Constructing Identity with Dreamstones: Megalithic Sites and Contemporary Nature
Spirituality
Author(s): Phillip Charles Lucas
Source:
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 11, No. 1
(August 2007), pp. 31-60
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Constructing Identity
with Dreamstones
Megalithic Sites and Contemporary
Nature Spirituality
Phillip Charles Lucas
ABSTRACT:
For growing numbers of people, the postmodern
construction of identity includes the search for a spirituality that reconnects
them with the natural world and fosters activity that protects the ecosystem
and its many forms of life. Practitioners of this “nature spirituality”
construct their identities using a large toolkit of symbols, myths, histories,
rituals, sacred places, and beliefs. The megalithic sites of Western Europe
constitute one element of this toolkit. This paper considers the ways these
sites are interpreted and experienced in the nature-spirituality subculture
and how these interpretations and experiences help individuals construct
empowering identities that tie together their spiritual and ecological
commitments. This interpretive process is occurring outside the control of
governing elites, ecclesiastical authorities, or dominant religious
institutions. It is at root an exercise in both individual and communal
identity construction, a movement of resistance to a world system that has
lost its secure moorings in the natural order.
INTRODUCTION
One might say that the fundamental human project, after physical
survival, is the construction of individual and collective identity. Identity
construction is an ongoing, fluid process that gives personal and collective
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Volume 11, Issue 1, pages
31–61, ISSN 1092-6690 (print), 1541-8480 (electronic). © 2007 by The Regents of the
University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s
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DOI: 10.1525/nr.2007.11.1.31
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life meaning, purpose, and security. In the postmodern world, identity
construction has become a more conscious, self-reflexive process than
it was in modern and pre-modern times. Identity construction, in other
words, is now both a choice and an imperative, since the identities
conferred upon us by social institutions, religious communities, and
nations have proven to be both unstable and unsatisfactory for increas-
ing numbers of people—particularly in the Western industrialized
democracies. This state of affairs has partly to do with a profound ques-
tioning of religious and national meta-narratives, the great truth-stories
that families and social institutions tell their members to socialize them
into the dominant culture’s values and norms.
1
A significant aspect of identity construction involves religious and
spiritual orientations. These orientations tell us where we have come
from, what we are here to do, how we should live together with others,
what our relationship with divinity—however conceived—should be,
and where we are heading in the future. They also give us a conception
of our totality as human beings, the physical, emotional, mental, and
spiritual dimensions of human existence.
For growing numbers of people, the postmodern construction of
identity includes the search for a spirituality that both reconnects them
with the natural world and fosters activity that protects the ecosystem
and its many forms of life.
2
These persons desire, in Adrian Ivakhiv’s
words, “to be part of a broader societal imperative—a refusal of the dis-
enchanting consequences of secular, scientific-industrial modernity . . .
and an attempt to develop a culture of reenchantment, a new planetary
culture that would dwell in harmony with the spirit of the Earth.”
3
I use
“nature spirituality” as an umbrella term that covers the diverse array of
individuals, groups, tribes, and communities joined by ritual practices
that embrace the natural world as a locus of sacred beings and/or ener-
gies and by a desire to protect and live in harmony with the natural envi-
ronment. As Ivakhiv observes, proponents of nature spirituality
“understand the divine or sacred to be immanent within the natural
world, not transcendent and separate from it, and speak of the Earth
itself as being an embodiment, if not the embodiment, of divinity.”
4
Among the many groups and communities included under the nature
spirituality tent are modern Pagans, various Druidic orders, Wiccans,
goddess worshippers, the women’s spirituality movement, neo-shamans,
New Agers, eco-feminists, eco-pagans, the neo-tribal “Rainbow family,”
Hedge Witches,
5
earth mysteries enthusiasts, Heathens,
6
adherents of
Celtic spirituality, and Green Christians and Jews.
7
Practitioners of nature spirituality construct their individual and col-
lective identities using a large toolkit of symbols, myths, histories, ritu-
als, sacred places, and beliefs, many of which were censored and
suppressed by dominant institutions in the past.
8
This paper examines
one element of this toolkit, the megalithic sites of Western Europe.
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These stone monuments date back to the Neolithic Age, which began
around 4500
B
.
C
.
E
. in Western Europe and continued to about 2200
B
.
C
.
E
. The monuments include passage tombs, gallery graves, simple
dolmens (called quoits in Cornwall), stone circles (sometimes called
cromlechs), stone rows, and standing stones (also called menhirs) that are
found in the thousands throughout Western Europe and the British
Isles. Practitioners of nature spirituality ascribe a wide range of mean-
ings to megalithic sites and these meanings in turn inform how practi-
tioners use the sites to construct and enhance their spiritual identities.
The various agendas and worldviews operating at megalithic sites are
sometimes competing discourses, but this does not necessarily result in
antagonism or hostility between different visitors. Rather, these “het-
erotopias”
9
are spaces of heterogeneity, “bringing together meanings
from incommensurable cultural worlds.”
10
They are spaces of resist-
ance, pluralistic, ever-changing, lacking an accepted identity, and
“linked by centerless flows of information.”
11
An awareness of the plurality of “readings” of the sites allows us to
perceive the many levels or textures of interpretation that surround
these relics from prehistory.
12
Shorn of their superficial idiosyncrasies,
all of these readings have a common root: a desire to reconnect with a
sacred earth. Proponents of nature spirituality see megalithic sites as
places where they can find solace and guidance, and reclaim an earthly
sanctuary from the exploitative intentions of modern global capitalism.
Once reclaimed, the sites are used for various rituals and ceremonies all
designed to enhance awareness of, and communion with, the sacred
earth.
13
It is important to stress that these sites are not some kind of
ontologically determined sacred spaces, but rather parts of a larger
activity of identity/place creation. As Nikki Bado-Fralick observes,
“Space has no ontological status independent of its relation to human
activity.” The nature spirituality religious landscape is “fluid and ever-
shifting, replete with themes of ‘becoming’ and transformation. Space
may assume either sacred or mundane status at any given moment in the
ritual process, its boundaries shifting according to the perspectives and
activities of the participants.”
14
In this paper, therefore, I want to consider in some depth the ways
these sites are interpreted and experienced, and how these interpreta-
tions and experiences help members of the nature-spirituality subculture
construct empowering identities that tie together their spiritual and eco-
logical commitments. Since interpretations of megalithic sites must deal
with the past, it is appropriate to discuss first the ways individuals and com-
munities create a “usable past” and how ancient monuments provide a
tangible connection with favored versions of the past.
15
As Marco Portales
reminds us, “the past changes not so much because the returns aren’t all
in, but because the living insist . . . on reshaping the past according to our
lights and the age’s needs. Why this need to redefine, to look and rewrite
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history anew? Because histories legitimize the past, not the past, but our
ways of looking at the pasts that we would enshrine.”
16
The individuals and groups who interpret megalithic sites often con-
struct a pedigree for these monuments that supports their present ide-
ological commitments and agendas.
17
As monuments, they serve as
symbolic emblems of the distant past. Because relatively little is known
about why these sites were constructed and how they were used, they can
be enlisted in the service of readings of the past that support identity
construction and spiritual experience in a re-enchanted world distinct
from secularized, scientific-industrial culture.
18
As places connected to
the sacred, however defined, they encourage followers of nature spiri-
tuality to reclaim a pre-Christian past, and to draw on the forces and
beings connected to a site in myth and tradition for spiritual empower-
ment in the present.
19
The sites thus provide us with a case study in how human beings con-
struct worlds of religious and spiritual meaning using emblems, symbols,
and representations of the past. This process of construction exempli-
fies Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s sedimentation theory, which
they formulated to explain “why humans invent traditions and yet seri-
ously hold that they stem from time immemorial.”
20
Put briefly, this
theory elaborates a process by which human experiences congeal as
recollection sediments. These sediments in turn become objective sign
systems that can be incorporated into “a larger body of tradition”
through iteration as poetry, spiritual allegory, and moral instruction. In
time, the sediments become part of cohesive religious systems and the
original processes by which they took shape are lost in the mists of time.
Therefore, other myths of origin can be invented for these signs systems
in ways that further the present commitments of religious communi-
ties/social institutions. A version of this process may be occurring with
the elaboration and spread of nature spirituality, both as a means of
enlisting symbols and sacred sites of the past to validate spiritual expe-
riences that fall outside mainstream religious practice, and to promote
an ethic of ecology in a time of environmental crisis.
