I don't like taking credit for other people's stuff, so I reckon it's time I said where I found the symbol above. It isn't some underground sign representing the cult of the Hare and we don't gather naked at night to vacantly stare up at the moon while making a humming noise. In fact I copied the symbol from the band called Ring.
Way back in the mid 1980s I bought a copy of their album, O De Dun Dun. Ring's music came like a breath of fresh. They represented a bubbling of energy in the underground which gave us some hope beyond the tedium of impending court cases and the doom and gloom of the time.
I especially liked a symbol which turned up in the sleeve notes, that of the triangle embraced by a cup. The cup itself looked more like an exaggerated moon crescent. I liked the Ring symbol and its bright irreverence compared to much of the drab (anti-war) symbolism of the time. I bet even Ring themselves couldn't explain it, so it leant itself well to mystery and magic. Several people copied my own versions for graffiti or decoration and would always ask me, 'Yeah, but do do you know what it means?'
Twenty years later and I used it again, first in the article on the Argyll Serpent Mound. (I suppose I must have been attracted unconsciously to its similarity to the cupping stone which celebrates the rising sun of the Equinox - Bright Carvings.) And then again in the new articles page for decoration. I hope you like the symbol, but I've no idea what it means.
Back with Ring I recently MP3ed their cassette album and it sounds just as fresh as ever. Tracks like The Unavoidable Non Event had an upbeat, enchanting trance quality that went beyond the gentle psychedelia of other festival bands.
I had one funny moment with the album back in 1986 which was a little spooky. I'd just had some photos developed and was sitting going through them with a friend. He turned up in one photo getting carted off by the police. This was at an eviction of a Christian peace camp which we'd turned up at to give moral support. So there was my friend Mark, surrounded by police grappling him by his arms and legs - oooer vicar. A book was precariously sticking out of his pocket about to fall - it was The Sane Society by Erich Fromm. We saw the book's title in the photo and we laughed. (Both peace camps were sat outside Faslane nuclear base, home of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction*). Then we both said, 'The sane society...I'm not mad it's the rest of the world' and cracked up giggling. It's the title to one of Ring's best songs.
'Follow the light and be yourself
Follow the light and be yourself
Follow the light and be yourself
I'm not mad, it's the rest of the world...'So this page is my 'thank you' to Ring for their groovy symbol. I never did get to hear the second album, but according to themselves, the first album was their best. Click here for the only current web guide to Ring...
*Notes - strangely some young whipper snappers don't know what this meant, as they were born after the Cold War. The politics of MAD was based on the idea that nuclear bombs are a really good thing to have because no one in their right mind would be crazy enough to fire them. If you think that's strange, puppy me lad, try explaining the shenanigans of WMD to a young teenager in 20 years time : )
I can't remember who that is living in the wire in the photo above, but it's the only old peace camp photo on my hard drive. Weren't witches once referred to as hedge sitters...?
