About me…

I hate these sorta things to be honest, but many people have suggested I should give a brief overview of misself, so here it is!

When I were a lad…

Born of Romany gypsy stock, according to those who know me, I’m the leading prehistorian for Ilkley Moor and the Rombald’s Moor complex, West Yorkshire, England. They may be right… I live amidst a library of some 5000 books and a coupla thousand journals on the archaeology, folklore & local history of the northern counties of the British Isles (amongst other things), and when I’m not studying or causing trouble I like to get out and about wandering hills and moors, off-path, in search of ancient sites, curious herbs and mythic histories. Most recently I was honoured to receive the accolade of being named “the Max Keiser of megaliths and rock art” by my old friend Richard Hirst – one of the best compliments I’ve ever received!  Over the years I’ve been described invariably as a lunatic, a fruitbat, a tosser, Barmy Bennett, a genius, a poet, an arrogant bastard, The Gazelle, a hermit, guru – along with “the Very Irreverent Paul Bennett” (as author and publisher Bob Trubshaw once called me); “an old Earth shaman if ever I saw one!” by the great Paul Devereux; aswell as an “intrepid megalithic explorer” by the honorable Aubrey Burl. It’s a disease I’ve had over many incarnations I think!

Waking up one morning beneath these roots

In my natural habitat, somewhere in the hills

In this lifetime I have walked, explored and studied the archaeology, folklore, history and mythic ideas underscoring megaliths and their compatriots for more than 40 years. It’s something of an obsession that’s been with me since I started venturing onto Ilkley Moor as a 10-year old, looking for cup-and-ring stones, tombs and stone circles. I was up there every weekend and most school holidays, in all weathers (storms, blizzards, fog – each with their own feel), venturing further afield in search of the same things as I got older. The illness has always been with me. Although I asked regional archaeologists for help in my early years, I was told in a quite dismissive way when I was young that “there was no point enquiring about cup-and-rings” as “they were unworthy of study.” It wasn’t an attitude I agreed with, but it taught me a lot about the manners of archaeologists and their rather limited pathways…

On psilocybin

Very stoned indeed

I also spent those same early years mixing up (in a somewhat confused way) a variety of my own spontaneous transpersonal experiences (which you never really understand at the time) with the ancient sites that I was exploring. Such encounters are what gave rise to my focus on folklore and Fortean phenomena – which were relevant in terms of feeding and nurturing the unconscious organic relationship with the environment in which I played. It wasn’t until I started an extensive use of psilocybin and other hallucinogens at the end of my teens that many of the seemingly extraneous ingredients achieved greater focus. Many old beliefs and intellectual systems showed themselves up for what they were: limited egocentric pathways that befalls us in all our juvenile development. These psychedelic tools opened doors to subjects I previously thought had no relevance to megalithic sites: archaeology had its necessary partner ‘anthropology’ added as a vital necessity; and then comparative religion – in particular, the religion of ‘primitive’ peoples (although the word ‘religion’ is as inept as the term ‘primitive’ in this arena). These academic regions give some of the folklore motifs commonly found at ancient sites very clear perspectives, showing exactly what some of these otherwise abstract tales represent.

On Ilkley Moor wi’ brick

Amidst this period I edited a small Fortean mag called Brigantia, then an earth-mystery magazine called Earth. I then got round to writing a lengthy booklet called Circles, Standing Stones & Legendary Rocks of West Yorkshire, which was followed a few years later (when I was living at the Rollright Stones) by The Old Stones of Rollright and District — which was co-authored by the great local Thespian, Thomas Wilson. I also wrote a small work called The Twelve Apostles Stone Circle, Ilkley Moor (recently updated), before my book The Old Stones of Elmet was published, in which the internationally renowned archaeologist Prof. Aubrey Burl wrote the Foreword (I was hugely pleased! Huge thanks again Aubrey!). My most recent works have been holy wells surveys of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and a companion volume on Stirling and District is soon to be finished. Hopefully, before too long, I’ll get round to publishing the immense Holy Wells of West Yorkshire: the largest survey of its kind ever written. I have numerous other unpublished manuscripts awaiting publication – but don’t expect ‘em to appear too soon. Thanks to being a spazmo, I have a great tendency towards apathy and imagine much of my work will never see the light of day,  Soz…

Homo-religiosus about to climb a waterfall

My primary interests today still concern the prehistoric rock art, neolithic and Bronze Age remains of Scotland and northern England and the nature of these remains. These ancient sites and the myths underscoring them are an integral part of what I am, not simply aspects of some “job” that I do within the confines of some clock.  I actively participate in a natural animistic engagement with such places, as our ancestors always did, enabling a more direct and simple approach to standing stones, cup-and-rings, old wells, streams, trees and the living cosmos as a whole. My engagement in these fields of study is exemplified by what Mircea Eliade termed homo religiosus — as contrasted with homo profanus — living and engaging in as simple a way as possible with the organic nature of our subject, at the same time utilizing the tools of data and imagery (the bedrock of homo profanus) to elicit clearer and more defined perspectives on that which we explore.

