The Poetry of the Stones

Stonehenge is the most magical place in the world to wait for the sunrise during the Summer Solstice 

Stonehenge

It is the last evening of the spring and the shortest night of the year. The awe of Salisbury most famous monument is undeniable. Its long-lasting mystery has remained impregnable over five millenniums and it still attracts hordes of romantics who go to Stonehenge to celebrate the arrival of the new summer season.  Salisbury train station is full with backpackers willing to take advantage of a priceless opportunity: living a 5000-year-flashback with the Druids at the megalithic monument which is Stonehenge. 

A few minutes after 7pm the Druids amaze everyone with their folkie traditional songs. Only with a guitar and a harmonica they offer a spontaneous concert followed by a sacred rites’ performance.

Frank Somers explains that “Stonehenge is a great calendar, a meeting place, a living space, a temple.”  Frank is a Stonehenge Druid of the Asteyna Grove, it is his ninth year at the summer solstice and he confesses that when he became a Druid “his dream came true.” Their long white attires and their infectious energy are easily recognizable among the crowds. Soon everyone inside the stone circle is dancing and singing with them. 

While the Druids are seeing off the sun, the path from the car park and the bus stop to the prehistoric monument seems that to Woodstock. The symbolic Volkswagen vans, some with psychedelic drawings on the outside and many long-hair men wearing hippie clothes and carrying acoustic guitars make the parallels to the legendary festival unavoidable.

Reminder of Woodstock

In the name of security, policemen register people’s backpacks and bags at the entrance, in some cases even with sniffer dogs. 

The summer solstice at Stonehenge is inseparably connected to Druidism. Druids’ knowledge is often compared to the learned priesthoods of antiquity, the Pythagoreans or the Babylon astronomers. However, an aura of mystery surrounds them, as they haven’t produced any written documents and all their knowledge is transmitted orally from one generation to the other. Druids were much respected, they were considered among the wisest men in the British Celtic society. Even Roman Emperor Caesar himself wrote that Druids “know much about the starts and celestial motions, and about the size of the earth and universe, and about the essential nature of things, and about the powers and authority of the immortal gods, and these things they teach to their pupils.” Druids believe in soul’s immortality and defend the importance of nature. Frank agrees since he says that “Druidism is about becoming synchronized with nature, being a priest of nature, but also with the ancestors.” 

The hippies, the Tories and Stonehenge 

Gone are the days when Margaret Thatcher’s government prohibited the biggest free festival in the UK. The first Stonehenge Free Festival was held in 1974, while the monument still was owned by private hand. Ten years later Stonehenge was placed under the control of English Heritage, an agency established by Parliament to look after ancient sites in England. They decided to suppress the festival and to ban the Druids from the site. The infamous Battle of The Beanfield took place in 1985. Hundreds of would-be festival goers had a violent confrontation with the police which ended up with dozens of arrests and hospitalizations. This battle was an indicative of the policy adopted by the Conservative party against the growing number of hippies attending the free festival. In 1974 five hundred people attended, while ten years later the figures had multiplied to 70,000 attendants. After being closed for fifteen years, in 2000 English Heritage decided to reopen the festival and it has remained opened ever since.

Sunset at Wiltshire's most famous plain

Even if the Tories are back in power, Frank is not afraid of a potential closing of the festival, as he thinks that “they won’t close it again because it’s money. When they did close Stonehenge it cost them one million pounds a year, so in terms of money, it’s much much cheaper for them to have it opened.” The Druid recognizes that “when you get any between twenty to thirty thousand people going, you know that a couple of people will be selfish and sometimes people come and will cause some trouble,”  and continues “but as long as people on average understand that it is not just a party in a field, that it is a very special place of a very special kind, there is no reason why it should be closed, and we support the idea of keeping it open so people can go to Stonehenge and have a good time there.”

