Last week I was up at some stone circles in the peaks and ran into some New Age enthusiasts. Also because it was just after the equinox I found plenty of evidence of pagan use of the stones, like the offering above in the Nine Ladies stone circle. I had a great time. Usually when I visit these places there’s stones and sky, but walking round with these really nice people there were also spirits goddesses and vibrations. Admittedly I didn’t sense any spirits, goddesses or vibrations, but I’m told they were there.
A friend was was also enjoying the day out and she was amused by the different reactions to some of the site between myself and these people. She felt it was a contrast between head and heart, that I knew more about the sites but the New Age visitors were experiencing it. I can’t agree. One reason is that there is a joy in finding things out, asking questions about something rather than simply accepting it isn’t an emotionless activity. The other reason is that I don’t know that much about these sites, and you’ll often find that pagans, druids and heathens are tremendously well-read on the literature around these sites. I’d be hugely surprised if, on a typical day, you can’t find a Pagan in Avebury who knows much more about the excavations than I do.
I don’t agree with their claims about spirits etc because I can’t verify them, but I’d be amazed if the people who built these stones didn’t have complex supernatural beliefs. I’ll bet that they couldn’t prove the existence of their spirits either, but I also suspect that modern and ancient Pagans share a respect for nature and for the megalithic sites, so I don’t find the idea of sacrifices at stone circles ridiculous. I can’t help thinking ancient sacrifices would have been a bit more bloody, but understandably no-one is keen to leave a severed goat’s head around a site in these times. Like Christianity or other religions Paganism has moved with the times.
This is why mockery of paganism bothers me. I picked up this story about a druid who is balancing energies in a cave in South Wales via Ma’at. It’s because the bones of the Red Lady of Paviland are in Oxford and this is causing psychic trauma. It’s easy to mock, but the idea that it’s ok to mock someone because he’s a “self-styled druid” and it’s the druidism that is silly that bothers me more. There is an belief that druidism isn’t a proper religion because it’s made up. Mike Pitts sums it up politely:
Modern Druid belief and ceremony has no connection with the people who built Stonehenge – it only dates back to the 18th century when an interest in paganism came into vogue. We simply don’t know what the belief systems or ceremonial practices of the original Druids were.
I agree with that, but that’s because I’m an atheist. Atheist or not it seems logical to assume that at least 99.9% of religions are made up, but that doesn’t necessarily make it open season on Jains*. Modern Christianity doesn’t have the the belief systems or ceremonial practices of the original Christians. For instance the early Christians had no New Testament. Does that disprove Christianity? Life would be easy if it did, but I’ve no doubt that Christians would argue that their ever-present God guides them in the modern world and that the New Testament helps. Fair enough, but given the same standard of proof it follows that maybe the ancient spirits that guided the druids still guide modern Pagans. The rituals may be different, but that’s because the world is different.
The reason it particularly bothers me is that Chris Warwick is raising what could be an eminently sensible question: what respect do we owe to the dead? Are human remains, even if they’re 26,000 years old important? Usually the appeal is back to what the dead would have wanted and I think that’s a dead end, especially when you’re dealing with prehistoric remains. It appears from examination of tombs at Mycenae that the dead expected to be laid out with care in a rock-cut tomb and then after a period for their their bones to be swept away to the side to make space for a new burial. I don’t know if these remains expected similar treatment. What I do know is that it would cause a lot of people distress today, if we handled human remains without respect, because they wouldn’t wish to think of themselves or their relatives being handled in a similar manner.
What I cannot accept is that the bones need to be in the cave to balance energies. There are a few reasons, but one is that the Sun knocks the cave out of equilibrium on a daily basis, radioactive elements in the rocks of the cave decay and the bones themselves slowly decompose through chemical processes. The cave is never ‘balanced’, it’s a dynamic system. By asserting his personally revealed beliefs overrule verifiable experience he’s opened his beliefs to ridicule and that is a shame. That’s why I cannot support his group Dead to Rights. If I did then other people could quite reasonably turn around and ask who the hell made me arbiter or the supernatural world. Despite this the reason Pagans deserve the same respect as any other religions is that all religions have their fringe. If you visit somewhere like the Wild Hunt, you’ll find that not all pagans agree with this notion of energies either. This should be no surprise, you can only generalise about Pagans as you can about Christians and most religions have their odd adherents, which is why I think they deserve a little respect.
*You can make fun of Jains, Jainism is a religion that says violence is wrong, but unlike a lot of other religions Jains behave like that’s true. Try putting an “Insert Name of Popular Religion = Aggression” sticker on your car and see what happens.
