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Avebury solstice, any good?

I'm going to be a bit controversial and confrontational here, but I say leave it to the ACTUAL pagans, rather than just go along because it's a bit new age-y and that sounds like fun.
Sorry, had to say it. My family are all pagans and get a bit fed up with people who have no actual belief in that treating it like some sort of festival or rave.
If you actually want to celebrate any solstice, equinox, or anything in between, get in contact with a local group and find out what they have organised or are going to as a group, don't just turn up at an ancient monument and expect to hijack it in to some sort of mass party, not everyone there is interested in having a wild time or a rave and you could ruin it for them. You can celebrate a solstice or equinox anywhere btw - pretty much just go out and look at dawn or sunset and appreciate it, you don't need to be anywhere special for it - nature has no cathedrals.
 
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I'm going to be a bit controversial and confrontational here, but I say leave it to the ACTUAL pagans, rather than just go along because it's a bit new age-y and that sounds like fun.
Sorry, had to say it. My family are all pagans and get a bit fed up with people who have no actual belief in that treating it like some sort of festival or rave.
If you actually want to celebrate any solstice, equinox, or anything in between, get in contact with a local group and find out what they have organised or are going to as a group, don't just turn up at an ancient monument and expect to hijack it in to some sort of mass party, not everyone there is interested in having a wild time or a rave and you could ruin it for them. You can celebrate a solstice or equinox anywhere btw - pretty much just go out and look at dawn or sunset and appreciate it, you don't need to be anywhere special for it - nature has no cathedrals.

All of this ^^ applies just as much to pagans as anyone; don't go to somewhere like Avebury etc on a solstice and expect not to find a load of other people. If it's communion with nature you want, find somewhere approriate, if it's somewhere with ancient connections to past peoples, there are literally thousands of them in Britain. Pagans don't own Stonehenge or Avebury.
 
All of this ^^ applies just as much to pagans as anyone; don't go to somewhere like Avebury etc on a solstice and expect not to find a load of other people. If it's communion with nature you want, find somewhere approriate, if it's somewhere with ancient connections to past peoples, there are literally thousands of them in Britain. Pagans don't own Stonehenge or Avebury.

I think you will find that English Heritage own both sites, and they roll their eyes and hope not too many people turn up.
 
I think you will find that English Heritage own both sites, and they roll their eyes and hope not too many people turn up.

Pagans aren't a homogenous group of course, but there are a few who over the years have acted as if they do own the Henge and Avebury and have done their best to monopolise access to those sites on the festival days by toadying up to EH, the police and all the other control freak bureaucracies who have tried to touristise the sites and strip them of any mystery.

There are so many amazing alternatives if you want a spiritual experience, and so many other festival days, some other sites are pretty famous really but just haven't attracted the weirdness for some reason or other.
 
There was a bit of moaning from pagans this year about the crush and the mess at Stonehenge and (from King Arthur) how it was disappointing that there were not enough robed people along, if nothing else just to try and remind the ravers and the casual tourists why everyone is there in the first place.

But you can't expect anything else if 37,000 people turn up. And, to be honest, Summer Solstice is about having a big party if it's about anything at all.:)

Avebury is different. It's quieter and more for the formal ritual and people should go for experience of the ceremony.

Pagans are instinctive outlaws (the main Avebury druids are ex-bikers) and no-one is going to frown and mutter if other outlaws come along and join in. They're going to be really pleased, in fact. You just have to remember that this means a lot to some people and, maybe for the half hour or hour of the ceremony, you don't act like louts.

But Avebury is a big, rambling site and you can have your own celebration in another field if you want
 
so recommended for next year then TopCat Mation ? it sounds like something i would fancy!
Yeah you would love it. Avebury has less up their own arse pagans and druid types than Stonehenge. It was funny hearing kids being told off for clambering on the Avebury stones. You got the impression that such tellings off had been going on since the stones got erected all those years ago.
 
Epona said:
I'm going to be a bit controversial and confrontational here, but I say leave it to the ACTUAL pagans, rather than just go along because it's a bit new age-y and that sounds like fun.
Sorry, had to say it. My family are all pagans and get a bit fed up with people who have no actual belief in that treating it like some sort of festival or rave.

It's like twats treating Christmas as a bit of a piss up or an excuse to eat nice food and spending time with others.
 
Yeah you would love it. Avebury has less up their own arse pagans and druid types than Stonehenge. It was funny hearing kids being told off for clambering on the Avebury stones. You got the impression that such tellings off had been going on since the stones got erected all those years ago.
I used to go to Avebury a lot as a child for rolling-down-hill opportunities :D
 
It's like twats treating Christmas as a bit of a piss up or an excuse to eat nice food and spending time with others.
Not quite - people don't have their christmas dinner in church, nor do they get pissed there. Nor would they think it acceptable to do so.
 
Pagans don't own stonehenge so not really comparable with churches. :)
Over the years, pagan have been noticeable among those negotiating with the forces of babylon, not to get exclusive access but to get the stones opened to anyone. No-one wants the stones to be some sort of holy museum, ringed with wire fences.

I think all they would like is to be able to do their thing for about one hour four times a year. They're happy with others being there too.:)
 
The pagans going to Stonehenge/Avenury now have nothing whatever to do with the "pagans" that built thing, about who's beliefs we know nothing.

For example how do they know that the sites were originally used for po-faced ceremonies and not festivals/raves?
 
The pagans going to Stonehenge/Avenury now have nothing whatever to do with the "pagans" that built thing, about who's beliefs we know nothing.

For example how do they know that the sites were originally used for po-faced ceremonies and not festivals/raves?
I reckon they were so impressively built that they were a collecting point for people from miles around and people that travel that far would stay for days if not weeks. There would have been ceremony, markets and raves.
 
The pagans going to Stonehenge/Avenury now have nothing whatever to do with the "pagans" that built thing, about who's beliefs we know nothing.


Still, they seemed to be capable of dealing with unwanted visitors.


The Stonehenge Archer is the name given to a Bronze Age man whose body was discovered in the outer ditch of Stonehenge. Unlike most burials in the Stonehenge Landscape, his body was not in a barrow, although it did appear to have been deliberately and carefully buried in the ditch.

Examination of the skeleton indicated that the man was local to the area and aged about 30 when he died.Radiocarbon dating suggests that he died around 2300 BCE, making his death roughly contemporary with theAmesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen buried 3 miles away in Amesbury.

He came to be known as an archer because of the stone wrist-guard and a number of flint arrowheads buried with him. In fact, several of the arrowheads' tips were located in the skeleton's bones, suggesting that the man had been killed by them.[1]

His body was excavated in 1978 by Richard Atkinson and John G. Evans who had been re-examining an oldertrench in the ditch and bank of Stonehenge. His remains are now housed in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum in Salisbury.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge_Archer
 
Last year they closed the road end of the ridgeway (sanctuary) off to vehicles so i parked up in the nearby village and carried tent up there just to see what happened - turned out that the security at the road end were fine with it as they only had legal right to prevent vehicles, a few parties going on they also had a water point there if i needed any - very mellow. A lot of parties going on in the woods there all the way down to the stones in Avebury.
 
I hear police are making their presence felt at Avebury nowdays. Never used to be the case. Hope it is ‘t so this year.
 
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