21
Let us now turn to the different ways contemporary individuals
and groups are using the megalithic sites of Western Europe to con-
struct spiritual identities and to practice their various forms of nature
spirituality.
MEGALITHS AS SYMBOLIC TOUCHSTONES
WITH PAGAN ANCESTRAL TRADITIONS
As Gabriel Cooney has observed, “One of the key ways of sustaining
links with the past is to perform rituals in defined, special places.”
22
For
increasing numbers of Europeans and North Americans, megalithic
sites are tangible points of connection with idealized matriarchal,
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nature-friendly religions of the pre-Christian past. Modern Pagans, Neo-
Druids, Wiccans, and others have created myths of continuity with these
Pagan religions of Northern Europe. They speculate that megalithic
sites mark sacred places where their spiritual ancestors worshiped earth
goddesses and other nature deities, and practiced rituals that celebrated
seasonal cycles. Through repeated use, the sites are believed to have
built up a powerful spiritual atmosphere that enables easier access to
wise ancestral beings and nature spirits. As one respondent put it, “A
thick layer of spiritual usage lies over these sites already . . . We know that
a place may have been an ancient settlement or gravesite, and we can
use the ambience there to enhance our experience.”
23
Though most
modern Pagans are sophisticated enough to know that an “unbroken
transmission of ritual practices” from Neolithic times until now is
unlikely, they still visit megalithic monuments because they provide a
tangible symbolic connection to Pagan ancestors and their traditions.
24
The fact that very little is known about the worldviews and ritual sys-
tems of Neolithic peoples seems not to be an impediment. In some cases,
anthropological and archaeological research is used as a foundation for
informed speculation concerning prehistoric beliefs and practices; in
other cases, specific details about rituals performed at the sites is accessed
by means of psychometry or other visionary techniques. To cite one of
many possible examples of the latter, a famed psychometrist who visited
the Castlerigg stone circle in Cumbria reported a vision of a tall, bearded
figure clothed in a single white garment standing in the circle’s center.
Assisted by a group of priests, the figure performed a ceremony that
invoked a downflow of opalescent, rose-tinged sky energy; this energy
penetrated the earth, ensuring the land’s fertility for another planting
cycle. According to the vision, the stones making up the circle were
draped with flowing banners bearing arcane symbols. These visionary
reports are influential within the nature spirituality subculture (though
by no means universally accepted) and provide suggestive details for the
construction of present-day rites and beliefs. They also lend credence to
claims that megalithic sites were sacred centers for ancient Pagans.
25
Some sites have a more recent history that makes them attractive to
Wiccans and their fellow travelers. The Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire,
to cite one example, is associated with the coven of Gerald Gardner, an
important figure in the modern Witchcraft revival of the 1940s and
1950s. Gardner and his associates used the stone circle for ritual prac-
tice, and the site has become a much-visited venue for Pagan rites of pas-
sage, including handfastings,
26
the naming of children, initiatory rites,
and funerary memorials.
27
Another site, the Bryn Celli Ddu passage tomb on the Welsh Isle of
Anglesey, is venerated by contemporary Druidic orders because the isle
was the last refuge of the Celtic Druids of Britain before their destruc-
tion by the Romans in 60
C
.
E
. Contemporary Druids leave offerings at
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the site as a memorial to their spiritual ancestors, despite the lack of
solid evidence that the passage tomb was itself used by the Druids dur-
ing their final days.
Although modern day Druidism is rife with speculations and folklore
of questionable historical accuracy, the tradition’s emphasis on ancestral
spirits and spirits of place makes Druids frequent visitors to megalithic
sites, which they invest with deep reverence.
28
To quote Philip
“Greywolf” Shallcrass, former Joint-Chief of the British Druid Order,
“Many Druids like to make ritual at ancient stone circles since there is
a feeling that they are places where communion with our ancestors may
be made more readily than elsewhere. There is also a sense that making
ritual at such places energises and benefits both the sites themselves and
the land around.”
29
Contemporary Druids continue to forge connections with their
“ancestors” by becoming active participants in discussions concerning
the disposition of skeletal remains found at megalithic sites such as
Stonehenge. Shallcrass, for example, has been active in asking archae-
ologists and National Trust officials in England to treat any excavated
remains with respect and to return them to their original burial sites
when their examinations are completed. This is important, in his view,
as “our ancestors clearly didn’t select their burial places at random,”
and, he believes, “they should be returned to the Earth as close to the
original grave sites as possible.”
30
Druid Paul Davies takes issue with the
whole enterprise of disinterring skeletal remains from megalithic sites,
arguing “Guardians and ancestors still reside at ceremonial sites such as
Avebury and the West Kennet Long Barrow . . . [excavations] are disre-
spectful to our ancestors. These excavations are digging the heart out of
Druidic culture and belief.”
31
In an effort to find a workable solution to
these concerns, Shallcrass has offered his services as a Druid shaman to
perform rituals with the spirits of the ancestors when reburials take
place at sites such as Stonehenge.
32
Archaeologists have reconstructed many prominent megalithic sites
over the past 150 years. They attempt to match their reconstruction
with what they believe was the site’s original form, but inevitably
anachronisms creep in, such as the transparent blocks built into the roof
of passage tombs and long barrows to allow for illumination of the inte-
rior. The West Kennet Long Barrow in Wiltshire is one such recon-
structed monument, but it has not lessened the site’s popularity within
the nature spirituality subculture. As one respondent put it, “Even
though I know it is reconstructed, I also know that the whole Avebury
landscape, of which West Kennet is a part, was of national spiritual
importance in the Neolithic era and I gain a great deal of satisfaction
from performing ritual there.”
33
Ultimately, this first reading of megalithic sites represents a desire by
the nature spirituality community to reconnect with a lost tradition that
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venerated the natural order and sought harmony with its deities and
forces. They see this lost tradition as an antidote to the exploitative atti-
tude toward the environment that has characterized conventional
Christian churches and Western civilization in general since the
Protestant Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. As one respon-
dent from Cornwall reflected, the attraction of megalithic sites for
Pagans has to do with “a wish to hearken back and reclaim and re-find
what we might have lost from the past. We don’t know for certain exactly
what ritual and religious significance most of these sites had . . . but it
seems reasonable that they might have been [used to practice Pagan rit-
uals].”
34
Thus, megalithic sites provide practitioners of nature spiritu-
ality with tangible connections to an idealized past era of harmony
between the natural and human orders. They serve as potent symbolic
37
Image A:
Stonehenge
“Contemporary Druids and other participants celebrate sunrise at
Stonehenge on the morning of the Summer Solstice.”
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centers around which to construct empowered spiritual identities that
resist the secularized and disenchanted (dominant) culture of late
modernity, and to practice a reinvented religion of nature.
MEGALITHS AS SITES OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
A second interpretation of megalithic sites sees them as places where
community building can occur for various participants in the nature
spirituality subculture. In many ways nature spirituality communities
share characteristics of postmodern “neo-tribalism” as theorized by
Zygmunt Bauman. For Bauman the postmodern world is characterized
by complexity, unpredictability, and the absence of a supreme goal-set-
ting power center. Individual identity in this state of affairs is fluid and
in a state of continuous refinement and reconstruction. In search of a
usable social identity, individuals seek out “new tribes” or communities
that often lead a distinctive existence on the periphery of mainstream
culture. These “new tribes” provide a home for postmodern wanderers
who share religious, political, and/or ethical orientations.
35
The nature
spirituality “tribes” are dynamic, ephemeral, and bio-degradable; they
often form spontaneously around various identity discourses that are
themselves in a state of elaboration and development. Some last only for
a time and a season, such as, for example, when groups form to protect
a megalithic site from commercial development or a new roadway. As
Jenny Blain and Robert Wallis observe, groups within the Pagan sub-
culture have fluid or unclear boundaries, and many modern Pagans
belong to more than one coven, environmental group, or site protection
association.
36
Nature spirituality participants are also known for their
independence, aversion to hierarchies, and distrust of authority. Some
prefer to visit megalithic sites on their own, and find themselves pursu-
ing a solitary path.
