21st December = Winter Solstice

A Happy Winter Solstice, may the candles burn on this shortest of days and may light once more return to our benighted land in the New Year. But I can't resist the factual evidence on this day.

A Game of Henge - Stonehenge

Phillip Gross

A game of Henge, my masters?

The pieces are set. We lost the box

with instructions years ago.

Do you see Hangman? Or

Clock Patience? Building bricks

the gods grew out of? Dominoes?

It's your move. You're in the ring

of the hills, of the stones, of the walls

of your skull. You want to go?

You want out? Good - that's

the game. Whichever way you turn

are doors. Choose. Step through, so...

And whichever world you stumble into

will be different from all the others, only

what they might have been,

you'll never know.

I had coffee with my friend yesterday morning and we chatted away, she mentioned the Ronald Hutton book on the table about Pagan religions, well if you want to know what the professor thinks of this subject on which he has written reams, then read this article.  His gentle historian's viewpoint and intellectual knowledge of such things as paganism and Druidism will settle your mind about religion, as Phillip Gross's poem does.  But it is a long read working through the imaginations of so many men through the centuries.  

We create our belief systems and then get cross when others take a different view, this is wrong, welcome the creativity of belief, foster it if you must, but don't let it turn to hate and violence.
Why do I write of Stonehenge today?  It is the Solstice when people gather (for free, occasionally English Heritage is kind) at Stonehenge on Sunday, though this wet miserable weather that is flooding our fields, roads and railways will be difficult for travel.

I spy Arthur Uther Pendragon, on the right of the central figure.  Yes fancy dress is acceptable!

I actually respect these modern day druids, but they are playing around with facts, Stonehenge was not built by the druids, basically because they came later.  Paul and I went to the opening of the new EH centre at Stonehengein 2013, again wet and miserable you can read the blog here, it was my birthday present to Paul, though he hated the weather.  And you should be able to spot Pendragon in the next, rather badly taken,  photo as they demonstrated once more that Stonehenge belonged to modern day Pagans.....

Alice Roberts - archaeologist, article