Gee, it seems like a lot of people are fighting about religion again over here. How about a little peace and harmony instead? Now here is a beautiful holiday, the summer solstice, which I bet got very little attention at Ask God, and yet without the sun there would be no life. First things first!! So it is a very important holiday to celebrate!! And interestingly enough, Druidism is a rapidly growing religion in England, and only ten percent of Church of England members (the primary Christian church) still attend services. It seems that the Druids were highly advanced scientists, in a way. They had advanced knowledge of the cycles of the stars and planets, and of geometry:
Druids Return to Stonehenge
Britain Opens Up Ancient Site for Holiest Rite
By T. R. Reid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 22, 1998; Page A01
SALISBURY PLAIN, England, June 21-For Christians, it's either
Christmas or Easter. For Jews, it's Yom Kippur, perhaps, or Rosh
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.
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.
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.
"Happy solstice!" shouted the Archdruid, his crimson cape flying in the
wind. "It's a great day to be a pagan."
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."
"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."
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.
In the 1980s, the British government abruptly shut off access to
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.
Then, just a few weeks ago, the government announced that sun lovers
could return to Stonehenge for the 1998 solstice.
Not surprisingly, there's a fairly large perception gap between the pagans
and the politicians about the reasons for the dispute.
Maughfling, the shaggy-haired 48-year-old who bears the title "Archdruid
of Stonehenge and Britain," blamed politics.
"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.
"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."
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.
"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.
"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."
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.
"When I moved from Roman Catholic to Druid in 1980, this was
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?' "
For 4,000 years one of the best ways to celebrate solar and lunar
phenomena has been to visit Stonehenge, the most complete remaining
example of intricate stone circles that ancient peoples created around the
world.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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."
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."
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