37
Given all this, many in the nature spirituality subculture have come
to view megalithic sites as places where they can meet and communicate
with kindred spirits whose ideals and values they share. For these par-
ticipants, the sites resemble the ancient gorsedds or meeting places where
chieftains, elders, shamans, and bards conferred on important tribal
matters. Covens, Druidic orders, neo-shamanic workshops, scholarly
gatherings, goddess groups, and Celtic spirituality groups choose to
hold meetings and rituals at the sites, in recognition of their historical
association with tribal events. One such place, the Boscawen Un stone
circle in Cornwall, is believed by local Pagans to have been one of the
principle gorsedds of ancient Britain. Sites like these provide a public
sacred space—a sanctuary—where isolated individuals can come to feel
part of a broader movement of spiritual and ecological awakening.
For New Age Travelers
38
and groups like the anarchic dance collec-
tive Mutant Dance, sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury have served as
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gathering places where like-minded nomadic tribes could meet for free
festivals during seasonal celebrations such as Midsummer. These groups
interpret the sites as prehistoric meeting places where people gathered
to feast, trade goods, make music, and celebrate tribal solidarity. They
come to the sites for similar community-building reasons, and the all-
night revelry, musical improvisations, handfastings, naming ceremonies,
and ritual magic they participate in builds a strong sense of neo-tribal
identity and solidarity. As one Pagan activist observed, “There’s a strong
sense of there being a tribe at Stonehenge, and one of the problems was
that people couldn’t meet each other anymore, when the gatherings
here were banned [in the 1980s and 1990s] . . . [For] the blessings of
children and the marriages in some sections of the community . . . it was
very important to come here.”
39
My own fieldwork confirms this community-building aspect of mega-
lithic sites. During one summer solstice celebration at Castlerigg stone
circle in 2000, an independent group of witches spontaneously gathered
together the various visitors to the site and performed a collective ritual
for world peace that included incantations, songs, dancing, and other
forms of merriment. The ritual broke down social barriers among the
participants, who included elderly mountain hikers, teenagers, mothers
and fathers, Wiccans, neo-shamans, and New Age Travelers. The inter-
actions after the ritual had a warmth and intimacy that was missing in
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39
Image B:
Castlerigg
“Pilgrims at the Castlerigg Stone Circle in Cumbria, Northern
England, soak up the natural beauty of the site.”
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the hours previous to this communal enactment.
40
On numerous other
occasions, I witnessed serendipitous meetings between both individuals
and small groups at remote sites throughout Western Europe.
Oftentimes friendships were formed, insights and ideas communicated,
food and drink shared, and rituals improvised. For seekers exploring the
world of nature spirituality, the megaliths were indeed sites of commu-
nity building, identity reinforcement, and ideological solidarity. Many of
my respondents spoke of “coming home,” and had an expectation that
they would meet their spiritual kindred at the sites.
Those who experience megalithic sites as community-building ven-
ues can also be understood as engaging in a postmodern rite of pil-
grimage. The anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner theorized that
pilgrimage was akin to the liminal phase in a classic rite of passage.
They maintained that the diverse individuals who come together at a
pilgrimage site experience a temporary erasure of their normative
identity markers and are fused into a powerful communal conscious-
ness by their focus on a common purpose. In the creative and trans-
formative space of the pilgrimage precincts, new bonds are forged
and new visions are born.
41
This experience of “communitas”—
although often ad hoc and spontaneous—is a significant aspect of the
magnetism that draws people to megalithic monuments. The sites
have become part of a sacred landscape visited by, among others,
Druidic orders (who celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge and
the winter solstice—and other Pagan festivals—at Avebury), New Age
tourists (such as those who ride the “Astral Bus” to megaliths in
Wiltshire), adherents of Celtic spirituality from North America (who
go on pricey tours to stone monuments in Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
and Brittany), and worshippers of the Mother Goddess (who travel to
Malta to experience the mysterious Neolithic Hypogeum at Hal
Safieni). By visiting these sacred geographies, pilgrims find a spatial
anchor for the creation of their alternative spiritual identities. As we
shall see in the next section, the megaliths are also sites of personal
transformation, where pilgrims journey on a quest for powerful expe-
riences that connect them with interior realms of spirit, spirit beings,
and an authentic “Self.”
42
SITES OF PRESENT SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
A third way of interpreting megalithic sites sees them as places where
present spiritual experiences can occur. In this view stone circles and
other monuments are spaces whose atmosphere fosters entry into
altered states of consciousness; where it is easier to “step between the
worlds” and contact spirit beings; where developing spiritual identities
are reinforced and grounded in profound experiences of non-ordinary
dimensions.
43
In this sense they are similar to Shinto shrines in Japan,
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which are set up in places where people have experienced powerful con-
tact with kami, a word connoting spirit, deity, aesthetic awe, and the
numinous.
44
Many megalithic sites have legends attached to them in
which people who visit suddenly find themselves ushered into a hidden
world of subtle energies and spirit beings. One finds this theme articu-
lated in traditional folklore as well as in contemporary fiction.
45
Proponents of Celtic and neo-shamanic spirituality elaborate on this
theme by fostering a subjective interaction with the land and its
guardian beings. What emerges is a spiritual topography in which strik-
ing natural features of the landscape—for example, rivers, mountains,
and caves—become points of contact with the magical Otherworld.
These places include megalithic monuments, which are believed to
mark sacred places in the landscape where the “accumulated energies
of centuries of ritual activity” make the sites reservoirs of spiritual power
that can be accessed for vision quests, shamanic journeys, and medita-
tive focus in the present.
46
In my fieldwork I have often encountered
people meditating or vision questing while leaning against a standing
stone within a circle. Often these visionary journeys occur at sunrise or
sunset, moonrise or moonset, times traditionally associated with “open-
ings” between the ordinary and sacred worlds.
Earth mysteries author Paul Devereux elaborates on this third inter-
pretation by suggesting that megalithic monuments may have been used
as sites for divination, oracles, or as dream chambers in the distant past.
He speculates, for example, that in Druidic times—much later than the
Neolithic period—worshippers spent the night inside sacred sites in
order to experience dream revelations. Something about these sites,
Devereux contends, facilitates contact with the deep subconscious or
with other states of being, however understood.
47
Throughout his writ-
ings he promotes a way of seeing the landscape as ancient shamans may
have done, of listening to rather than reading preformed ideas into the
sites. In an interview with the author, Devereux said,
The idea is how to change your mental viewpoint when you are there to
allow in unconscious material . . . A product of the prehistoric place is a
product of another level of consciousness. If you can get into that level
of consciousness yourself you’ll get information that you can’t get using
an analytical approach.
48
From this perspective, Devereux has learned to appreciate ancient
megaliths as “dreamstones” that foster visions of power animals, ances-
tor beings, and guardian spirits in the stones themselves.
49
Some of my respondents reported experiencing prophetic or pro-
tective dreams and visions at the sites, while others reported oracular
phenomena. Jo May, a therapist connected with the Rosemerryn fogou
(a subterranean chamber usually from the Iron Age) in Cornwall,
observes,
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The kind of phenomena experienced in the fogou . . . include inner
voices giving . . . pertinent guidance, sometimes forecasting events
before they happen; subjective perceptions of powers and presences—
usually of female figures, frequently described as “women in white” or
priestesses; visions involving the laying-out of the dead in preparation for
the soul’s journey to another realm; [and] visions of enforced
entombment for the purpose of confronting the dark side of the soul in
order to re-emerge reborn.
50
Devereux’s Dragon Project recorded thirty-five volunteers’ dreams at
four outdoor sites in England and Wales, including a Neolithic dolmen
and a fogou in Cornwall. The subjects were awakened during rapid eye
movement periods and asked to give oral dream reports to a research
assistant. An equal number of dreams recorded at the subjects’ homes
constituted a control group. Two judges then evaluated the dream
reports using the Strauch Scale to measure “magical” and “paranor-
mal” themes. About 45 percent of the dreams at the outdoor sites fell
into these thematic categories, while only 30 percent of the home
dreams did. Although no definitive explanation has been given for this
difference, the results do suggest that some anomalous properties of the
sacred sites themselves could be involved.
51
In this vein it is important to note that the neo-shamanic movement
has increasingly embraced megalithic sites as part of its toolkit for soli-
tary vision quests and group initiatory rituals. Practitioners are drawn to
the sites for various reasons, but a particular attraction is the sites’ puta-
tive use by tribal shamans in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Another
attraction is the shape of passage tombs. Many of these monuments
resemble a womb-like cave with a passageway to a central chamber that
mirrors the birth canal. In many cultures caves have been regarded as
entrances to the underworld or symbolic wombs of rebirth. Some neo-
shamans see passage tombs as ancient sites of initiation into the mys-
teries of life and death. The interior of a passage tomb, they maintain,
can be read as a microcosm of the cosmos, with the dome of the tomb
representing the upper world, and its echo under the earth represent-
ing the lower world. Within this microcosm, the shamans acted out
their role as mediators between the three realms (upper world, middle
world, and underworld).
