right angle is not just an abstraction. It is the human being itself in nature.

Le Corbusier’s Hands André Wogenscky MIT 2006, p.84

Did the broch order the lives of the times? Was it the conceptual element that located man in nature? Was it the ‘right angle,’ the axis mundi - human intelligence bringing space toward the vertical line dedicated by weight, and toward the horizontal plane along which our eyes move and within which they settle in their search for the infinite?

^

One only has to read about the highland clearances to realise that the 'simple' crofters were highly intelligent and articulate people, not merely the cliché country yokels or village idiots.

^^

See also: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html

22 March 2023

NOTE:

Axis mundi

The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, columna cerului, center of the world), in religion or mythology, is the world center and/or the connection between Heaven and Earth. As the celestial pole and geographic pole, it expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The spot functions as the omphalos (navel), the world's point of beginning.

The image is mostly viewed as feminine, as it relates to center of the earth (perhaps like an umbilical providing nourishment). It may have the form of a natural object (a mountain, a tree, a vine, a stalkk, a column of smoke or fire) or a product of human manufacture (a staff, a tower, a ladder, a staircase, a maypole, a cross, a steeple, a rope, a totem pole, a pillar, a spire). Its’ proximity to heaven may carry implications that are chiefly religious (pagoda, temple mount, minaret, church) or secular (obelisk, lighthouse, rocket, skyscraper). The image appears in religious and secular contexts. The axis mundi symbol may be found in cultures utilizing shamanic practices or animist belief systems, in major world religions, and in technologically advanced "urban centers". In Mircea Eliade's opinion, "Every Microcosm, every inhabited region, has a Centre; that is to say, a place that is sacred above all."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_mundi

23 March 23

BROCH TEXTS

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-symbol-place.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/01/on-brochs-enigma-of-meaning-form.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-desert-broch-ksar-de-draa.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2012/07/mousa-broch.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-chinese-broch-hakka-tulou.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/building-brochs.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-architecture-shapes-and-moulds.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/09/brochs-thinking-scribbles.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-game-of-brochs.html

https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/more-on-building-brochs-thinking-doodles.html

26 MARCH 2023

NOTE

Religious experience

It is difficult today with our rational, scientific scepticism to have any idea of what might be called the ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ understanding of other times. While not seeking to pretend that Sufism might have any relationship to beliefs and practices of broch times, Islamic mysticism might help us touch on the depth and subtlety of things religious by way of example. Martin Lings has written on the subject, and points out that one should not pick and choose the preferred bits of different beliefs as a dilettante might.

We are not seeking to do this; we want to touch on an aspect of experience to show what can be involved in matters that have become alien to us. The quotes here have been taken from Martin Lings, What is Sufism? published by George Allen & Unwin, London, 1975:

p.64

‘It is Hidden in Its Own

Outward Manifestation wherein It doth appear

As Veil after Veil made to cover Its Glory.’

p.56

As an image of the primordial soul, the Seal of Solomon with its two triangles pointing in opposite directions figures an intense extroversion balanced - and dominated by – an intense introversion, the pull of the outer world being balanced by the pull of the Heart . . . and one of the functions of Heart-knowledge is to anticipate this regeneration by continually referring outward objects back to the inner realities they symbolise.

p.57

. . . the Book of Nature, the Primordial Revelation whose hieroglyphs are man and the animals, the forests and the fields, the mountains, seas and deserts, sun, moon and stars. One of the Qur’an’s most central teachings is: ‘Do not look on the things of this world as independent realities, for they are all in fact entirely dependent for their existence on the Hidden Treasure whose Glory they were created to reveal.’

 NOTE

3 APRIL 23

See also: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/04/shetland-dark.html

15 APRIL 23

See: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/04/belonging-architecture-broch-experience.html

3 MAY 2023

NOTE

We do need to try to get into the minds of ancient people if we are going to truly understand them and their buildings; but this is difficult: see -

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230428-the-puzzle-of-neanderthal-culture-and-aesthetics

The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

Getting into the minds of ancient people, never mind those of a different kind of human altogether, is one of the great challenges of archaeology. Ever since the first Neanderthal remains were identified in the 19^th Century, how they lived and what they thought has been a fundamental and evocative question motivating those who study them. Yet despite immense leaps in archaeology over the past 160 years, the answer remains complicated and sometimes problematic, partly because of our own preconceptions. 

10 Sept 2023

NOTE

Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn The Book of Certainty The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 2015.

p.21

But although today men are so far from the Paradise as to be almost beyond the reach of any reminder of it, the men of old were still near enough to be keenly aware of its loss; and indeed it is no exaggeration to say that the most of what the ancients have left behind them is stamped more or less clearly with the consideration of how a man might return to the Paradise and become once more the true man. It is for the sake of this return that the Lore of Certainty was given to man by means of the religions.

p.22

It is owing to the natural tendency of all earthly things towards degeneration that the proportion of those who follow the Path is much smaller in later than in earlier times.

1 OCTOBER 2023

NOTE

IS THE STAIR THE LADDER SYMBOL?

This is a brief note to follow up this thought. One has to ask if the intramural stair is a symbolic ladder, accessing other ‘higher’ worlds both literally and symbolically. As previously noted, this internal stair is likely to be the only one known to the broch inhabitants, thus holding a unique status just because of this. We are familiar with the concept of spiritual height with the ‘on high’ phrase alluding to heaven. The ladder symbolism reinforces the concept of the upper portion of the broch being a special, spiritual space/place.

Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn (Martin Lings), in The Book of Certainty, (The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 2015), writes about this symbolism and its significance:

p.38

What is true of earthly objects applies also to acts: an earthly act is the last of a hierarchy of corresponding shadows which spans the whole Universe. Figuratively speaking, if each series of corresponding shadows or reflections throughout the different worlds be likened to the series of the rungs of a ladder, an earthly act is the lowest rung, or rather as the support upon which rests the foot of the ladder, and to stand at the foot in upward aspiration is precisely what constitutes an act of remembrance in the sense of the word dhikr. The traveller may thus sanctify all his acts in seeking to remember, through them, the Divine Qualities in which they are rooted.

p.39

The ladder as a symbol of the true rite and all that this rite implies recalls the tree which is mentioned in he opening quotation as a symbol of the good word;

p.40

A profane book, on the contrary, has only one meaning and therefore no vertical dimension at all.