Genius Loci - Spirit of place
The term Genius Loci can be translated as Spirit of place and is often taken to mean that indefinable thing about a place that makes it special. However it has another, more traditional, meaning; the God or Goddess of the place. It is this meaning that we are starting to lose site of in our modern world.Our ancestors felt that many places were special; places where the veil between the worlds was thinner than normal for example or places that had their own ‘spirit’, God or Goddess. Often natural springs, rivers or woodland clearings were felt to be these special places and each were often invested with a god or more often goddess of its own. Naturally these places would have been known locally and would have been very special but unfortunately knowledge of only a very few have come down to us today.
One famous and well documented example is that of the City of Bath. Here the hot spring that made the location so attractive to the Romans was also seen as a special place with its own Goddess by the existing inhabitants of the region. The locals had named the Goddess of the spring ‘Sulis’ . "Sul" is Celtic for "sun" and "eye" and she is thought to be a sun Goddess. As even then the spring was known to have the power to heal then obviously the Goddess Sulis was associated will that healing power and Sulis became associated with Illness and Wellness as well.
The Romans on taking over the area also recognised the importance of the Goddess of the place and associated the springs with the Goddess Minerva. Minerva however was seen as the Goddess of wisdom, she was the Roman view of Athena in fact, rather than of healing but the fact that they associated such an important Goddess with the place shows its importance and that the Romans understood that importance and respected it.
Another less well known example of the spirit of place is that of Sabrina the spirit of the river Severn. The Romans called the river ‘Sabrina Fluvius’ and a number of stories surround the river and its naming.
Perhaps the best documented story is that of Geoffrey of Monmouth's quasi-historical “Histories of the Kings of Britain” and many believe it to be authentic folklore or mythology. However another legend tells a different story where political intrigue and personal infidelity lead to the Daughter of the then ruler of England being thrown into the river. The river was named after that daughter Sabre (also called Sabrina in the Romanised form).
some indications that the Neolithic peoples also felt this spirit of place as from the Neolithic bog under Somerset's Bell Track comes a wooden idol, a goddess offered votively to the swamp to protect the travellers overhead from its murky depths and malevolent forces.
The crudely carved offering is at total variance with the woodmanship of the track way itself, and it is possible that it had been brought from a sacred woodland many miles away that had been left to the gods.
The truth will of course never be known but the fact that these legends grow up around the river gives us a good indication that it was seen as one of these special places and invested with a sprit of its own well before the Romans arrived.
So the next time you are out and about and you feel that a place, a spring or brook or clearing in the forest, has a sprit all of its own or that you are not alone then maybe the reason is that the Genius Loci is still there.
Maybe a few words or thoughts directed to that sprit might be in order, a word of thanks or respect; after all it might have been a long time since anybody last acknowledged it!