52
Evidence from my fieldwork indicates that
many passage tombs are used for this kind of shamanic journeying by
contemporary neo-shamans.
Sometimes the rituals of neo-shamanism include actual physical con-
tact with the stones, either by touching with the hands, the forehead, or
the spine. One respondent in Portugal, a German neo-shaman, takes
her students to the Almendres stone circle near Evora. This massive
cromlech has one stone with a large cup-like indentation. The respondent
related how—shortly after moving to the area—she had been drawn to
place her forehead in the indentation. The depth of the altered state of
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Image C:
Brykelidhu
“Contemporary Druids consider the Passage Tomb of Bryn Celli
Ddu on the Isle of Anglesey a sacred site and often leave
offerings.”
Image D:
Almendres
“These four stones from the Almendres Cromlech in Portugal
include one stone used for Neoshamanic vision questing.”
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consciousness she experienced convinced her to use the stone as a site
for student vision quests. At propitious moments during the annual sea-
sonal and lunar cycles, she takes students to place their foreheads
against the stone as a means of inducing shamanic journeying.
53
Devereux’s research into acoustical resonances at megalithic mounds
revealed that all the sites in the study yielded resonance frequencies in
a narrow band that lies squarely within the vocal range of adult males.
He speculates that Neolithic ritualists likely used singing or chanting at
propitious moments such as sunrise on the winter solstice to create “an
alchemical exchange of light and sound: regenerating solar light for the
ritualists and the ancestral spirits within, awesome sounds announcing
the cosmic moment for the congregation outside.”
54
The resonance
frequency of the inner chambers would have enhanced the volume and
reverberation of the human voice, “creating the commanding sense of
the presence of supernatural agencies, whether gods or ancestral spir-
its.”
55
My own fieldwork has uncovered evidence of group rituals in pas-
sage tombs from Ireland to Denmark; these neo-shamanic rituals
include singing, chanting, and drumming as well as the use of hallu-
cinogens to amplify the influence of these sounds and thus to induce
altered states of consciousness.
Another of the present spiritual experiences reported by respondents
is contact with spirit beings, however conceived. For some, these are
guardian spirits attached to specific sites. One respondent reported
encountering such a spirit while preparing a megalithic site for a group
ritual during the 1999 solar eclipse in Cornwall. After reassuring the spirit
of his benevolent intentions, he reported that the atmosphere changed
completely and he felt he had been granted permission to use the site.
This respondent also reports doing magical work involving spriggans, a
term derived from the Cornish sperysyan, meaning spirit beings. He notes
that spriggans are fierce protective spirits that live only in Penwith in West
Cornwall: “Spriggans haunt all the sacred sites, the weird and wonderful
cairns, the hilltop castles, the stone circles, quoits, and standing stones and
what they hate more than anything, and will attack without quarter, are
those who are miserly, mean-spirited and who threaten their homes.”
56
The respondent organized rituals to awaken “slowly, gently, carefully all
the wild elemental spirits in which Cornwall abounds” as a way to protect
sites during the expected eclipse celebrations.
57
Jo May, in his accounts of spiritual experiences at his fogou, mentions
his summoning of nature spirits with a Druidic-inspired silver ball with
chimes, which he rolls in the palm of his hand. After participants for-
mulate questions, he becomes the conduit for communications from
these spirit beings, speaking like an oracle in riddles and gnomic utter-
ances.
58
Graham King, the current proprietor of the Museum of
Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall, considers megalithic sites particularly
auspicious places for contacting various spirit beings and nature deities.
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He also recommends labyrinths inscribed in stone monuments as places
where contact with spirit worlds can occur with greater ease.
59
I have
come across contemporary labyrinths constructed in stone circles and
passage tombs in Southern France, Ireland, and Denmark. It is possible
these labyrinths are used as sites of communication with various spiritual
realms.
60
Jenny Blain’s research into contemporary Heathens has uncovered
putative interactions between adherents and Norse deities, ancestral
spirits, house-wights, and land-wights connected with specific landscapes
and megalithic sites. This ties into Heathenry’s sense that the landscape
is alive and that sacred sites have guardian spirits (wights).
61
Each of
these examples supports the notion that practitioners of nature spiritu-
ality are using megalithic sites to facilitate entry into altered states of
consciousness and to construct spiritual identities grounded in per-
ceived contact with sacred dimensions and beings.
SACRED SPACES FOR SEASONAL RITES,
RITES OF PASSAGE, AND OFFERINGS
A fourth interpretation of megalithic sites treats them as ritual centers
where practitioners of nature spirituality can celebrate seasonal festivals
and various rites of passage. Pagans, Wiccans, Neo-Druids, and others
tend to celebrate the primary cycle of the solar year as well as monthly
lunar cycles, and eclipses.
62
Their annual seasonal cycle mimics the
accepted Celtic ritual calendar and includes Samhain, the Celtic New
Year feast on November 1; the winter solstice on December 21; Imbolc,
the midwinter festival on February 1; the vernal equinox on March 21;
Beltane on May 1; the summer solstice on June 21; Lughnasadh on
August 1; and the autumnal equinox on September 23. The most impor-
tant lunar festivals are the new moon, celebrated when the first sliver of
waxing crescent appears in the western sky at dusk, and the full moon.
Solar and lunar eclipses each occur twice a year, although generally the
solar eclipses that approach totality are the most celebrated of these
phenomena. Over the past twenty-five years, the celebration of these
cyclical events at megalithic sites has increased “exponentially,” accord-
ing to one respondent.
63
As stated earlier, megalithic sites have become
significant ritual centers because of their association with pre-Christian,
Pagan religions that many followers of nature spirituality believe were
matrifocal, nonviolent, and goddess worshipping.
64
The popular Samhain rites occur in early November and are often cel-
ebrated in megalithic passage tombs, long barrows, or fogous. The festival
marks the close of the agricultural year and the beginning of a new annual
cycle. It is a time of the return of the darkness, symbolic of the Cauldron
of the Goddess, the Otherworld womb from which all life springs.
Practitioners of Celtic spirituality believe that this three-day celebration
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breaks down the space-time barriers that keep the Otherworld hidden
from the ordinary realm. It is a time to celebrate ancestors, wise elders,
and supernatural beings who can pass over the space-time continuum to
commune with the “tribe.” Rituals celebrated at this time include the
casting of sacrificial objects onto a bonfire; an invitation to the ancestral
spirits to join the circle and receive offerings; the holding of a torch or
candle by the ritual leader while facing the southwest (the most auspicious
direction for contact with Otherworld beings); circumambulation of the
ritual area three times to create a bridge to the otherworld; communion
with spirit beings; lustrations from the ritual cauldron; divination; and
feasting.
65
The Winter Solstice rites celebrate the return of light at the darkest
point of the year. The timing of these rites is arguably on more solid his-
torical ground, in that it is supported by archaeological evidence at
many megalithic sites throughout Western Europe. At the Newgrange
passage tomb in County Meath, Ireland, for example, an aperture con-
structed above the entryway allows light to enter the passageway as the
sun rises over the eastern horizon on the winter solstice. This light
slowly illuminates the passageway until the entire central chamber is set
ablaze. A similar phenomenon occurs at sunset on the winter solstice at
the Maes Howe passage tomb in the Orkney Islands. Clearly, winter sol-
stice was a significant event for Neolithic peoples. I found numerous
instances of celebration of this festival during my field research. At
Lough Gur stone circle in Ireland, for example, the rites include prayers
welcoming the sunshine, a bonfire lit in the center of the circle, silent
meditation around the circumference of the stone circle, the voicing of
wishes for the New Year, and a feast with wine and cakes.
66
The tone of
rites at this time is introverted, intense, somber, and connected to work-
ing with ancestors. Black robes are favored over the white robes of sum-
mer festivals.
67
Another popular seasonal festival is summer solstice, which is
widely celebrated because of its connection to Stonehenge. The
Midsummer festival at Stonehenge attracted an estimated 14,500 par-
ticipants in 2001, 23,500 in 2002, 31,000 in 2003, and 17,000 in 2006.
