Column: A Pilgrim at Stonehenge

Pagan Perspectives

My suitcase is an antique, a big red leather monster. It doesn’t do anything that modern luggage is supposed to do. Suitcases today have wheels and collapsible handles, so that there’s no difference between carrying one change of pants or twenty. Mine doesn’t have that, and I kind of like it that way. Suitcases are meant to be picked up and carried, hefted with one’s own arms and back.

Column: Solstice at Stonehenge

My first impression of England came in a solstice ritual put on by the Cotswold Order of Druids at Stonehenge several weeks ago. This struck me at the time as the single most clichéd way for a Pagan pilgrim to begin his visit to the country, but then things become clichés often because they are so perfect that they can’t help but become obvious. During my stay in England, I had the good fortune of having many wonderful magickal experiences, but the ceremony at Stonehenge stands out. For one thing, the sheer size of it: dozens and dozens of people in cloaks and robes, circling the stones, our steps in time with drums from the Morris players toward the back of our line. I felt the same sense that I felt at Thingvellir when I visited Iceland: that mixture of wonder, curiosity, smallness, transience that we call the sublime.