News Item: Druids Return to Stonehenge
Taliesin_2
shane@cais.com
Tue Jun 23 22:11:22 1998
Got this item from the Wasgington Post online site. Enjoy!*p**br*Druids Return to Stonehenge:Britain Opens Up Ancient Site for Holiest Rite*p*                  By T. R. Reid*br*                  Washington Post Foreign Service*br*                  Monday, June 22, 1998; Page A01 *p*     SALISBURY PLAIN, England, June 21—For Christians, it's either*br*Christmas or Easter. For Jews, it's Yom Kippur, perhaps, or Rosh*br*Hashanah. But if you happen to be a Druid, there's no question about the holiest day of the year: It's June 21, the summer solstice.*p*     And the holiest place on Earth for a Druid to celebrate the sacred sunrise of the solstice is Stonehenge, the 4-million-pound solar calendar erected here on the flinty plains of southern England 4,000 years ago by a group of Stone Age astronomers who had uncanny knowledge of celestial movements.*p*     This happy confluence of holy place and holy morning explained the smile of joy that spread across the bushy face of Archdruid Rollo Maughfling at 4:52 a.m. today. That was the moment when Maughfling and his fellow sun worshipers, gathered at the center of this ancient circle of stone slabs, saw the first copper gleam of dawn come peeking up from the east.*p*     "Happy solstice!" shouted the Archdruid, his crimson cape flying in the wind. "It's a great day to be a pagan."*p*     In response, his white-robed followers let forth a long, harmonic chorus that has not changed since the Roman historian Pliny the Elder compared it to "the singing of the bees." *p*     "Eye-Ay-Oh," the Druids chanted, stretching out the last syllable until it rose above the tall plinths and merged with the breeze.      "Eye-Ayyyyy-Ohhhhhhhhhhhh."*p*     Practitioners of Druidry, an ancient European religion that worships the Earth, the air and the stars, have been serenading the summer solstice sunrise in roughly similar style at Stonehenge for 21 centuries. But today's celebration, as the Archdruid noted, was special.*p*     In the 1980s, the British government abruptly shut off access to*br*Stonehenge during the summer and winter solstices each year, forcing the Druids to move their most sacred ceremony to the shoulder of a busy highway with a distant view of the monument. Angry charges flew back and forth for more than a decade, but Stonehenge remained closed.*p*     Then, just a few weeks ago, the government announced that sun lovers could return to Stonehenge for the 1998 solstice.*p*     Not surprisingly, there's a fairly large perception gap between the pagans and the politicians about the reasons for the dispute.*p*     Maughfling, the shaggy-haired 48-year-old who bears the toele "Archdruid of Stonehenge and Britain," blamed politics.*p*     "Our religion was growing fast," the Archdruid said. "The prime minister, Mrs. Thatcher, was a Conservative, and she didn't like all these people joining Druidry. So one day she up and announced that we were a bunch of 'medieval brigands' and banned us from Stonehenge.*p*     "Well, there was one young politician in the Labor Party who took our side and defended our rights. That man was Tony Blair. And now he's prime minister, and here we are, back for this year's solstice."*p*     Clews Everard, who supervises Stonehenge for English Heritage, a body roughly equivalent to the U.S. National Park Service, offered a slightly different take on these events.*p*     "After the '60s and the Age of Aquarius, an awful lot of people wanted to hang out with Druids," she said. "They started showing up here in strange clothing on the morning of the solstice just to have a party. That's what 'medieval brigands' was all about.*p*     "We have one of the world's greatest archaeological treasures in our trust here, and it was endangered by these mobs. So we had to shut access. But this year we negotiated an arrangement that 100 people could come. Rollo [the Archdruid] promised that his worshipers would respect the site. And they have done. We'll surely have them back next year."*p*     England has only about 15,000 self-described Druids, and another 10,000 or so aligned with other pagan orders. But, while the mainstream Christian and Jewish faiths are losing adherents -- fewer than 10 percent of Church of England members still attend services -- the various Druid orders have been gaining, both in sheer numbers and in respectability. *p*     "When I moved from Roman Catholic to Druid in 1980, this was*br*considered incredibly weird," said Chris Turner, 57, a university technician who wore a cluster of oak leaves around his neck. "It was something you wouldn't dare mention at the office. But today, when I explain that I worship the power resonating up through the Earth, people are interested. They say, 'Now, Chris, how should I celebrate the equinox?' "*p*     For 4,000 years one of the best ways to celebrate solar and lunar*br*phenomena has been to visit Stonehenge, the most complete remaining*br*example of intricate stone circles that ancient peoples created around the world.*p*     Stonehenge is a series of concentric rings of massive rock slabs, most weighing 50 tons or more. Although the layout seems random, astronomers have determined that the rocks were ingeniously placed to form a calendar. To this day, the stone calendar keeps nearly perfect track of the earth's yearly progress around the sun.*p*     Each year on the summer solstice -- the day when the sun is at its highest point north of the equator, and thus the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere -- the sunbeams pass directly over the center of a pointer rock outside the stone circle and shine straight down a track called The Avenue onto the "altar stone" at the center. *p*     One day later, the sun has started moving south, and its beams no longer graze the center of The Avenue. The ancients presumably watched these movements to measure time -- to decide when to plant summer crops and to keep track of how old they were.*p*     "This is an astounding piece of geometry," said Professor Tony Dean, a non-Druid astronomer who came this morning to see if Stonehenge really is aligned right for the solstice. "They must have had a very, very sophisticated understanding of solar movement."*p*     In the center of the stone circle, meanwhile, another kind of movement was taking place. With a shake of his oak stave and some strikes on a large gong, the Archdruid performed the marriage of two of his followers, who confirmed their vows by holding hands and leaping together over a pail of flowers. "Hail to thee, sun," the Archdruid intoned. "Shine your peace on this marriage bed."*p*     The newlyweds giggled shyly, and the surrounding Druids offered their timeless amen once more. "Eye-Ay-Oh," they chanted, the endless wail echoing off the stone. "Eye-Ayyyy-Ohhhhhhhhh."*p**br*         © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company