Visiting Stonehenge

(Nimue)

At the weekend I had the wonderful experience of going to a Druid gathering at Stonehenge. I have done it before, but not in many years, it’s the kind of expedition that really calls for a driver. I prefer to mostly do my pilgrimages on foot, but Stonehenge is something truly special and I really needed the connections this gave me. Two of the three of us in my party had not done this before, so that was also an important consideration.

We spent some of the day exploring the landscape around Stonehenge – not something I’d been able to do before We visited nearby woodhenge, looked at Durrington Walls and visited some of the barrows. These are considerably later constructs than Stonehenge, and shows that this site stayed significant to people long after it was built. This is especially important to me because as a modern Pagan I’m not doing what my ancestors did here, but there is a continuity in simply wanting to show up and in feeling moved by what’s in the landscape.

I hope to go back in more suitable conditions and spend some time walking in the landscape around Stonehenge. I’d like to spend more time with the barrows and to explore other remnants of ancient history in the landscape.

One of the things we were able to do at Stonehenge, was sing. Being very much on the bard path, this means a great deal to me. I have sung there before. This time I was able to share my ‘3 Drops’ which is an explicitly Druidic song, with James leading it and Keith joining us. It was a powerful, magical thing to get to do, offering that creation to both the place and the people gathered in it. I found it a deeply affirming experience.

At one point in the ritual we were invited to open ourselves to the space and seek a single word as a focus for our inspiration. What were we there to learn? To take away with us? I had quite a strange experience at this point. I’m going to take some time to sit with it and think about it. My word was ‘giants’ and has implications for the spirits of place book I’m working on.

Every time I’ve been to Stonehenge in the past, I’ve been sleep deprived to some degree – probably least so for this most recent visit. When I’m sleep deprived, I hallucinate. My first experience of this at Stonehenge was seeing a herd of wild horses in the mist. This is fairly typical of the kinds of things I see when my brain is being odd. Arguably these are aura migraines, but they make for interesting experiences and I remain open to them as spiritual experiences. 

For me, the question around magical experiences is, what do they inspire? If what I experience takes me in a good direction, then I don’t think it matters in the slightest whether it was ‘really’ a kind of visual migraine. I’ve come away from this midwinter gathering with some considerable things to think about and explore. I’m probably going to need to do some sitting out, which is challenging at this time of year. I’ll write more about this when I’ve had chance to do some of that and reflect on it all.

(Photograph by Keith Errington)