68
While conducting field research at the site in 2001, I noticed several
rituals that took place from sunset on June 20 to the late morning of
June 21. One Pagan festival troupe marched into the circle from the
west at sunset playing pipes, drums, and a long trumpet. They then
conducted a group invocation to celebrate sunset and played festive
music while bystanders danced and feasted. Another Pagan group car-
ried a “green woman,” a fertility symbol constructed of leaves and
branches, around the circumference of the circle at sunset before
placing the emblem against one of the sarsen standing stones. A soli-
tary Druid priest, clad in white and carrying a staff, approached the cir-
cle from each of the four cardinal directions in silence before entering
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the circle itself. At dusk, many visitors meditated in solitude at various
locations around the circle’s periphery. The entire site had a carnival
atmosphere throughout the night, with drumming, singing, acrobat-
ics, dancing, and general merrymaking celebrating the seasonal apex
of the earth’s forces of fertility and life.
69
At dawn during the 2000 and 2001 Midsummer celebrations at
Stonehenge, thousands of people faced the Heelstone at the site’s
northeast quadrant “waiting as sky, mist, stones and celebrants became
part of an experience that was deeply moving.”
70
They joyously “cele-
brated the growing brightness in the sky, each in their own way: those
inside the circle of stones drumming and cheering, druids conducting
ceremonies on the north side of the circle, and many others standing to
the south, watching the daybreak.”
71
As the sun rose over the Heelstone
the general buzzing rose to a roar as thousands of participants shouted,
chanted, and cheered. After this event, I observed several handfasting
ceremonies under the ceremonial direction of Pagan priests.
72
While attending the Midsummer celebrations at Castlerigg stone cir-
cle in 2000 I also witnessed a diverse array of ritual practices. These
included salutes to the spirits of the four directions, circumambulation
of the circle’s periphery, music-making with drums and didgeridoos, a
group ritual that built a cone of psychic power, silent meditations while
touching the stones, divination, dancing, and feasting. The celebrations
at both Castlerigg and Stonehenge included children, teens, young
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Image E:
Pagans
“Two Stonehenge pilgrims meditate near the Heel Stone on the
evening before Summer Solstice sunrise, 2001.”
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adults, and senior citizens.
73
These celebratory rites reinforce the spiri-
tual identities of participants by affording social confirmation for pri-
vately held beliefs and practices. They support the budding “plausibility
structures” that are forming within the contemporary nature spiritual-
ity movement.
74
One of the more influential books guiding nature spirituality ritual
is Michael Dames’ The Avebury Cycle, published in 1977, which used
archaeological speculations from the 1950s and Marija Gimbutas’ writ-
ings from the 1970s to posit the existence of Neolithic Mother
Goddesses. Dames proposed that the Avebury prehistoric landscape,
including Avebury stone circle, the processional avenues leading to it,
the Sanctuary, West Kennet Long Barrow, and Silbury Hill, was the stage
for an annual ritual cycle that honored the Mother Goddess and her
mysteries. Each monument was used in turn to celebrate a particular
event in the agricultural calendar. Silbury Hill, to cite one example, was
seen by Dames as an “effigy of the Great Goddess, the All Mother,
Mother Earth.”
75
It resembled a pregnant goddess from the air and was
associated with pregnancy, the lunar cycle, and the harvest festival of
Lammas. Within a short time of The Avebury Cycle’s publication, nature
spirituality adherents were celebrating Dames’ speculative rituals in the
Avebury landscape. Various goddess rites continue today at these sites,
including, for example, an annual women’s full moon dance on Silbury
Hill. Gimbutas’ theme of a matriarchal Neolithic culture that was
destroyed by a violent patriarchal culture during the Bronze Age was
picked up and used as a significant interpretive frame by musician Julian
Cope, the author of two popular guides to megalithic sites in Western
Europe, The Megalithic European (2004) and The Modern Antiquarian
(1999).
76
Dames’ influence on nature spirituality rituals is an example
of the constructed status of many elements of this movement as well as
evidence to support Berger and Luckmann’s sedimentation theory in
practice.
Another example of the cyclical rituals performed at megalithic sites
occurred during the total solar eclipse that darkened Cornwall in 1999.
According to one of the event’s chief organizers, inclusive rituals
attended by people from Western Europe and North America were per-
formed at the Hurlers stone circles, Men an Tol stone row, and
Boscawen Un stone circle, all of which are located in Cornwall. The rit-
ual at Boscawen Un began with participants circumambulating the cir-
cle and invoking the spirits of the four directions. Oberon
Zell-Ravenheart of the Church of All Worlds called upon the god and
goddess after which drums, flutes, didgeridoo, clapping, and chanting
were used to raise the cone of power around the great leaning center or
“King” stone. As the sky darkened and the temperature dropped, par-
ticipants fell silent and joined in a moment of awe and wonder at the
strange light and atmosphere that descended.
77
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Seasonal and astronomical celebrations are not the only kinds of
rites that occur at megalithic monuments. The sites are increasingly
used to celebrate various rites of passage, including conception, the
naming of newborns, handfastings, bereavement rituals such as ash scat-
tering, and esoteric initiation. The Rollright Stones, which is now owned
and operated by the Rollright Trust, takes bookings for various cere-
monies and events. These include public Pagan festivals, handfastings,
child-namings, family gatherings, annual Shakespeare performances,
and plays based on local Rollright’s folklore.
78
Other rites are more solitary in nature. One Pagan activist reports
that whenever she visits a local stone circle she walks around it with the
intention of honoring it and participating in its energy field. She goes
to alternating sides of the stones as a way to interweave a web of ener-
gies that connects her to the whole. She also honors a great stone at the
middle of the circle to celebrate the union of male and female energies.
In her vision the circle itself is female and the central stone is male.
Honoring both polarities constitutes a positive interaction with the spirit
of the site and what it symbolizes.
79
A final rite that is commonly observed at megalithic sites is the leav-
ing of various offerings. This practice has become somewhat controver-
sial because well-meaning visitors often leave ritual litter that can become
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Image F:
Ritual Circle
“This Fire Circle honoring the four directions lies within the
Zambujeiro Dolmen, near Évora, Portugal.”
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piles of trash over time. The most common offerings are organic in
nature, i.e., fruits, vegetables, flowers, grass wreaths, pinecones, shells,
wooden staffs, and stones. Each offering is a symbol that has either per-
sonal or generally accepted meanings. For example, seashells symbolize
the water element, stones or gems the earth element, a feather air and
spirit communication, while incense sticks and smudge sticks symbolize
fire and purification. Sweetgrass braids attract strength and guidance
from nature spirits, godseyes
80
symbolize the oneness of all life, cowrie
shells are symbols of the Goddess, and pomegranates are a traditional
offering for Samhain. At many sites goddess figurines are inserted into
corners or even left in plain sight as offerings to the Mother Goddess. At
a site in Cornwall I found polished stones, quartz crystals, coins, angel
cards, egg-shaped stones, a ritual staff, and photographs. At Long Meg
standing stone in Cumbria (shortly after Midsummer 2000) I discovered
cards inscribed with poems, flower wreaths, candles, and a purple ribbon
wrapped around the huge menhir at the level that an ancient spiral had
been inscribed. At Wayland’s Smithy long barrow near Marlborough, a
visitor had left a poem to the ancestral spirits of the site. Some visitors
leave cards or photos as memorials to deceased loved ones. Perhaps the
most common offerings I have observed are symbols of the four ele-
ments, often found together: a black feather (air), a stick of incense
(fire), a shell (water), and a sprig of grass or flower (earth).
Popular books on Celtic spirituality and shamanism advise visitors to
megalithic sites to make offerings as tokens of gratitude and exchanges
of energy. One author explains:
It should never be forgotten that the indiscriminate use of ancient sites
is a major contribution to their demise. The constant draining of power
by individuals and groups has stripped many of these places of their
inherent power. Thus you should always give back something in
exchange for what you take. The simple laying of a hand on one of the
stones, or on the Earth itself, is generally enough. Returning something
of what has been received, as a freely given gift, is always a good thing.
81
A neo-shamanic teacher gives specific directions to his students on
how to leave offerings at megalithic sites:
To make an offering, gently hold whatever you wish to give in your hand
and present it up to the sky. Lower your hand and present your offering
to the Earth to show appreciation to the Mother. Hold it out to each of
four directions, north, south, east and west, keeping in your mind the
connection between all things. As you leave the offering in your chosen
place, voice your thanks.
82
A third example describes an “intuitive offering” that includes
pouring water or whiskey into cupmarks (human-made indentations)
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on ancient megaliths and “watching it stream down the grooves.”
