Knowledge of the Ancients as opposed to Wisdom of the Ancients has therefore been shown as different. There is not a neat available definition of Knowledge of the Ancients, nor of Ancient Knowledge, probably because knowledge is self explanatory. Knowledge of the Ancients and Ancient Knowledge, they hang together around Knowledge as opposed to Wisdom, and Ancient Knowledge is the general term for knowledge passed down through generations. Knowledge, generations, these words are all related to human and societal practices over genetic millennia or centuries at least, for it to become knowledge.
For the purpose of this purely pagan blog this is good, because humans habit in, or inhabit, on an Earth based existence, and more than that, their generations before have gained their knowledge from centuries and millennia on the same region of land, hence the knowledge, because knowledge comes from observing the land, the the majestic rising and setting of Helios overhead. It does not actually matter who goes around who, but we know that it is Earth which spins around Helios, but either way, knowledge is needed for Earth based existence. Ancient Knowledge is Knowledge on and of the land, for survival basically.
So Knowledge of the Ancients, which is ancient, is by a human and yet it is what is known which is that useful knowledge. It is and it is not paradoxical. It is both. Pliny the Elder was a human, yet it is his astonishing depth and breadth of geography, natural history, minerals and metals, ethnography and societal practices in the lands around the Roman Empire, both within and outside its frontiers which is the knowledge and information. He is no longer in physical, but the knowledge he imparted does remain. And because knowledge is based on fact, or physical and material reality (which this blog does include psychic phenomena because it is factual and real) how can Pliny the Elder connect with British farming and the Iran oil disruption chaos of 2026?
In Pliny’s day, the first century CE, he would not now know what we are talking about if we said oil disruption due to American aggression in Iran. Pliny in his wide travels, observation, enquiry and knowledge might well have known of Iran, or Iranshahr, as the natives of the region called themselves. He would well have known the Persians, as called by Greeks and Romans, a constant presence and worry to successive Emperors on the eastern borders.
Pliny the Elder, born in Italy into the new and optomistic Roman Empire and dying in the eruption of Vesuvius 79CE, when in his official capacity and acting with the bravery which men of service possess, going ashore to enquire of the situation and to reassure terrified citizens. The eruption of Vesuvius was way bigger than any human knowledge, plans, intention, ability, or biology, and a man of great cognitive capacity, experience and observation died along with all other biology, as all biology does under superior forces of Earth or Helios.
In the unfortunate loss of his many other works, the Natural History remains, and contains a vast range of knowledge, knowledge, not wisdom. Pliny in Book XVII, on Aboriculture, states how the tribes of Britain and Gaul use seaweed as fertilizer and how effective this is. Gaul, modern day France, has a very, very long coastline. Britain, with our complicated geography has an even longer coastline, and therefore even more seaweed.
In 2026, these few months into the year and the global disruption from the unexpected rush to war over no one is quite sure what, other than the USA is going in hard to a completely different geographical and cultural region, and way of ‘doing business,’ several nutshells have stood out loud and clear. Well, to this writer anyway. One is the stated anxiety within the ‘UK’ that British farming will soon be in crisis because it cannot get the fertilizers needed to …. fertilize the farming land of Britain. Was there ever such a strange juxtaposition?
It is about 2,000 years since Pliny the Elder put together his comprehensive Historia Naturalis, compiling the intricacies of Ancient Knowledge of human and land. The completeness of human on land, survival over seasons and cycles, years and years, going into 100s, going into millennia, it is a wondrous thing. And Pliny certainly thought so.
In this nutshell of British farming and the oil crisis in Iran, if this were to be explained to someone like Pliny of how it came to be seen as a problem, what would we say? All the centuries through to somewhere around 1815 when trade had opened up and cheaper imports were available, still of the sea kelp and other seaweed to reduce down for that potash and soda ash, to nutrient rich, but cheaper, British farms used what was plentifully available, and from the ancient knowledge of those who were born, lived, and worked the land and shorelines. That is less than 200 years ago.
Fast forward another 100 years, and the new world of ‘science,’ and the departure from the real facts of life, the logical way of living, and the cheap, synthetic, fake, chemical fertilizers were offered as an alternative. The devil incarnate. To manufacture the phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen based fertilizers, which sound so natural but are not, requires the use of fossil fuels, oil and natural gas. The chemical process is way above this writer’s ken, and a nutshell does not have space to contain the chemical formulas, mining extraction processes, all the heavy equipment used to create those cheap synthetic chemical fertilizers. How it is all extracted, formulated into a synthetic and toxic fertilizer, shipped to the ‘UK’, and poured onto the land must be a very complicated and energy consuming process. But the end point is cheaper and easier. But than what we ask?
It is a surprise at finding there is any link at all between British farmland and Iran. Under common sense, if the same materials are still in situ around the same coastlines of Britain as Pliny wrote of 2,000 years ago, and which had existed for at least another 7,000 years before after the melting of the last Ice Age, and the Ancient Knowledge holding as true as ever had been, why is there any crisis in Britain?
Why has leadership in Britain allowed such a divergence? Why can the government not communicate with all coastal County Councils, including Cornwall (who is not devolved and why not?), Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to ask who still hold this Ancient Knowledge? There must be a few crofters on the far reaches of Western Isles and Scotland who still live by traditional methods. Why are government officials not hot footing it out to find those people, to ask them, to look to common sense and gratitude in the abundance which lies around us? Why is there not a module inserted into the curriculum of all secondary age pupils on which seaweeds to recognise, how to pick, how to reduce down, how to spread on the land? In the sad facts of State -v- biology in the ‘UK’, the chaos caused in Iran does not have a clearer focus than this. Probably the government has started a billion pound research programme, which will take 10 years, and never deliver (the information, not the seaweed to fertilizer). Meanwhile, ancient cultures retain their link over millennia of old to young, young become old, pass old to young, and if anything this crisis is showing, it is who has the right to opinionate, and who doesn’t.