As a result of all this, I have developed a great admiration for real natural enquirers, however mad others may deem them! Without such people the world would not grow, nor discoveries be made. Those people with spirit and energy; those who know the world beyond the object-subject dichotomy – and not depleted by the mass of psychological vampires that infest the world in which we strive to live and grow* – are the vitality behind movement and development. Long may they keep coming through…

Crossing this giant

…readying to climb

Although I was born and bred in Yorkshire, I was fortunate to move to the edges of the Scottish mountains a few years ago.  The mountains and the wilderness are, in truth, my greatest inspiration.  They are the source of all nourishment and spirituality, in every one of Her cloaks: come blizzards, hurricane, deep night, rain and mist.  Nature is, and always has been, my finest partner.  I’ve had an adoration of climbing waterfalls, olde trees, vivid mosses and the forgotten skins of endless lichens since I was a child.  These simple elements are integrally tied into my own cosmos as much as that of the megalithic world when our ancestors lived and breathed the animistic realism binding them to the world as it is: a relationship that most modern people have all but forgotten…

I am available to do excellent guided walks to the prehistoric archaeological and sacred sites in Yorkshire, England and Perthshire in Scotland: the standing stones, stone circles, rock art, settlements and ancient tombs – with multidisciplinary overtones. The best guided walks where you will get to visit most sites are those I do on Ilkley Moor – and no one else even comes close to the exceptionally broad knowledge imparted on such walks. I am also available to do talks and lectures, and my specialised fields are:

Holy Wells & Sacred Springs of Yorkshire
Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology of West Yorkshire
Prehistoric rock art of Yorkshire
Rombald’s Moor: Folklore & Archaeology
The Rollright Stones: Folklore & Archaeology
Transpersonal psychology and shamanism

Email me at megalithix@yandex.com if you are interested in a day’s walk with a small group, or have need for a speaker on the subjects above.

Jon Tilleard

* On the down-side of things, I’ve lost all tolerance of puritanical reductionists (idiots), autocrats, politicians, addicts (of sex, drugs, money, power, etc), capitalists, intellectual masturbators, the Kleptocracy and Born-Again religious followers – all of whom are deviant lost zealots in their relative ways. These seemingly disparate groups of people have each abrogated themselves from their own subjectivity and, where they can, cull others into and under their delusional boughs, draining dreamers, children and natural scientists of their spirit. These dangerous people who view the world as inorganic, lifeless, as a tool for the use of men, are fucked-up at their very roots. The Himalayan people call such individuals ‘dundro‘ – the lost and empty human, unable to even feel the world that feeds their lungs.

Favourite Authors:

Katherine Briggs, Aubrey Burl, Paul Davies, Paul Devereux, Mircea Eliade, Mrs M. Grieve, Stanislav Grof, Phil Hine, John Keel, T.C. Lethbridge, John Lilly, John Michell, Reginald Ray, Rupert Sheldrake, Harry Speight, Thomas Szasz, Charles Tart, Chogyam Trungpa, W.B. Yeats…

Favourite Films:

Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Apocalypse Now, Apocalypto, At Play in the Fields of the Lord,  Avalokiteshvara, Black Robe, Borat, Cheech & Chong, District 9, Excalibur, Fight Club, Goodfellas, Hitler, Hound of the Baskervilles (Peter Cook & Dudley Moore), Ip Man (1-4), Journey to the West, Kundun, La Cage Aux Folles, Last Temptation of Christ, Leon, Life of Brian, Little Buddha, Lord of the Rings, The Magic Christian, Manchurian Candidate, The Matrix, Milarepa, The Mission, Mongol, Mulan, Predator, Rabbit Proof Fence, Ran, Red Cliff, The Revenant, Rob Roy, Shaolin (2011), Star Trek, Whale Rider, Wicker Man (1973), Withnail and I, Wolf Totem…

Favourite Music:

Harold Budd, Ry Cooder, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Lisa Gerrard, Hevia, Roy Harper, Detlef Keller, Annie Lennox, Ennio Morricone, Pink Floyd, Denez Prigent, Sparks, Klaus Schulze, Ed Tangent, Throbbing Gristle, T.Rex, Vangelis, Wagner, Roger Waters, Hans Zimmer…

Other Influences:

altered states of consciousness, astrophysics, Brian Clough, Buddhism, Bugs Bunny, Calvin & Hobbes, cartography, death, a ‘Delicate Heart of Thunder’, Albert Einstein, Fawlty Towers, football, Game of Thrones, herbalism, isolation, Max Keiser, Bernard Manning, occultism, place-names, psilocybin, quantum physics, Rombalds Moor, Naomi Ross, sex, shamanism, Taoism, thunderstorms, Jon Tilleard, waterfalls, wilderness…