A Druid Priest explains Stonehenge

Submitted by Ordinal on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 08:21

Description

Heritage Key presents A Druid Priest Explains Stonehenge.

Druid Kim Payne is a regular protester at Stonehenge. He told us his theories about how the stones got there, what the site originally meant, and what it means now to the community of druids who stage regular protests against the lack of access to the stones - sometimes naked protests.

Click play for a unique insight into Stonehenge, from somebody very much at one with the stones.

See some stunning Stonehenge photography - and add your own - in the Heritage Key Flickr Pool.

CreditsFilmed by Jon Himoff, Edited by Ryan Chatfield

Transcription

There’s many different types of stories about how the stones got here. What you have there is two sets of stones. You’ve got the trilithons, which are two uprights and one across. They come from 20 miles in that direction at Marlborough Downs. The others are the Preseli Mountain bluestones. They come from 200-and-whatever-it-is that way (points) in Wales, in the Preseli Mountains.

It was an investment in time and protein. You’ve got to think about it – when they’re doing that they’re not hunting, they’re not gathering, they’re not farming.

Title: How did the stones get there?

You can go with half a dozen different theories. You can go with the archaeological theories, which say they dragged them, which are quite possible, or you can go with the weird and wonderful theories which say they levitated them. It’s up to you. My personal one is you’ve got to remember that this is chalk downs. Now chalk downs, when it’s cold, gets a thick layer of ice on it, and a sledge moves very easily on a thick layer of ice. 4000 years ago there wasn’t much topsoil. The chalk would still have been exposed from the last glaciations. So during the winter... very easy to drag stones across.

People ask me were there any burials actually in the henge or not? Yes there were. And last year – this’ll get you – last year the archaeologists dug them up and took them away. Oh dear.

Title: Who did the bones belong to?

Those bones were put there for a very specific reason. They were the guardians. You do not put a burial in a place like that unless it’s either a) a high priest, b) a high priestess, a chieftain or a queen. Somewhere like that you’re not going to get common or garden rabble like you and me.

This place is actually massive. Most people think of Stonehenge as being just the stones. No, you’ve got approximately 20 square miles of huge earthworks. Huge stones.

Title: What does Stonehenge mean to you?

We’re basically here on a protest at the moment, because what we want is free and open access to the stones, so that anybody, like yourselves as well as us, can come along at any time and enter the stones and be in the spirit of the stones, to worship, do ceremonies, or whatever. Because it’s an ancient sacred place, and it has been for a long time.

Title: How long have people been in the area of Stonehenge?

There have been people in this area for 4, 4 and a half thousand years plus.

If you just look at Stonehenge, you can see on top of one of the trilithons, there’s a little nipple, a little bump, a little point. On the capstone that goes between the two, there’s a cup, and it fits like that. And that’s a basic mortise and tenon joint from woodworking. So in a sense you could say that Stonehenge is nothing more than a stone representation of a wooden structure, because they would have built in wood before they built in stone.

This is our only home. We just can’t go that way at the moment (points to the sky) – we’ve not quite got the technology. So this is our only home, and we’ve got to look after her.

Now we’re being stopped, apart from 4 times per year when English Heritage graciously let us into the stones – that’s the autumn equinox, the vernal equinox which is the next one, the summer and winter solstices. So what we do is during the middle of the night we run across naked and do ceremonies in there sometimes, because then they can’t touch us.

Title: Why is it important to protect Stonehenge?

As I said, we’re actually here protesting at the moment because we want these fences down. You can actually go into the stones. English Heritage will charge you £6.50 to walk around it – the wrong way, because you walk around it anti-clockwise, therefore disempowering the site, therefore disempowering England.

There’s so much that we don’t actually know for certain but we can guess and we can look at the evidence and make informed judgements. But you’ve got to remember another thing. When you’re looking at this place, don’t look at it with the eyes of a modern man or woman. Take yourself back to when it was built, when they didn’t know about cars, cameras, internet, and look at it through their eyes. What would it mean to them?

Words by Kim Payne.

Related Publications

Prehistoric Britain

Routledge (2010)

by Timothy C. Darvill

Caesar's Druids: An Ancient Priesthood

Yale University Press (2010)

by Miranda Aldhouse-Green

From Stonehenge to Santa Claus: The Evolution of Christmas

Tempus Publishing (2008)

by Paul Frodsham

Comments

Visitor:

It's funny, these druids like to protest but seem to know so little about the monument itself. The burials 'taken' last year were bones that had already been excavated in the 20's then replaced.And they are to be brought back. After all they are everyone's ancestors not just pagans'--I suspect sometimes certain factions prefer NO new knowledge because it destroys fluffy theories. The bones all across the monument (primarily cremated) are of men,women and children too. they were special people but as unpalatable as it may be to some, they could just as easily be year-sacrifices as nobility (esp the kids!) The man in the ditch terminal, an inhumation from 2300 BC, in fact had been shot in the back with arrows; this is parelled by burials at ditch terminals elsewhere mostly especially at a timber circle in Wales,where a skeleton inside was a young man of similar age,also shot by arrows. People have lived near the stones since the mesolithic--8000 years ago. remnants of posts,perhaps totems are in the Sh carpark. Please tell me how you can fit nearly a million visitors a year into the stones without damage,especially to the ground. It is physically impossible; people would have to be timed as to entry also,to prevent fighting,and have a limited visit.The truth really is like people like this 'druid' (whose religion bears no historical relationship to that of the stonehenge people) don't really want 'everyone' to freely visit--they want it for THEMSELVES and their own personal gratification,and damn the consequences.

Sat, 11-07-2009 13:14