Summer Solstice

The Radical Anthropologists Group camp near Avebury every year. They form the Kings Drummers who perform a ritual and a show at Avebury with Terry the Druid and at Stonehenge with King Arthur every year at summer solstice. This year the performance was based on the myth of the bull and the transition from the hunter/gatherer era to farming. I believe that Stonehenge was constructed during the Taurean age.(1) The above Youtube video gives you a little idea of what it was like. Hail King Arthur!
Solstice at Stonehenge has now become the domaine of gap year foreign students and I wonder if they know why they are there…the spiritual significance of this moment. Stonehenge is masculine and Avebury is more feminine…I always prefer the Avebury part of the show.
However wandering around Stonehenge at solstice is an amazingly trippy experience…at one point I was standing alone on a stone, doing as my good friend Laura the astrologer advised me to do… meditating on what I want from a man, my hearts’ desire. Just then a man got up on the stone with me and said “Hey gorgeous, give us a snog”. I declined (although I was tempted seeing that everybody else was snogging). Ooh could this be my hearts desire? I wondered.That was quick.
The man started to talk: “Well my Mrs is right pissed off with me.”
Ok so he’s married I thought. “Why?” I asked politely.
“Cos I was snogging men! It was fucking brilliant, tongues ‘n all! She got the hump and buggered off”.
“Are you gay or bi then?”
“Nah, not at all. But it was great!!!Anyway I hope my Mrs is having a good time and snogging someone else…”
He continued “I”m just out of jail actually.”
“Why were you in there?” I say.
“Beating up my Mrs.”
I gulp.
“Well she’s always hitting me too, so I clocked her one. We are like that me ‘n her”. He makes a gesture of two fists knocking together “but we love each other, we are meant to be, nothing will ever separate us.”
I say to him: “Well I think you ought to go and look for her, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Sweet. I’ll do that. Go on, give us a snog will ya?”
I peck him lightly on the lips.
He jumps down: “Happy solstice…”
Next some football type hooligans get up on(what I now regard as)my stone. They are rowdy and loud and are spoiling my moment so I push them off.
Later I walk around. The Hari Krishna’s are making a fantastic noise. There are drums circles everywhere. People are bobbing to invisible/unheard music. One group of about 50 people are standing back to back in a spiral, holding hands, with their eyes closed. Individuals lay asleep covered in St Johns ambulance lurid pink blankets and bits of polythene, impervious to the rain.
(1) During the Taurean Age ( 4000 BCE ), worship of the Golden Calf was common in the Middle East. During the Arian Age ( circa 2000 BCE ), the Jews indulged in widespread ritual sacrifice of sheep and other animals in the Temple. During the Piscean Age ( 160 BC – 2000 ACE ), many Jews walked away from animal sacrifice and embraced Christianity. And of course there is always the shadow side of each age.The shadow side of the Piscean age was Virgo, the woman, hence 2000 years of repression of The Goddess. The shadow side of the much lauded Aquarian age is Leo. Today’s fame fetish is corrosive. Andy Warhol expressed the Aquarian/Leo polarity most prophetically: “In the future, everyone (Aquarian equality) will be famous (Leo limelight) for 15 minutes”.