83
Pouring and lustration rituals are generally associated with fertility and
good luck in European folklore.
This last type of offering crosses a line for some Pagan writers. It is
similar to inserting coins, stones, and other offerings into cracks in
stones, decorating ancient stone engravings with white chalk to make
them more visible, drawings spirals or pentacles using chalk or paint,
lighting ritual fires near standing stones, or lighting votive candles
inside passage tombs for illumination. All of these acts threatens the
integrity of stone monuments and can deface or erode surfaces, and
split stones apart. These practices have fostered a preservation ethic
within the nature spirituality subculture that includes etiquette for
those leaving offerings at the sites. In its essentials, it admonishes visi-
tors to bring only organic offerings—preferably from the immediate
environment—and to take away whatever was brought when one
leaves.
84
The leaving of offerings encourages a subjective participation with
the perceived sacred presences at megalithic sites. It is akin to rites of
offering found in many religious traditions and reinforces the sense of
being part of an authentic tradition of earth spirituality that has roots in
the deep past.
POINTS OF CONTACT WITH ENERGIES OF HEALING
AND SELF-EMPOWERMENT
A fifth reading of sacred sites sees them as places where powerful
natural energies can be accessed for healing, magic, ecological
activism, and personal empowerment. This interpretation of the sites
has its roots in an unorthodox view of human prehistory, a view most
clearly articulated by earth mysteries authors such as John Michell,
Robin Heath, Francis Hitching, Hamish Miller, and Paul Broadhurst.
These writers speculate that Neolithic peoples practiced an advanced
spiritual science that harmonized body and mind with powerful ter-
restrial and celestial forces. According to these authors, these ancient
cultures saw the earth as a living grid of subtle forces, and marked spe-
cial “nodes” and “vortices” in this vast web of energy by building mega-
lithic monuments on them. This allowed these cultures to harness
terrestrial and celestial energies for healing, fertility, self-defense, and
spiritual journeying.
85
The writings of Iris Campbell and John Foster Forbes provided sup-
port for these views by arguing that survivors from Atlantis had built the
great megalithic monuments and used then for “elemental magic.”
They claimed that the quartz stones that are a regular component of
megalithic monuments could draw “telluric” currents and focus stellar
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influences during particular seasons and cosmic cycles. The stones at the
sites “picked up earth vibrations” and transmitted messages from long
distances to those who pressed their hands against certain stones.
Campbell believed that the Mayborough Henge monument near
Penrith in Cumbria was built to gather magnetism from the four direc-
tions; this energy was then used to enhance etheric centers in the
human body.
86
Another researcher whose views became influential for this fifth
interpretation is Alfred Watkins, an antiquarian who studied old
straight tracks within the British countryside. Watkins is credited with
coining the term “leys” for straight lines between significant landscape
features and hill forts, megaliths, churches, and other human con-
structions. Over a period of forty years, Watkins’ observations mor-
phed into the idea of “ley lines,” putative energy pathways that
connected megalithic monuments and natural landscape features.
Believers in ley lines and subtle energies called, among other terms, tel-
lurgic energy, chi, and dragon force use psychic, intuitive, and occult
methods—such as dowsing—to both measure and harness these ener-
gies at megalithic sites.
87
A good example of this way of reading megalithic sites can be found
in the writings of Jo May, who envisions his fogou at Rosemerryn,
Cornwall, as part of a local energy complex (the “Lamorna Temple”)
that includes other megaliths in Penwith. May sees this complex as an
analogue to the Hindu chakra system that distributes subtle energies in
the human body.
88
My field research has observed numerous instances of this “energies”
reading of ancient megaliths. Several examples will have to suffice.
While walking along the Druids’ Way stone row in Brittany, I met a man
who practiced alternative healing using crystals. He did this by placing
the crystals at different points on a patient’s body as a way to release
blockages that were affecting the body’s subtle energy system. When I
encountered the man, he had placed about 20 large crystals on a promi-
nent stone in the row. He told me that his teacher had awakened the
stone in an esoteric ritual, and that it was now a powerful source of heal-
ing energy. Every month he came down from Paris to “recharge” his
crystals by placing them on the “awakened” stone.
89
At numerous sites I saw New Agers using a pendulum to measure
subtle forces in stone circles and dolmens. In one instance, I encoun-
tered a retired electrical engineer at a chambered cairn near
Inverness, Scotland, who was using a pendulum to determine which
stones belonged in the cairn and which stones had been thrown there
by the local farmer. He told me he was removing the dissonant stones
so that the entire site could be returned to its original function as part
of Britain’s primordial energy grid. The engineer was a resident of
Findhorn and explained that he was part of a project to “retune” the
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ancient megaliths of Great Britain so that the land could once again
receive beneficial terrestrial and celestial currents. These currents had
been blocked by modern industrial and commercial developments, as
well as by the gradual decay of megalithic sites over the past 4,000
years. Part of the “retuning” at this site included the placing of crystals
and precious stones at the base or top of uprights in the cairn’s sur-
rounding stone circle.
90
Such alterations in megalithic sites, it should
be added, are strongly condemned by archaeologists and many mod-
ern Pagans, who believe in leaving sites the way they are for the most
part.
The efforts of participants in the nature spirituality subculture
(whether New Agers or Pagans) to “retune” or “work ritual” within
megalithic sites fits into an overall conception of the sites that is akin
to how acupuncturists view the human body. When an acupuncturist
inserts a needle into a “meridian” on the body, it is believed to affect
a circuit that conducts subtle energies to other parts of the body.
Inserting the needle relieves blocked energies and encourages proper
flow. This in turn brings needed vital forces to organs that are depleted
or undernourished. The effort to retune megalithic sites—again, a
highly controversial activity—is often conceived by New Agers as a
kind of acupuncture treatment designed to unblock energies and
restore overall health to the body of Gaia, the living being of the
earth.
91
The energies believed to be present at the sites are often used for
healing activities of various kinds. I observed one such treatment at the
Rollright Stones in 2001. A man was moving his hands in slow passes
over the body of a woman who was reclining on her back in the center
of the circle. In a subsequent interview, the man identified himself as
a Reiki practitioner from London. He said that his teacher had often
brought students to Rollright because the healing energies of a treat-
ment were greatly intensified within the circle. The Reiki practitioner
now brought his own clients to the circle to access its special energies
for his treatments. In my field research I met numerous other alterna-
tive health practitioners who brought staffs, wands, pendulums, crystals,
and other paraphernalia with similar notions about the healing ener-
gies that could be tapped at megalithic sites.
92
The practices associated with accessing the “energies” of megalithic
sites can be understood as ways to construct spiritual identities that are
empowered by communion with perceived celestial and terrestrial
forces. Through dowsing, energizing ritual implements, and “retuning”
or reawakening the monuments, nature spirituality adherents believe
that they are harmonizing themselves with subtle energies with which
modern scientism and rationalism have lost contact. They can use their
attunement to these perceived forces for healing work in both the
human and other-than-human realms.
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SITES OF POETIC, ARTISTIC,
AND MUSICAL INSPIRATION
A sixth and final interpretation of megalithic monuments views them
as places of poetic, artistic, and musical inspiration. This more aesthetic
reading begins with the etchings of megaliths by antiquarians William
Stukeley, William Borlase, and William Cotton in the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. It continues with landscape painters like
John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, who were enchanted with
Stonehenge and produced watercolors and paintings that dramatized
the site’s mystery, antiquity, and grandeur.
93
Poets like Wordsworth and
novelists like Thomas Hardy were also inspired by megalithic monu-
ments during the Victorian Era. This aesthetic reflex has continued in
the present era with “Land Art” visual artists like Richard Long, whose
paintings are famous for their stone-row-inspired lines in remote land-
scapes, and Robert Morris and Herbert Bayer, whose earthworks echo
ancient henge monuments, barrows, and passage tombs. An “Earth
Mysteries” exhibition toured the British Isles during the late 1970s and
brought large crowds to view prints, drawings, paintings, photography,
sculpture, and installation art inspired by the forms and geometry of
megalithic monuments. Two Cornwall artists, Sarah Vivianne and Ian
McNeill Cooke, continue in this tradition in the twenty-first century, pro-
ducing paintings and other artwork depicting idealized visions of local
stone circles, standing stones, and quoits. Vivianne describes her artistic
inspiration as
part of my response to the Earth’s energies in the sacred sites . . . It’s part
of my spirituality. The two are very closely connected. I go to sacred sites.