How or why Stonehenge was built remains a secret, even though many theories have come up in the course of history. Some argue that Stonehenge was a place for dead which was part of a bigger complex of monuments distributed around the surrounding area. Others defend that Stonehenge was a sacred place where people travel from many different places under the impression that, by going there, they could be cured. The theory which affirms that the megalithic monument was then an astronomical observatory is one of the most popular ones. Some are even convinced that it is an alien landing site. People celebrating the summer solstice at Wiltshire monument have their own ideas about how the stones were brought there.

What common people think

 “I think it was probably an ancient human civilization whose leaders had religious beliefs based on years and years of observations of solar system and how the starts moved through the sky, and then developed a religion around that. And then probably used I guess slave labour in order to get this rocks moved here from long distances away and posted them in a certain way in order to mark the change of the seasons,” says Chris, from Washington. He is in England on holiday with his wife and two daughters. 

Charles, a Canadian from the mountains of the British Columbia thinks that it was the giants the ones who built Stonehenge. “Apparently the stones were brought here, dragged for years by people, but I don’t believe this, because when you got to find food you can’t spend years dragging rocks across, so I believe, and I think I know, that it was built by giants. And giants are people that are really big, like the size of an elephant, so they could pick up these stones and just make them like a Lego set.” Charles is currently on holiday around Europe and has come to Stonehenge to give one sacred plant to the Druids on behalf of his aborigine Mexican friends. 

Charles, from Canada

Alex, from Buckinghamshire, thinks that the stones were brought by “the ancient Britons who lived at the time of the Bronze Age. I think it happened before the Romans came here.” Alex thinks that “some of the stones were brought from Wales,” and adds “this definitely one of the most beautiful places on earth you can be, especially tonight.” Fanny, who comes from Bristol, agrees with the theory her mum told her when she still was a child. “Stonehenge might be the Druids’ heaven,” she says, and adds, “they cut loads of blocks, they put the stones on to those blocks and they pushed along and they keep moving the previous locked the front.”  Fanny is sure that Stonehenge was something to do with the way the sun rises.

The Druids feel closer to their ancestors while at Stonehenge, like Frank says “by having rituals and celebrations here we are part of the cycles they were part of.” He admits that “every time I go there I feel differently, I think it depends on if I go on my own, or with more people, if I am inside the circle of if I stay away… so I never get to explore in the same way.”

But not everything at Stonehenge is about rituals for Druids. Frank affirms that while waiting for the sun “I like that we play music and chat to each other”. The feeling of being literally in the middle of the stones, surrounded by people, cannot be compared with seeing the megalithic monument from feet away, the perspective changes so much that it just seems another place. The Druids and spontaneous people joining them and singing together to the sun inside the stone circle conforms the most perfect symbiosis men-nature one can expect to see. 

It is one of those places where you don’t need to look for the magic is everywhere.  Suddenly, everything seems possible. There are fairies, Druids, New Agers and hippies among others coexisting in harmony in only three hundred feet in diameter. There are bare foot children playing freely around, as in some sort of paradise. Alcohol is only the means, not the end. This peaceful atmosphere makes the approach to Stonehenge’s former sacred rites easy, even for those with little imagination. A middle-age couple comment when it’s still dark that the humanity must have not changed that much ever since Stonehenge was first built, more than five thousand years ago.

Here comes the sun

Time flies and the dawn is close. Everyone is looking at a man who waits for the sun doing huge soap bubbles. 

Massive Bubbles

Those who have been waiting from dawn to dusk seem impatient. A part of the mysticism seems to be gone with the darkness. Many stare at the horizon looking for the sun. 

Druids, as they did in the evening to say goodbye to the sun, have another circle, getting ready to say hello to the sun. And today, for first time in seven years, the clear sky let everyone contemplate the sunrise. Hands up: the sun shines across the top of the Heelstone (25 feet and 35 tons) into the Stone circle itself. 

An unexpected feeling of belonging reaches me. The crowds start to leave the place, slower than last night, when they came. Many approach the stones once more before going. At eight o’clock policemen tell us to go. Like in any other festival, the night has left a trail of not organic rubbish on the green grass. Something not very keen to mother Earth, you might think. 

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