Bringing to the end of our Solstice festival, we went on a visit to the stone circles at Stanton Drew with artist Dawn Giles, her partner, actor Eamonn Fleming, and dog Ruby. Prior to visiting the site, we met in the Druids Arms , the one and only pub in the small village. Mike told Dawn and Eamonn about the Winter Solstice Calendar idea, a sort of advent calendar, only it would start on 16th December and end on the 15th of January. Eamonn said he wanted one only if it had chocolate in it. So, pagan winter festival chocolate it is! The idea is that Christmas is really a solstice celebration, bringing light joy and love into the darkest part of the year and welcoming in the gradual return of the light in the form of longer days. As we understand it, the Christian church highjacked the calendar to shift cultural feasting attention to the birth of Christ, so we bear no shame in creating a festival calendar for all, hopefully available for this year’s festival to come.
Dawn had attended an artist talk by Madame Cerski about work at Stanton Drew, got inspired, inspired us and a “must go” date to the stone circles was arranged.
The stone circles at Stanton Drew are freely open to humans (sorry Ruby, dogs not allowed!) to walk round and enjoy in good old Ministry of Works Ancient Monuments fashion. The Druid Arms even has three standing in their beer garden, known as The Cove.
We were there to get a feel for the circles in their landscape and generally enjoy the stones, as well as to have a good natter with Dawn and Eamonn in the pub. The site, ranking third in popularity after Stonehenge and Avebury, contains the remains of one very large circle and two smaller circles to the north and south of the main. We noticed that the henge which would have encircled the main had now been filled in; perhaps due to the settling of the land over the many years since it was built. Interestingly the interior of the large stone circle would have been filled with 9 concentric wooden circles and possibly had a wooden or thatch roof or the like. That would have been a huge structure in area and throws into even more mystique why the stones had been quarried and moved there. There are also some nice, though probably more modern stories, about the stones which means they have captured imaginations through the ages.
Mike brought along his staff and wand as these always feel so right in these megalithic contexts, particularly where the land energy is so strong. Today we started by just touching the stones (something that is not allowed at Stonehenge!) and doing a bit of stone hugging. From even a short distance these stones appeared quite dead. The stone was unusual and crystalline in places, smooth in another, covered in lichen and rust stains in another, and seems to have a pock-ridden volcanic quality to its erosion with stones stuck in stones.
But both Lance and Mike discovered that some of these stones had an energy when touched and hugged; different stones, different energy resonances with different chakra areas of the body. Feeling different chakra energy through our Tantra workshop experiences is familiar to us and the stone resonance definitely reflected that. Standing In the middle of the large circle the staff seemed to wake up energetically. Lance had the strange experience of feeling from the middle of the circle that the stones were alive, which triggered something similar in Mike. This was all the more resonant when we read at an information point that there is a story that the stones go down to the river to drink on the 6th day after the full moon. Suddenly this felt rather spooky, but resolved in our minds that a return trip during a full moon would be essential.
Despite the biting January cold of the day, the visit has inspired and freed up some more ideas for a piece of writing in the Bluestones: Lan and Deek story that is currently being developed to publish on this site, and to inspire our art works. In all, a great visit to a fascinating site with some wonderful company!