I experience the sensations, the feelings, the energies. Because I’m
trained as a painter a lot of that is a very visual experience. And so when
I’m painting its part of the process of honoring and celebrating the
sacred sites.
94
During my fieldwork I have met solitary writers, painters, and musi-
cians who regularly visited the sites to soak up their atmosphere and
await inspiration. In one instance, I encountered a professional musi-
cian at a recumbent stone circle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who came
to the circle whenever his creative muse was blocked. The day I visited
the site he was busy scribbling away in a notebook under a sunny sky
while lying prone on the huge recumbent stone.
95
This aesthetic reading of the sites influences a large number of visi-
tors, many of whom have no connection with nature spirituality as such.
Nevertheless, this aesthetic response augments the sense of mystery,
ambience, and sacrality that informs the five other readings of the sites
we have discussed.
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CONCLUSION
Each of these six interpretations of megalithic sites is an exercise in
identity construction that mixes myth and history, vision and memory,
imagination and ritual. For contemporary people in search of a spiri-
tual identity that is body- and nature-friendly and that addresses press-
ing ecological commitments, the sites serve as potent symbols of a time
when humanity was believed to have lived more gently and harmo-
niously on the earth. For some the sites foster transformative spiritual
experiences by facilitating contact with alternative realities and states of
consciousness. Contemporary Druids reaffirm their identity with the
earth and the “Celtic tradition” by practicing rituals constructed from
bits of folklore, myth, local history, and oral traditions at the megaliths.
Neo-shamans reinforce their self-identified role as bridges between the
worlds by journeying to the realms of nature spirits and power animals
at the sites. During their solitary pilgrimages to the sites, other seekers
craft spiritual identities from the ancient voices they hear, the inspira-
tions and revelations they receive, and the healing dreams and visions
they experience. For many the sites serve as ritual centers where they
can celebrate terrestrial and celestial cycles and build communities of
kindred spirits. The megaliths serve as touchstones from deep antiquity
for those who wish to re-enchant a world left disenchanted by scientism
and industrialization. For yet others the megaliths offer connection to
powerful natural energies that can be used for healing and self-empow-
erment. Their various rites of touching and circumambulation allow
them to recharge their ritual tools and reenergize spiritual commit-
ments and orientations. Finally, the sites can serve simply as places of
aesthetic, artistic, musical, and poetic inspiration; places removed from
the ambient strains and stresses of urban life where the creative imag-
ination can be re-stimulated and where visions, both ancient and mod-
ern, can foster wholeness and integration.
The interpretations of megalithic sites are in a continual process of
refinement and change. In a freewheeling, egalitarian, and grassroots
manner, individuals and groups have cobbled together eclectic readings
of these sites using a vast array of historical information, myths, folklore,
esoteric traditions, archaeological research, and ritual imaginaries. This
interpretive process is occurring outside the control of governing elites,
ecclesiastical authorities, or dominant religious institutions.
96
It is at
root an exercise in both individual and communal identity construction;
a movement of resistance to a world system that has lost its secure moor-
ings in the natural order.
The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers who generously
offered their expertise during the revision process. This paper is stronger
in both style and substance because of their suggestions and critiques.
Lucas: Constructing Identity with Dreamstones
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ENDNOTES
1
For a further discussion of postmodern identity issues, see Peter Berger, The
Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (Garden City:
Anchor Books, 1980); Kenneth Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in
Contemporary Life (New York: Basic Books, 1991); and Anthony Giddens,
Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1991). For a discussion of identity construction and national meta-
narratives, see Karen A. Cerulo, Identity Designs: The Sights and Sounds of a Nation
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995).
2
Jenny Blain and Robert J. Wallis, “Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights:
Contemporary Pagan Engagements with the Past,” Journal of Material Culture 9,
no. 3 (2004): 240–41. Jenny Blain, email communication with author, 25 January
2000.
3
Adrian J. Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and
Sedona (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001), 4.
4
Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground, 8.
5
This term denotes a witch who works alone and who practices wildwood
mysticism, a hidden knowledge believed to be at the root of witchcraft. See Rae
Beth, The Hedge Witch’s Way: Magical Spirituality for the Lone Spellcaster (London:
Robert Hale, 2003).
6
Heathenry denotes a modern revival of Germanic/Norse Paganism and is
frequently used as a self-designation by followers of Germanic Neopaganism in
the United Kingdom. Heathens seek to re-create Pagan belief and practice
using literary sources—specifically the Eddas and Sagas—and archaeological
sites such as stone circles. Adherents seek a deeper connectedness to local
landscapes and communication with the wights, ancestors, and other spirit
beings tied to these landscapes. The tradition is polytheistic, animist, and
employs shamanism in its rituals and magic. See also Jenny Blain, Nine Worlds of
Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-shamanism in Northern European Paganism (London:
Routledge, 2002).
7
Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground, 7–8. My designation “nature spirituality” is
coterminous with Ivakhiv’s conception of “earth spirituality” or “ecospirituality.”
My term has a greater European flavor than Ivakhiv’s conception, which has a
North American accent. This is probably because my research focuses primarily
on European nature spirituality adherents, while his looks at both North
American and European eco-spiritualities.
8
Blain and Wallis, “Sacred Sites,” (2004), 237–61.
9
To use Michel Foucault’s formulation, as articulated in his article, “Of Other
Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22–27.
10
Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground, 11.
11
Edward C. Relph, “Post-Modern Geography,” Canadian Geographer 35, no.1
(1991): 98–105.
12
Fiona Bowie, Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Publishing, 2000), 242.
13
Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground, 223.
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14
Nikki Bado-Fralick, “Mapping the Wiccan Ritual Landscape: Circles of
Transformation,” Folklore Forum 33, nos.1–2 (2002): 48.
15
A recent Carnegie Council conference entitled “The Search for a Usable
Past” concluded,
The modern idea of a usable past reflects a desire to make sense of
national experiences in ways that unify rather than separate us. The
search for a usable past aims at creating a better world by incorporating
achievements as well as regrets, pride as well as disappointment, into our
historical accounts. In the right hands the usable past can be an
expression of communal aspiration.
My use of “usable past” incorporates the notion that individuals and collectives
construct pasts from many sometimes dubious and contradictory elements in
order to promote present aspirations, agendas, and worldviews. See <www.cceia.org/
resources/articles_papers_reports/716.html>, accessed 26 December 2006.
16
Marco A. Portales, “Literary History, a ‘Usable Past,’ and Space,” MELUS 11,
no. 1 (1984): 91–102.
17
Bob Trubshaw, Sacred Places: Prehistory and Popular Imagination
(Loughborough, U.K.: Heart of Albion Press, 2005), 60, 114; Isaac Bonewits,
email communication with NUREL listserv, 28 April 1997.
18
Trubshaw, Sacred Places, 88; Jerome A. Voss, “Antiquity imagined: cultural
values in archaeological folklore,” Folklore 98, no. 1 (1987): 89.
19
Trubshaw, Sacred Places, 35.
20
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A
Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 86–87.
21
Berger and Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality, 86–87; Trubshaw, Sacred
Places, 31; Blain and Wallis, “Sacred Sites,” (2004), 240–41.
22
Gabriel Cooney, Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland (New York, N.Y.: Routledge,
2000), 89.
23
Clare Slaney, email communication with author, 11 August 2001.
24
Andy Norfolk, email communication with author, 31 March 2000.
25
Paul Devereux, Earth Memory: Sacred Sites—Doorways into Earth’s Mysteries (St.
Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 1992), 168.
26
Handfastings are Pagan wedding rituals. They have two forms: weddings, and
betrothals for a year and a day. If the latter, the participants can renew the vow
or not after the designated period.
27
Andy Norfolk, email communication with author, 22 July 2001. Gardner is also
associated with Stonehenge. At Midsummer, he participated in rites with the
Ancient Druid Order that included a sword (brought from his museum in the
Isle of Man) that fitted the Heel Stone.
28
Trubshaw, 99.
29
Quoted in Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain, “Sacred Sites, Contested
Rites/Rights,” Discussion Document and Report, 2001; <www.sacredsites.org.
uk/discussions/discussion2002-1.pdf>, p.13, accessed 3 February 2007.
30
Quoted in Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain, “Sacred Sites, Contested
Ri(gh)tes: Community and Diversity in Pagan Approaches to Archaeological
Lucas: Constructing Identity with Dreamstones
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Monuments,” draft of paper presented at British Association for the Study of
Religions Conference, Cambridge University, 11 September 2001, 9.
31
P. Davies, “Respect and Reburial,” The Druid’s Voice: The Magazine of
Contemporary Druidry 8, no. 1 (Summer, 1997): 12–13.
32
Wallis and Blain, “Sacred Sites, Contested Ri(gh)tes,” 9.
33
Clare Slaney, email communication with author, 11 August 2001.
34
Sarah Vivianne, interview with author, 27 June 2001.
35
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2000); see
also Michel Maffesoli, The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass
Society (London: Sage Publications, 1996).
36
Wallis and Blain, “Sacred Sites, Contested Ri(gh)tes,” 11.
37
Sarah Vivianne, interview with author, 27 June 2001.
38
A community of counterculture nomads that espouses New Age beliefs and
travels in mobile homes, vans, and caravans to music festivals, fairs, and sacred
sites such as Glastonbury and Avebury in the British Isles. Their heyday was in
the 1980s and 1990s.
39
George Firsoff, as quoted in Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain, “Sites,
Sacredness, and Stories: Interactions of Archaeology and Contemporary
Paganism,” Folklore 114, no. 33 (2003): 317.
40
Author’s Field Notes, Keswick, England, 21 June 2000.
41
See Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and
Metaphors (Cornell, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974).
42
Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground, 48–50.
43
Andy Norfolk, email communication with author, 31 March 2000.
44
Craig Strobel, email communication with Nature Religion Listserv, 17 March
2000.
45
See, for example, Diana Gabaldon, Outlander (New York: Dell Publishing,
1991).
46
Alexei Kondratiev, Celtic Rituals: An Authentic Guide to Ancient Celtic Spirituality
(Scotland: New Celtic Publishing, 1999), 71–73.
47
Devereux, Earth Memory, 163.
48
Paul Devereux, interview with author, 29 June 2001.
49
Wallis and Blain, “Sites, Sacredness, and Stories,” 311–12.
50
Jo May, Fogou: A Journey into the Underworld (Glastonbury, U.K.: Gothic Image
Productions, 1996), 64.
51
Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux, and Adam Fish, “The Use of the Strauch
Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and Wales,”
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams 13, no. 2 (2003): 95–105.
52
David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness,
Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 244, 266–69;
John Matthews, The Celtic Shaman (Shaftesbury, U.K.: Element,1991), 180.
53
Author’s Field Notes, Almendres Stone Circle, Evora, Portugal, 6 June 2003.
54
Paul Devereux, Stone Age Soundtracks: The Acoustic Archaeology of Ancient Sites
(London: Vega, 2001), 80–86.
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55
Devereux, Stone Age Soundtracks, 89.
56
Cassandra Latham and Andy Norfolk, “A Press Release on Behalf of the
Genius Loci of West Penwith,” The Druid’s Voice: The Magazine of Contemporary
Druidry 9, no. 1 (Winter 1998/99): 27.
57
Latham and Norfolk, “A Press Release”; see also Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred
Ground, 54.
58
May, Fogou, 103–104.
59
Graham King, interview with author, 29 June 2001; Wallis and Blain, “Sacred
Sites, Contested Rites/Rights,” 13.
60
For further discussion of the use of labyrinths in contemporary spiritual
practice, see Gailand MacQueen, The Spirituality of Mazes & Labyrinths (Kelowna,
B.C.: Northstone), 2005.
61
Jenny Blain, “Heathenry, the Past, and Sacred Sites in Today’s Britain,” in
Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Michael F.
Strmiska, 181–208 (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC CLIO, 2005).
62
Such seasonal festivals are not exclusive to nature spirituality. Christian
festivals such as Easter and Christmas, the Jewish liturgical calendar, and Hindu
religious festivals are all orientated to various celestial and seasonal phenomena.
63
Graham King, interview with author, 29 June 2001.
64
A thoughtful critique of the matriarchal reading of prehistory can be found
in Cynthia Eller’s The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Won’t
Give Women a Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).
65
Kondratiev, Celtic Rituals, 105–21.
66
Deirdre McGrath, “Lough Gur Becomes a Druid’s Glen for Millennium
Solstice,” Limerick Leader, Online Edition, 25 December 1999; <www.limerick-
leader.ie/issues/19991225/news01.html>, accessed 4 January 2007.
67
Graham King, interview with author, 29 June 2001.
68
Blain and Wallis, “Sacred Sites,” (2004), 249. An anonymous reviewer gave the
2006 figure. It should be noted that not all participants at Stonehenge’s
Midsummer festival have an active connection with the nature spirituality
movement as defined in this paper.
69
Author’s Field Notes, Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England, 20–21 June 2001.
70
Jenny Blain and Robert J. Wallis, “A Living Landscape? Pagans, Archaeology,
and Spirits in the Land,” 3rd Stone: Archaeology, Folklore and Myth 43, no. 3
(Summer 2002): 22.
71
Jenny Blain, “‘Old Religion,’ New Conflicts: Newspapers, Nationalism and the
Politics of Alternative Spirituality,” paper presented at Birmingham Cultural
Studies Conference, June 2000.
72
Author’s Field Notes, Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England, 21 June 2001.
73
Author’s Field Notes, Castlerigg, Keswick, England, 21 June 2000.
74
The phrase “plausibility structures” comes from Peter Berger’s work, especially
The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor Books, 1967), 45–47. Berger maintains that human worldviews are
socially constructed and maintained. As such, they require a social base for their
continued existence. He refers to this base as the worldview’s plausibility
structure.
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75
As quoted in Paul Devereux, Symbolic Landscapes: The Dreamtime Earth and
Avebury’s Open Secrets (Glastonbury, U.K.: Gothic Image, 1992), 161; Michael
Dames, The Avebury Cycle (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977).
76
Trubshaw, Sacred Places, 138–42; see Julian Cope, The Megalithic European: The
21st Century Traveller in Prehistoric Europe (London: Element, 2004); Julian Cope,
The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-Millennial Odyssey through Megalithic Britain
(London: Thorsons, 1999); see also Michael Dames, The Silbury Treasure: The
Great Goddess Rediscovered (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976).
77
Andy Norfolk, email communication with author, 22 July 2001.
78
Blain and Wallis, “Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights,” 237–61.
79
Sarah Vivianne, interview with author, 27 June 2001.
80
Godseyes are traditional talismans woven from yarn that provide protection
from negative forces. The name is associated with the idea of the eye of a god
watching over the petitioner.
81
Matthews, The Celtic Shaman, 179.
82
Will Adcock, Shamanism: Rituals for Spirit Journeying and Creating Sacred Space
(London: Select Editions, 2000), 33.
83
Wallis and Blain, “Sites, Sacredness, and Stories,” 314.
84
Wallis and Blain, “Sites, Sacredness, and Stories,” 310; Clare Slaney, email
communication with author, 11 August 2001; Sarah Vivianne, interview with
author, 27 June 2001.
85
See, for example, John Michell, The View over Atlantis (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1972); Robin Heath and John Michell, The Measure of Albion: The Lost
Science of Prehistoric Britain (St. Dogmaels, Wales: Bluestone Press, 2004); Francis
Hitching, Earth Magic (London: Cassell, 1976); Hamish Miller and Paul
Broadhurst, The Sun and the Serpent (Launceston, U.K.: Pendragon Press, 1998);
Trubman, Sacred Places, 86, 90–3.
86
Devereux, Earth Memory, 172; John Foster Forbes, The Unchronicled Past: Being
a Brief Account of What Ensued as the Result of the Tragedy of Atlantis (London:
Simpkin Marshal Ltd., 1938).
87
Christopher Chippindale, Stonehenge Complete (New York: Thames and
Hudson, 2004), 246–49.
88
Jo May, Fogou, 51–52.
89
Author’s Field Notes, Forest of Fougeres, Brittany, France, 24 May 2000.
90
Author’s Field Notes, Gask Farm, Inverness, Scotland, 18 June 2000.
91
Graham Harvey, Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth (New
York: New York University Press, 2000), 156–57.
92
Author’s Field Notes, Rollright Stones, England, 1 July 2001.
93
Chippendale, Stonehenge Complete, 103–12.
94
Sarah Vivianne, interview with author, 27 June 2001.
95
Author’s Field Notes, Tomenaverie Stone Circle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 19
June 2001.
96
Trubshaw, Sacred Places, xii–xiii, 59.
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